CHAPTER IIITHE MILL POND
Itwas Saturday. At 2.30 the Kangaroos were coming to drag the pond. Danny had got up at 6.30 and was at the scene of yesterday’s adventures by 7.30. The tracks were still clear, but there were no new ones.
All the morning he was on guard, now watching from his place of ambush behind the old wall; now exploring the mill for any possible clues.
The sky was black with threatening clouds. At twelve the storm broke. The rain came down in torrents. Danny took shelter in the mill, keeping watch on the pond from the window. It was nearly two before the downpour ceased. Then a pale sunbeam broke out, and Danny ventured forth into the drippingworld. Little streamlets gurgled down the paths; cataracts gushed from pipes and gutters about the mill. Small ponds lay in hollow places.
And, alas, the tracks of the stranger’s steps were hidden by an ocean of muddy water!
Danny’s heart sank. He had counted so on showing the Kangaroos this incontestable evidence. Any Scout would have read the true story of yesterday’s adventures in those marks. And now they were gone!
At 2.30 the Kangaroos arrived, very keen on the job. They dragged the pond from end to end. They raked its bottom with a hay-rake. They probed it with a pitchfork. Then they laughed scornfully.
“Nothing doing,” said the Patrol-Leader. “’Fraid you must have been dreaming yesterday, young Wolf Cub.”
Danny was astounded. He had seen the bicycle thrown in, and now he had seen the pond dragged with great thoroughness and no bicycle revealed.
The youngest Kangaroo had a bright idea.
“I expect the chap came early this morning and dragged the pond himself and got up the bike,” he said.
Danny shook his head.
“I was here before it began to rain,” he said, “and there were no fresh tracks.”
The Kangaroos went away, very bored and very muddy. It was not long before the story had spread through the whole Troop and the whole Pack. Everyone was inclined to agree with Fred Codding, the Sixer, that Danny the Detective was a little liar. But Danny, though hopelessly bewildered,knewthat what he had seen the day before had not been a dream.
The next few days were very unhappy. Danny was in hopeless disgrace. The Scouts laughed. The Cubs were angry because he had brought disgrace on the Pack. The Scoutmaster chaffed Mr. Fox, the Cubmaster, and said he had heard there was a budding novelist in the Pack!
The only comforting thing that happenedwas that in a local paper there appeared a short account of a gentleman’s bicycle having mysteriously disappeared from outside a shop where he had left it.
But instead of this convincing everyone that Danny’s story was true, he was only chaffed about the little paragraph.
All this made him quite determined to clear his honour and the honour of the Pack. He made up his mind never to rest until he had solved the mystery. From then onward he looked at everyone with the eye of a detective. Not one stranger escaped his notice, or one unusual track upon the road. He was untiringly on the alert.
Meanwhile the weather had cleared up. The hot July sun had dried the mud completely. The roads became so hard that there was no chance of tracking. Danny was sorry for this, for he was ever on the lookout for the footmarks of which he had a sketch in his book. Now there seemed no chance by this means of obtaining a clue.
But before a month had gone by he had met with another stranger who seemed to form another link in the mysterious chain.
To their pride and joy the 1st Dutton Wolf Cubs had been invited by the Scouts to take part in a great field day. Danny had been given a quarter of a mile of road to patrol. It happened to be the lonely lane that led past the deserted mill.
He had just concealed himself in the hedge when a market-cart rumbled by. A little ahead of him it stopped. The carter looked keenly up and down the road and all about him. Then, as if sure he was not perceived, he pushed aside his vegetable baskets, lifted up a piece of sacking, and helped a man to emerge from the bottom of the cart. Without a single word the man jumped down on to the road, and the cart lumbered on.
The stranger stood for a moment looking about him suspiciously. He was a very ragged and dirty tramp, with a stragglingred beard and a great, bulgy sack on his shoulders. Presently, as if to make sure of his whereabouts, he began to plod along the road.
Danny was after him like a flash, his rubber shoes making no noise on the road. It wasreal“stalking” this time! Scanning every detail of the man’s appearance, Danny could find nothing to show that he was not a genuine tramp. But that which caught his eye was the sack. It was bulgy and ragged. Out of a hole hung a rabbit skin. But there was evidently something large and square in the sack as well. It looked as if it might be a box. And from inside this seemed to come a scraping, scuffling noise, as if it contained something alive.
At this moment the tramp turned suddenly around and saw him.
Danny was a boy who always had all his wits about him. He was a London boy, remember! He realised at once that he must put the man off his guard and not lethim think that he had followed him out of suspicion.
“Please, mister,” he said, “could you tell me the time?”
The man was staring angrily at him out of a pair of little, pale blue eyes. He had evidently been startled at finding a Wolf Cub at his heels when he had thought himself quite alone! The innocent question must have reassured him, for he looked very much relieved.
“It’s three o’clock,” he said gruffly.
Danny was looking him over eagerly. Whatcouldhe say next, so as not to have to go away? Surely this strange man who crept out from among baskets in a cart, carried something alive in a bag full of rabbit skins, and knew the exact time without a watch, must be a “suspicious character!”
“I say, mister,” he continued, skipping along innocently by the man, “are you collecting rabbit skins and bottles?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to Dutton?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you know the pub. called ‘The Green Man’——”
“Yes, I know it well.”
(Ah, thought Danny,I’ve caught you, old sport!There’s not a pub. called “The Green Man” at Dutton!)
“Well,” he went on aloud, “just a bit further on, past the pub., there’s a little thatched house. That’s where my mother lives. She’ll give you some skins, ’cos we had rabbit-pie last night for supper. You will go to her, won’t you?”
“Yes, I’ll go there right enough,” said the man.
(We’ll see! thought Danny.)
But the man was walking fast. He had very nearly reached the part of the road where Danny’s patrol ended. It seemed to the Cub that the most important thing in all the world just now was to follow up this man. But he knew that he must not fail in his duty. SeniorPatrol-Leader Church had posted him on that road and said:
“Don’t leave your post without orders.” So he must stick to it.
“Well, good-bye, mister,” he said. “I’ve got to stay here ’cos I’m a sentry. Don’t forget to call for mother’s rabbit skins.”
“All right,” growled the man, and trudged on while Danny squatted down on the bank and watched him.
“I bet he’s not going to the village!” he said to himself. “He’s a stranger here, but he wants to make out he’s not. And I’m pretty sure he’s not a real tramp, ’cos he has hands like a gentleman. Oh, Idowish I could follow him! I wish it was a muddy day instead of this rotten dry weather—then I’d soon pick up his trail when this game’s over. I wonder if there’s not some way I could track him.”
He racked his brains for a moment and tried to remember what private detectives on the pictures do on such occasions. Suddenly, like a flash, he remembered a fairy story hehad read inHans Andersen. It was about a mother who wanted to know where her daughter went off to in the night, so she sewed a little bag full of flour on to the girl’s dress and cut a hole in the corner of it, so that, as she went along, the flour ran out, and the mother was able to track the girl all through the streets.
“Wish I had a little bag full of flour,” thought Danny. But a Wolf Cub is never at a loss how to do things, once he has got hold of the idea. In a minute he had drawn his notebook out of his pocket and torn a number of pages out. With quick fingers he tore these up into wee scraps and put them into his cap.
The man was already out of sight round the corner. Scrambling up the bank and through the hedge into a field, Danny sprinted along for all he was worth.
Before long he was up with the man, who still plodded along, head bent, his sack on his back. Creeping like a little green snakethrough the hedge, Danny stole softly up behind him.
He felt just as Cubs do in theSheer Khan Dance, only this time it wasreal, not “pretend.” Holding his breath and treading as softly as a cat, he crept so close that he could have touched the tramp. Still the man trudged on. Danny’s heart was in his mouth.
Softly he straightened himself. Then he took a handful of the paper-scraps from his cap and slipped them into the torn pocket of the man’s ragged coat. Then he stood quite still and gradually crept sideways until he was under cover in the ditch. His heart was beating fast. As he watched the retreating figure of the man he saw a little scrap of paper fly out here and there.
“I’ve got you!” said Danny, hugging himself. It was all he could do not to give vent to a howl of joy that would have roused the very jungle!
It was at this moment that an “enemyScout” trod on a dry stick the other side of the hedge and set Danny on his guard. Lying flat on his tummy in the ditch and peeping through a patch of nettles, he caught sight of a flutter of red and grey that was unmistakably a Kangaroo shoulder-knot!
Creeping along the ditch, regardless of the hundred nettle-stings that raised great white lumps on his knees, Danny indulged in a little strategy. Taking off his cap, he arranged it on a stump so that it just showed above a mass of green and would be well in view from a gap in the hedge.
Then he doubled along the ditch to where a hidden gap gave a beautiful chance for the enemy to cross the road, and, getting over a stile into the wood opposite, to get in touch with their own party. By this tempting gap Danny took cover.
“I hope he sees my cap,” he said to himself, “then he’ll think I’m there, and will bring his party up to this fence.” Suddenly a bright idea struck him. “I’llmakehim havea look at it,” he said. Standing cautiously up in the ditch, he picked up a stone and took careful aim.Plump—it fell among the nettles, just by the cap. “That’ll make him think there’s a chap there,” said the detective to himself with satisfaction. And sure enough, before long, the Kangaroos, thinking the sentry was safely ensconced in the ditch further up, were making their way with an unguarded amount of crackling towards the gap. Two minutes later Danny had taken three important prisoners and sent them to the base “out of action.”
“Jolly smart piece of work,” said Patrol-Leader Church, when the field was called in at five o’clock. “I knew I had put a good man on to patrol that road, but I never thought he’d succeed in taking prisoners!”
Danny’s heart glowed at the praise, but his mind was more intent upon the piece ofrealscouting he had on hand than on the game. When the other boys trooped home to tea, happy and hungry, Danny turned his eagersteps in the direction of the lonely piece of road he had been patrolling. He forgot how hungry he was and how nice the cup of tea and the plum cake at home would be. There was work to be done.
In about half an hour Danny was back at the place where he had last seen the tramp. It was a still, summer evening. Not a breath of wind stirred. Danny was glad, for it meant that the scent, in the form of the scraps of paper, would not have blown away. Yes! There was a little piece on the road. Here was another on the bank. Another—another—another! Now there was none for quite a long way. Then—a whole patch on the dusty road! Just here the tramp had been walking at the side of the road, where the dust was soft and white and thick. Joy of joys—his footmarks were distinctly visible!
Out came Danny’s precious notebook, and in a moment he had drawn a quick sketch of the footprint and added its size in inches. Then he went on carefully. Every here andthere a little piece of white paper showed distinctly. He had reached the old mill. And sure enough the trail turned down the very path where he had followed the bicycle tracks six weeks ago! In the same way it seemed to indicate that the man had taken cover behind walls and hedges, so as not to be seen from the road or from the mill. Little did he know that he left a tell-tale track of white paper behind him! And as Danny reached the pond he had to put his hands over his mouth to suppress a laugh of delight. There, on the surface of the still, black water, showed a quantity of little scraps of white paper!
Danny walked round the bank, thinking hard. What on earth could the man have got into the pond for?
There were no wet marks on the dust where he got out. It was the most mysterious thing he had ever come across. Here was a pond in which a man and a bicycle had disappeared, and also a tramp with something alive in a sack! Had they drowned themselves? No—forthe Kangaroos had dragged the pond and nothing had been fished up.
Suddenly Danny had an idea.
“There must be a kind of cave or cellar they get into from under the water!” he said. “I expect they are burglars or smugglers or forgers or something. And that’s where they hide their treasure. Then, after dark, they come up.” He decided to have another try to make the Scouts take him seriously; but he was still sore at the memory of all the ridicule that had been heaped upon him before.
“I’ll log it down,” he said, taking out his notebook, “and after dark I’ll come back and lie in wait for him as he comes up. Then to-morrow I’ll make my report.”
He squatted down behind the ruined wall and began to write:
“July 26, 1914.“Saw a tramp get out of a cart, where he was hiding. Followed him. He had something alive in a sack, but he pretended theywere rabbit skins and bottles. Said he knew a pub. called ‘Green Man’ in Dutton, which there isn’t. Tracked him down by scraps of paper. He must have got into Mill Pond, but he has not got out yet (6.30).“(Signed) D. Moor.”
“July 26, 1914.
“Saw a tramp get out of a cart, where he was hiding. Followed him. He had something alive in a sack, but he pretended theywere rabbit skins and bottles. Said he knew a pub. called ‘Green Man’ in Dutton, which there isn’t. Tracked him down by scraps of paper. He must have got into Mill Pond, but he has not got out yet (6.30).
“(Signed) D. Moor.”
Then he went home to supper.