The Mystery of the Disappearing Dogs. Arthur Hammond

      The Professor eyed his back angrily and then turned to Red’s Sister. “Mary, have you got the minutes of the last meeting?” he said.

      Red’s Sister straightened up from the fire, pulled a rumpled school exercise book out of the back pocket of her jeans and opened it. She was Official Secretary of the gang. The Professor now eyed the notebook sourly.

      “Look at the state of that darn thing,” he said. “What’ve you been doing with it, cleaning your shoes on it or something? That’s supposed to be our official record book, not an old piece of used Kleenex. You’re a girl; you’re supposed to be neat and tidy. Why the heck don’t you keep it clean?”

      Mary looked at the covers of the book and shrugged. She wiped it on the leg of her jeans. A new black streak appeared.

      “Okay. Let’s have the minutes of the last meeting,” the Professor said with a sigh.

      Red’s Sister cleared her throat and began to read.

      “Meeting of the twenty-third of August,” she said. “The leaders of the Annex Gang assembled at headquarters at 8.30 p.m., but Fatty Gzowski was away because he was on vacation with his parents up at Muskoka. Absence excused.”

      The Professor nodded and Fatty, who was still standing over by the door, made a little bow. Red’s Sister went on reading.

      “A report was made by me—I mean by Red’s Sister—about some guys from the Spadina Gang who were on our territory on garbage day, taking magazines and comic books that people had put out. I told them—I mean Red’s Sister told them—to beat it, because these magazines and comic books belonged to us, and then they tried to dump me in a garbage can but I got away and, boy, I really hit that guy Frankie Horton when he tried to grab me!”

      The Professor looked across at Red. “What happened about the Spadina Gang?” he said.

      “We fixed ’em,” Red said in a satisfied voice. “Yesterday. Me and Fatty and a couple of guys from Hazelton Avenue went over to that new apartment block that’s being built on Spadina Road, where they have their headquarters. We did what you said. We took a whole lot of garbage, old shoes and stuff, and spread it all round the place where they meet, down in the basement. Then we chalked up that message on the wall that you gave us: ‘We hear you want our garbage. Here’s some more.’ Signed—‘The Annex Gang.’ ”

      “Did any of them see you?” the Professor said.

      “Nope,” Fatty said. “We made sure there was no one about before we went in.”

      “Do they know where we’re meeting?” the Professor said. “They’ll probably try a revenge raid.”

      Red shook his head. “I don’t think they know or they’d have raided us before this. But we’d better be careful from now on, because they’ll probably send out scouts to trail us here.”

      “Right,” the Professor said, turning to Fatty. “Doorkeeper to use vigilance. Don’t let anyone in here without the proper password. And all of you watch out that you’re not followed when you come here, and make sure there’s no one around when you come in. If they break in here, they’ll wreck the place and then the neighbours’ll probably complain to the cops or the developer who owns this place and we’ll be thrown out of here for good.”

      “I already do make everyone give the password,” Fatty said. “He’s the one you want to tell.” He pointed to Blackie. “He’s always trying to get in here without it. He thinks it’s stupid.”

      “I was in a hurry, that’s all,” Blackie said sourly without looking round. “I just happened to have some very urgent news to tell. But no, nobody wants to listen. First of all, we have to go through this rubbish of reading the minutes and fooling around with passwords and all that stuff. Okay, so let it wait. See if I care. Go on, finish reading your crummy minutes.”

      The Professor stood up angrily. “Look,” he said. “If you don’t like the way I run things, you don’t have to take part, you know. I organized this gang and I was elected to this job so that I could keep it organized and run things properly. But if no one likes it, I can always resign and you can always go back to being just another bunch of unorganized kids, fighting among yourselves and getting pushed around by other people, like the Spadina Gang, because they’ve got the sense to get themselves properly organized.”

      “Okay, okay!” Red said, snapping his clasp knife shut and standing up. “Let’s not start fighting among ourselves, hey Prof, like you say.” He gently pushed the Professor back down in his seat. “We all think the way you’re running the gang is swell, but if Blackie really has got some urgent news to tell maybe we should just make an exception to the rules this once and let him tell it, even if we haven’t finished the minutes. Blackie, you listening? Okay, Prof?”

      But Blackie had decided to sulk. He shook his head.

      “No,” he said. “It can wait now. Come on, Mary. Finish the lousy minutes.”

      Red’s Sister looked round at everyone and shrugged. “The next thing’s about you, anyway,” she said to Blackie. “The next thing at the meeting was a report from Blackie, the Official Dog-Keeper . . .”

      “Mascot-Keeper,” the Professor grunted, still angry.

      “. . . Mascot-Keeper, about how Sput was getting on in his training for the Dog Derby. Blackie said that he and a couple of other kids had been taking Sput for a daily swim in High Park, but the trouble was that he kept taking off after ducks instead of swimming straight across the pond from one side to the other. Next week they were going to take him over to Centre Island to try and get him to swim after a rowboat, the way he’ll have to in the race. Blackie was given some money from the treasury for renting the boat.”

      Everyone looked at Blackie curiously.

      “How’s he getting on?” Red said. “Think he’s got any chance of beating that big black mutt the Spadina Gang’s entering for the race—what’s it called—Buster?”

      Blackie looked at Red sadly, then at the Professor.

      “Well, right up until today I’d have said he had a pretty good chance,” he said. “I’ve seen that mutt of Spadina’s swim. It’s fast to begin with, but it can’t keep it up. If Sput had got into the race, he’d have beaten that one anyway.”

      “What do you mean, if he’d got into the race?” Fatty said. “Is he hurt or something?”

      “No, he’s not hurt,” Blackie said. “At least, I don’t think so. I don’t know whether he’s hurt or not. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you ever since I got in here. He’s been stolen!”

      2

      A Raid

      “Stolen!” Fatty and the Professor both said at once.

      “What do you mean, he’s been stolen?” the Professor went on. “How do you know?”

      “Because I left him tied up to our porch in front of the house while we had supper,” Blackie said. “And when I came out to get him, to bring him here, he was gone. My mother won’t let me bring him into the house when we’re eating because he keeps coming round and putting his head into people’s laps for something to eat. So tonight I tied him up with his long leash to one of the wooden rails on the porch. That way he has room to move about a bit. But when I came out, he was gone.”

      “Well, how do you know he didn’t just get loose?” Red’s Sister said. “He doesn’t have to be stolen. Maybe he just got bored waiting and