IV
A GERMAN SAUSAGE
Creeping softly back, Danny let himself down through the skylight once more. Whistling loudly, he went into the big room, just to show that he was there, and, taking up the spare bundles of newspapers, pretended to be putting them away in the other room. This he did simply to put the man off his guard, if he was still watching through the crack in the curtains. Then, while the spy imagined he was packing away the papers in the Sixers’ room, he began to make his arrangements for capturing Mr. Bulky.
First of all he took the two trek cart ropes, and making them into coils slipped them round his arm. Then from the week-end camp cupboard he took the large travelling rug belonging to Mr. Fox. It was heavy and cumbersome, and climbing out of the skylight with it was no easy job, but somehow Danny managed to do it and to get along the roof until once more he was exactly over the head of Mr. Bulky.
The great moment had come. If only the spy did not chance to look up all would be well. Balancing himself carefully, Danny stood up and opened wide the folds of the heavy rug. Then with great care he flung it completely over the figure of the man below, at the same time jumping down himself straight on to the smothered head of the terrified Mr. Bulky, and knocking him down like a ninepin. Hopelessly tangled in the rug, Mr. Bulky’s struggles were of no avail. Danny, kneeling on his chest, quickly wound one of the ropes about his feet, and secured it with a clove-hitch. The other rope he wound round and round the unhappy man’s body and arms, finishing up with a bow-line round his neck, so that his struggles only made matters worse for him. The language of Mr. Bulky was probably very strong, but fortunately his mouth was so full of rug that Danny did not understand a word.
As he stood there in the semi-darkness, Danny could not help laughing. Mr. Bulky looked so exactly like a chrysalis; he curled about just as they do when you hold them in your warm hand, or poke them with your finger. But what to do with the chrysalis was more than he could decide. At last an idea struck him: he would cart him off to the police station in the trek cart!
With some difficulty he managed to put together the cart, and then with much hauling and pushing, and the help of a strong plank, he managed to hoist the bundle that was Mr. Bulky into the cart. Then, whistling a cheerful tune, he trundled it down the road towards Mr. Bates’s house.
Mr. Bates was just helping Mrs. Bates wash up when Danny knocked at his door. He came out in his shirt-sleeves, a large carving fork in his hand. “Hello, Danny,” he said, “what brings you here so late?”
“I have come,” said Danny with a tone of high importance in his voice, “to deliver into your hands a document, written in German, and found in the possession of Mr. Bulky.”
The constable gasped.
“Here it is,” said Danny, handing him the letter.