Danny the detective

by Vera C. Barclay

“So,” said Danny, “the chap who went down into the pond with his sack did come up the way he went down. He went down on Saturday afternoon and he came up in the night. What’s more, he came up after I had left the place at 1 A.M. I can’t help thinking he had something to do with the two chaps in the car.”

The Detective scratched his head. It was so jolly puzzling.

“Anyway, I missed him. And he’s not here now, so there’s no good in my staying here,” he said.

An empty feeling under his Sunday waistcoat told him that it must be getting near one o’clock. At dinner his thoughts were far away, and his mother wondered why he was so silent. He determined to spend the afternoon having a long think. He would read up all his notes and try to put the various clues together and solve the mystery. He had a particular, secret place of his own where he always hid when he wanted to be quiet. It was in the ruins of an old abbey that stood on the grounds of Sir Edward Finch’s estate.

The old, grey, half-crumbled buildings stood quite close to the little lodge where he lived. No one was allowed to go into this ruin. One reason was that Sir Edward was a funny old crank and hated strangers poking about on his property. Another was that the beautiful old tower of the church was supposed to be tottering and about to fall. In fact, two years ago a man had been killed by a part of the church falling on him. So a high, barbed-wire fence surrounded the ruin. The great iron gates were always kept locked, and no one ever went in. But one day Danny had discovered that there was a little wee path that led from his mother’s cabbage patch to the hedge that divided the garden from the ruin. The path was only about ten inches wide. It must have been made by rabbits, and if rabbits could get through the hedge and the barbed-wire into the mysterious old abbey, a boy could get in, too. So Danny had followed the path and had soon scrambled through the thick hedge. To his delight he had found himself in a fascinating place.

The turf was soft and mossy and full of harebells. And there was the old grey ruin to explore. Danny crept about in the traceried cloisters, where he loved to imagine the holy monks walking six hundred years ago with their sandalled feet. There was the room where he decided they must have had their meals. But most of all he loved the ruined church. Somehow it seemed very holy. He always used to take his cap off when he went in, though it was open to the blue sky, and carpeted with wild flowers. One day he had found a tomtit’s nest built between the mossy stones where the altar had been.

Now, on this hot sleepy Sunday afternoon he crept out into the back-garden and filled his cap with gooseberries. Then he wriggled through the hedge and had soon curled up in a warm corner of the cloisters with no one to see him but the rabbits.

Danny had not had a very restful night, having been on guard by the pond, and now the warm sun and his good dinner and the drowsy hum of the bees in the wild thyme made him very sleepy and he began to nod.

Before long he was fast asleep, and having a very strange dream. He thought he was back in the old days and that he was a knight in shining armour who had come to the abbey to pray before going to the Crusades. In his dream he saw the monks moving about in their white habits. And then he suddenly saw a horrid-looking fellow creeping about in the shadows all dressed in black and hiding a dagger beneath his wide sleeves.

“A traitor,” said Danny in his dream. And then he suddenly saw it was the man he had seen with the bicycle and again in the motor! Drawing his long sword, he stepped forward, and—but at this exciting moment he woke up with a start.