Oswald thought there was something in it, and so did Albert’s uncle when we asked him, but the others thought not, so Oswald agreed to drop it. Besides, Holloway is a long way off. All the time we were talking about the paper Alice seemed to be thinking about something else, and when we had done she said —
‘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 any one 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?’ Noel asked. And Alice explained that she did not want to get any one into trouble, even burglars. ‘But we might watch to-night,’ she said, ‘and see if we see the light again.’
‘They might have been burglars,’ Noel 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 to-night.’
‘It’s no use watching to-night,’ 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 tea-time, 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 had only been playing what Albert’s uncle calls our favourite instrument — I mean the Fool. For the house next door was as dark as dark. Then suddenly we heard a sound — it came from the gate at the end of the garden. All the gardens have gates; they lead into a kind of lane that runs behind them. It is a sort of back way, very convenient when you don’t want to say exactly where you are going. We heard the gate at the end of the next garden click, and Dicky nudged Alice so that she would have fallen out of the tree if it had not been for Oswald’s extraordinary presence of mind. Oswald squeezed Alice’s arm tight, and we all looked; and the others were rather frightened because really we had not exactly expected anything to happen except perhaps a light. But now a muffled figure, shrouded in a dark cloak, came swiftly up the path of the next-door garden. And we could see that under its cloak the figure carried a mysterious burden. The figure was dressed to look like a woman in a sailor hat.
We held our breath as it passed under the tree where we were, and then it tapped very gently on the back door and was let in, and then a light appeared in the window of the downstairs back breakfast-room. But the shutters were up.
Dicky said, ‘My eye!’ and wouldn’t the others be sick to think they hadn’t been in this! But Alice didn’t half like it — and as she is a girl I do not blame her. Indeed, I thought myself at first that perhaps it would be better to retire for the present, and return later with a strongly armed force.
‘It’s not burglars,’ Alice whispered; ‘the mysterious stranger was bringing things in, not taking them out. They must be coiners — and oh, Oswald! — don’t let’s! The things they coin with must hurt very much. Do let’s go to bed!’
But Dicky said he was going to see; if there was a reward for finding out things like this he would like to have the reward.
‘They locked the back door,’ he whispered, ‘I heard it go. And I could look in quite well through the holes in the shutters and be back over the wall long before they’d got the door open, even if they started to do it at once.’
There were holes at the top of the shutters the shape of hearts, and the yellow light came out through them as well as through the chinks of the shutters.
Oswald