“So I have,” he said, a little uneasily. Then he hurried on, and Danny was left standing in the road. He gave up his idea of going fishing and decided to go on the trail again. Here was a new, important clue—the friendly artist, so full of questions and kindness, was one of the stealthy gang!
He determined to go to the pool and find out where and how the man had torn such a great piece out of his coat.
As he passed the drain pipe in the ditch, he paused and looked at it. He was standing on the bank, his hand resting on a telegraph-pole, when something made him glance up. Just above his head, a torn scrap of cloth, with a button sewn to it, was hanging on a bent nail in the post.
Reaching up, Danny unhooked it. Yes, it was the artist’s button! So he had been climbing a telegraph-pole! What on earth for? Danny was more puzzled than ever. But it was certainly a “clue,” and he logged it in his notebook, with the other particulars concerning the artist.
The pool revealed no more secrets, except that someone had certainly climbed out of it lately, and left wet marks on the bank.
“Look, sir,” he said, “you’ve torn a big piece out of your coat! And one of the buttons, too!”
“My word, but I won’t half keep a sharp lookout on that chap,” said Danny to himself, as he walked home. But he had two pieces of news to learn when he reached Dutton. One was that the artist and his portmanteau had departed in a cart for the station; and the other that the newspapers had very serious news in them. The quarrel between Germany and the Balkan States that had been attracting attention was spreading to something wider. “It will end in a great war,” people said. In a few days came the news that Germany had broken all treaties, and was trampling on little Belgium. England, standing for fair play, must come in. On August 4th, England had declared war on Germany.
“If only we could do something,” everybody felt. The Dutton Scouts and Wolf Cubs fairly ramped with impatience to be called out on war service. Their chance came sooner than they expected. And sooner than he expected came the solution to the great mystery that had puzzled Danny the Detective for so long.