Mystery of the Invisible Thief by Enid Blyton

somewhere. I know she only goes to your part of the town in the afternoon.”
    “I know! She delivers down at the other end of the town,” said Bets suddenly. “I was at Mrs Kendal’s once, with a message for Mother - and the grocer’s girl came then. We could go and wait about for her there, Daisy.”
    “Right. Come on,” said Daisy. “Goodbye, boys - don’t start playing a game and forget all about your job!”
    “Don’t be silly, Daisy,” said Larry, quite annoyed. The boys went off to Pip’s and the girls went off to the other end of the town.
    They were lucky because they didn’t have to wait very long. They sat in the small dairy near Mrs Kendal’s, eating ice-creams, keeping a watch for the grocer’s van.
    “There it is!” said Bets suddenly, and Daisy looked up, to see Harris’s yellow van coming round the corner. It came to a stop nearby.
    Daisy and Bets paid quickly for their ice-creams and hurried out. They were just in time to see the grocer’s girl jump from the van, hurry to the back, undo the door, and drag out a big box piled with groceries.
    “Let her go in with it first, and then we’ll speak to her when she comes out,” said Daisy. They walked slowly to the back of the van. Then Bets saw that a little packet of soap powder had fallen out and was lying in the road.
    “It must have fallen out of the girl’s box,” she said to Daisy, and bent to pick it up just as the grocer’s girl came out again, this time with her box empty.
    “I say - you dropped this,” said Bets, holding it out.
    “Oh, thanks very much,” said the girl gratefully. “I missed it when I took the things in just now. I’m in an awful hurry this morning - had an interview with the police, you know. About the robbery at Mrs Williams.”
    This was just the opening the other two wanted. Daisy seized on it eagerly. “Oh, did you really? Did you know that I and my brother lived next door to Mrs Williams, and we rushed in to help her?”
    “No! Well I never!” said the girl, astonished. “Did you see anything of the thief? I hear he took quite a bit of Mrs Williams’ jewellery.”
    “Did he?” said Daisy, who hadn’t yet heard what exactly had been taken. “You went to the house yesterday afternoon too, didn’t you? Did you see anything of the thief?”
    “No, not a thing,” said the girl. “I didn’t see anyone at all. I think I must have come before he was there. I never saw or heard anything.”
    “Did you see any loaves or any parcel in the kitchen when you went in?” asked Bets, wondering if the grocer’s girl had gone to the house before the others.
    “There were no loaves there when I went, and I didn’t see any parcel,” said the girl, getting into her van. “Mr Goon asked me a lot of questions this morning - and I couldn’t tell him a thing. To think I was there and might have brushed against the robber! Well, it just shows, doesn’t it?”
    Bets and Daisy didn’t know exactly what it showed, but they nodded their heads.
    “Sorry I can’t stop,” said the girl. “I’d love to hear what you did too - but I’m so awfully late. To think I didn’t hear or see a thing. Bad luck, wasn’t it?”
    She drove off. Daisy and Bets looked at one another. “Well, that was unexpectedly easy,” said Bets. “It took us hardly any time. We may as well go back and see how the boys are getting on.”
    So they went off to the boys, who were patiently waiting for the postman and the baker. They were swinging on the gate so as not to miss them. They looked surprised to see Daisy and Bets so soon.
    “We has an easy job,” said Daisy. “But nothing came of it. The grocer’s girl delivered her goods before the others, and she didn’t see or hear anything suspicious at all.”
    “Nobody ever seems to see this thief,” said Larry. “They hear him and see his foot-marks and glove-marks, but they don’t see him. I bet neither the postman nor the baker will have seen him, either.”
    “Here is the postman!” said Daisy. “Look - coming up the road with his little cycle-van. Let’s