“I was here before it began to rain,” he said, “and there were no fresh tracks.”
The Kangaroos went away, very bored and very muddy. It was not long before the story had spread through the whole Troop and the whole Pack. Everyone was inclined to agree with Fred Codding, the Sixer, that Danny the Detective was a little liar. But Danny, though hopelessly bewildered, knew that what he had seen the day before had not been a dream.
The next few days were very unhappy. Danny was in hopeless disgrace. The Scouts laughed. The Cubs were angry because he had brought disgrace on the Pack. The Scoutmaster chaffed Mr. Fox, the Cubmaster, and said he had heard there was a budding novelist in the Pack!
The only comforting thing that happened was that in a local paper there appeared a short account of a gentleman’s bicycle having mysteriously disappeared from outside a shop where he had left it.
But instead of this convincing everyone that Danny’s story was true, he was only chaffed about the little paragraph.
All this made him quite determined to clear his honour and the honour of the Pack. He made up his mind never to rest until he had solved the mystery. From then onward he looked at everyone with the eye of a detective. Not one stranger escaped his notice, or one unusual track upon the road. He was untiringly on the alert.
Meanwhile the weather had cleared up. The hot July sun had dried the mud completely. The roads became so hard that there was no chance of tracking. Danny was sorry for this, for he was ever on the lookout for the footmarks of which he had a sketch in his book. Now there seemed no chance by this means of obtaining a clue.
But before a month had gone by he had met with another stranger who seemed to form another link in the mysterious chain.
To their pride and joy the 1st Dutton Wolf Cubs had been invited by the Scouts to take part in a great field day. Danny had been given a quarter of a mile of road to patrol. It happened to be the lonely lane that led past the deserted mill.
He had just concealed himself in the hedge when a market-cart rumbled by. A little ahead of him it stopped. The carter looked keenly up and down the road and all about him. Then, as if sure he was not perceived, he pushed aside his vegetable baskets, lifted up a piece of sacking, and helped a man to emerge from the bottom of the cart. Without a single word the man jumped down on to the road, and the cart lumbered on.