“I believe we might be detectives ourselves, but I should not like to get anybody into trouble.”
“Not murderers or robbers?” Dicky asked.
“It wouldn’t be murderers,” she said; “but I have noticed something strange. Only I feel a little frightened. Let’s ask Albert’s uncle first.”
Alice is a jolly sight too fond of asking grown-up people things. And we all said it was tommyrot, and she was to tell us.
“Well, promise you won’t do anything without me,” Alice said, and we promised. Then she said—
“This is a dark secret, and anyone who thinks it is better not to be involved in a career of crime-discovery had better go away ere yet it be too late.”
So Dora said she had had enough of tents, and she was going to look at the shops. H. O. went with her because he had twopence to spend. They thought it was only a game of Alice’s but Oswald knew by the way she spoke. He can nearly always tell. And when people are not telling the truth Oswald generally knows by the way they look with their eyes. Oswald is not proud of being able to do this. He knows it is through no merit of his own that he is much cleverer than some people.
When they had gone, the rest of us got closer together and said—
“Now then.”
“Well,” Alice said, “you know the house next door? The people have gone to Scarborough. And the house is shut up. But last night I saw a light in the windows.”
We asked her how and when, because her room is in the front, and she couldn’t possibly have seen. And then she said—
“I’ll tell you if you boys will promise not ever to go fishing again without me.”
So we had to promise. Then she said—
“It was last night. I had forgotten to feed my rabbits and I woke up and remembered it. And I was afraid I should find them dead in the morning, like Oswald did.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Oswald said; “there was something the matter with the beasts. I fed them right enough.”
Alice said she didn’t mean that, and she went on—
“I came down into the garden, and I saw a light in the house, and dark figures moving about. I thought perhaps it was burglars, but Father hadn’t come home, and Eliza had gone to bed, so I couldn’t do anything. Only I thought perhaps I would tell the rest of you.”
“Why didn’t you tell us this morning?” Noël asked. And Alice explained that she did not want to get anyone into trouble, even burglars. “But we might watch tonight,” she said, “and see if we see the light again.”
“They might have been burglars,” Noël said. He was sucking the last bit of his macaroni. “You know the people next door are very grand. They won’t know us—and they go out in a real private carriage sometimes. And they have an ‘At Home’ day, and people come in cabs. I daresay they have piles of plate and jewellery and rich brocades, and furs of price and things like that. Let us keep watch tonight.”
“It’s no use watching tonight,” Dicky said; “if it’s only burglars they won’t come again. But there are other things besides burglars that are discovered in empty houses where lights are seen moving.”
“You mean coiners,” said Oswald at once. “I wonder what the reward is for setting the police on their track?”
Dicky thought it ought to be something fat, because coiners are always a desperate gang; and the machinery they make the coins with is so heavy and handy for knocking down detectives.
Then it was teatime, and we went in; and Dora and H. O. had clubbed their money together and bought a melon; quite a big one, and only a little bit squashy at one end. It was very good, and then we washed the seeds and made things with them and with pins and cotton. And nobody said any more about watching the house next door.
Only when we went to bed Dicky took off his coat and waistcoat, but he stopped at his braces, and said—
“What about the coiners?”
Oswald had taken off his collar and tie, and he was just going to say the same, so he said, “Of course I meant to watch, only my collar’s rather tight, so I thought I’d take it off first.”
Dicky said he did not think the girls ought to be in it, because there might be danger, but Oswald reminded him that they had promised Alice, and that a promise is a sacred thing, even when you’d much rather not. So Oswald got Alice alone under pretence of showing her a caterpillar—Dora does not like them, and she screamed and ran away when Oswald offered to show it her. Then Oswald explained, and Alice agreed to come and watch if she could. This made us later than we ought to have been, because Alice had to wait till Dora was quiet and then creep out very slowly, for fear of the boards creaking. The girls sleep with their room-door open for fear of burglars. Alice had kept on her clothes under her nightgown when Dora wasn’t looking, and presently we got down, creeping past Father’s study, and out at the glass door that leads on to the veranda and the iron steps into the garden. And we went down very quietly, and got into the chestnut-tree; and then I felt that we
