Secret Seven #1 ch6

CHAPTER SIX Finding Out a Few Things All the Secret Seven set off at once, feeling extremely important. Scamper went with Peter, Colin and Jack, his tail well up, and he also felt very important. He was mixed up in a Mystery with the Society! No wonder he turned up his nose at every dog he met. They left Pam and George at the corner, looking rather worried. The two looked at one another. ‘_How_ are we going to find out who owns the house?’ said Pam. ‘Ask at the post-office!’ said George, feeling that he really had got a very bright idea. ‘Surely if the house is owned by someone who has put in a caretaker, there must be letters going there.’ ‘Good idea!’ said Pam, and they went off to the post-office. They were lucky enough to see a postman emptying the letters from the pillar-box outside. George nudged Pam. ‘Come on. We must start somewhere. We’ll ask _him_!’ They went up to the man. ‘Excuse me,’ said George. ‘Could you tell us who lives at the old house down by the stream—you know, the empty house there?’ ‘How can anyone live in an empty house?’ said the postman. ‘Don’t ask silly questions and waste my time! You children—you think you’re so funny, don’t you?’ ‘We didn’t mean to be funny or cheeky either,’ said Pam in a hurry. ‘What George means is—who owns the house? There’s a caretaker there, we know. We just wondered who the house belongs to.’

‘Why? Thinking of buying it?’ said the postman, and laughed at his own joke. The children laughed too, wishing the man would answer their question. ‘How would I know who owns the place?’ he said, emptying the last of the letters into his sack. ‘I never take letters there except to old Dan the caretaker, and he only gets one once in a month—his wages, maybe. Better ask at the estate office over there. They deal with houses, and they might know the owner—seeing as you’re so anxious to find him!’ ‘Oh, _thank_ you,’ said Pam, joyfully, and the two of them hurried across to the estate office. ‘We might have thought of this ourselves,’ said Pam. ‘But, I say—what shall we say if the man here asks why we want to know? You only go to a house agent’s if you want to buy or sell a house, don’t you?’ They peeped in at the door. A boy of about fifteen sat at a table there, addressing some envelopes. He didn’t look very frightening. Perhaps _he_ would know—and wouldn’t ask them why they wanted the name of the owner. They went boldly in. The boy looked up. ‘What do you want?’ he said. [Illustration] ‘We’ve been told to ask who owns the old house down by the stream,’ said George, hoping the boy might think that some grown-up had sent him to find out. Actually it was only Peter, of course, but he didn’t see why he should say so. ‘I don’t think the house is in the market,’ said the boy, turning over the pages of a big book. ‘Do your parents want to buy it, or something? I didn’t know it was to be sold.’

The two children said nothing, because they didn’t really know what to say. The boy went on turning over pages. ‘Ah—here we are,’ he said. ‘No—it’s not for sale—it was sold to a Mr. J. Holikoff some time ago. Don’t know why he doesn’t live in it, I’m sure!’ ‘Does Mr. Holikoff live anywhere here?’ asked Pam. ‘No—his address is 64, Heycom Street, Covelty,’ said the boy, reading it out. ‘Course, I don’t know if he lives there now. Do your people want to get into touch with him? I can find out if this is his address now, if you like—he’s on the telephone at this address.’ ‘Oh, no, thank you,’ said George hastily. ‘We don’t want to know anything more, as the house is—er—not for sale. Thank you very much. Good morning.’ They went out, rather red in the face, but very pleased with themselves. ‘Mr. Holikoff,’ said Pam to George. ‘It’s a peculiar name, isn’t it? Do you remember his address, George?’ ‘Yes,’ said George. He took out his notebook and wrote in it: ‘Mr. J. Holikoff, 64, Heycom Street, Covelty. Well, we’ve done our part of the job! I wonder how the others are getting on.’ They were getting on quite well. Janet and Barbara were busy examining the tracks down the lane that led to the stream. They felt quite like detectives. ‘See—the car with the van behind, or whatever it was, turned into the lane from the direction of Templeton; it didn’t come from our village,’ said Janet. ‘You can see quite clearly where the wheels almost went into the ditch.’

‘Yes,’ said Barbara, staring at them. ‘The tracks of the van wheels are narrower than the wheels of the car that towed it, Janet. And look—just here in the snow you can see _exactly_ what the pattern was on the wheels of the van. Not of the car, though—they’re all blurred.’ [Illustration] ‘Don’t you think it would be a good idea to take a note of the pattern of the tyre?’ said Janet. ‘I mean—it just _might_ come in useful. And we could measure the width of the tyre print too.’ ‘I don’t see how those things can possibly matter,’ said Barbara, who wanted to go down the lane and join the three boys. ‘Well, I’m going to try and copy the pattern,’ said Janet firmly. ‘I’d like to have _some_thing to show the boys!’ So, very carefully, she drew the pattern in her notebook. It was a funny pattern, with lines and circles and V-shaped marks. It didn’t really look very good when she had done it. She had measured the print as best she could. She had no tape-measure with her, so she had placed a sheet from her notebook over the track, and had marked on it the exact size. She felt rather pleased with herself, but she did wish she had drawn the pattern better. Barbara laughed when she saw it. ‘Gracious! What a mess!’ she said. Janet looked cross and shut her notebook up. ‘Let’s follow the tracks down the lane now,’ she said. ‘We’ll see exactly where they go. Not many vans come down here—we ought to be able to follow the tracks easily.’ She was quite right. It was very easy to follow them. They went on and on down the lane—and then stopped outside the old house. There were such a lot of all kinds of marks there that it was difficult to see exactly what they were—footprints, tyre-marks, places where the snow had been kicked and ruffled up—it was hard to tell anything except that this was where people had got out—and perhaps had had some kind of struggle.

‘Look—the tyre-marks leave all this mess and go on down the lane,’ said Janet. She looked over the gate longingly. Were the boys in the old house with the caretaker? ‘Let’s go and see if we can find the boys,’ said Barbara. ‘No. We haven’t quite finished our job yet,’ said Janet. ‘We ought to follow the tracks as far as they go. Come on—we’ll see if they go as far as the stream. There are _two_ lots of tracks all down the lane, as we saw—so it’s clear that the cars went down and then up again. We’ll find out where they turned.’ That was easy. The tracks went on down to a field-gate, almost to the stream. Someone had opened the gate, and the car had gone in with the trailer, and had made a circle there, come out of the gate again, and returned up the lane. It was all written clearly in the tyre-tracks. ‘Well, that’s the story of last night,’ said Janet, pleased at their discoveries. ‘The car and the thing it was pulling came from the direction of Templeton turned down into this lane, stopped outside the old house, where people got out and messed around—and then went down to the field, someone opened the gate, the car and trailer went in and turned, and came out again and went up the lane—and disappeared into the night. Who or what it brought in the trailer-van goodness knows!’ ‘Funny thing to do in the middle of the night,’ said Barbara. ‘Very queer,’ agreed Janet. ‘Now let’s go back to the old house and wait for the boys.’ ‘It’s almost one o’clock,’ said Barbara. ‘Do you think they’re still there?’ They hung over the gate and watched and listened. To their horror the old caretaker came rushing out as soon as he saw them, his big stick in his hand. ‘More of you!’ he cried. ‘You wait till I get you. You’ll feel my stick all right. Pestering, interfering children! You just wait!’ But Barbara and Janet didn’t wait! They fled up the lane in fright, as fast as they could possibly go in the soft thick snow.