Читать книгу The Mystery of the Strange Messages - Enid blyton - Страница 5

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Mr. Goon cycled home, very angry indeed. Fatty always seemed to get the best of him somehow—and yet the policeman felt that he, Goon, had been in the right all the time. That fat boy had given himself away properly by disguising himself as the butcher-boy again. He’d done it once too often this time! Ah well, he could tell Mrs. Hicks that he had solved the business of those notes, and given someone a good ticking-off!

He flung his bicycle against the fence, and went into his house. He found Mrs. Hicks scrubbing the kitchen floor, a soapy mess all round her.

“Oh, there you are, sir,” she began, “Look, I’ll have to have a new scrubbing-brush, this here one’s got no bristles left, and I can’t ...”

“Mrs. Hicks—about those notes,” interrupted Mr. Goon. “There won’t be any more, you’ll be glad to know. I’ve been to talk to the one who wrote them—frightened him almost to death, I did—he admitted everything, but I’ve taken a kindly view of the whole matter, and let him off, this time. So there won’t be any more.”

“Oh, but you’re wrong, sir,” said Mrs. Hicks, rising up from her knees with difficulty, and standing before him with the dripping scrubbing-brush still in her hand. “You’re quite wrong. I found another note, sir, as soon as you’d gone!”

“You couldn’t have,” said Mr. Goon, taken aback.

“Oh, but I did, sir,” said Mrs. Hicks. “And a funny place it was in too. I wouldn’t have noticed it if the milkman hadn’t pointed it out.”

“The milkman? Why, did he find it?” said Mr. Goon, astonished. “Where was it?”

“Well, sir, it was tucked into the empty milk-bottle, stood outside the back-door,” said Mrs. Hicks, enjoying the policeman’s surprise. “The milkman picked up the bottle and of course he saw the note at once—it was sticking out of the bottle-neck, sir.”

Mr. Goon sat down heavily on a kitchen chair. “When was the note put there?” he asked. “Could it have been slipped in some time ago—say when the butcher-boy was here?”

“Oh no, sir. Why, I’d only put out the milk-bottle a few minutes before the milkman came,” said Mrs. Hicks. “I washed it out, sir. I always do wash my milk-bottles out, I don’t hand them dirty to the milkman, like some folks—and I put it out nice and clean. And about three minutes later along came Joe—that’s the milkman, sir—and puts down your quart, sir, and picks up the empty bottle.”

“And was the note in it then?” asked Mr. Goon, hardly able to believe it.

“Yes, sir. And the milkman, he says to me, ‘Hey, what’s this note for? It’s addressed to Mr. Goon!’ and he gave it to me, sir, and it’s on your desk this very minute.”

“Exactly when did the milkman hand you the note?” asked poor Mr. Goon.

“About twenty minutes ago, sir,” said Mrs. Hicks. Goon groaned. Twenty minutes ago he had been with all five children—so it was plain that not one of them could have been stuffing a note into his empty milk-bottle then. Certainly not Fatty.

“You look upset, sir,” said Mrs. Hicks. “Shall I make you a nice hot cup of tea? The kettle’s boiling.”

“Yes. Yes, I think I could do with one,” said Goon, and walked off heavily to his little office. He sat down in his chair.

Now what was he to do? It couldn’t have been Fatty after all. There was someone else snooping about, hiding notes here and there when no one was around. And good gracious—he had left all the notes with those five kids! What a thing to do! Mr. Goon brooded for a few minutes and was glad to see Mrs. Hicks coming in with an enormous cup of hot tea.

“I put in four lumps,” said Mrs. Hicks. “And there’s another in the saucer. You’ve got a sweet tooth, haven’t you, sir? What about me getting a new scrubbing-brush, now we’re on the subject, and ...”

“We’re not on the subject,” said Mr. Goon, shortly. “Put the cup down, Mrs. Hicks. I’ve something difficult to work out, so don’t disturb me till my dinner-time.”

Mrs. Hicks went out, offended, and shut the door loudly. Goon called her as she went down the passage.

“Hey, Mrs. Hicks. Half a minute. I want to ask you a question.”

Mrs. Hicks came back, still looking offended. “And what might you be wanting to know?” she said.

“That butcher-boy—what was he like?” asked Goon, still vainly hoping that he might have been Fatty in disguise. “And did he really bring some meat—the meat you ordered?”

“Of course he did!” said Mrs. Hicks. “Two very nice lean chops, sir, the kind you like. I told you before. And I told you I didn’t see the butcher-boy, I was upstairs. But it was him all right. I know his whistle. And I heard him calling over the fence to the next-door kid. It was Charlie Jones all right. What’s all the mystery, sir?”

“Nothing, nothing, nothing!” said Mr. Goon, feeling very down-hearted. It couldn’t have been Fatty after all; it must have been the real butcher-boy. He might have guessed that, when Mrs. Hicks told him that his chops had come. Fatty wouldn’t have known that chops were ordered. Oh, what an ass he had been!

He caught sight of the note on his desk. Same square, cheap envelope. Same pasted-on bit of paper, with “Mr. goon” on, in cut-out letters. What was inside this time?

He slit the envelope open. He paused before he took out the note. He remembered what Larry had said about finger-prints. There might be some on the writing-paper inside. Goon fetched his own gloves and put them on. They were thick leather ones, and he found it very difficult to get the thin sheet of paper out of the envelope, while wearing such bulky gloves.

At last it was out, and he unfolded it to read. He saw the usual cut-out words and letters, all pasted on a strip of paper, which itself was stuck on the sheet of writing-paper.

“Why don’t you do what you are told, egg-head”, he read, and grew crimson in the face. who was writing these rude notes? Just wait till he got his hands on him!

He forgot all about his cup of tea, and it grew cold. Poor Goon. He simply could not make up his mind what to do! Why, oh why had he gone to see Fatty that morning, and left behind all the other notes?

“I can’t go and report things to the Super now,” he thought. “If I do, I’ll have to tell him I went and told everything to that Trotteville boy—and he’ll telephone to him and tell him to take over. He’s always in the middle of things, that boy—always doing me down. What am I to do?”

Goon sat and worried for a long time. If only he could catch whoever it was delivering these notes! That would be the thing to do! He would soon solve everything then, once he got his hands on the fellow! Yes, that was certainly the thing to do. But how could he watch for him every minute of the day? It was impossible.

Then a sudden thought came to him, and he brightened. What about his nephew Ern? What about asking him to stay with him for a while, and give some pocket-money to keep a watch for him? Ern was smart.

Leaving his cold tea, he went out to Mrs. Hicks, who was sitting down enjoying her second cup of tea.

“I’ve got to go out,” he said. “Be back by tea-time. Keep a look-out in case anyone else comes with a note.”

“But your chops, sir,” began Mrs. Hicks. It was no good—Goon was off on his bicycle, riding at top speed to Ern’s home. Mrs. Hicks sighed and poured herself out a third cup of tea. Well, if he wasn’t back by dinner-time she would have those chops herself!

Meantime Fatty and the others had been busy discussing what seemed like a new, and rather sudden, mystery. They were in the middle of it when Mrs. Trotteville came home from her shopping, hoping to find that all the jumble had been taken from the attics, and neatly stacked into the garage. She was not very pleased to find so little done.

“Well! You said you could get everything downstairs for me by the time I came back, so that I could look over it,” she said. “Whatever have you been doing?”

Nobody said a word about Mr. Goon’s visit. Mrs. Trotteville was always displeased if she thought that Fatty had been “meddling in mysteries” again. She was tired of Mr. Goon coming along with complaints of his doings.

“Sorry, Mother! We’ll finish everything this afternoon,” said Fatty. “Larry and the rest can easily come along again. Anyway, we’ve got quite a few things out in the garage already.”

“I should hope so!” said his mother. “I’ve got to look over everything, mend what can be mended, and price each thing. And by the way, Frederick, I’ve the names and addresses of a few people in Peterswood who have said that they will be pleased to give some jumble for the sale, if you go and collect it on a barrow.”

“A barrow!” said Fatty. “Do you mean I’m to borrow the gardener’s old barrow and trundle it through the streets? No, thank you!”

“I’ve arranged with the builder to lend you his barrow,” said his mother. “Well, I suppose it’s a handcart, really, not a barrow. Larry can go with you to help you. It’s for a good cause, so you can do your bit, surely.”

“You have an awful lot of good causes, Mother,” said Fatty. “Still, I’d rather have a mother with too many, than one with none at all! All right—I’ll do some collecting round and about for you. Larry and Pip can both help me.”

“We’ll come this afternoon and clear out the attics properly,” promised Larry. “What time? Half-past two?”

“Yes,” said Fatty. “And I vote we all go out to tea at the best tea-shop in the village. We’ll be hungry after our hard work.”

“Well, I’ll pay for a good tea,” said his mother, laughing. “I see you’ve forgotten that you want to take off some of your fat, Frederick.”

“Don’t remind me of that, Mother, just when I’m looking forward to meringues and chocolate éclairs,” groaned Fatty.

That afternoon the five, with Buster continually getting in their way at awkward moments, carried down an enormous amount of jumble from the big attic—and just as they were in the very middle of it, a piercing whistle was heard coming up the attic stairs.

“Whoever’s that?” said Fatty, startled. He looked down the steep little flight of stairs. “Gosh! It’s ern! Ern, what on earth are you doing here?”

“Come on down,” said Ern. “I got something to tell you. I’m staying with my uncle—he fetched me this morning.”

“Staying with Goon!” said Fatty, disbelievingly. “But you detest him! Half a mo—we’ll all be down and hear what you’ve got to say. My word, Ern—this is a surprise! We’ll be down in a tick.”