Mystery of the Invisible Thief Read Free Page B

was still outside. Blow! Fortunately Hilary didn’t want to go in the front way. She wanted to take Bonny to the stables, which were round at the back.
    Bonny was led into his stable. “Don’t you rub him down or anything before you leave him?” asked Fatty. “I’d be pleased to do it for you, Hilary. You’ve had a tiring afternoon.”
    Hilary thought that Fatty was the nicest boy she had ever met in her life. Fancy thinking of things like that! She wouldn’t have been so much impressed if she had known how desperately Fatty was trying to stay down in the stables till the Inspector had gone!
    Fatty groomed the pony so thoroughly that even Hilary was amazed. Bets watched with Buster, rather bored. “See if they’ve gone,” whispered Fatty to her, jerking his head towards the front garden. Bets disappeared. She soon came back. She nodded. Fatty straightened up, relieved. Now he could stop working on that fat, restless pony!
    “Now we’ll go to the house and find out exactly what happened,” said Fatty to Hilary. “I expect your housekeeper is there. She’ll tell us everything. Then you must show Bets all the prizes you have won. She’ll love to see them. Won’t you, Bets?”
    “Yes,” said Bets, doubtfully.
    “You must see them too, Fatty,” said Hilary. He nodded - also doubtfully.
    “Come along,” said Hilary and they walked up a long garden path to the house. It was a nice house, square-built, with plenty of windows. Trees surrounded it, and it could not be seen from the road.
    They went in at the back door. A woman there gave a little scream of fright. “Oh, lawks! Oh, it’s you, Miss Hilary. I’m in such a state of nerves, I declare I’d scream if I saw my own reflection in a mirror!”
    Fatty looked at her. She was a plump little woman, with bright eyes and a good-tempered, sensible mouth. He liked her. She sank down into a chair and fanned herself.
    “I’ve just heard about the robbery,” said Hilary. “Jinny, this is a boy who’s brought me home and this is a girl called Bets. They are friends of my godfather, Inspector Jenks.”
    “Oh, are they?” said Jinny, and Fatty saw that they had gone up in her estimation at once. “Ah, he’s a fine man, that Inspector Jenks. So patient and kind. Went over everything, he did, time and time again. And the questions he asked me! Well there now, you’d never think anyone could pour them out like that!”
    “It must have been a great shock for you, Jinny,” said Fatty, in his most courteous and sympathetic voice. He had a wonderful voice for that sort of thing. Bets loked at him in admiration. “I was sorry for poor little Hilary too. I felt I really must see her home.”
    “That was real gentlemanly of you,” said Jinny, thinking that Fatty was just about the nicest boy she had ever met. “She’s nervous, is Miss Hilary. And I’ll be nervous too, after this!”
    “Oh, you don’t need to be,” said Fatty. “Burglars hardly ever come to the same place twice. Do tell us all about it - if it won’t tire you too much.”
    Jinny would not have been tired if she had told her story a hundred times. She began at once.
    “Well, I was sitting here, half-asleep-like, with my knitting on my knee - about four o’clock it must have been. And I was thinking to myself, ‘I must really get up and put the kettle on to boil,’ when I heard a noise.”
    “Oooh,” said Hilary faintly.
    “What sort of noise?” asked Fatty, wishing he could take out his notebook and put all this down. Still, if he forgot anything, Bets would remember it.
    “A sort of thudding noise,” said Jinny. “Out there in the garden somewhere. Like as if somebody had thrown something out of the window and it had landed plonk in the garden.”
    “Go on,” said Fatty, and Bets and Hilary listened, all eyes.
    “Then I heard a cough upstairs somewhere,” said Jinny. “A man’s deep cough that was stifled quickly as if he didn’t want to be heard. That made me sit up, I can tell you! ‘A man!’ I says to myself. ‘Upstairs and all! Can’t be the