Mystery of Tally-Ho Cottage by Enid Blyton Page B

something? Mr. Goon began to worry. He pedalled back to his house, still frowning.
    ‘I think I’ll go up to the cottage at Tally-Ho House and pop in to see the Larkins again,’ he thought. ‘I’ll ask Rob Larkin if that fat boy has been snooping round - and if he has I’ll have Something to Say about it.’
    But Fatty had not been to see the Larkins because the Superintendent had said that he did not wish him to. Fatty was still rather down in the dumps, though he kept a cheerful face with the others.
    He thought about Ern’s rough notes, and wondered how little Poppet was getting on. In his notes Ern had put that she was afraid of Mrs. Larkin. She was terrified of Mr. Larkin too, so her life couldn’t be a very happy one. After seven years of love and fuss and petting, life must seem very grim to little Poppet these days!
    ‘I’m sure Mrs. Lorenzo will try to get her dog back, if she can’t get out of the country,’ said Fatty to himself. ‘Or she will send someone to fetch her, and put her in a home with kindly people. I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea if I went to see Ern’s treehouse this afternoon, and did a bit of snooping round myself.’
    He sat and thought a little more. ‘Better not go as myself in case I bump into Goon. I’ll disguise myself - I’ll be an Indian, as Bets suggested!’
    He looked at himself in the mirror, and twisted a face-towel over his head like a turban. Bets was right - he looked exactly like a brown-faced Indian! Fatty grinned and felt much more cheerful.
    ‘It doesn’t suit me to sit and do nothing when there’s something on,’ he said. ‘That’s not the way to make anything happen! Come on, Fatty - stir yourself. Get out your fancy clothes and dress up!’
    Immediately after he had had lunch, Fatty set to work down in his shed. He found a fine strip of gay cloth that would do for a turban, and looked up ‘Turbans - how to wear’, in a very useful little book called Dress up Properly. He practised turban-tying for some time and at last produced a most satisfactory one, wound correctly round his head.
    He pencilled a faint black moustache, rather thin, on his upper lip, and darkened his chin to make it seem as if he had a shaved beard. He put cheek-pads in to alter the shape of his face, and at once looked older, and fatter in the cheeks. He darkened his eyebrows and made them thicker, then gazed at himself in the glass, putting on a sinister, rather mysterious expression.
    ‘That’s all right,’ he thought. ‘Gosh, it’s queer looking at myself in the mirror and seeing somebody quite different! Now, what else shall I wear?’
    He decided that the Eastern clothes he had were a bit too gay for January weather. He didn’t want a crowd of kids following him around! He suddenly thought of some Eastern students he had seen in London.
    ‘They wore turbans, and rather tightish, but ordinary black trousers, and an overcoat,’ he remembered. ‘Didn’t want to shiver in our cold climate, I suppose! Perhaps it would be best if I just wore a turban, and ordinary clothes. My face is so very sunburnt that just wearing a turban makes me look Eastern!’
    He found a pair of rather dirty, very tight black trousers, which he couldn’t do up at the waist. He had a brain-wave and tied a sash round his middle instead. Then he put on an old overcoat.
    ‘A foreign student from somewhere out east!’ he said to himself. ‘Yes - that’s what I am! Come on, Fatty - off to Tally-Ho!’
    He left Buster behind, much to the little Scottie’s dismay, and set off, passing rapidly by the kitchen window, hoping that the maids would not see him. But his mother saw him, and gazed after him in surprise.
    ‘Who’s that?’ she wondered. ‘A friend of Frederick’s, I suppose. What a peculiar-looking fellow in that gay turban!’
    Fatty went off down to the river, and made his way along the river-path. He only met an old lady with a dog, and she gazed at him uneasily. Was he going to snatch her handbag? But he passed quickly, and she heaved