Mystery of the Missing Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

had a shrewd idea of the contents, and it would have been a real feather in bis 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 tonight, 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