Mystery of the Disappearing Cat (7 page)

“Bets, you must go! There’s your bell again.”

“Well, it’s your bell too — it means you’ve got to come in and wash and change into your suit for supper-time,” said Bets. “You know it does.”

Pip did know it. Larry gave a sigh. He knew that he and Daisy ought to go home too. They had farther to go than Pip and Bets.

“We’ll have to go too,” said Larry. “Fatty, I suppose you couldn’t possibly stay and watch, could you? It really would be funny to see. Why don’t you stay? Your mother and father don’t bother about you much, do they? You seem to go home or go out just whenever you like.”

“All right, I’ll stay here and watch,” said Fatty. “I think I’ll climb that tree there. It’s easy to climb, and the leaves are nice and thick. I can see everything well from up there, and not be seen myself.”

“Well, come on then, Bets,” said Pip, not at all wanting to go. Fatty was going to have all the fun.

Then there came the sound of men’s voices up the garden, and the children looked at one another at once.

“It’s Tupping and Clear-Orf coming back,” whispered Larry. “Over the wall, quick!”

“Good-bye, Fatty, see you tomorrow sometime,” said Pip in a low voice. The four ran quietly to the wall. Pip gave Bets a leg-up, and got her safely over. The others were soon safely on the other side. Fatty was left by himself. He shinned up the tree very quickly, considering his plumpness.

Fatty sat on a broad bough, and carefully parted the leaves so that he could see what was going on down below. He saw Mr. Tupping coming towards the cat-house with Clear-Orf.

“Well now,” Clear-Orf said, “we’ll just have a look-round, Mr. Tupping. You never know when there’s clues about, you know. Ah, many a clue I’ve found that’s led me straight to the criminal.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Tupping wisely, “I believe you, Mr. Goon. Well, I shouldn’t be surprised if that boy Luke hasn’t left something behind. He may be clever enough to steal a valuable cat, but he wouldn’t be clever enough to hide his tracks.”

The two men began to hunt carefully round and about the cat-house. The Siamese cats watched them out of brilliant blue eyes. They could not imagine why so many people came to their shed that day. Fatty looked down at the hunters, carefully peering between the leaves.

Mr. Goon found the cigar-end under the cat-house first. He pounced on it swiftly and held it up.

“What’s that?” asked Mr. Tupping in astonishment.

“Cigar-end,” said Mr. Goon with great satisfaction. Then he looked puzzled and tilted back his helmet to scratch his head. “Does that boy Luke smoke cigars?” he asked.

“Don’t be silly,” said Mr. Tupping impatiently. ” ‘Course not. That’s not a clue. Somebody who came with Lady Candling to see her cats must have chucked his cigar-end away under the house. That’s all.”

“Hmmm!” said Mr. Goon, not at all wanting to dismiss the cigar-end like that. “Well, I’ll have to think about that.”

Fatty giggled to himself. The two men went on searching. Mr. Tupping straightened himself up at last.

“Don’t seem nothing else to be found,” he said. “I suppose there wouldn’t be anything in the cat-house to see, do you think?”

Mr. Goon looked doubtful. “Shouldn’t think so,” he said. “But we might look. Got the key, Mr. Tupping?”

Mr. Tupping took the key down from a nail at the back of the cat-house. But before he had unlocked the door Mr. Goon gave a loud exclamation. He had looked through the wire-netting of the cat-house and had seen various things on the floor that caused him great excitement. Why, the place seemed alive with clues I

“What’s up?” asked Mr. Tupping.

“Coo! Look here! See that shoe-lace there?” said Mr. Goon, pointing. “That’s a whopping big due, that is. Somebody’s been in there and lost his shoe-lace!”

Mr. Tupping stared at the shoe-lace in the greatest astonishment. Then he saw the blue button — and the hair-ribbon. He gave a gasp of surprise. He inserted the key in the lock and opened the door.

The two men collected the “clues” from the cat-house. They brought them out to look at them.

“Whoever went in there wore shoes with brown laces, that’s certain,” said Mr. Goon with great satisfaction. “And look at that there button — that’s come off somebody’s coat, that has.”

“What’s this?” asked Mr. Tupping, showing Mr. Goon Pip’s peppermint drop. Mr. Goon sniffed at it

“Peppermint!” he said. “Now, does that boy Luke suck peppermints?”

“I expect so,” said Mr. Tupping. “Most boys eat sweets. But Luke don’t wear a hair-ribbon, Mr. Goon. And look, there’s another cigar-end — like the one you found under the house.”

Mr. Goon soon lost his excitement over his finds, and became puzzled. He gazed at his clues in silence.

“Judging by these here clues, the thief ought by rights to be someone that smokes cigars, wears blue hair-ribbons and blue buttons, sucks peppermint drops, and has brown laces in his shoes,” he said. “It don’t make sense.”

Fatty was trying his hardest not to giggle out aloud. It was so funny seeing Mr. Goon and Mr. Tupping puzzle their heads over all the clues that the children had so carefully left for them to find. Mr. Goon cautiously licked the peppermint drop.

“Yes; it’s peppermint right enough,” he said. “Well, this is a fair puzzler — finding all these dues, and nobody we can fit them to, so to speak. You finding anything else, Mr. Tupping?”

Mr. Tupping had gone into the cat-house, and was looking all round it again very, very carefully.

“Just looking to see if there’s any clue we’ve overlooked,” he said. But he couldn’t seem to find anything else, however hard he hunted. He came out again, looking rather untidy and cross.

“Well, there don’t seem much else to be found,” he said, sounding very disappointed. “I’m sure you’ll find it’s that boy Luke, Mr. Goon, that’s the thief. These clues can’t be clues — just things that got into the cage by accident.”

“Well, a peppermint drop seems a funny sort of thing to get into the cage by accident,” said Mr. Goon grumpily. “I’ll have to take all these things home and think about them.”

Fatty chuckled deep down in himself as he watched Mr. Goon put his “clues” into a clean white envelope, lick it up, write something on it, and put it carefully into his pocket. He turned to Mr. Tupping.

“Well, so long!” he said. “Thanks for your help. It’s that boy Luke, no doubt about it. I’ve told him I’ll go along and give him a thorough questioning tomorrow, and if I don’t force a confession out of him, my name’s not Theophilus Goon!”

And with that mouthful of a name old Clear-Orf departed majestically down the path, his “clues” safely in his pocket, his mind puzzling them over.

Fatty longed to get down the tree, go home, and have some supper. He suddenly felt tremendously hungry. He peered down to see if Mr. Tupping had gone. But he hadn’t

He was in the cat-house again, hunting about very carefully. After a while he came out, looking thoughtful, locked the house, and went off up the path still looking thoughtful. Fatty waited till his footsteps had died away, then slithered down the tree.

“Well, we’ll see old Luke tomorrow and ask him no end of questions,” thought Fatty as he went home. “My word — this has been an exciting day!”

But there were more exciting things to come!

Pip and Bets Pay a Call.

Next morning Fatty was down at Pip’s house early, longing to tell the others how surprised and puzzled Mr. Goon and the gardener had been when they had found all the “false” clues. Larry and Daisy arrived about the same time as Buster and Fatty, and soon the children were giggling over Fatty’s story.

“Clear-Orf asked Tupping if Luke smoked cigars,” said Fatty with a chuckle. “I almost fell out of the tree trying not to laugh!”

“We’ve whistled lots of times to Luke this morning,” said Pip, “but he hasn’t answered us, or come to the wall either. Do you think he is too frightened to?”

“Perhaps he is,” said Fatty. “Well, we simply must talk to him, and tell him about the whistle we found in the cats’ cage, and all the clues we put there ourselves. I’ll go and whistle awfully loudly.”

But not even Fatty’s loudest and most vigorous whistling brought any answer. So the children decided to wait at the gate about one o’clock. That was the time when Luke went home to his dinner.

So they waited at the gate. But no Luke appeared. The children waited until ten minutes past one, and then had to rush off to their own meal.

“Perhaps he’s got the sack,” said Fatty, the idea occuring to him for the first time. “Perhaps he won’t come next door any more.”

“Oh,” said Bets in dismay, “poor Luke! Do you think Lady Candling gave him notice then, and said he wasn’t to come any more?”

“How shall we find out?” said Larry.

“We could ask Tupping,” said Daisy doubtfully. The others looked at her scornfully.

“As if we’d go and ask Tupping anything!” said Larry. They all stood and thought for a moment.

“I know,” said Pip. “Lady Candling said I could take Bets in to see her. So I will, this afternoon. And I could ask Lady Candling herself about Luke, couldn’t I?”

“Good idea, Pip,” said Fatty. “I was just thinking the same thing myself. And also you could take the chance of finding out where Lady Candling was between four and five o’clock perhaps. I mean, find out whether she had any chance of slipping off down to the cats herself, to steal her own Dark Queen away.”

“Well, I’m sure she didn’t,” said Pip at once. “You’ve only got to look at her to know she couldn’t even think of doing such a thing! Anyway, I thought we had decided that it wasn’t worth while questioning our Suspects, seeing that Luke was by the cat-house all the time during that hour and would have seen anyone there.”

“Well, I suppose it isn’t really,” said Fatty. “I don’t see that it’s any way possible for the thief to have stolen the cat right under old Luke’s nose. He said that he hadn’t left the spot for even half a minute.”

“There’s our dinner-bell again,” said Bets. “Come on, Pip, we shall get into an awful row. Come back afterwards, ~with others, and we’ll tell you how Pip and I get on this afternoon.”

At half-past three Pip and Bets thought they would go and see Lady Candling.

“I think it would be more polite to Lady Candling if you went looking clean,” said Daisy. So poor Pip and Bets went into the house to wash and put on clean clothes.

Soon they were walking sedately down the drive, out of the gate, and up Lady Candling’s drive. They passed Tupping on the way. He was cutting the hedges there. He scowled at them as they passed.

“Good afternoon, Tupping, what a beautiful day it is!” said Pip, in an imitation of his mother’s politeness. “I really think we shall have a little rain before long, though, don’t you? Still, the vegetable garden needs it, I’m sure!”

Tupping gave a growl, and snipped viciously at the hedge. Pip felt sure he would like to have snipped at him and Bets. He grinned and went on his way.

The two children went to the front door and rang the bell. A trim little maid came to the door and smiled at the children.

“Please, is Lady Candling in?” asked Pip.

“I think she’s in the garden,” said the maid. “I’ll take you out to the verandah, and you can go and look for her if you like. She may be picking roses.”

“Have they found the cat yet?” asked Pip as he and Bets followed the maid out to a sunny verandah.

“No,” said the maid. “Miss Harmer’s in a great state about her. It’s a funny business, isn’t it? I’m afraid it must have been Luke. After all, he was the only one near the cats between four and five o’clock.”

“Didn’t you hear or see anyone strange at all yesterday afternoon?” asked Pip, thinking that he might as well ask a few questions.

“Nobody,” said the maid. “You see, Lady Candling had quite a tea-party yesterday — nine or ten people altogether — and Cook and I were busy all the time. We didn’t go down the garden at all between four and five o’clock, we had such a lot to do. If we had slipped down, we might have seen the thief at his work. Ah! it was a good day for the thief — with Miss Harmer out, and Tupping out, and Cook and me busy, and Lady Candling up here at the house with her friends!”

“It was,” said Pip. “It looks as if the thief must have known all that too, to arrange his theft so neatly.”

“That’s why we think it must be Luke,” said the girl. “Though I always liked Luke. A bit simple, but always very kind. And that Tupping’s a perfect horror to him.”

“Don’t you like Tupping either?” said Bets eagerly.

“He’s a rude, bad-tempered old man!” said the girl. “But don’t you say I said so. Cook and me wish it had been him that took the cat. Well, I mustn’t talk to you any more. You go out and find her ladyship.”

Pip and Bets went into the sunny garden. “From what the maid says it’s quite clear that we can cross Lady Candling, the parlourmaid, and the cook off our list of Suspects,” said Pip. “Hallo! there’s Miss Trimble.”

Miss Trimble advanced to meet them. Bets spoke to Pip in a whisper.

“Pip! Let’s count how many times her glasses fall off! They keep on doing it.”

“Well, children!” said Miss Trimble in her bird-like voice, giving them a wide and toothy smile. “Are you looking for Lady Candling? I think I have seen this little girl before, haven’t I? Aren’t you the little girl that the strawberry runners ran away with? Oh, what a joke, ha, ha!”

She laughed, and her glasses fell off, dangling on their little chain. She put them on again.

“Yes, I’m the little girl,” said Bets. “And we have come to see Lady Candling.”

“Oh, what a pity! She’s just gone out!” said Miss Trimble. “I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with poor old me!”

She laughed again, and her glasses fell off. “Twice,” said Bets, under her breath.

“Do you know where Luke is?” said Pip, thinking it would be a good idea to go and find him if he was anywhere about.

“No, I don’t,” said Miss Trimble. “He didn’t turn up today. Tupping was very annoyed about it.”

“Did Lady Candling give Luke the sack, Miss Tremble?” asked Bets.

“My name is Trimble, not Tremble,” said Miss Trimble.

“No, Lady Candling didn’t give him notice. At least, I don’t think so. Wasn’t it a pity about that lovely cat? I saw her at four o’clock, you know.”