‘I said,’ Charlotte answered, glowing with the pride of a successful strategist—‘I said we’d help them to search! Come on, the three C.’s. Round the back way! We’ll help them to search for their runaway boy—so we will! And when they’ve gone we’ll bring you something to eat—something really nice—not just biscuits. Don’t you worry. The three C.’s are yours to the death.’
CHAPTER VII
BEING DETECTIVES
If you are Jack Delamere, the Boy Detective who can find out all secrets by himself, pretending to be a French count, a young lady from the provinces, or a Lincolnshire labourer with a cold in his head, and in those disguises pass unrecognised by his nearest relations and by those coiners and smugglers to whom in his ordinary clothes he is only too familiar,—if you can so alter your voice that your old school-fellows believe you to be, when dressed for the part, an Italian organ-grinder or a performing bear——
I am sorry, this sentence is too much for me. I give it up. What I was going to say was that persons accustomed to the detective trade, or, on the other hand, persons who are used to keeping out of the way of detectives, no doubt find it easy to play a part and to look innocent when they are guilty, and ignorant when of course all is known to them. But when you are not accustomed to playing a part in a really serious adventure—not just a pretending one—you will find your work cut out for you. This was what Charles and Caroline felt.
It was all very well for Charlotte to have arranged that they should help the Police to look for Rupert, and the other two said cordially that it was very clever of her to have thought of it, and they all started together for the side door where the policeman was still talking to Mrs. Wilmington. But their feet seemed somehow not to want to go that way; they went more and more slowly, and when they were half-way to the house, Caroline said:
‘I don’t think I will. I don’t know how. I should do something silly and give the show away. I shall say I’m too tired.’
‘You are too bad,’ said Charlotte, exasperated. ‘I go and lay all the plans and then you funk.’
‘I don’t,’ said Caroline. And so anxious was she not to have to play the part of pretending to look for Rupert when all the time she knew where he was, that she added humbly, ‘Don’t be snarky. I’m only saying I’m not clever enough. I’m not so clever as you, that’s all.’