"Oh! I suppose you dropped it when you came round interfering last night/' said Mr. Goon. "I don't know what children are coming to nowadays - always turning up and messing about and hindering others and being a general nuisance! You clear orf!"
"Ah! My shilling!" said Larry, suddenly pouncing on his shilling, which, when he had arrived, he had carefully dropped beside a patch of celandines. "All right, Mr. Goon. We'll go. I've got my shilling now."
"Well, clear orf, then," growled the policeman. "I've got work to do here - serious work, and I don't want children messing about, either."
"Are you looking for glues?" asked Bets, and immediately got such a nudge from Pip that she almost fell over.
Luckily Clear-Orf took no notice of this remark. He hustled the children out of the gate and up the lane. "And don't you come messing about here again.," he said.
"Messing about!" said Larry indignantly, as they all went off up the lane. "That's all he thinks children do - mess about. If he knew what we'd discovered this morning, he'd go green in the face!"
"Would he really?" said Bets, interested. "I'd like to see him."
"You nearly made me go green in the face when you asked old Clear-Orf if he was looking for clues!" said Pip crossly. "I thought the very next minute you'd say we had been looking for some and found them, too! That's the worst of having a baby like you in the Find-Outers!"
"I would not have said we'd found anything," said Bets, almost in tears. "Oh, look - there's Fatty. We'd better warn him that Clear-Orf is down there."
They stopped Fatty and warned him. He decided to go down and do his measuring and copying later on. He didn't at all like Clear-Orf. Neither did Buster.