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."