It was easy to get an old shirt and muffler. Fatty produced a torn shirt of his own, and found a muffler down in the garden shed, which he must have left there months before.
He dragged the shirt in the dirt, and it was soon as filthy as the old man's. He dirtied the muffler a little more too.
"What about the shoes?" he said. "We want frightfully old ones. That old man's were all cracked open at the toe."
The shoes were a real problem. Nobody’s father had shoes as old as that. The children wondered if they could buy a pair from some tramp, but when they went out to find a tramp, the only one they met had perfectly good shoes on.
Then Daisy had a brain-wave. "Let's look in all the ditches we pass!" she said. "There are always old boots and shoes in ditches, I don't know why. We might find some there."
Sure enough they did! Larry came across a dirty,-damp old pair, open at the toes and well worn at the heels. He tossed them to Fatty.
"Well, if you think you really do want to wear such horrible things, there you are! But you'll have to dry them or you'll get awfully damp feet, and have a streaming cold."
"He'll be able to sniffle properly then," said Bets. She too had been practising the old man's sniff, much to her mother's annoyance.
"Ill put them under the tank in the hot cupboard," said Fatty. "They'll soon dry there. They'll about fit me. I don't at all like wearing them, but, after all, if it's important to solve the Mystery, it's important to put up with little things like this!"
The trousers seemed quite impossible to get. Nobody's father wore the kind of coarse corduroy that the old man wore. Could they possibly buy a pair in the village shop and make them torn and dirty for Fatty to wear?