Presently a window opened at the right side of the house, and a man looked out. His head was quite bald on top, and he had a straggling beard that reached almost to the middle of his waistcoat. He wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses that made his eyes look very big.
"What are you doing?" he called.
Larry went and stood under the window and spoke extremely politely.
"I hope you don't mind, sir, but our ball fell in your garden, and we're looking for it."
A gust of wind blew into the garden and flung Daisy's hair over her face. It tugged at Mr. Smellie's beard, and it rustled round the papers on the desk by him. One of them rose into the air and flew straight out of the window. Mr. Smellie made a grab at it, but didn't catch it. It fell to the ground below,
"I'll get it for you, sir," said Larry politely. He picked up the paper and handed it back to the old man.
"What a very queer paper," he said. It was thick and yellow, and covered with curious writing.
"It is parchment," said Mr. Smellie, looking at Larry out of short-sighted eyes. "This is very, very old."
Larry thought it would be a good idea to take a great
Interest in old papers. "Oh, sir!" he said. "Is it really very old? How old? How very interesting!"
Mr. Smellie was pleased to have any one taking such a sudden interest. "I have much older ones," he said. "I spend my time deciphering them - reading them, you know. We learn a great deal of old history that way."
"How marvellous!" said Larry. "I suppose you couldn't show me any, sir, could you?"
"Certainly, my boy, certainly," said Mr. Smellie, positively beaming at Larry. "Come along in. I think you will find that the garden door is open."
"Could my sister come too?" asked Larry. "She would be very, very interested, I know."
"Dear me, what unusual children," thought Mr. Smellie, as he watched them going in at the garden door. They were just wiping their feet when a little bird-like woman darted out of a room nearby and gazed at them fa surprise.
"Whatever are you doing here?" she said. "This is Mr. Smellie's house. He doesn't allow any one inside."
"He's just asked us in," said Larry politely. "We have wiped our feet very carefully."
"Just asked you in," said Miss Miggle, the housekeeper, filled with astonishment. "But he never asks any one in - except Mr. Hick. And since they quarreled even he hasn't been here."
"But perhaps Mr. Smellie has visited Mr. Hick!" said Larry, still wiping his feet, anxious to go on with the conversation.
"No, indeed he hasn't," said Miss Miggle. "He told me that he wasn't going to visit any one who shouted at him in the disgusting way that Mr. Hick did. Poor old gentleman, he doesn't deserve to be shouted at. He's very absent-minded and a bit queer sometimes, but there's no harm in him."
"Didn't he go down and see the fire when Mr. Hick's workroom got burnt?" asked Daisy. Miss Miggle shook her head.
"He went out for his usual walk that evening," she
said. "About six o'clock. But he came back before the the fire was discovered."
The children looked at one another. So Mr. Smellie had gone out that evening - could he possibly have slipped down to Mr. Hick's, started the fire and come back again?
"Did you see the fire?" asked the housekeeper, with interest. But the children had no time to answer, for Mr. Smellie came out to see what they were doing. They went with him into his study - a most untidy room, strewn with all kinds of papers, its walls lined with books that reached right up to the ceiling.
"Gracious!" said Daisy, looking round. "Doesn't any one ever tidy this room? You can hardly walk without stepping on papers!"
"Miss Higgle is forbidden to tidy this room," said Mr. Smellie, putting his glasses on firmly. They had a habit of slipping down his nose, which was rather small. "Now let me show you these old, old books - written on rolls of paper - in the year, let me see now, in the year ... er, er ... I must look it up again. I knew it quite well, but that fellow Hick always contradicts me, and he muddles my mind so that I can't remember."
"I expect your quarrel a day or two ago really upset you," said Daisy, most sympathetically. Mr. Smellie took off his glasses, polished them and put them back on his nose again.
"Yes," he said, "yes. I don't like quarrels. Hick is a most intelligent fellow, but he gets very angry if I don't always agree with him. Now this document..."
The children listened patiently, not understanding a word of all the long speech that Mr. Smellie was making.
He quite forgot that he was talking to children, and he spoke as if Larry and Daisy were as learned as himself. They began to feel very bored. When he turned to get another sheaf of old papers, Larry whispered to Daisy. "Go and see if you can find any of his shoes in the cupboard outside in the hall."
Daisy slipped out. Mr. Smellie didn't seem to notice
that she was gone. Larry thought he would hardly notice
if he, Larry, went too!
Daisy found the hall cupboard. She opened the door and went inside. It was full of boots, shoes3 goloshes, sticks and coats. Daisy hurriedly looked at the shoes. She turned up each pair. They seemed about the right size, but they hadn't rubber soles.
Then she turned up a pair that had rubber soles! How marvellous! Perhaps they were the very ones! She looked at the markings - but for the life of her she couldn't quite remember the markings in the drawing of the footprint. Were they or were they not just like the ones she was looking at?
"I'll have to compare them," thought the little girl at last. "I must take one shoe home with me and go down to see the footprint drawing. We shall soon see if they are the right ones."
She stuffed a shoe up the front of her jersey. It made a very funny lump, but she couldn't think where else to hide the shoe. She crept out of the hall cupboard - straight into Miss Miggle!
Miss Miggle was tremendously astonished to see Daisy coming out of the boot cupboard. "Whatever are you doing?" she asked. "Surely you are not playing hide-and-seek?"
"Well - not exactly" said Daisy, who didn't quite know what to say. Miss Miggle carried a tray of buns and milk into the study, where Mr. Smellie was still lecturing poor Larry. She put the tray down on the table. Daisy followed close behind her, hoping that no one would notice the enormous lump up her jersey.
"I thought the children would like to share your eleven o'clock lunch with you, sirs" said Miss Miggle. She turned to look at Daisy. "Gracious, child - is that your hanky up the front of your jersey. What a place to keep it!"
Larry glanced at his sister and was amazed to see the curious lump behind her jersey.
"I keep all kinds of things up my jersey-front," said Daisy, hoping that no one would ask her to show what
she had. Nobody did. Larry was just about to, but stopped himself in time on seeing that the lump was decidedly the shape of a shoe!
The children had milk and buns, but Mr. Smellie did not touch his. Miss Miggle kept at his elbow, trying to stop him talking and to make him eat and drink.
"You have your milk now, sir," she kept saying. "You didn't have your breakfast, you know." She turned to the children. "Ever since the night of the fire poor Mr. Smellie has been terribly upset. Haven't you, sir?"
"Well, the loss of those unique and quite irreplaceable documents in the fire gave me a shock," said Mr. Smellie. "Worth thousands of pounds they were. Oh, I know Hick was insured and will get his money back all right, but that isn't the point. The documents were of the greatest imaginable value."
"Did you quarrel about those that morning?" asked Daisy.
"Oh no; you see, Hick said these documents here, that I've just been showing you, were written by a man called Ulinus," said Mr. Smellie earnestly, "and I know perfectly well that they were written by three different people. I could not make Mr. Hick see reason. He flew into a terrible temper, and practically turned me out of the house. In fact, he really frightened me. He frightened me so much that I left my documents behind."