Mystery of the Invisible Thief (13 page)

“My knife’s gone - that silver one,” said Fatty. “And that little silver case I kept odds and ends in. And yes - my cigarette case is gone, the one I use when i’m disguised. Well, the thief is welcome to that! I suppose he thought it was silver, but it isn’t. It’s just metal!”

“Oh, Fatty!” wailed Bets. “What’s happened? Has a robber been here? Oh, what shall we do?”

“Shut up, Bets,” said Pip. “Behaving like a baby as usual. Go home if you can’t be any help.”

Bets stopped wailing at once. She looked at Fatty but he was completely engrossed in checking up his belongings.

She went outside to swallow her tears and be sensible - and then she suddenly saw something that made her stare. She yelled loudly.

“Fatty! FATTY! Come here, quick!”

Fatty appeared at top speed, the others behind him. Bets pointed to the muddy path near the shed. On it were clear footprints - enormous ones!

“Gosh!” said Fatty. “It’s our robber again. The very same one - look at the marks his rubber heels made - the same pattern as before.”

“Will there be glove-prints too?” asked Daisy excitedly, and she went back into the shed.

“Shouldn’t think so,” said Fatty following. “There’s no wallpaper or distemper to show them up.”

“Well, look - there they are!” said Daisy, pointing triumphantly. And sure enough, there were two large glove-prints showing clearly on the looking-glass that Fatty had in his shed.

“He likes to leave his mark, doesn’t he?” said Larry. “You’d almost think he was saying, ‘This is the robber, his mark!’”

“Yes,” said Fatty thoughtfully. “Well, it’s the same fellow all right. He hasn’t got away with a great deal, thank goodness - but what a mess!”

“We’ll soon clear it up,” said Bets, eager to do something for poor old Fatty.

“Let’s take a very careful snoop round before we move anything,” said Fatty. “The Mystery has come right to our very door - it’s all-alive-oh again. We may perhaps be able to solve it this time.”

“I suppose you’re not going to inform the police!” said Larry with a laugh.

“No. I’m not,” said Fatty very firmly. “First thing I’m going to do is to measure up the footprints to make absolutely certain they’re the same ones that we saw before - at Norton House and at Mrs Williams’s.”

They were, of course, exactly the same. No doubt about it at all. The glove-prints were the same too.

“We can’t find out whether there was a hollow cough this time,” said Pip, “because there was nobody here to hear it. I suppose there aren’t any scraps of paper, are there, Fatty?”

“None,” said Fatty. “But there weren’t at Mrs Williams’s either, you know. I’m beginning to think that they really had nothing to do with the robberies. They don’t really link up with anything.”

Daisy went wandering off down the path a little. She came to another print by the side of the path, almost under a shrub. She called Fatty.

“Look!” she said. “Isn’t this strange print like the ones you found in both the other robberies?”

Fatty knelt to see. On the wet ground under the shrub the mark was quite plain - a big roundish print with crisscross lines here and there.

“Yes,” said Fatty puzzled, turning over the pages of his notebook to compare his drawing with the print. “It’s the same. I cannot imagine what makes it - or why it appears in all the robberies. It’s extraordinary.”

They all gazed down at the strange mark. Pip wrinkled his forehead. “You know - somehow I feel as if I’ve seen it somewhere else besides the robberies. Where could it have been?”

“Think, Pip,” said Fatty. “It might help.”

But Pip couldn’t think. All he could say was that he thought he had seen it somewhere on the day when they all went interviewing.

“That’s not much help,” said Fatty with a sigh. “We were all over the place that day. Now we’d better put everything back. I can’t see that we can find any more clues. As a matter of fact it seems as if this robbery is almost an exact repetition of the others - large footprints, glove-prints, strange unknown print, and small goods stolen.”

They hung up the clothes, and put back everything into the chest of drawers. They kept a sharp lookout for any possible clue, but as far as they could see there was none at all.

“How did the thief get down to the shed?” asked Larry. “Did he get in through the back gate leading into the lane, do you think? It’s not far from the shed. Or did he come down the path from the house?”

“Well - if he made that mark under the shrub, it rather looks as if he came from the house,” said Fatty. “On the other hand, the large footprints are only round and about the shed - I didn’t find any on the path up to the house, did you?”

“No,” said Larry. “Well, it’s more likely he would have come quietly in through the back-gate down by the shed - he wouldn’t be seen then. It’s very secluded down here at the bottom of the garden - can’t be seen from the house at all.”

“All the same, I think we’d better ask the cook and the house-parlourmaid if they saw anyone,” said Fatty. “They just might have. And we’ll ask who has been to the house this afternoon too. Any tradesman or visitor might have seen somebody.”

“Yes. Good idea,” said Larry. “Come on - let’s go and find out.”

The Warning

The house-parlourmaid was out, and had been out all the afternoon. The cook was in, however, and was rather surprised to see all the five children and Buster trooping in at her kitchen door.

“Now don’t you say you want tea,” she began. “It’s a quarter to six, and…”

“No, we don’t want tea,” said Fatty. “I just came to ask you a few things. Someone’s been disturbing my belongings in the shed at the bottom of the garden. I wondered if you had seen anyone going down the path to the shed this afternoon.”

“Goodness,” said the cook alarmed. “Don’t tell me there’s tramps about again. I thought I saw a very nasty-looking fellow slipping down that path the other day.”

Fatty knew who that was all right. So did the others. They turned away to hide their grins.

“No - it’s today I want to know about,” said Fatty. “Did you see anyone at all?”

“Not a soul today,” said the cook. “And I’ve been sitting here at this window all the time!”

“You didn’t have forty winks, I suppose?” asked Fatty, with a smile. “You do sometimes.”

“Well, maybe I did for a few minutes,” said the cook, with a laugh. “I get right sleepy in the afternoons, when it’s hot like this. Still, I was awake enough all right when the tradespeople came.”

“Who came?” asked Larry.

“Oh, the usual ones,” said the cook. “The girl with the groceries, the milkman, the baker - and let me see, did the gasman come? No, that was this morning.”

“Anyone else?” asked Fatty.

“Well, Mr Goon called,” said the cook, “and he asked for your mother, but she wasn’t in. So he went away again. He came at the same time as the baker did. They had a good old talk together too, out in the front garden. I heard them. Mr Goon bumped into the baker just as he was leaving.”

“I bet they had a good talk about Bets and me,” said Fatty to the others. “Anyone else call, Cook?”

“Not that I know of,” she said. “I didn’t have any talk with the baker - he’s too much of a saucy one for me - I just left a note on the table to tell him how many loaves to leave. And I didn’t see the milkman either - he knows how much to leave. I saw the grocer’s girl, and she was in a hurry as usual.”

“I wonder what Goon wanted,” said Fatty as they left the kitchen to walk down to the shed again. “I bet he wants to know if I was the old tramp the other day. As if Mother would know!”

They were just walking out of the scullery door when Daisy stopped suddenly and looked down at the ground.

“Look!” she said, and pointed.

They all looked - and there, just by the scullery door, in a wet patch of ground, was the same roundish mark that they had seen under the shrub! The same as they had seen at the other two robberies as well.

“Gosh!” said Fatty staring down. “The thief did actually come to the scullery door then! He must have made that mark - but why?”

“Your cook said nobody else came except the people she mentioned,” said Larry. “It seems to me as if the thief came here, peeped in and saw the Cook asleep and went down to the shed to do his dirty work.”

“Then why didn’t he leave large footprints here?” said Daisy. “There’s only small ones going to and from the bottom of the garden. I looked. There’s no large ones at all - no larger than size seven, anyway.”

“It beats me!” said Pip.

It beat them all. Now there had been three separate robberies, all obviously done by the same man, who left exactly the same marks each time - and yet he had never once been seen, though he must really be a very big fellow indeed.

“He’s invisible - that’s how he can do all these things!” said Daisy. “I mean - surely somebody would have seen him one of the times. But all he does is to come and go, and leave behind him foot and glove-prints, and do just what he likes! He must be laughing up his sleeve at all of us.”

“It can’t be old Goon, can it?” said Bets, hopefully. “He has large feet and hands, and he has got a hollow, sheep-like cough, and he really does hate you, Fatty. He came here today too - why couldn’t he have slipped down and been spiteful, turning all your things upside down and making a mess?”

“I daresay he’d like to,” said Fatty, “but remember he was away at the time of the first robbery - and honestly I don’t think he’s ass enough to do such idiotic things - I mean, it’s sheer dishonesty, robbing people like this, and Goon wouldn’t risk his job and his pension. No, rule that right out, Bets.”

“Are you going to ask the milkman and the others if they saw anyone?” asked Bets. Fatty shook his head.

“No. I’m pretty certain now that if the milkman, the baker or grocer’s girl had seen anyone here this afternoon, wandering about in large-size boots they would have told Cook. Anyway, I’m not interviewing that cocky little baker again - wouldn’t he be pleased if he knew I’d been robbed! He’d rub his little hands like anything, and rock to and fro on his toes and heels with glee.”

“Yes, he would,” said Bets, rocking to and fro as she remembered how he had gone up and down on his heels. “Nasty little man. I hope he doesn’t hear about this.”

“No one is to,” said Fatty firmly. “I’m not going to have Goon strolling down the garden and fingering everything in my shed. How he’d love to look through my make-up box, and pick up all my moustaches and eyebrows and wigs!”

“Well, none of us will say a word about this afternoon’s do,” said Larry. “We’ll keep the thief guessing! He’ll wonder why there’s no news of his last robbery!”

“The last thief burst the lock on your door, Fatty,” said Bets. “How will you lock it tonight?”

“I’ll slip out and buy a padlock,” said Fatty. “That will be the easiest thing to do tonight - put a padlock on the door. I’ll come with you when you go home. I can get one at the garage - that stays open till seven.”

So, at ten to seven Fatty and the others strolled up the lane to the garage in the village. They bought a strong little padlock, and came out examining it.

A voice behind them made them jump. It was Mr Goon, starting on his first night-round.

“Ho! A padlock! Maybe you’ll need that, Master Frederick! You’d better be careful.”

Everyone swung round in astonishment. “What do you mean, Mr Goon?” said Fatty.

“I’ve had notice that you’ll be the next on the robbery-list,” said Goon importantly. “I came to warn your mother this afternoon. Just you see that everything is well-locked up tonight, windows fastened and everything. And have that there pesky little dog of yours in the front hall.”

“What is all this about?” said Fatty, hoping that nobody would blurt out anything about the robbery that had already happened that afternoon. “What nonsense, Mr Goon!”

Mr Goon swelled up a little, and Bets was sure one of his uniform buttons was about to spring off. He fumbled in his breast-pocket and brought out his little notebook. He undid the elastic strap and ran through the pages. Everyone watched in silence.

He took out a scrap of dirty paper, and handed it to Fatty. “There you are. If that isn’t a plain warning I don’t know what is. ’Course you don’t need to take no notice of it at all - and anyway I’ll be sure to be round two or three times tonight to see as everything is all right round at yours.”

Fatty took the scrap of paper. On it, printed in uneven lettering, were three words:

TROTVILLS NEXT. - BIGFEET

Fatty silently passed it round to the others. They knew what Goon didn’t know - that the warning was too late. Bigfeet the robber, had already been to the Trottevilles!

“There you are!” said Goon, enjoying the interest he was causing. “The impertinence of it! Good as saying ‘Fat lot of good you are - I’ll tell you where I’m going to strike next.’ Signing himself Bigfeet too. He’s got some sauce!”

“Goon, have you got the other scraps of paper on you?” asked Fatty. “The ones found at Norton House, with 2, Frinton and 1, Rods on it? It would be useful to compare them.”

Goon gave a scornful little snort. “Think I didn’t compare them, Mr Smarty? ’Course I did. But this here note’s in printed capitals and the others aren’t. Can’t see any likeness at all.”

“I think you’re wrong, Mr Goon,” said Fatty, suddenly speaking like a grown-up again. “And if you like I’ll show you the likeness.”

“Gah,” said Goon in disgust. “Think you know everything, don’t you? Well, I tell you I’ve compared the three scraps of paper, and this one’s different.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Fatty.

That stung Mr Goon and he glared. He felt in the little pocket of his notebook and produced the other two notes. He showed them to Fatty, together with the third one. “See? No likeness at all!” he said triumphantly.

“I’m not thinking of the words written on the papers,” said Fatty. “I’m thinking of the paper they’re written on. It’s exactly the same. Whoever wrote the first notes, wrote this one too. So those first scraps of paper were clues after all - though they led to nothing.”

Mr Goon stared at the scraps of paper. Fatty was right. They had obviously been torn from the same notebook or sheets of paper - they were all rather yellowed and the surface was a little fluffy.