Читать книгу The Mystery of the Pantomime Cat - Enid blyton - Страница 6

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The five children chuckled over the trick they had played on the unsuspecting Pippin. Larry had met him the morning after, and stopped to have a few words with him.

Mr. Pippin, remembering Mr. Goon’s words of warning about the five children, looked at him rather doubtfully. This wasn’t the dangerous fat boy, though—it was one of the others.

“Good morning, Mr. Pippin,” said Larry, politely. “Settled in all right?”

“Of course,” said Mr. Pippin. “Nice place, Peterswood. I’ve always liked it. You at home for the Easter holidays?”

“Yes,” said Larry. “Er—got on to any mystery yet, Mr. Pippin?”

“Shouldn’t tell you if I had,” said Mr. Pippin, grinning at Larry. “I’ve had a Warning about you, see?”

“Yes. We thought you probably would have,” said Larry. “By the way, our cook had a fright last night. Said she saw two ruffians outside our back door.”

Mr. Pippin pricked up his ears at once. “Did she? What were they like?”

“Well—she said one of them had red hair,” said Larry. “But you’d better ask her if you want any particulars. Why? Have you seen them?”

“Perhaps I have and perhaps I haven’t,” said Mr. Pippin, annoyingly.

He nodded to Larry and walked off. He was thinking hard. So Larry’s cook had also seen a red-haired ruffian. Must have been the same red-haired fellow that he too had seen that night then. What were they up to? He decided to interview Larry’s cook, and did so. He came away with a very lurid account of two enormous villains, six feet high at least, growling and groaning, squinting and pulling faces.

One of them certainly had red hair. Mr. Pippin began to look out for people with red hair. When he met Mr. Kerry the cobbler, who had flaming red hair, he eyed him with such suspicion that Mr. Kerry felt really alarmed.

P.C. Pippin also came across the vicar’s brother, a kind and harmless tricyclist who liked to ride three times round the village each morning for exercise. When Mr. Pippin had met him for the third time, and scrutinized him very very carefully, the vicar’s brother began to think something must be wrong. Mr. Pippin was also surprised—how many more times was he going to see this red-haired tricyclist?

When Larry related to the others that he had met Pippin, and told him about the red-haired man seen by the cook, and when Fatty heard from Janet the cook that the policeman had actually been to interview her about him, he chuckled.

“I think a spot of disguising is indicated,” he said to the others. “A few red-haired fellows might interest our nice round ripe Pippin.”

So at twelve o’clock a red-haired telegraph boy appeared on a bicycle, whistling piercingly. When he saw Mr. Pippin he stopped and asked him to direct him to an address he didn’t know. The policeman looked at him. Another red-haired fellow! There was no end to them in Peterswood, it seemed.

At half-past one another red-haired fellow appeared beside the surprised Pippin. This time he was a man with a basket. He had black eyebrows which looked rather odd with his red hair, and frightful teeth that stuck out in front. He talked badly because of these.

“Scuthe me,” lisped the red-haired fellow. “Pleathe, can you thay where the Potht Offith ith?”

At first P.C. Pippin thought the fellow was talking in a foreign language, but at last discovered that he was merely lisping. He looked at him closely. Another red-haired chap! Most peculiar. None of them really looked like the ruffian he had seen the night before, though.

At half-past two yet another red-haired fellow knocked at P.C. Pippin’s door, and delivered a newspaper which he said must have been left at the wrong house. Pippin thought it was one that Goon had, and thanked him. He stared at him, frowning. All this red hair! Fatty stared back unwinkingly.

Feeling uncomfortable, though he didn’t know why, P.C. Pippin shut the door and went back into the front room. He felt that if he saw one more red-haired man that day he would really go to the oculist and see if there was something wrong with his eyes!

And at half-past five, when he was setting out to go to the post, what did he see but an elderly looking man shuffling along with a stick—and with bright-red hair sticking out from under his cap!

“I’m seeing things,” thought poor Mr. Pippin to himself, “I’ve got red hair on the brain.”

Then a memory struck him. “Well! What was it that Mr. Goon told me? He warned me against red-haired fellows dashing about all over the place, didn’t he? What did he mean? What’s all this red-haired business? Oh yes—Mr. Goon said it would be Fatty disguising himself! But that boy couldn’t be as clever as all that!” Mr. Pippin began to review all the red-haired people he had seen that day. He thought with especial suspicion of the man he had seen three times on a tricycle.

“Ah! Wait till I meet the next red-head,” said Mr. Pippin darkly to himself. “If there’s tricks played on me, I can play a few too! I’ll give the next red-head a Real Fright!”

It so happened that the next one he met was the vicar’s brother on his tricycle again, hurrying along to catch the post at the post office. Mr. Pippin stepped out into the road in front of him.

The vicar’s brother rang his bell violently but Mr. Pippin didn’t get out of the way. So the rider put on his brakes suddenly, and came to such a sudden stop that he almost fell off.

“What is it, constable?” said the vicar’s brother, astonished. “I nearly ran you down.”

“What’s your name and address, please?” asked Mr. Pippin, taking out his note-book.

“My name is Theodore Twit, and my address is the Vicarage,” said Mr. Twit, with much dignity.

“Ho yes,” said Mr. Pippin. “ ‘The Vicarage’ I don’t think! You can’t put me off that way!”

Mr. Twit wondered if the policeman was mad. He looked at him anxiously. Mr. Pippin mistook his anxious look for fright. He suddenly clutched at Mr. Twit’s abundant, red hair.

“Ow!” said Mr. Twit, and almost overbalanced from his tricycle. “Constable! What does this mean?”

Mr. Pippin had been absolutely certain that the red hair would come off in his hand. When it didn’t, he was horrified. He stared at Mr. Twit, his pink face going a deep red.

“Do you feel all right, constable?” asked Mr. Twit, rubbing his head where Mr. Pippin had snatched at his hair. “I don’t understand you. Oh—thank goodness, here is my sister. Muriel, do come here and tell this constable who I am. He doesn’t seem to believe me.”

Mr. Pippin saw a large and very determined-looking lady coming towards him. “What is it, Theodore?” said the lady, in a deep, barking kind of voice. Mr. Pippin took one look at Muriel, muttered a few words of shamed apology, and fled. He left behind him two very puzzled people.

“Mad,” said Muriel, in her barking voice. “Goon was mad enough, goodness knows—but really when it comes to this man snatching at your hair, Theodore, the world must be coming to an end!”

It so happened that Miss Twit went to call on Fatty’s mother that evening, and when Fatty heard her relate the story of how that extraordinary Mr. Pippin had tried to snatch at dear Theodore’s red hair, he had such a fit of the giggles that his mother sent him out of the room in disgust at his manners. Fatty enjoyed his laugh all to himself, with Buster gazing at him in wonder.

“So old Pippin is up to that trick, is he?” thought Fatty. “Right. It must be dropped. Hope he doesn’t associate me with the red-haired ruffian he saw last night, though. He won’t turn up at the Little Theatre and find his precious Clues if he thinks it’s a trick.”

The five children had had a meeting that day, which was Thursday, to decide what clues they would spread for Pippin at the back of the Little Theatre. There was a kind of verandah there, under cover, where all kinds of clues might be put.

“Cigarette-ends, of course, to make Pippin think other meetings have taken place there,” said Fatty.

“Yes—and matches,” said Larry. “And what about a hanky with an initial on it—always very helpful that, when you want clues!”

“Oh yes,” said Daisy. “I’ve got an old torn hanky and I’ll work an initial on it. What shall I put?

“Z,” said Fatty, promptly. “Might as well give him something to puzzle his brains over.”

“Z!” said Bets. “But there aren’t any names beginning with Z, surely.”

“Yes there are—Zebediah and Zacharias, to start with!” grinned Fatty. “We’ll have old Pippin hunting round for Zebediahs before he’s very much older!”

“Well, I’ll put a Z on then,” said Daisy. “I’ll get my needle and thread now. What other clues will you put down?”

“A page out of a book,” said Pip. “Out of a time-table or something.”

“Yes. That’s good,” said Fatty, approvingly. “Any other ideas?”

“What else do people drop by accident?” wondered Daisy. “Oh, I know what we could do. If there’s a nail or anything there, we could take along a bit of cloth and jab it on the nail! Then it would look as if whoever had been there for a meeting had caught his coat on the nail. That would be a very valuable clue, if it was a real one!”

“Yes, it would,” agreed Fatty. “And we’ll take a pencil and sharpen it there—leave bits of pencil-shavings all over the place. Gosh, what a wonderful lot of clues!”

“We must also leave something to make Pippin go on with the chase somewhere else,” said Larry.

“Yes. What about underlining a train in the time-table page that we’re going to throw down?” said Pip. “We’re going to chuck one down, aren’t we? Well, if we underline a certain train—say a Sunday train—old Pippin will turn up for that too!”

Every one giggled. “And Fatty could dress up in some disguise, and slip a message into Pippin’s hand to suggest the next place to go to,” said Daisy. “We could send him half over the country at this rate!”

“Wait till Goon gets a report of all this,” said Fatty with a grin. “He’ll see through it at once—and won’t he be wild!”

Soon all the clues were ready, even to the pencil-shavings, which were in an envelope.

“When shall we place the clues?” said Bets. “Can I come too?”

“Yes. We’ll all go,” said Fatty. “I don’t see why not. There’s nothing suspicious about us all going out together. We can go on our bicycles and put them in the car-park at the back of the Little Theatre. Then we’ll pretend to be looking at the posters there, and one of us can slip up to the verandah and park the clues. It won’t take a minute.”

“When shall we go?” asked Bets again. She always wanted to do things at once.

“Not today,” said Fatty. “There’s a bit of a breeze. We don’t want the clues blown right off the verandah. The wind may have died down by tomorrow. We’ll cycle along after tea tomorrow, about six.”

So the next day, about ten to six, the five set off, with Buster as usual in Fatty’s bicycle basket. They cycled round to the back of the Little Theatre and came to the car-park there. A good many children were there already, getting bicycles from the stand.

“Hallo!” said Fatty, surprised. “Has there been a show here this afternoon?”

“Yes,” said a boy near by. “Just a show for us children from Farleigh Homes. They let us in for nothing. It was jolly good. I liked the cat the best.”

“The cat? Oh, Dick Whittington’s cat, you mean,” said Fatty, remembering that the show that week was supposed to be a skit on the Dick Whittington pantomime. “It’s not a real cat, is it?”

“ ’Course not!” said the boy. Daisy, who had already seen the show, explained to Fatty.

“It’s a man in a cat’s skin, idiot. Must be rather a small man—or maybe it’s a boy! He was very funny, I thought.”

“Look—there go the actors,” said a little girl, and she pointed to a side door. “See, that’s Dick Whittington, that pretty girl. Why do they always have a girl for the boy in pantomime? And that’s Margot, who is Dick’s sweetheart in the play. And there’s Dick’s master—and his mother, look—she’s a man, really, as you can see. And there’s the captain of Dick’s ship—isn’t he fine? And there’s the chief of the islands that Dick visits—only in the play he’s a black man, of course.”

The five children gazed at the actors as they left the side door of the Little Theatre. They all looked remarkably ordinary.

“Where’s the cat?” asked Bets.

“He doesn’t seem to have gone with them,” said the little girl. “Anyway I wouldn’t know what he was like, because he wore his cat-skin all the time. He was awfully good. I loved him.”

A teacher called loudly, “Irene! Donald! What are you keeping us waiting for? Come along at once.”

The car-park emptied. Fatty looked round. “Now,” he said, “come on! The coast is clear. We’ll all go and look at these posters here, and talk to one another—and then when we are sure no one is watching us, I’ll slip up to the verandah and drop the clues.”

It was most annoying, however, because one or two people kept coming to the car-park, and for some reason or other walked across it. Fatty finally discovered that it was a short cut to a cigarette shop in the next street.

“Blow!” he said. “We’ll have to hang about till it shuts. It’s sure to shut soon.”

It was boring having to wait so long, and talk endlessly about the posters. But at last the shop apparently did shut and nobody else took the short cut across the car-park. It was now getting dark. Fatty slipped up the three steps to the verandah.

He threw down the clues—cigarette-ends and matches—torn hanky with Z on—pencil-shavings—page torn from a time-table with one Sunday train underlined—and a bit of navy-blue cloth which he jabbed hard on a nail.

He turned to go—but before he went he took a look in at the window near by. And what a shock Fatty got!

He turned to go—but before he went he took a look in at the window near by, and what a shock Fatty got!