BEING DETECTIVES
If you are Jack Delamere, the Boy Detective who can find out all
secrets by himself, pretending to be a French count, a young lady from
the provinces, or a Lincolnshire labourer with a cold in his head,
and in those disguises pass unrecognised by his nearest relations and
by those coiners and smugglers to whom in his ordinary clothes he
is only too familiar,—if you can so alter your voice that your old
school-fellows believe you to be, when dressed for the part, an Italian
organ-grinder or a performing bear——
I am sorry, this sentence is too much for me. I give it up. What I was
going to say was that persons accustomed to the detective trade, or,
on the other hand, persons who are used to keeping out of the way of
detectives, no doubt find it easy to play a part and to look innocent
when they are guilty, and ignorant when of course all is known to
them. But when you are not accustomed to playing a part in a really
serious adventure—not just a pretending one—you will find your work cut
out for you. This was what Charles and Caroline felt.
It was all very well for Charlotte to have arranged that they should
help the Police to look for Rupert, and the other two said cordially
that it was very clever of her to have thought of it, and they all
started together for the side door where the policeman was still
talking to Mrs. Wilmington. But their feet seemed somehow not to want
to go that way; they went more and more slowly, and when they were
half-way to the house, Caroline said:
‘I don’t think I will. I don’t know how. I should do something silly
and give the show away. I shall say I’m too tired.’
‘You _are_ too bad,’ said Charlotte, exasperated. ‘I go and lay all the
plans and then you funk.’
‘I don’t,’ said Caroline. And so anxious was she not to have to play
the part of pretending to look for Rupert when all the time she knew
where he was, that she added humbly, ‘Don’t be snarky. I’m only saying
I’m not clever enough. I’m not so clever as you, that’s all.’
I am sorry to say that Charlotte only answered ‘Rats!’ and added, ‘I
suppose Charles is going to cry off next?’ She did not think he was:
she just said it. And Charles most unexpectedly answered:
‘I think I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.’
Charlotte stamped her foot. ‘Oh, all right!’ she said; ‘but for
goodness’ sake come on. They’ll think there’s something up.’ And they
walked on.
‘Look here,’ said Caroline suddenly, ‘I _will_ pretend to help. It was
only that I was so awfully afraid they’d find him. Only if I disappear,
you’ll understand it’s just because I felt sillier than I could bear.
You help too, Charles. I’m sure you can—only don’t pretend too much. I
shouldn’t talk much except asking questions, if I were you.’
‘Right O!’ said Charlotte.
And Charles said, ‘Oh, well, only if I give it away without meaning to,
don’t blame me.’
And by this time they were quite near the house, by whose side door of
many-coloured glass the group of talking grown-ups awaited them. Mrs.
Wilmington was there with her handkerchief over her head. And William
and the gardener’s boy and the gardener, and a tall stout young man
with fat red hands who was the Police.
‘I can’t and won’t,’ Mrs. Wilmington was saying. ‘The Master’s
orders is—are—that he’s not to be disturbed in the mornings on any
pretence—not if the house was on fire. I couldn’t face him with this
vulgar tale of runaway boys. _I_ give you leave to search for him,’ she
said in proud refined accents. ‘I’m quate competent to take _that_ upon
me; quate.’
The Police turned from her to the children, who said ‘Good
morning!’—all but Charlotte, who had said it before.
‘Good morning to _you_,’ said the Police, ‘and so you young ladies and
gents is going to join the search-party?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Caroline.
‘What’ll you do with him if you catch him?’ Caroline asked abruptly.
‘Send him to gaol, in course,’ said the Police, winking at William.
‘An’ you’re all going to help the law in the execution of its duty.
And very useful I daresay you’ll be,’ he added affably, ‘knowing the
place and what not. Now see here,’ he went on, condescending to them
in a way which, it was remarked later, was like his cheek; ‘let’s have
a game of play, make-believe, you know. Let’s pretend this runaway lad
is a friend of yours’ (a cold shiver ran down three youthful backs; for
a moment it seemed that all was discovered, but the Police went on,
still playfully)—‘a friend of yours, and you and him has settled to
play a little game of hide-and-seek. And he’s He. Now where,’ he ended,
more affably almost than they could bear,—‘where would you look first?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Charles miserably.
‘Oh! just anywhere,’ said Charlotte.
But Caroline said slowly, ‘I should look in the wood over there,’ and
pointed straight to the spot where Rupert lay buried in fern and leaves.
‘Right you are,’ said the Police, delighted to have got a suggestion.
‘Then here goes.’
Charlotte dared not look at her sister lest her face should show her
detestation of this traitorous act. Charles put his hands in his
pockets to express indifference, and decided not to whistle for fear of
overdoing his part. He told himself that he never would have believed
it of Caro—never.
And now Caroline was speaking again, looking confidingly up into the
large patronising face of the Police.
‘That’s where I should look,’ she was saying, ‘if we were playing
hide-and-seek. But as it is—— You see we’ve been there all the morning,
and he couldn’t have come into the wood without our hearing him,
you know. Have you tried the other wood, beyond the garden? And the
thatched summer-house? And the lodge that isn’t used? Over by the other
gates, you know.’
‘The old lodge,’ the Police echoed. ‘A very likely spot, I shouldn’t
wonder. You lead the way, young gentleman,’ he said to Charles.
‘Good old Caro—oh, _good_ old Caro!’ Charlotte was saying to herself as
the party started.
‘I’ll dispose my search-party proper later on,’ said the Police
importantly, and turned to say, ‘Ain’t you coming, Miss?’ to Caroline,
who was stooping down, doing something to her foot.
‘I can’t,’ she said; ‘I’ve got a stone in my shoe. And it hurts,’ she
added, standing up firmly on it.
Caroline went indoors, and the search-party threaded the woods and
converged at last on the empty lodge. Its lattice-paned windows were
dusty, its door hung on a broken hinge, and little black balls of
hard moss were dotted between the flagstones of its yard. Its thatch
was loose in places, ruffled like the plumage of an old stuffed bird,
and its garden had been so long untilled that it had ceased to be the
weed-grown earth patch that a neglected garden first becomes, and had
grown green all over, covered itself with grass and fern and bramble
and baby oak-trees, and become just a fenced-in patch of the wood
beyond.
‘Halt!’ said the Police; ‘just the place. I’ll warrant we’ve run the
young gentleman to earth this time.’
But they hadn’t. There was nothing in the lodge but an old hamper with
a hole in it, a litter of straw and old damp paper, some cold ashes in
the grate, and in the upper rooms two last year’s birds’-nests, and a
chair with three legs and half a back.
The Police stooped his helmeted head to the low door lintel, and came
out into the sunshine a disappointed man.
‘Thought we’d got him,’ he said; and that was what he said at the
thatched summer-house and in the larch wood, and at various other parts
of the park and grounds where Rupert was not.
‘Isn’t it nearly dinner-time?’ Charles asked, as the search-party
pushed through a very brambly brake and came out once more at the back
of the deserted lodge.
‘Your kind governess, she put back dinner an hour for you to assist in
the search,’ said the Police reassuringly.
‘Best try the other side, Mr. Poad,’ said William; ‘you’ve drawed this
blank.’
‘I will now whistle to the gentleman as owns the runaway,’ said the
Police suddenly and terribly, and whistled.
‘Where is he?’ Charlotte asked, with a sudden vision of the Murdstone
gentleman seeing everything with half an eye, capturing Rupert and
carrying him off in half a minute. Charles was wondering ‘what they do
to you for helping runaway boys.’
‘Along the road,’ the Police answered, ‘with Mr. Binskin from the Peal
of Bells. Keeping watch. I’d best report to him.’
‘Will he come with us?’ Charles could not help asking.
‘I’m of opinion he’s best where he is,’ said the Police. ‘I’m just
a-going to tell him to keep on up and down outside. The ostler from the
Peal is over the other side, case he gets out that way. Unless he’s had
to get back to his work already.’
‘Let’s go and have another look at those birds’-nests while we’re
waiting,’ said Charlotte, with great presence of mind. And so it was
through the little diamond panes of the lodge that they saw again the
Murdstone gentleman, in evening dress and an overcoat, with his tie
in a crumpled state under one ear, and his face, as Charlotte said,
exactly like the face of a baffled executioner.
He stood talking to the Police for a few moments, with the old familiar
scowl that they knew so well. They felt like that about it, though
they’d only met the scowler, as you know, on one occasion. Then he went
back through the gate, and the children, when they were quite sure that
he was gone, rejoined the Police, rather tired, and feeling as though
this silly game of looking for what they knew, or at any rate hoped,
they weren’t going to find, had been going on for ever, and seemed as
though it would never stop.
‘I thought it best,’ the Police explained to William, ‘to keep the gent
on the outside of the place. He seems peppery-natured, and if he was
to spy his boy among your glass-houses, which is where I propose to
conduct my search in next, I wouldn’t answer for it but what he’d leap
upon him among the glass like a fox at a duck, and damage untold, as
like as not.’
Need I tell you that Rupert was not discovered among the glass?
Less brisk than at its starting, the search-party returned to the
side door where the coloured glass was, to be met on its doorstep by
Caroline, rather out of breath and very hot. She carried her sun-bonnet
by its strings (Aunt Emmeline believed in sun-bonnets and made dozens
of them, as presents for all her friends).
‘Well?’ said Caroline.
‘We haven’t found him, Miss, if that’s what you mean,’ said the Police,
taking his helmet off and wiping his face. ‘I suppose you ain’t seen
anything?’
Caroline looked nervously at the others.
‘I _heard_ something,’ she said, ‘in the wood over there. I went back,’
she went on in a sort of wooden way—and now she was not looking at the
others at all—‘because I left something there; and I heard a rustling
sound, and I saw footmarks, in the boggy part of the wood, and I
thought it looked like boy’s boots.’
Charlotte said afterwards that she really thought she should have burst
into little pieces. And Charles said the same.
To hear their own elder, and till now loved and esteemed sister,
quietly betraying the refugee, and to be quite unable to say what they
thought of her without having to explain the lack of candour in their
own conduct! It was a terrible moment.
‘You don’t say so,’ said the Police, and turned to William. ‘It’s a
thirsty job,’ he added carelessly, and William said he’d ask indoors.
A tray with glasses and a jug of something cool resulted. And the
Police and William both seemed the better for it. The gardener had
retired. It was too far the wrong side of dinner-time for him, he said.
The Police drew a long breath, and wiped his mouth with the back of his
hand.
‘Now then,’ he said; ‘you lead the way, Miss.’
Caroline led. The others followed. They could hardly bear to go, yet
they could still less bear to be left behind. Across the hot sunny
grass they went and into the wood. Even that, though shady, was hot,
and there seemed to be more flies than could possibly be needed for
any useful purpose. Caroline, still carefully avoiding the eyes of the
others, led the way straight to the ferny lair where they had left
Rupert, the others following in helpless fury.
‘Hullo!’ said the Police, ‘this looks something like.’
For there the lair was—plainly to be seen—a lair and nothing else, but
a lair that was deserted.
‘I think we’re on to him now,’ said the Police; ‘which way did you say
them footstepses was, Missie?’
‘Farther on,’ said Caroline. ‘I tied my handkerchief to a tree to mark
the place.’
‘You never!’ said the Police admiringly; ‘why, you deserve to be in the
Force, Miss. It’s not every constable, even, would have thought of
that.’
And I believe he spoke the truth.
Following Caroline and the Police, pushing miserably through the bushes
that sprang back as the others passed through and tried to hit them in
the face, Charlotte and Charles exchanged glances full of meaning.
The whole party made a good deal of noise: there was the rustling
of leaves, both the green and the dead kind; the snapping of twigs
underfoot; the grating of bough against bough as the searchers pushed
through the hazels and sweet chestnuts and young oaks.
‘You’d do fine for keepers,’ said William, coming last. ‘No poachers
wouldn’t never hear _you_ a-coming.’
‘That your handkerchief, Miss?’ the Police at the same moment asked
smartly, and pointed to a white thing that drooped from a dog-wood
branch; ‘you identify the handkerchief?’
‘Yes,’ said Caroline in a stifled voice, ‘and there’—she pointed down.
There were footprints, very plain and deeply-marked footprints, not
very large, yet not small like a girl’s. They were the footprints,
beyond any doubt, of a boy.
‘Now we’ve got him,’ said the Police for about the fifteenth time that
morning, and proceeded to follow the steps, as was remarked later, like
any old sleuth-hound.
William said, ‘Remarkable deep for the time of year,’ but nobody took
any notice of him. The boot-boy took a pleasure in planting his own
steps beside the tracks they were following, till the Police admonished
him.
‘Them tracks is evidence,’ he said; ‘you needn’t tread so nigh them.’
The tracks led them down a steep place, a sort of gorge, and ended at
the tall oak fence.
‘He must have escaped this way,’ said the Police.
‘I’ll take my Sunday Sam he never,’ said William.
‘There’s another footprint here,’ said Caroline anxiously.
‘So there be,’ said the Police. ‘You ’ave been a ’elp, Miss. I shall
name you in my report.’
It was now seen that a further line of footprints led along the fence
to a place where a pale was loose.
‘This is where he got through, you may depend,’ said the Police.
‘I’ll easy wrench another pale loose, if you want to follow on,’ said
William, and as he did so Charlotte saw him wink, distinctly wink at
Caroline. How hateful everybody was! Oh, poor Rupert!
[Illustration: They were the footprints, beyond any doubt, of a boy.]
Every one got through, Charles and Charlotte rather doubtfully looking
up and down the road first to see if the Murdstone master was in sight.
‘Which way?’ the Police now asked himself and the others anxiously.
That was quickly settled. A whitish object lying in the middle of the
road ten yards away, beckoned them to the right. The Police stooped
stiffly, picked it up and examined its corners.
‘Rupert Wix,’ he read solemnly. ‘I shall now sound my whistle and
acquaint the gentleman as owns the boy with our discovery of the
ankercher belonging to the runaway.’
But Caroline laid a hand on his arm and arrested the whistle on its way
to his lips.
‘Isn’t that something else white, farther along?’ she said.
‘Don’t tell me ’e got two ankerchers,’ said William; ‘no boy was ever
bred as ’ad two ankerchers at the one time.’
‘I don’t see nothing,’ said the Police, but he walked in the direction
of Caroline’s gaze.
‘It’s wonderful what eyes you’ve a-got, Miss,’ said William; ‘none of
the rest of us didn’t spy it.’
Charlotte and Charles walked apart from Caroline in a marked manner.
There certainly was something white in the road—a piece of paper with a
stone on it, and also, as the Police saw when he picked it up, writing,
pencilled, with that kind of black blunt pencilledness which happens
when you have a pencil whose point has seen better days, and you
encourage its efforts with your tongue.
‘To any kind Bypasser,’ the Police read out, ‘please put the inside in
the post for me.’
The paper on which this was written was a leaf torn from a note-book
and folded across. Inside was another leaf with a stamp in the corner,
as though it had been a post-card. On one side was an address, ‘Mr. and
Mrs. Wix, The Nest, Simla, India,’ and on the other these lines which
the Police read out:
DEAR PARENTS—I am running away to sea through being so
ill-treated by Macpherson. I will write from the first
port. I shall get a ship at Hastings, I expect.—Your
affecate son,
RUPERT.
‘Well!’ said the Police; ‘if that don’t beat all! Lucky we saw this.’
‘Yes, ain’t it,’ said William, ‘and this the Hastings road and all. You
ought to catch up easy if you start right away now.’
‘I shall now blow my whistle,’ said the Police as usual, ‘and acquaint
the boy’s guardian with our discovery.’
‘If we can’t be any more use,’ said Caroline hastily, ‘perhaps you
wouldn’t mind our going back to our dinners. They’ll be getting
dreadfully cold for the time of year,’ she added a little wildly.
‘Best go back through the gap,’ said William. ‘It ought to be mended,
though. Here, you,’ he said to the gardener’s boy, ‘go round by the
lodge and tell Peters to get it seen to.’
‘There is no need to detain you,’ said the Police, ‘and thanking you
for your assistance, which shall be mentioned in my report. Good
morning to you.’ He blew his whistle and they hastened back through the
gap.
Once through it the others refused to meet Caroline’s eye. But she did
not seem to notice it.
‘I know listening’s wrong,’ she said; ‘but when you’re playing
detectives the rules are different, and I should like——’
‘Slip along by the pale, Miss,’ said William. ‘“All’s fair in love an’
war,” as the saying is.’
She slipped, and the others could not help following her. William went
too.
The boots of the Murdstone tutor were now heard on the road. Then came
the voice of the Police, explaining how clever he had been in finding
the footsteps, the handkerchief, and the letter. ‘And you’d best read
the letter,’ the Police added.
A brief letter-reading silence was broken by the Murdstone man, very
angry indeed.
‘Monstrous!’ he said; ‘and left in the public road for any stranger to
see! Monstrous! There’s not a word of truth in it.’
‘You can tell that to the Magistrate,’ said the Police. ‘Beg pardon,
sir, I mean I think I’ve cleared up this little difficulty for you.’
‘I suppose I can get a trap in the village?’ the Murdstone man asked.
‘At the Green Dragon, sir.’
‘Right,’ said Mr. Macpherson smartly. ‘Good morning!’ And he turned and
walked quickly away, leaving the Police planted there, as they say in
France.
‘Well—I’m—dished!’ said the Police aloud, after a moment’s silence, to
what he supposed to be solitude; ‘not so much as tuppence to drink his
blooming bad health in. The stingy blighter! He can look for his own
boys after this. And I hope the young ’un gets off, so I do.’
‘Same here,’ whispered William behind the grey oak paling.
The Police walked heavily away.
‘Best go in to dinner,’ said William, and the four walked in silence
across the park. When they got to the side door William spoke.
‘You’re a fair masterpiece, Miss Caroline,’ he said; ‘that I will say.’
‘Thank you,’ said Caroline.
Charles and Charlotte both felt—they owned it afterwards—almost choked
by all the things they wanted to say to Caroline and couldn’t, because
of William. They drew long breaths and almost snorted with mixed
emotions.
‘I say,’ said Caroline eagerly, as William turned away. But Charles
interrupted.
‘We don’t mean to speak to you,’ he said.
And just then Mrs. Wilmington appeared at the door, and no one could
say anything further; anything that mattered, that is.
She escorted the girls to their room. In her superior lady-like way she
was curious about the missing boy. Charlotte told the story briefly,
while Caroline buried her hot face in a big basin of cold water and
blew like a grampus. Then there was dinner, and Mrs. Wilmington stayed
all through that to hear more details. When dinner was over Caroline
disappeared.
‘I expect she’s gone away to cry,’ Charlotte whispered to her brother.
‘I say, I wish we hadn’t. But we did agree we oughtn’t to speak to a
traitor till it was sorry: you said so yourself in the wood.’
‘It’s all very beastly,’ said Charles. ‘I wish it hadn’t happened,
upsetting everything.’
‘I say,’ Charlotte said, ‘let’s forgive her now. I expect she thought
she was doing right, being like a Spartan boy or something. Caro is
silly like that sometimes. Let’s go and find her and forgive her, and
talk it all over comfortably, the three of us.’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Charles; ‘let’s find her, if you like.’
But they couldn’t find her.