Chapter Chapter 3 · CHAPTER 3. BEING DETECTIVES

. CHAPTER 3. BEING DETECTIVES

The next thing that happened to us was very interesting. It was as real

as the half-crowns--not just pretending. I shall try to write it as like

a real book as I can. Of course we have read Mr Sherlock Holmes, as

well as the yellow-covered books with pictures outside that are so badly

printed; and you get them for fourpence-halfpenny at the bookstall when

the corners of them are beginning to curl up and get dirty, with people

looking to see how the story ends when they are waiting for trains. I

think this is most unfair to the boy at the bookstall. The books are

written by a gentleman named Gaboriau, and Albert’s uncle says they are

the worst translations in the world--and written in vile English. Of

course they’re not like Kipling, but they’re jolly good stories. And we

had just been reading a book by Dick Diddlington--that’s not his right

name, but I know all about libel actions, so I shall not say what his

name is really, because his books are rot. Only they put it into our

heads to do what I am going to narrate.

It was in September, and we were not to go to the seaside because it is

so expensive, even if you go to Sheerness, where it is all tin cans and

old boots and no sand at all. But every one else went, even the people

next door--not Albert’s side, but the other. Their servant told Eliza

they were all going to Scarborough, and next day sure enough all the

blinds were down and the shutters up, and the milk was not left any

more. There is a big horse-chestnut tree between their garden and ours,

very useful for getting conkers out of and for making stuff to rub on

your chilblains. This prevented our seeing whether the blinds were

down at the back as well, but Dicky climbed to the top of the tree and

looked, and they were.

It was jolly hot weather, and very stuffy indoors--we used to play a

good deal in the garden. We made a tent out of the kitchen clothes-horse

and some blankets off our beds, and though it was quite as hot in the

tent as in the house it was a very different sort of hotness. Albert’s

uncle called it the Turkish Bath. It is not nice to be kept from the

seaside, but we know that we have much to be thankful for. We might be

poor little children living in a crowded alley where even at summer

noon hardly a ray of sunlight penetrates; clothed in rags and with bare

feet--though I do not mind holes in my clothes myself, and bare

feet would not be at all bad in this sort of weather. Indeed we do,

sometimes, when we are playing at things which require it. It was

shipwrecked mariners that day, I remember, and we were all in the

blanket tent. We had just finished eating the things we had saved, at

the peril of our lives, from the fast-sinking vessel. They were rather

nice things. Two-pennyworth of coconut candy--it was got in Greenwich,

where it is four ounces a penny--three apples, some macaroni--the

straight sort that is so useful to suck things through--some raw rice,

and a large piece of cold suet pudding that Alice nicked from the larder

when she went to get the rice and macaroni. And when we had finished

some one said--

‘I should like to be a detective.’

I wish to be quite fair, but I cannot remember exactly who said it.

Oswald thinks he said it, and Dora says it was Dicky, but Oswald is too

much of a man to quarrel about a little thing like that.

‘I should like to be a detective,’ said--perhaps it was Dicky, but I

think not--‘and find out strange and hidden crimes.’

‘You have to be much cleverer than you are,’ said H. O.

‘Not so very,’ Alice said, ‘because when you’ve read the books you know

what the things mean: the red hair on the handle of the knife, or the

grains of white powder on the velvet collar of the villain’s overcoat. I

believe we could do it.’

‘I shouldn’t like to have anything to do with murders,’ said Dora;

‘somehow it doesn’t seem safe--’

‘And it always ends in the poor murderer being hanged,’ said Alice.

We explained to her why murderers have to be hanged, but she only said,

‘I don’t care. I’m sure no one would ever do murdering _twice_. Think

of the blood and things, and what you would see when you woke up in the

night! I shouldn’t mind being a detective to lie in wait for a gang

of coiners, now, and spring upon them unawares, and secure

them--single-handed, you know, or with only my faithful bloodhound.’

She stroked Pincher’s ears, but he had gone to sleep because he knew

well enough that all the suet pudding was finished. He is a very

sensible dog. ‘You always get hold of the wrong end of the stick,’

Oswald said. ‘You can’t choose what crimes you’ll be a detective about.

You just have to get a suspicious circumstance, and then you look for a

clue and follow it up. Whether it turns out a murder or a missing will

is just a fluke.’

‘That’s one way,’ Dicky said. ‘Another is to get a paper and find

two advertisements or bits of news that fit. Like this: “Young Lady

Missing,” and then it tells about all the clothes she had on, and the

gold locket she wore, and the colour of her hair, and all that; and then

in another piece of the paper you see, “Gold locket found,” and then it

all comes out.’

We sent H. O. for the paper at once, but we could not make any of the

things fit in. The two best were about how some burglars broke into

a place in Holloway where they made preserved tongues and invalid

delicacies, and carried off a lot of them. And on another page there

was, ‘Mysterious deaths in Holloway.’

Oswald thought there was something in it, and so did Albert’s uncle when

we asked him, but the others thought not, so Oswald agreed to drop it.

Besides, Holloway is a long way off. All the time we were talking about

the paper Alice seemed to be thinking about something else, and when we

had done she said--

‘I believe we might be detectives ourselves, but I should not like to

get anybody into trouble.’

‘Not murderers or robbers?’ Dicky asked.

‘It wouldn’t be murderers,’ she said; ‘but I _have_ noticed something

strange. Only I feel a little frightened. Let’s ask Albert’s uncle

first.’

Alice is a jolly sight too fond of asking grown-up people things. And we

all said it was tommyrot, and she was to tell us.

‘Well, promise you won’t do anything without me,’ Alice said, and we

promised. Then she said--

‘This is a dark secret, and any one who thinks it is better not to be

involved in a career of crime-discovery had better go away ere yet it be

too late.’

So Dora said she had had enough of tents, and she was going to look at

the shops. H. O. went with her because he had twopence to spend. They

thought it was only a game of Alice’s but Oswald knew by the way she

spoke. He can nearly always tell. And when people are not telling the

truth Oswald generally knows by the way they look with their eyes.

Oswald is not proud of being able to do this. He knows it is through no

merit of his own that he is much cleverer than some people.

When they had gone, the rest of us got closer together and said--

‘Now then.’

‘Well,’ Alice said, ‘you know the house next door? The people have gone

to Scarborough. And the house is shut up. But last night _I saw a light

in the windows_.’

We asked her how and when, because her room is in the front, and she

couldn’t possibly have seen. And then she said--

‘I’ll tell you if you boys will promise not ever to go fishing again

without me.’

So we had to promise.

Then she said--

‘It was last night. I had forgotten to feed my rabbits and I woke up and

remembered it. And I was afraid I should find them dead in the morning,

like Oswald did.’

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Oswald said; ‘there was something the matter with

the beasts. I fed them right enough.’

Alice said she didn’t mean that, and she went on--

‘I came down into the garden, and I saw a light in the house, and dark

figures moving about. I thought perhaps it was burglars, but Father

hadn’t come home, and Eliza had gone to bed, so I couldn’t do anything.

Only I thought perhaps I would tell the rest of you.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us this morning?’ Noel asked. And Alice explained

that she did not want to get any one into trouble, even burglars. ‘But

we might watch to-night,’ she said, ‘and see if we see the light again.’

‘They might have been burglars,’ Noel said. He was sucking the last bit

of his macaroni. ‘You know the people next door are very grand. They

won’t know us--and they go out in a real private carriage sometimes. And

they have an “At Home” day, and people come in cabs. I daresay they have

piles of plate and jewellery and rich brocades, and furs of price and

things like that. Let us keep watch to-night.’

‘It’s no use watching to-night,’ Dicky said; ‘if it’s only burglars they

won’t come again. But there are other things besides burglars that are

discovered in empty houses where lights are seen moving.’

‘You mean coiners,’ said Oswald at once. ‘I wonder what the reward is

for setting the police on their track?’

Dicky thought it ought to be something fat, because coiners are always

a desperate gang; and the machinery they make the coins with is so heavy

and handy for knocking down detectives.

Then it was tea-time, and we went in; and Dora and H. O. had clubbed

their money together and bought a melon; quite a big one, and only a

little bit squashy at one end. It was very good, and then we washed the

seeds and made things with them and with pins and cotton. And nobody

said any more about watching the house next door.

Only when we went to bed Dicky took off his coat and waistcoat, but he

stopped at his braces, and said--

‘What about the coiners?’

Oswald had taken off his collar and tie, and he was just going to say

the same, so he said, ‘Of course I meant to watch, only my collar’s

rather tight, so I thought I’d take it off first.’

Dicky said he did not think the girls ought to be in it, because there

might be danger, but Oswald reminded him that they had promised Alice,

and that a promise is a sacred thing, even when you’d much rather

not. So Oswald got Alice alone under pretence of showing her a

caterpillar--Dora does not like them, and she screamed and ran away when

Oswald offered to show it her. Then Oswald explained, and Alice agreed

to come and watch if she could. This made us later than we ought to have

been, because Alice had to wait till Dora was quiet and then creep out

very slowly, for fear of the boards creaking. The girls sleep with their

room-door open for fear of burglars. Alice had kept on her clothes

under her nightgown when Dora wasn’t looking, and presently we got down,

creeping past Father’s study, and out at the glass door that leads on

to the veranda and the iron steps into the garden. And we went down very

quietly, and got into the chestnut-tree; and then I felt that we had

only been playing what Albert’s uncle calls our favourite instrument--I

mean the Fool. For the house next door was as dark as dark. Then

suddenly we heard a sound--it came from the gate at the end of the

garden. All the gardens have gates; they lead into a kind of lane that

runs behind them. It is a sort of back way, very convenient when you

don’t want to say exactly where you are going. We heard the gate at the

end of the next garden click, and Dicky nudged Alice so that she

would have fallen out of the tree if it had not been for Oswald’s

extraordinary presence of mind. Oswald squeezed Alice’s arm tight, and

we all looked; and the others were rather frightened because really we

had not exactly expected anything to happen except perhaps a light. But

now a muffled figure, shrouded in a dark cloak, came swiftly up the

path of the next-door garden. And we could see that under its cloak the

figure carried a mysterious burden. The figure was dressed to look like

a woman in a sailor hat.

We held our breath as it passed under the tree where we were, and then

it tapped very gently on the back door and was let in, and then a light

appeared in the window of the downstairs back breakfast-room. But the

shutters were up.

Dicky said, ‘My eye!’ and wouldn’t the others be sick to think they

hadn’t been in this! But Alice didn’t half like it--and as she is a girl

I do not blame her. Indeed, I thought myself at first that perhaps

it would be better to retire for the present, and return later with a

strongly armed force.

‘It’s not burglars,’ Alice whispered; ‘the mysterious stranger was

bringing things in, not taking them out. They must be coiners--and oh,

Oswald!--don’t let’s! The things they coin with must hurt very much. Do

let’s go to bed!’

But Dicky said he was going to see; if there was a reward for finding

out things like this he would like to have the reward.

‘They locked the back door,’ he whispered, ‘I heard it go. And I could

look in quite well through the holes in the shutters and be back over

the wall long before they’d got the door open, even if they started to

do it at once.’

There were holes at the top of the shutters the shape of hearts, and the

yellow light came out through them as well as through the chinks of the

shutters.

Oswald said if Dicky went he should, because he was the eldest; and

Alice said, ‘If any one goes it ought to be me, because I thought of

it.’

So Oswald said, ‘Well, go then’; and she said, ‘Not for anything!’ And

she begged us not to, and we talked about it in the tree till we were

all quite hoarse with whispering.

At last we decided on a plan of action.

Alice was to stay in the tree, and scream ‘Murder!’ if anything

happened. Dicky and I were to get down into the next garden and take it

in turns to peep.

So we got down as quietly as we could, but the tree made much more noise

than it does in the day, and several times we paused, fearing that all

was discovered. But nothing happened.

There was a pile of red flower-pots under the window and one very large

one was on the window-ledge. It seemed as if it was the hand of Destiny

had placed it there, and the geranium in it was dead, and there was

nothing to stop your standing on it--so Oswald did. He went first

because he is the eldest, and though Dicky tried to stop him because he

thought of it first it could not be, on account of not being able to say

anything.

So Oswald stood on the flower-pot and tried to look through one of the

holes. He did not really expect to see the coiners at their fell work,

though he had pretended to when we were talking in the tree. But if he

had seen them pouring the base molten metal into tin moulds the shape of

half-crowns he would not have been half so astonished as he was at the

spectacle now revealed.

At first he could see little, because the hole had unfortunately been

made a little too high, so that the eye of the detective could only see

the Prodigal Son in a shiny frame on the opposite wall. But Oswald held

on to the window-frame and stood on tiptoe and then he _saw_.

There was no furnace, and no base metal, no bearded men in leathern

aprons with tongs and things, but just a table with a table-cloth on it

for supper, and a tin of salmon and a lettuce and some bottled beer. And

there on a chair was the cloak and the hat of the mysterious stranger,

and the two people sitting at the table were the two youngest grown-up

daughters of the lady next door, and one of them was saying--

‘So I got the salmon three-halfpence cheaper, and the lettuces are only

six a penny in the Broadway, just fancy! We must save as much as ever we

can on our housekeeping money if we want to go away decent next year.’

And the other said, ‘I wish we could _all_ go _every_ year, or

else--Really, I almost wish--’

And all the time Oswald was looking Dicky was pulling at his jacket to

make him get down and let Dicky have a squint. And just as she said ‘I

almost,’ Dicky pulled too hard and Oswald felt himself toppling on the

giddy verge of the big flower-pots. Putting forth all his strength our

hero strove to recover his equi-what’s-its-name, but it was now lost

beyond recall.

‘You’ve done it this time!’ he said, then he fell heavily among the

flower-pots piled below. He heard them crash and rattle and crack, and

then his head struck against an iron pillar used for holding up the

next-door veranda. His eyes closed and he knew no more.

Now you will perhaps expect that at this moment Alice would have cried

‘Murder!’ If you think so you little know what girls are. Directly she

was left alone in that tree she made a bolt to tell Albert’s uncle all

about it and bring him to our rescue in case the coiner’s gang was a

very desperate one. And just when I fell, Albert’s uncle was getting

over the wall. Alice never screamed at all when Oswald fell, but Dicky

thinks he heard Albert’s uncle say, ‘Confound those kids!’ which would

not have been kind or polite, so I hope he did not say it.

The people next door did not come out to see what the row was. Albert’s

uncle did not wait for them to come out. He picked up Oswald and carried

the insensible body of the gallant young detective to the wall, laid it

on the top, and then climbed over and bore his lifeless burden into our

house and put it on the sofa in Father’s study. Father was out, so

we needn’t have _crept_ so when we were getting into the garden. Then

Oswald was restored to consciousness, and his head tied up, and sent

to bed, and next day there was a lump on his young brow as big as a

turkey’s egg, and very uncomfortable.

Albert’s uncle came in next day and talked to each of us separately.

To Oswald he said many unpleasant things about ungentlemanly to spy on

ladies, and about minding your own business; and when I began to tell

him what I had heard he told me to shut up, and altogether he made me

more uncomfortable than the bump did.

Oswald did not say anything to any one, but next day, as the shadows of

eve were falling, he crept away, and wrote on a piece of paper, ‘I want

to speak to you,’ and shoved it through the hole like a heart in the top

of the next-door shutters. And the youngest young lady put an eye to

the heart-shaped hole, and then opened the shutter and said ‘Well?’ very

crossly. Then Oswald said--

‘I am very sorry, and I beg your pardon. We wanted to be detectives, and

we thought a gang of coiners infested your house, so we looked through

your window last night. I saw the lettuce, and I heard what you said

about the salmon being three-halfpence cheaper, and I know it is very

dishonourable to pry into other people’s secrets, especially ladies’,

and I never will again if you will forgive me this once.’

Then the lady frowned and then she laughed, and then she said--

‘So it was you tumbling into the flower-pots last night? We thought it

was burglars. It frightened us horribly. Why, what a bump on your poor

head!’

And then she talked to me a bit, and presently she said she and her

sister had not wished people to know they were at home, because--And

then she stopped short and grew very red, and I said, ‘I thought you

were all at Scarborough; your servant told Eliza so. Why didn’t you want

people to know you were at home?’

The lady got redder still, and then she laughed and said--

‘Never mind the reason why. I hope your head doesn’t hurt much. Thank

you for your nice, manly little speech. _You’ve_ nothing to be ashamed

of, at any rate.’ Then she kissed me, and I did not mind. And then she

said, ‘Run away now, dear. I’m going to--I’m going to pull up the blinds

and open the shutters, and I want to do it at _once_, before it gets

dark, so that every one can see we’re at home, and not at Scarborough.’