Mystery of the Hidden House (5 page)

“If I can get my mother to say you can all come to tea, I’ll telephone you,” said Fatty. “I don’t see why I can’t go and buy a whole lot of cakes, and have you to tea down here in the shed. We’d be nice and cosy, and we could make as much noise as we liked.”

But alas for Fatty’s plan, an aunt came to tea, and he was made to go and behave politely at tea-time, handing bread and butter, jam and cakes in a way that Ern would have admired tremendously.

Ern was not having a very good time with his uncle. He had tried in vain to replace the notebook he had taken, but Mr. Goon always seemed to be hovering about. Ern didn’t mean to let his unde see him put it back!

He kept trying to go into his uncle’s office, which was next to a little wash-place off the hall. But every time he sauntered out into the hall, whistling softly as if he hadn’t a care in the world, his uncle saw him.

“What you want?” he kept asking. “Why are you so fidgety? Can’t a man have forty winks in peace without you wandering about, and whistling a silly tune?”

“Sorry, Uncle,” said Ern, meekly. “I was just going to wash my hands.”

“What, again?” said Mr. Goon, disbelievingly. “You’ve washed them twice since dinner already. What’s this new idea of being clean? I’ve never known you wash your hands before unless I told you.”

“They feel sort of - well, sort of sticky,” said Ern, rather feebly. He went back into the kitchen, where his uncle was sitting in his armchair, his coat unbuttoned, and his froggy eyes looking half-closed and sleepy. Why didn’t he go to sleep as he usually did?

Ern sat down. He picked up a paper and pretended to read it. Mr. Goon knew he was pretending, and he wondered what Ern was up to. He didn’t want to wash his hands! No, he wanted to go into his uncle’s office. What for? Mr. Goon thought deeply about the matter.

A sudden thought came into him mind. Aha! It was that cheeky toad of a boy, Frederick Trotteville, who had put Ern up to snooping about his office to see if any mystery was afoot. The sauce! Well, let him catch Ern snooping in his desk, and Ern would feel how hard his hand was! He began to hope that Ern would do a bit of snooping. Mr. Goon felt that he would quite like to give somebody a really good ticking-off! He was in that sort of mood, what with that dog snapping at his ankles and making him rush off like that in front of Ern.

He closed his eyes. He pretended to snore a little. Ern rose quietly and made for the door. He stopped in the hall and looked back. Mr. Goon still snored, and his mouth was half open. Ern felt he was safe.

He slipped into the office, and opened the drawer of the desk. He slid the notebook into the drawer - but before he could close it a wrathful voice fell on his ears.

“Ho! So that’s what you’re doing - snooping and prying in my private papers! You wicked boy - my own nephew too, that ought to know better.”

Ern felt a sharp slap across his left cheek, and he put up his hand. “Uncle! I wasn’t snooping! I swear I wasn’t.”

“What were you doing then?” demanded Mr. Goon.

Ern stood and stared at his uncle without a word to say. He couldn’t possibly own up to having taken the notebook - so he couldn’t say he was putting it back! Mr. Goon slapped poor Ern hard on the other cheek. “Next time I’ll put you across my knee and deal with you properly!” threatened Mr. Goon. “What are you snooping for? Did that cheeky toad of a boy tell you to hunt in my desk to see what sort of a case I was working on now? Did he tell you to find out any of my clues and give them to him?”

“No, Uncle, no,” said Ern, beginning to blubber in fright and pain. “I wouldn’t do that, not even if he told me to. Anyway, he knows the mystery. He’s told me about it.”

Mr. Goon pricked up his ears at once. What! Fatty had got hold of another mystery! What could it be? Mr. Goon could have danced with rage. That boy! A real pest he was, if ever there was one.

“Now, you look here,” he said to Ern, who was holding his hand to his right ear, which was swollen with the slap Mr. Goon had given it, “you look here! It’s your duty to report to me anything that boy tells you about this mystery. See?”

Ern was torn between his urgent wish to be loyal to Fatty, the boy he admired so tremendously, and his fear that Mr. Goon might really give him a thrashing if he refused to tell anything Fatty told him.

“Go on,” said his uncle. “Tell me what you know. It’s your bounden duty to tell a police officer everything. What’s this here wonderful mystery?”

“Oh - it’s just lights flashing on Christmas Hill,” stammered poor Ern, rubbing his tear-stained face. “That’s about all I know, Uncle. I don’t believe Fatty knows much more. He’s given me a notebook - look. You can see what’s written down in it. Hardly anything.”

Mr. Goon frowned over the headings. He began to plan. He could always get this notebook from Ern - and if the boy refused to give it to him, well then, as an officer of the law he’d get it somehow - even if he had to do it when Ern was asleep. He gave it back to Ern.

“I’ve got a good hard hand, haven’t I, Ern?” said Mr. Goon to his nephew. “You don’t want to feel it again, do you? Well, then, you see you report to me all the goings-on that those kids get up to.”

“Yes, Uncle,” said Ern, not meaning to at all. He backed away from his uncle. “There aren’t any goings on just now. We hadn’t planned anything. Uncle. You came and interrupted us.”

“And a good thing too,” said Mr. Goon. “Now you can just sit down at the kitchen table and do some holiday work, see? Time you did something to oil those brains of yours. I’m not going to have you tearing about with those five kids and that dog all day long.”

Ern went obediently to the kitchen and settled down at the table with an arithmetic book. He had had a bad report from his school the term before, and was supposed to do a good bit of holiday work. But instead of thinking of his sums he thought about the Find-Outers, especially Fatty, and the Mystery, and Flashing Lights, and Kidnappers and Robbers. Lovaduck! How exciting it all was.

Ern was worried because his uncle wouldn’t let him go out. He couldn’t get in touch with the others if he didn’t go out. Suppose they went to look for those flashing lights and didn’t let him know? Ern felt he simply couldn’t bear that.

All that day he was kept in the house. He went to bed to dream of tigers, crocodiles, Fatty reciting verse and somebody kidnapping his uncle. When he awoke the next morning he began to plan how to get into touch with the others.

But Mr. Goon had other plans. “You can take down all those files in those shelves,” he said. “And clean up the shelves and dust the files, and put them back in proper order.”

That took Ern all the morning. Mr. Goon went out and Ern hoped one of the Find-Outers would come, but they didn’t. In the afternoon Mr. Goon settled himself down to go to sleep as usual. He saw Ern looking very down in the dumps and was pleased. “He won’t go snooping again!” he thought. “He knows what he’ll get if he does!”

And Mr. Goon went peacefully off to sleep. He was awakened by a thunderous knocking at the door. He almost leaped out of his chair, and Ern looked alarmed.

“Shall I go, Uncle?” he said.

Mr. Goon did not answer. He went to the door himself, buttoning up his uniform. That knocking sounded official. It might be the Inspector himself. People didn’t usually hammer on the door of a police officer like that. They’d be afraid to!

Outside stood a fat old woman in a red shawl. “I’ve come to complain,” she began, in a high, quavering voice. “The things I’ve put up with from that woman! She’s my next-door neighbour, sir, and she’s the meanest woman you ever saw. She throws her rubbish into my garden, sir, and she always lights her bonfire when the wind’s blowing my way, and…”

“Wait, wait,” said Mr. Goon, annoyed. “What’s your name and where do…”

“And only yesterday she called me a monster, sir, that was the very word she used, oh, a wicked woman she is and it’s myself won’t stand it any longer. Why, last week her dustbin…”

Mr. Goon saw that this would go on for ever. “You can put in a written complaint,” he said. “I’m busy this afternoon,” and he shut the door firmly.

He settled himself down in his chair again, but before two minutes had gone, there came such a knock at the door that it was a wonder it wasn’t broken down. Mr. Goon, in a fury, leapt up again and almost ran to the door. The woman was there again, her arms folded akimbo over her chest.

“I forgot to tell you, sir,” she began, “when I put my washing out last week this woman threw a pail of dirty water over it, and I had to wash it all again, and…”

“Didn’t I tell you to put in a written report?” roared Mr. Goon. “Do as you’re told, woman!” And again he shut the door, and stamped into the kitchen, fuming.

No sooner had he sat down than the knocker sounded again. Mr. Goon looked at Ern. “You go,” he said. “It’s that woman again. Tell her what you like.”

Ern went, rather scared. He opened the door and a flood of words poured over him. “Ooh, it’s you this time, it it? Well, you tell your uncle, what’s the good of me putting in a written report, when I can’t read nor write? You ask him that. You go in and ask him that!”

And then, to Ern’s enormous astonishment, the red-shawled woman dug him in the chest, and said in a whisper, “Ern! Take this! Now, tell me to go away, quick!”

Ern gaped. That was Fatty’s voice, surely. Coo, was this Fatty in one of his disguises? Wonderful! Fatty winked hugely, and Ern found his voice.

“You clear-orf!” he cried. “Bothering my uncle like this! I won’t have it! Clear-orf, I say!”

He slammed the door. Mr. Goon, in the kitchen, listened in astonishment. Why, Ern had been able to get rid of the woman far more quickly than he had. There must be something in the boy after all.

Ern was quickly reading the note Fatty had pushed into his hand:

“Tonight. Watch for lights on Christmas Hill. Hide in ditch by mill. Midnight. Report tomorrow.”

Ern stuffed the note into his pocket, too thrilled for words. It was beginning! He was plunging into a Mystery! And he wouldn’t tell his uncle a single word. That Fatty! Fancy having the cheek to dress up like that and come thundering on his uncle’s front door. Ern went into the kitchen, quite bemused.

“So you got rid of that woman?” said his uncle. “Well, let’s hope she won’t come hammering again.”

She didn’t. She went home to Fatty’s house, slipped out of her things in Fatty’s shed - and there was Fatty himself, taking off the woman’s wig he wore, and rubbing away the wrinkles he had painted on his face. He chuckled. “That took Goon in properly! My word, Ern’s face was a picture when he saw it was me!”

Mysterious Happenings on Christmas Hill

Ern was in such a state of excitement all the rest of the day that his uncle couldn’t help noticing it. He stared at Ern and wondered. What was up with the boy? He hadn’t seen or heard from the others. Then why was he so excited? He couldn’t keep still for a minute.

“Stop fidgeting, Ern!” said Mr. Goon sharply. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing, Uncle,” said Ern. Actually Ern was a bit worried about something. He knew Christmas Hill all right - but he didn’t know where this mill was that Fatty had written of in his letter. How could he find out? Only by asking his uncle. But would his uncle smell a rat if he began talking about the mill?

He decided to get a map of the district out of the bookcase and study it. So when Mr. Goon was answering the telephone, Ern slid the map from the shelf, opened it and looked for the mill. Oh yes - there it was - on the right of the stream. If he followed the stream he couldn’t help coming to the mill. Ern shivered in delight when he thought of creeping out all by himself that night. He marked where the mill was, and then with his pencil followed the way he would go, right up to the mill.

Mr. Goon’s eyes looked sharply at the map as he came back into the room. “What are you studying?” he asked.

“Oh - just looking at a map of this district to see if I can go for a good walk somewhere,” said Ern. He put the map back, and felt the little note in his pocket. Nothing would make him show it to Mr. Goon. Ah, that was a clever trick of Fatty’s, getting him a message through, right under Mr. Goon’s nose!

Mr. Goon knew there was something up, especially when Ern said he would pop off to bed early. That wasn’t like Ern! He watched him go, and then took out from the shelf the map that he had seen Ern using. He at once saw the pencilled path from the village of Peterswood to the old mill on Christmas Hill.

“So that’s where something’s going on!” said Mr. Goon to himself. “Lights flashing on Christmas Hill - which means somebody’s there that’s got no business to be. And the person to look into this is P.C. Goon. There’s no time like the present, either. I’ll go tonight!”

Quite a lot of people were preparing to go to Christmas Hill that night! Pip and Larry were going, complete with torches, and red, blue and green coloured paper to slip over the beam now and again. Fatty was going, of course, to give Ern a fright. Ern was going - and so was Mr. Goon. A real crowd!

Mr. Goon didn’t go to bed that night. It wasn’t worth it. He planned to slip off at about half-past eleven, very quietly so as not to wake Ern.

Ern, as a matter of fact, was wide awake, listening to the church clock striking the half-hours. He shivered with excitement in his warm bed. He didn’t hear Mr. Goon go quietly out of the front door and pull it to behind him. He quite thought his uncle was in bed and asleep, as he usually was at that hour.

About two minutes after Mr. Goon had gone from the house Ern got up. He was fully dressed. He took his torch and tried it. Yes, it was all right. Bit faint, but it would last. He pulled on a coat, stuffed a scarf round his neck, and put on his big cap. He trod quietly down the stairs, hoping not to wake up his uncle - who by this time was plodding softly up Christmas Hill.

Fatty was already by the mill, hidden safely under a bush. Larry and Pip were some distance away, each with a torch and directions to begin shining them here and there, to and fro, every few minutes, in the direction of the mill. The hill was a desolate, deserted place, and the wind was very cold as it swept across it that night.