Mystery of the Pantomime Cat (13 page)

He disappeared into the theatre, and Fatty rode off

to Loo Farm. He waited there for ten minutes, sitting on his
bicycle behind a wall. When he spotted Goon coming along, he rode out suddenly,
and once again Mr. Goon got a fine view of a full-moon face shining out at him.

"Now you clear-orf!" yelled Mr. Goon. "Following me
about like this! You with your fat face and all. You go and see a dentist. Gah!
Think yourself funny following me about with that face."

"But Mr. Goon—it looks as if you're following
me
about,"
protested Fatty. "I go to telephone, and you are there! I go to the
car-park and you come there too. And I call at Loo Farm, and hey, presto, you
come along here as well I What are you following
me
for? Do you think
I
 did the robbery at the
Little Theatre?"

Mr. Goon looked in puzzled distaste at Fatty's fat face. He
couldn't make it out. How could any one's face get as fat as that so suddenly?
Was he seeing double?

He decided not to call at Loo Farm whilst that boy was hanging
round with his full-moon face. Mr. Goon rode away down the road, defeated.

"Toad!" he murmured to himself. "Regular toad, that
boy. No doing anything with him. Well, he don't know how well I've got on with
this Case. Give him a shock when he finds it's all cleared up, arrests been
made, and sees the Inspector giving me a Pat on the Back! His and his fat
face!"

Fatty looked at his watch. It was getting on for twelve. He'd
better go back and join the others. What news had they been able to get?

He rode up to Pip's house. They were all there, waiting for him.
Bets waved out of the window.

"Buck
up,
Fatty! We've all got plenty of news! We
thought you were
never
coming!"

At the Show-and Afterwards.

The children sat down in Pip's big playroom, a bag of chocolates
between them, supplied by Larry.

"Well—it looks as if we've all got something to report,"
said Fatty. "Girls first. How did you get on, Daisy and Bets?"

Taking it in turns to supply the news. Bets and Daisy told their
story. "Wasn't it
lucky
to see Zoe herself?" said Daisy.
"She's sweet, she really is.
She
couldn't possibly have done the
job, Fatty."

"But isn't it awful about the hanky with Z on?" said
Bets. "And oh, Fatty—she smokes the same kind of cigarettes as our
cigarette-ends were made of—Player's!"

"Well, Goon will probably find that most of the others smoke
them too. so we needn't worry so much about that," said Fatty. "I'm
sorry about that hanky business, though.
Why
did we put Z on that silly
hanky!"

"Don't you think we ought to tell Goon that—I mean, about us
putting the hanky down for a false clue?" said Daisy, anxiously. "I
can't bear Goon going after poor Zoe with a false clue like that—it's awful for
her."

"It can't
prove
anything," said Fatty, thinking
hard. "If it
had
been hers, she might have dropped it any old time,
not just that evening. I don't see that Goon can make it really
prove
anything."

"Neither do I," said Larry. "We'll own up when the
case is finished—but I don't see much point in us spoiling our own chances of
solving the mystery by confessing to Goon."

"All right," said Daisy. "Only I can't
help
feeling
awful about it."

"I must say you two girls did very well," said Fatty.
"You got a lot of most interesting information. What about you, Larry and
Pip?"

Then Larry and Pip told of their meeting with the manager, and
related in great detail all he had said to them. Fatty listened eagerly. This
was splendid!

"I say—that was fine," he said when the two boys had
finished. "I feel there's absolutely no doubt at all now that it was
Boysie who took in the doped tea. Well—if he
did
do the job—or helped
somebody to do it—he certainly made it quite clear that he was in it, by taking
the tea to the manager! I suppose he didn't realize that the remains of the tea
would show the traces of the sleeping-draught. It's the sort of thing a mutt
like Boysie would forget."

"Well—we shall see him this afternoon," said Daisy.
"I forgot to tell you. Fatty, that we arranged with Zoe to meet all the
members of the show after it had finished this afternoon, for autographs. So we
shall see Boysie as well."

"Very good," said Fatty, pleased. "You all seem to
have done marvellously. I consider I've trained you jolly well!"

He was well pummelled for that remark. When peace had been
restored again, Larry asked him how
he
had got on—and he related all
that Pippin had told him.

"It's funny that every single member of the show had a grudge
against the manager, isn't it?" he said. "He must be a beast. He did
just the kind of things that would make people want to pay him back. Motives
sticking out everywhere!"

"What are motives?" Bets wanted to know.

"Good reasons for doing something," explained

Fatty. "Understand? The show-people all had good reasons for
getting back at their manager—motives for paying him out for his
beastliness."

"It's a very interesting mystery, this," said Larry.
"Seven people could have done the job—all of them have good motives for
getting even with the manager—and all of them, except Boysie, and perhaps Zoe,
have good alibis. And we don't think either of those would have done the job!
Zoe sounds much too nice."

"I agree," said Fatty. "It's a super mystery. A
proper Who-Dun-It."

"What's
that'!"
said Bets at once.

"Oh dear—Bets is an awful baby," said Pip. "Bets—a
Who-Dun-It is a mystery with a crime in it that people have got to solve—to
find out who did it."

"Well, what's it called a Who-Dun-It for, then?" said
Bets, sensibly. "I shall call it a Who-Did-It."

"You call it what you like, said Fatty, grinning. "So
long as we find out who-dun-it or who-did-it, it doesn't matter what we call
it. Now—what's the next step?"

"We'll all go to the show this afternoon, watch every one
acting, and then go round and collect autographs, speak to all the members of
the show, and take particular notice of Boysie," said Larry, at once.

"Go up top," said Fatty. "And tomorrow we go after
the rest of the alibis. Larry and Daisy will go to see Mary Adams, to find out
if Lucy White's alibi is sound—and Pip and I will see if we can test Peter
Watting's and William Orr's. We shall have to find out how to check John James
too—he went to the cinema all the evening—or so he said."

"Yes—and Alec Grant's," said Daisy. "lie went to
Sheepridge and gave a show there on his own."

"Silly to check that, really," said Pip. "So many
people heard and saw him. Anyway, it will be jolly easy to check."

'There's the dinner-bell," said Pip. "I must go and
wash. What time do we meet this afternoon? And where? Down at the
theatre?"

"Yes," said Fatty. "Be there at a quarter to three.
The show starts at three. So long!”

They were all very hungry indeed for their meal. Detecting was
hungry work, it seemed! Fatty spent a good time after his meal writing out all
the things he knew about the mystery. It made very interesting reading indeed.
Fatty read it over afterwards, and felt puzzled. So many Suspects, so many
motives, so many alibis—how in the world would they ever unravel them all?

At a quarter to three all the Find-Outers were down at the Little
Theatre. A grubby little boy was in the booking-office, and gave them their
tickets. They passed into the theatre and found their seats. They had taken them
as far forward as they could, so as to be able to observe the actors very
closely.

They were in the middle of the second row—very good places indeed.
Some one was playing the piano softly. There was no band, of course, for the
show was only a small one. The stage-curtain shook a little in the draughts
that came in each time the door was opened. The children gazed at it, admiring
the marvellous sunset depicted on the great sheet.

The show began punctually. The curtain went up exactly at three
o'clock, and the audience sat up in expectation.

There were two plays and a skit on Dick Whittington's Pantomime.
In the first two plays, Boysie did not appear, but he came in at the last one,
and the children shouted with delight as he shuffled in on all fours, dressed
in the big furry skin that the boys had seen through the window on Friday
night.

He was very funny. He waved to the children just as

he had waved to the three boys when they
had peered in to see him on the Friday night. He capered about, cuddled up to
Zoe Markham (who was Dick Whittington and looked very fine indeed), and was
altogether quite a success.

"Zoe looks lovely," said Larry.

"Yes—but why do the Principal Boys parts
always
have
to be taken by girls," said Daisy, in the interval of a change of scenery.
"Do you remember, in Aladdin, it was a girl who took Aladdin's part—and in
Cinderella a girl took the part of the Prince."

"Sh!" said Bets. "The curtain is going up again.
Oh. there's the Cat! And oh, look—his skin is splitting down by his tail!"

So it was. The Cat seemed to realize this and kept feeling the
hole with his front paw. "Meeow," he said, "meeow!" Almost
as if he was a real cat, dismayed at the splitting of his coat!

"I hope he doesn't split it all the way down," said
Bets. "I bet he'd get into a row with that awful manager, if he did. Oh,
isn't he funny! He's pretending to go after a mouse.
Is
it a
mouse?"

"Only a clockwork one," said Daisy. "Well, Boysie
may be queer in his head and all that—but I think he's jolly clever in his
acting. I do really."

Fatty thought so too. He was wondering if any one quite so good at
acting could be as silly as people said. Well—he would see if he could talk to
Boysie afterwards—then he could make up his own mind about him.

The show came to an end. The curtain came down, went up once, and
came down again. It stayed down. Every one clapped and then got up to go home.
It was past five o'clock.

"Now let's rush round to the stage-door," said Fatty.
"Come on!”

So, autograph-books in hand, the five of them tore round to the
stage-door, anxious to catch all the actors and actresses before they left.

They waited for five minutes. Then Zoe came to the door, still
with some of the grease-paint on her pretty face. But she had changed into a
suit now, and looked quite different.

"Come along in and meet the others inside," she said.
"They won't be out for a few minutes and it's cold standing at that
door."

So, feeling a little nervous, the five children trooped in at the
stage-door and followed Zoe to a big room, where one or two of the actors were
gulping down cups of tea.

Peter Watting and William Orr were there, one elderly and rather
sour-looking, one young and rather miserable-looking. They didn't look nearly
so fine as they had done on the stage, when Peter had been Dick's master and
William had been a very dashing captain, singing a loud, jolly song of the sea,
the blue blue sea!

They nodded at the children. "Hallo, kids! Autograph-hunting?
Well, we're flattered, I'm sure! Hand over your books."

The two men scribbled in each book. Then Zoe introduced them to
Lucy White, a tall, gentle-looking girl who had been Dick Whittington's
sweetheart in the play. She had looked really beautiful on the stage, with a
great mass of flowing golden curls, which the children had admired very much.
But the mass of curls now stood on a side-table—a grand wig—and Lucy was seen
to be a quiet, brown-haired girl with a rather worried face.

She signed the books too. Then John James came in, burly, dour,
and heavy-footed, a big man, just right for the black king in the play.
"Hallo!" he said. "You

don't mean to say that somebody wants our autographs! Well, well!
Here's fame for you!"

He signed the books too. Fatty began to get into conversation with
William and Peter. Larry tried to talk to John James. Pip looked round. Surely
there should be somebody else to ask to sign their books?

There was—and he came in at that moment, a small, dapper little
man, who had played the part of Dick's mother on the stage. He had been very
good as the mother—neat and nimble, using an amusing high voice, and even
singing two or three songs in a woman's voice very cleverly indeed.

"Could we have your autograph, please?" said Fatty,
going up to him. "I say, I did like your performance. I could have sworn
you were a woman! Even your voice!"

"Yes—Alec was in great form with his singing today,"
said Zoe. "Got his high notes beautifully! You should see him imitate me
and Lucy—takes us off really well, so that you'd hardly know it wasn't us! We
tell him he's lost in this little company. He ought to be on in the West
End!"

"He thinks that himself, don't you. Alec?" said John
James, in a slightly mocking voice. "But the manager doesn't agree with
him."