ON THE SPY TRAIL.
Jimmy's bloodhound, Faithful, had his fortune told the other day—really, I mean; not what the man next door says when Faithful keeps on singing to his cat at night from the bottom of an apple-tree.
Jimmy says the man next door often has gloomy thoughts as to what will happen to Faithful, and he gets up from his warm bed to tell them to him.
Jimmy says Faithful was not expecting to have his fortune told; he was just sitting quietly on the wall near the road, watching the day go by.
Everything was very nice and quiet and peaceful; there was a cat up each of three trees close by, and a hen up another, all being comfortable and quite all right where they were, thank you, because Faithful had inquired.
The man next door was being busy amongst his flowers; he was replanting some that had been planted right on the top of a place where Faithful had laid down some bones to mature.
Things were so quiet that Jimmy was just thinking about taking his bloodhound on the spy trail, when a woman came along with a little hand-organ slung round her neck and a cage containing two small green parrots for telling your fortune.
Bloodhounds are very fond of music, Jimmy says; they sing to it, at least Faithful does. Jimmy says Faithful lifted up his stomach and threw back his head; but he found it a little difficult to keep time at first, because, you see, the notes that were missing in the organ were not the same ones that were missing in Faithful's voice. Jimmy says it is just the same when two people singing a duet both have hiccoughs; unless they hiccough together you always notice something wrong.
The parrots were very clever; they would come out of the cage and perch on the end of a stick the woman held, and then pick a small blue envelope out of a box. Jimmy says that he doesn't think the parrots had ever seen a prize bloodhound like Faithful before, not even in their native haunts, for when Faithful tried to make a fuss of them and love them they kept flying about the cage and moulting their feathers at him.
Faithful picked up one of the feathers, and when one of the parrots came out of the cage to tell fortunes he tried to put the feather back again. But the parrot avoided him and went away.
Faithful did his best to catch it again; he has a very good nose for game, Jimmy says, and he soon tracked the parrot to its lair: it had joined the hen, and the hen was being surprised—you could hear it doing it, Jimmy says.
Jimmy says Faithful sat at the bottom of the tree and tried to look like a birdcage; but his presence seemed to disturb the woman so much that Jimmy had to put the chain on him and lead him away.
Jimmy says Faithful kept yearning to go back and help; he is a good yearner, Jimmy says, and he does it by pushing his head through the collar as far as he can stretch it, and then choking. Jimmy says the butcher is a good yearner too, but he does it by going red in the face and trying to burst his collar with his neck. He did it at Faithful this time. You see Faithful was quietly passing his shop and doing nothing at all to anyone—Jimmy had only just let him loose on the trail—when he caught sight of the butcher's sandy cat lying curled up in the window and going up and down at him with her side. Jimmy says cats are always doing something like that at his bloodhound, and then what can you expect if you will do it?
There was a fly-paper on the counter, and after old Faithful had driven the cat into a corner Jimmy saw him suddenly swing his tail at the fly-paper and get firm hold of it; then he squatted down on the counter and wagged the fly-paper at the cat like anything to try and mesmerise it. Jimmy says that when the butcher came into the shop, and Faithful stopped to turn round and see where things were, the butcher yearned at him like anything, and it only made him worse when old Faithful semaphored at him with the fly-paper.
There was only a bluebottle on the fly-paper besides Faithful, Jimmy says, so that it wasn't very crowded; but by the buzz the bluebottle kept on making you would think it owned the fly-paper. Jimmy says his bloodhound had never shared a fly-paper with a bluebottle before, and he kept stopping to answer the bluebottle back instead of keeping to the spy trail.
Jimmy says Faithful had just sent an ultimatum to the bluebottle when there came the sounds of the hand-organ from a house close by.
Jimmy says as soon as Faithful heard the music he seemed to stiffen all at once and become rigid. He looked splendid like that, Jimmy says. One paw up, his tail as straight as he could get it, and the fly-paper at half-mast—everything pointing to sudden death.
Jimmy followed Faithful as hard as he could, and was in time to see him stalking quietly hand over fist across a lawn while the woman was getting one of the green parrots on the end of the stick.
Jimmy knew the man who lived at the house, and who was having his fortune told. He had come there to live a tired life, Jimmy says, and when the War broke out he had put up a big flag-pole with a Union Jack on it as his share.
Jimmy says the parrot had just got the man's fortune in its beak, when Faithful took a standing jump from behind the woman at it. It was awful, Jimmy says. The woman gave a scream and grabbed at the parrot, the man grabbed at Faithful, and Faithful—well, Jimmy says he never knew quite what Faithful did or how he did it, but he emerged with the man's fortune sticking to the fly-paper.
Jimmy says bloodhounds are very sensitive and avoid a commotion; but the man and the woman were not used to his side action in running and they fell over one another.
Jimmy says it was a very funny fortune; it was in a special red envelope and he couldn't understand it at first. You see it only contained the names of some towns and villages, and Jimmy was just wishing that Faithful would leave music and parrots and fly-papers and fortunes alone, and catch German spies instead, when it all came to him because a friend of his mother's lived at one of the villages and some Zeppelin bombs had been dropped there.
The woman had given the man the names of the places where Zeppelin bombs had fallen, and old Faithful had been tracking them down all the time.
Jimmy's head just buzzed with thoughts as he ran to the police-station. They caught the man and the woman, and one of the policemen discovered the flag-pole on the man's lawn, and it turned out to be part of a wireless apparatus to send messages to Germany.
Jimmy says that, when the spies were nicely locked up and settled for the night, one of the policemen got the parrot to tell Faithful's fortune, and when they opened the envelope it said,
"Your face is your fortune."
Subaltern. "Well, what do you want?"
Tommy (formerly a cobbler). "The Cap'n's 'orse wants soleing and 'eeling, Sir."