Читать книгу The Mystery of the Missing Man - Enid blyton - Страница 7

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‘Oi’m a-comin’, Oi’m a-comin’,’ croaked Fatty, stumbling to the door. ‘Keep that dog off me!’

‘Here, girl—let the dog pounce on the fellow when he comes out,’ ordered Goon. ‘He’ll catch him for us and make things easy. Look out, now—he’s unlocking the door—the sauce of it, locking himself in like that!’

The door opened very suddenly indeed, and the old man inside rushed out. He lunged at Goon and almost bowled him over, big as he was.

‘Buster, go for him, go for him!’ cried Eunice in excitement. ‘Get him—he’s a tramp, he’s no business there. Catch him!’

Buster, mad with excitement at seeing Fatty again, leapt all round him in delight, barking loudly. Eunice and Goon quite imagined that he was attacking the old man, and were surprised that the old fellow didn’t yell for the dog to be called off.

‘Hey—he’s escaping!’ cried Goon, as he realized that the tramp was halfway up the garden, the dog still barking round him. ‘I’ll go after him—you keep back, Miss, he’s a dangerous fellow.’

But Fatty had too big a start and was now out of the front gate and racing for dear life down the road. Goon marvelled that an old man could run so fast.

By the time that Goon had got to the first corner, Fatty had entirely disappeared. He had run into the garden of the house there, gone right down to the bottom, leapt over the wall and made his way back once more to the little lane right at the bottom of his garden. He and Buster stood there, panting and listening, Buster licked Fatty’s hand, feeling very happy.

‘They’ve come back—they’ve gone into the house, Buster,’ said Fatty at last. ‘Now they’ll wake up Dad and Mother and tell them fairy-tales about an old thief of a tramp lying in my shed. Blow them!’

He slid into his shed, took his own clothes and slid out again, locking the shed behind him. He put the keys into his pocket. Then he crept up the garden to the kitchen door. He peered in at the window. Good—only Jane and Cookie were there, looking rather startled as they listened to something going on out in the hall.

‘That’s Goon and Eunice there, I suppose,’ thought Fatty, exasperated. ‘Well, I must change out of these things somehow—but where? I daren’t go in yet.’

He decided to change them under a tree—but first he peered in at the hall window to see what was going on. His father and mother and Mr. Tolling were all there, and Mr. Goon was trying in vain to get a word in—but Eunice was in full spate, describing at great length all that had happened.

‘He was fierce, that tramp!’ she cried. ‘As strong as ten men, Mr. Goon here said. Buster was very brave, he barked and bit—and the tramp kicked out at him like anything. Oh, if only Frederick had been there, this would never have happened. He would have turned that fellow out at once.’

‘Here!’ said Mr. Goon, indignantly, breaking in at last. ‘What do you mean? If I couldn’t get him, nobody could. I tell you ...’

‘A-a-a-a-ah!’ suddenly screamed Eunice and pointed to the hall window, through which Fatty was peering, enjoying the whole scene. ‘There’s that tramp again. Quick, Mr. Goon!’

Everyone raced out of the front door as Fatty neatly slipped in at the side door. He shot upstairs at top speed, and into his bedroom, with an excited Buster.

‘Not a word, Buster,’ he said. ‘Not a bark, please. Just let me get changed!’

He stripped off the old clothes at top speed, and stuffed them into a cupboard. He cleaned his face, and removed whiskers, moustache and beard. Then he washed his hands and sank down into a chair with a sigh.

‘Whew! What a joke, Buster! I wonder if they’re all still chasing that old tramp. Disgusting old fellow, wasn’t he? No wonder you barked at him!’

He sat and waited for a while but nobody came back, so he decided to go downstairs, and out into the road, and wait there. Then he would walk briskly up as if he had been out for a stroll, and pretend to be most surprised to see the others.

It all went off beautifully. Fatty strolled up with Buster just as a very disgruntled Goon came back with an equally disappointed Eunice, and a very annoyed trio of parents.

‘What nonsense!’ Mr. Trotteville was saying. ‘I don’t believe there was any tramp there—just this girl’s imagination! And you believed her, Goon! On a Sunday afternoon, too!’

Goon was red and angry, and Eunice was white-faced and furious, but had enough manners not to argue. They suddenly saw Fatty strolling along and shouted to him.

‘Frederick! Where have you been?’

‘You seen a nasty-looking tramp, Master Frederick?’ asked Goon. ‘Whiskers and all? He was down in your shed—smoking his pipe too. Might have set the place alight!’

‘A tramp—with whiskers?’ said Fatty, sounding extremely surprised. ‘Where is he? Quick, I’ll set Buster on him!’

‘That dog’s already been at him,’ said Mr. Goon, exasperated. ‘Must have bit his trousers to pieces—barking and snarling. I wonder he’s got any ankles left!’

‘Well, Mr. Goon, I think we’ll not bother any more,’ said Mr. Trotteville, firmly. ‘The man’s gone—and we can’t do anything about it. Come in, Eunice—you can’t do anything either.’

‘What a thing to happen—on a Sunday too!’ said Mr. Tolling, looking rather white. ‘A good thing you happened to be about, Constable. Tramps hiding in garden sheds! Was anything stolen?’

‘What a thing to happen—on a Sunday too!’ said Mr. Trotteville, beginning to look exasperated. ‘Anyway, he only keeps a lot of rubbish there.’

Fatty said nothing to that. He was not at all anxious for his father to see what he really kept in his shed! All kinds of disguises, sets of grease-paints for making up his face, dreadful false teeth to wear over his own, cheek-pads to alter the shape of his cheeks, false eyebrows, moustaches, beards—good gracious, Mr. Trotteville would certainly have been amazed to find so many peculiar things!

‘Master Frederick—perhaps we’d better go down to your shed and have a look round to see if that tramp took anything,’ suggested Goon, who thought this might be a very good opportunity of seeing exactly what Fatty did keep in his shed. Goon had a shrewd idea of the contents, and it would have been a real feather in his cap if he could have poked round into every corner. Ha! He’d find a few of that boy’s secrets then!

‘Oh, I can easily look myself,’ said Fatty. ‘And I wouldn’t dream of bothering you any further, Goon. You go home and finish your Sunday nap.’

Goon went red. ‘I’m on duty,’ he said, ‘and a good thing for you I was too! If I hadn’t come by when I did, that there tramp might have stolen half your things and set your shed on fire!’

‘I bet he wasn’t smoking,’ said Fatty, who knew quite well that he, Fatty, had only had an unlighted pipe in his mouth.

‘You don’t know anything about it!’ said Eunice. ‘I saw him, not you—and he was smoking like a chimney—wasn’t he, Constable?’

‘That’s right, Miss,’ said Goon, thinking that Eunice was someone after his own heart, willing to exaggerate to make a story more exciting! ‘A very nasty-looking piece of work, he looked—no wonder the dog went for him.’

‘Good old Buster,’ said Fatty, bending down to pat the little Scottie, and to hide a grin. Well, well—what a couple of exaggerators Goon and Eunice were! It was really a pity he couldn’t tell them that he was the dirty old tramp!

The others had all gone indoors now, and Fatty decided that he had had enough of Goon and would go in too. He debated whether to bicycle up to Pip’s and tell him about the tramp episode, but decided that he’d better not. Eunice might follow him there!

‘Come on indoors,’ he said to Eunice. ‘It must be teatime by now.’

Eunice followed him in, and to Fatty’s disgust she insisted on telling him again and again how she had peered through the window and keyhole of his shed, and had spotted the tramp, and how she and Goon had gone for him when he came out.

‘I don’t know why you wanted to go and spy into my shed,’ said Fatty at last, so tired of Eunice that he decided to be rude. Perhaps she would go off in a huff then. That would be fine.

‘I was not spying!’ she said, angrily, and, to Fatty’s delight, took herself off at once. She marched out of the door and stamped up the stairs to her room. Fatty immediately shot out to the kitchen with Buster, collected some cakes and scones and biscuits from the tea-tray, and raced off again.

‘Eunice won’t come spying into my shed again today,’ he thought. ‘I can take these down there and eat and read in peace. I only hope Goon doesn’t come snooping round. What a life—Eunice always about, and Goon popping up whenever he’s not wanted.’

He let himself into his shed, locked the door behind him, and sat down. He found his book and began to munch. It was only when he had eaten two-thirds of what he had brought that he remembered he was slimming.

‘Blow!’ he said, and looked at the faithful Buster, waiting patiently for a titbit. ‘Why didn’t you remind me not to eat all these? Have you forgotten I’m slimming, Buster? Couldn’t you paw me hard, when you see I’m tucking in?’

Buster obligingly pawed him, and whined, hoping to get one of his favourite chocolate biscuits. ‘You can have a cake and a biscuit,’ said Fatty. ‘But only to stop me from eating them! And I warn you—you’ll have to go for a cross-country run with me to-night, to work off all this extra food!’

And so, when Eunice, who seemed to have forgotten that she had been offended, suggested after supper that they should have a game of chess, Fatty mournfully shook his head.

‘Nothing I’d like better than to beat you at chess, Eunice,’ he said, ‘but ...’

‘Beat me! You couldn’t!’ said Eunice. ‘I’m champion chess-player of my school!’

‘How strange—so am I,’ said Fatty, quite truthfully. ‘But I fear I’ve eaten too much today, Eunice, and I’m now going for an hour’s run down by the river and back.’

‘What—in the dark?’ said his mother. ‘Really, I think you are overdoing this running business, Frederick!’

Fatty thought so too—but the idea of a solemn evening playing chess with a fiercely-brooding Eunice was too much for him. Sorrowfully he went off with Buster to change into running-shorts, and was soon loping along by the quiet river, with Buster at his heels. What a life!