It was a good ten-mile walk, and whoever had built the road had done it in a rather vague manner, so that it wound to and fro and up and down. The white dust lay on it like a thick layer of talcum powder and the hot sun beat down like a blast furnace. The Mayor and Menelous Stafili tramped on getting dustier and dustier and hotter and hotter with each passing mile. Never in their lives had the usefulness of a donkey been brought home to them so forcibly. At length, half-dead from exhaustion, they staggered into the outskirts of Melissa. They immediately went to the nearest café, revived themselves with suitable quantities of ouzo, and then made their way to the Central Police Station where Inspector Prometheous Steropes had his office.
Inspector Prometheous Steropes took his job very seriously. He was an ambitious man and it annoyed him that there was so little crime in Melissa, for he felt quite sure that, given suitable opportunities, he could display a brilliance for detection which would dazzle his superiors in Athens and earn him swift promotion. However, as it was, his superiors in Athens hardly deigned to acknowledge his existence.
One of his most prized possessions was a set of Sherlock Holmes stories, in handsome red morocco binding, which Major-General Finchberry-White had brought out for him the previous year, and which he had studied assiduously until he knew the “master’s” methods by heart.
He was a tall, lanky man with a long chin as blue and as polished as a gun barrel and a sweeping nose that, he liked to think, made him the very personification of his favourite detective. When he was told that Mayor Oizus and Menelous Stafili, in a pitiable condition, were asking to see him, he was considerably mystified, for he knew Kalanero to be one of the most law-abiding villages on the island. What, he wondered, could they possibly want to see him about? The two still-perspiring men were ushered into his office where the Chief Inspector, in his immaculate uniform, was sitting behind his big oak desk, endeavouring to look as much as possible like Sherlock Holmes interviewing a client. He rose to his feet and gave a little bow.
“Mayor Oizus,” he said, “Menelous Stafili. Please be seated.”
The Mayor and Menelous Stafili sank gasping into chairs.
“It would appear,” said the Chief Inspector, fixing them with a gimlet eye, “that you have walked here.”
“We have indeed,” said the Mayor, mopping his face with his handkerchief. “I never realised what a great distance it was before.”
The Chief Inspector mused for a moment.
“Why,” he asked, “didn’t you come on a donkey?”
“That’s exactly what we’ve come to see you about,” said the Mayor. “We have no donkeys.”
The Chief Inspector frowned. “What do you mean, you have no donkeys?” he inquired. “Kalanero was full of donkeys the last time I saw it. You yourself, if I remember right, possess five.”
“But that’s just the point,” wailed the Mayor. “We none of us possess donkeys any more. The Communists have taken them.”
The Inspector started.
“The Communists,” he said incredulously. “What foolish talk is this?”
“Last night,” explained the Mayor. “some dastardly Communists came to our village and stole all our donkeys and my little horse.”
“Mayor Oizus,” said the Inspector, grimly, “can it be that you are drunk, or that you have taken leave of your senses?”
“No, no,” said Menelous Stafili, “what he says is perfectly true, Inspector. All the donkeys and his little horse have vanished.”
The Inspector picked up a long curved pipe from his desk and tapped it thoughtfully against his teeth, and then rasped it on his tiny black moustache.
“What,” he asked cunningly, “would Communists want with donkeys?”
“It’s a plot,” said the Mayor breathlessly. “It’s a plot to undermine the agriculture of Kalanero. It’s probably only the beginning of a gigantic conspiracy to undermine the agriculture of the whole island.”
The Inspector was visibly impressed by this.
“It could be that you are right,” he said. “But why are you so certain that it’s Communists?”
“Read this,” said the Mayor dramatically, as he slapped the poster saying DONKEYS OF THE WORLD UNITE on the Inspector’s desk.
“Aha!” said the Inspector, delighted. “A clue!”
He picked up an enormous magnifying glass and carefully inspected the poster, both back and front.
“You’re quite right,” he admitted. “It’s undoubtedly the work of Communists.”
“What do you suggest we do?” asked the Mayor. “If we can’t get our donkeys back, the whole village will be ruined.”
“Don’t excite yourself, Mayor Oizus,” said the Inspector soothingly, holding up one hand. “I myself will take charge of this case.”
He called for his clerk and told him to have three policemen at the ready, together with Melissa’s one and only police car, a battered old Ford which the Inspector generally used for trips out to inspect his vineyards. Then, with efficiency that visibly impressed the Mayor and Menelous Stafili, he picked up the telephone and dialled a number. He waited for a moment or so, tapping his pipe against his teeth, his eyes narrowed, looking every inch the determined detective.
“Gregorious?” he said suddenly into the phone. “Prometheous here. Tell me, Gregorious, you remember those two hunting dogs of yours that you offered to lend me? Well, are they any good at tracking? They are, eh! Would they be able to track a donkey? Yes, yes, a donkey. No, I am not fooling. I am trying to solve a crime. You think they would, eh! Well, can you lend them to me? Thanks very much — I’ll come round and collect them straight away.”
So, with great difficulty, the Mayor, Menelous Stafili, the Inspector, three policemen and two large, friendly and happily-panting dogs, were packed untidily into the police car and soon it was bumping its way along the road to Kalanero, where the Inspector hoped his great day of triumph would come.
CHAPTER 7
The Forces of Law
Now the children naturally knew that the disappearance of the donkeys would create an unparalleled sensation in the village and they had been vastly amused at the villagers’ reaction. However, what they had not anticipated was that outside reinforcements might be called in. When they discovered that Mayor Oizus and Menelous Stafili had actually taken the unprecedented step of walking into Melissa to see the Chief of Police, they viewed the news with some consternation.
“What do you think’s going to happen now?” David asked worriedly. “If they rope in the whole of the police force they’re almost bound to find the donkeys sooner or later.”
“Bah!” said Amanda scornfully. “That Inspector couldn’t find the nose on his face.”
But secretly she, too, was somewhat alarmed by the news, although she would never have admitted it.
“Had we better go and feed the donkeys?” said Yani.