“The men who caught him must have made him write it!” said Larry, thinking hard. “They wanted us all to be caught - because we know about the secret room. But clever old Fatty managed to write a secret letter on the same paper.”
“We nearly didn’t find out about the secret one,” said Daisy. “My goodness! - we were just going down to Milton House - to knock at the door - and it would have opened, and we’d have gone in - and we would have been prisoners too.”
“I think we were all very feeble not to think of testing for a secret message,” said Pip. “We ought to have done that as a matter of course.”
“Bets and her sniffing saved us,” said Larry. “If she hadn’t smelt the orange juice, we would all have been in the soup! Good old Bets! She’s really a fine Find-Outer. She found out about the secret message.”
Bets glowed with pleasure at this praise. “My uncomfortable feeling about Fatty was right, wasn’t it?” she said. “Oh dear! - I hope he isn’t too unhappy. Pip, shall we telephone the Inspector at once? I feel as if I want to tell him everything as soon as possible.”
“I’ll telephone now,” said Larry. He went down the stairs with the others, and took up the telephone receiver. He asked for Inspector Jenks’ number. He lived in the next big town.
But alas, the Inspector was out and would not be back for an hour. What was to be done?
“It’s no good going down to Milton House,” said Larry. “Not a bit. If those men have caught Fatty, they would somehow catch us, and then we couldn’t be any help to him at all. We’ll have to wait patiently.”
“It - it would be silly to tell Clear-Orf, wouldn’t it?” said Bets. She disliked Mr. Goon extremely, but she felt that it was very urgent to get help to Fatty.
“What! Make old Clear-Orf a present of our mystery!” said Pip, in disgust. “You’re mad, Bets. Anyway, he’s in bed with a cold. Our charwoman, who goes to turn out for him, told me that this morning. He won’t be snooping down to Milton House for a bit.”