“I better just begin at the beginning,” he said to himself, and, pressing heavily upon the paper and frowning desperately, began to write.

REPORT

by Joseph L. Potts

(aged 14 ½)

On consideration, he thought this needed a little more corroborative detail, and added his address and the date. The report then proceeded:

I had a talk with the boys about the catter (erased) cattapult. Bill Jones says he reckollects of me standing in the Dispatch and Mrs. Johnson collering of the cattapult. Sam Tabbit and George Pyke was there too. What I says to them was as Mr. Bredon give me back the cattapult and it have the bit of leather tore and I wants to know who done it. They all says they never been to Mrs. Johnson’s draw and I think they was tellin the truth sir because Bill and Sam is good sorts and you can always tell if George is fibbing because of the way he looks and he was looking alright. So then I says could it have been any of the others and they says they have not seen none of them with cattapults so I makes out to be very angry and says it’s a pitty a boy can’t have his cattapult confist confiskcated without somebody goes and tears of it. And then Clarence Metcalfe comes along which he is head boy sir and asks what’s up so I tells him and he says if anybody’s been at Mrs. Johnsons draw its very serious. So he gets arsking them all and they all says no but Jack Bolter remembers of Mrs. Johnson leaving her bag on the desk one day and Miss Parton picking it up and taking of it down to the canteen. I says when? And he says it was about two days after my cattapult was confik took away, and the time just after lunch sir. So you see sir it would have been laying there an hour sir when nobody was about.

Now sir about who else was there and might have seen it took. Now I comes to think I remember Mr. Prout was there at the head of the stairs because he passed a remark to Mrs. Johnson and pulled my ear and there was one of the young ladies I think it was Miss Hartley waiting to get a messenger. And after I gone down to Mr. Hornby Sam says as Mr. Wedderburn came along and him and Mrs. Johnson had a bit of a joke about it. But sir I expecks lots of people knew about it because Mrs. Johnson would tell them in the canteen. She is always telling tales on we boys sir I suppose she thinks its funny. This is all I has to report about the cattapult sir. I has not yet made any inquiry about the other matter thinking one was enough at a time or they might think I was asking a lot of questions but I have thought of a plan for that.

Yours respeckfully

J. POTTS.

“What the devil are you doing there, Joe?”

Ginger, too absorbed in his report to have kept a proper look-out upon Bert, started violently, and thrust the exercise book under his pillow.

“Never you mind,” he said, nervously. “It’s private.”

“Oh, is it?”

Bert flung the bedclothes aside and advanced, a threatening figure.

“Writing poitry?” he demanded, with contempt.

“It’s nothing to do with you,” retorted Ginger. “You leave me be.”

‘“And that there book over,” said Bert.

“No, I won’t.”

“You wont, won’t you?”

“No, I won’t. Get out!”

Ginger clasped the document with agitated hands.

“I’m going to ’ave a look-leggo!”

Ginger was a wiry child for his years and spirited, but his hands were hampered by the book, and the advantages of height, weight, and position were with Bert. The struggle was noisy.

“Let me go, you beastly great bully.”

“I’ll teach you to call names! Cheeky little beast.”

“Ow!” wailed Ginger. “I won’t, I won’t, I tell you! it’s private!”

Whack! wallop!

“Nah then!” said a stately voice, “wot’s all this?”

“Wally, tell Bert to leave me be.”

“He didn’t oughter cheek me. I only wanted ter know wot he was doin’, sittin’ up writin’ poitry w’en he oughter a-bin asleep.”

“It’s private,” persisted Ginger. “Really and truly, it’s frightfully private.”

“Can’t yer leave the kid alone?” said P. C. Potts, magisterially, “makin” all this noise. You’ll wake Dad and then you’ll both get a ’iding. Now both of you ’op back to bed or I’ll ’ave ter take you up for disturbing the peace. And you did oughter be asleep, Joe, and not writing poitry.”

“It ain’t poitry. It’s something I was doing for a gentleman at the office and he said I wasn’t to tell nobody.”

“Well, see here,” said Wally Potts, extending a vast official fist. “You ’and over that there book to me, see? I’ll put it away in my drawer and you can ’ave it again in the morning. And now go to sleep for goodness’ sake, both of yer.”

“You won’t read it, will yer, Wally?”

“All right, I won’t read it if you’re so bloomin’ perticler.”

Ginger, reluctant but confident of Wally’s honour, reluctantly released the exercise-book.

“That’s right,” said Wally. “and if I ’ear any more larkin’ about you’re for it, both of yer. See wot I mean?”

He stalked away, gigantic in his striped pyjamas.

Ginger Joe, rubbing the portions of himself which had suffered in the assault, rolled the bed-clothes about him and took comfort in telling himself a fresh instalment of that nightly narrative of which he was both author and hero.

“Bruised and battered, but unshaken in his courage, the famous detective sank back on his straw pallet in the rat-ridden dungeon. In spite of the pain of his wounds, he was happy, knowing that the precious documents were safe. He laughed to think of the baffled Crime King, gnashing his teeth in his gilded oriental saloon. ‘Foiled yet again, Hawkeye!’ growled the villainous doctor, ‘but it will be my turn next!’ Meanwhile…”

The life of a detective is a hard one.

It was on the Friday of the week in which all these stirring incidents occurred that Pym’s Publicity, Ltd. became convulsed by the Great Nutrax Row, which shook the whole office from the highest to the lowest, turned the peaceful premises into an armed camp and very nearly ruined the Staff Cricket Match against Brotherhood’s, Ltd.

The hardworking and dyspeptic Mr. Copley was the prime mover of all the trouble. Like most fomenters of schism, he acted throughout with the best intentions-and indeed, when one looks back upon the disturbance in the serene perspective of distance and impartiality, it is difficult to see what he could have done, other than what he did. But as Mr. Ingleby observed at the time, “It isn’t what Copley does, it’s the way he does it”; and in the heat and fury of the battle, when the passions of strong men are aroused, judgment easily becomes warped.

The thing started in this way:

At a quarter past six on the Thursday evening, the office was deserted, except for the cleaners and Mr. Copley, who, by an altogether exceptional accident, was left working overtime upon a rush series of cut-price advertisements for Jamboree Jellies. He was getting along nicely, and hoped to be through by half-past six and home in good time for 7.30 supper, when the telephone in the Dispatching rang violently and insistently.

“Dash it!” said Mr. Copley, annoyed by the din, “they ought to know the office is closed. You’d think they expected us to work all night.”

He went on working, trusting that the nuisance would cease of itself. Presently it did cease, and he heard the shrill voice of Mrs. Crump informing the caller that there was nobody in the office. He took a soda-mint tablet. His sentence was shaping itself beautifully. “The authentic flavour of the fresh home-grown orchard fruit-of apricots ripening in the sunny warmth of an old, walled garden…”

“Excuse me, sir.”

Mrs. Crump, shuffling apologetically in her carpet slippers, poked a nervous head round the door.