The Mystery of the Disappearing Dogs. Arthur Hammond

his leash or unhooking it somehow and taking it with him. The leash was still looped round the porch rail, the way I left it. Someone had unclipped it from his collar. He couldn’t have done that by himself!”

      “But why would anyone want to steal . . . ?” Red began, and then interrupted himself. “The Spadina Gang!” he said. “That’s it! Of course! This is how they decided to get even for that garbage we left at their headquarters. If they manage to keep Sput hidden until after the race next week, they won’t have to worry about him beating that mutt of theirs in the CNE Dog Derby!”

      “The dirty rats!” Fatty said. “Boy, raiding each other’s headquarters is one thing, but stealing Sput to keep him out of the race is different. This is just a dirty, low-down, mean . . .”

      “Shut up a minute,” the Professor said urgently. “Did you hear that?”

      They all cocked their heads and listened, looking at him curiously. There was no sound except the noise of the traffic outside, growing louder as it passed the house, and then fading.

      “What?” Red said. “I didn’t hear anything.”

      “I thought I heard a noise of some kind,” the Professor said, listening again for a moment and then relaxing. “I guess it was a car or a truck or something outside.”

      “Well, what are we going to do?” Red’s Sister said. “About Sput, I mean. We’re not just going to let the Spadina Gang get away with this, are we? Why don’t we go right over and raid their place now, before they’re ready for us. They won’t expect us to hit back so soon.”

      The Professor looked at Red inquiringly. Raids were the responsibility of the War Leader.

      Red shook his head doubtfully. “We’d have to round up some more members of the gang first,” he said, “and by the time we got everyone together, it’d be too late to go. There wouldn’t be anyone there. We can’t go the way we are, just the five of us. We might walk into their whole gang at this time of night. We’d get massacred, especially on their territory.”

      “Well, what are we going to do then?” his sister said impatiently. “We can’t just sit here and let them get away with it!”

      But before anyone could reply, the Professor suddenly held up his hand for silence again, and this time they all heard it: the slow creaking of a floorboard in the empty house above their heads.

      They stood looking at each other for a moment, their hearts thumping with surprise and fright. There was nothing in the house above them: no one had lived there for years. The bare wooden floors were sifted deep in dust and rubble—plaster and broken laths from the walls and ceilings, scraps of torn wallpaper, dried leaves, and a few rusted tin cans and empty bottles. In all the time they had been using the basement as their headquarters, they had never heard so much as a rat or mouse move in the rest of the building. And, apart from the side door to the basement, which they had managed to open originally and which they had fitted with a new padlock for themselves, there was no possible way of getting into the house. The windows were all firmly boarded up, and the doors were nailed, both front and back.

      But now, unmistakably, the sound came again: a slow, repeated creaking, as if someone were stepping again and again on the same telltale board. It was as if someone were pacing up and down in the room above their heads, treading on the same board each time as he passed. But who could it be? And for what possible reason? And how had he got in—especially with Sput outside to warn them . . .

      And then they remembered. Tonight Sput wasn’t outside to warn them. He wasn’t sitting at his usual post in the garden, his leash slipped around the old rain-water pipe at the side of the house, ready to raise a hullaballoo of barking if any stranger so much as put a foot inside the garden. Sput had been stolen. They had been caught napping, the very first time they had met without their watchdog!

      After a moment more, the creaking stopped and did not come again. They looked up at the ceiling intently and then at each other. Suddenly there was another sound, closer: a cautious footstep at the top of the stairs which led down to the basement from the inside of the house.

      Now the Professor acted.

      “Red, blow out that candle,” he whispered softly. “Mary, can you put out that fire without making any noise?”

      Red leaned over to the stub of candle, standing beside him in its bottle on a low wooden shelf, and blew. The flame flared out sideways for an instant and then went out, leaving a harsh smell of burnt wick. Now the only light in the room was a faint glow from the remains of the fire which Red’s Sister had built in the grate. She quickly raked it apart with a stick and began to press one foot on the embers quietly, crushing them out.

      There was another cautious step on the stairs outside.

      “Okay!” the Professor whispered. “Now, everyone to this side of the room and down flat behind the piles of magazines.”

      Red’s Sister put her foot down once more on one of the faintly glowing sparks in the fireplace and then moved across the room, while Fatty and Blackie edged round it in the dark to take up their positions. In a moment, all five leaders of the Annex Gang were lying down flat on the floor behind the huge piles of magazines and comic books that they had collected over the months. Then they waited, their faces turned toward the door at the foot of the basement stairs.

      The room was now in complete darkness.

      From their positions on the floor they could see a crack of light under the basement door. It moved slightly as they watched.

      “Flashlight,” the Professor whispered.

      Now there was a whisper of sound from outside and a slight metallic click, as the latch on the basement door was lifted. The light outside went out, and the door swung open, creaking.

      There was a moment of absolute silence.

      Then a whisper: “There’s no one in here,” someone said.

      “Shut up,” someone else said, and sniffed. “Smell that? Candle smoke, and wood smoke too.”

      The flashlight suddenly went on again, its beam shooting across the room to the fireplace, then moving quickly to either side.

      “Jeepers!” a third voice said. “Look at all those magazines piled up there. Let’s get ’em!”

      There was a scuffle in the doorway as two or three people tried to push in and were held back.

      “Wait a minute,” the voice with the flashlight said. “This may be a trap. We know they came in here. They may be hiding somewhere.”

      “Oh, come on,” a girl’s voice said. “They must have gone. They probably heard us pull that board off the window and slipped outside. Let’s go in.”

      “In that case why haven’t the scouts outside signalled?” the first voice said. “They must still be here somewhere.”

      Nevertheless, he began to advance into the room a few paces, slowly swinging the flashlight beam around the walls and the piles of magazines that lay everywhere.

      Several other dim figures, both boys and girls, pushed into the room behind him and now another flashlight was switched on.

      Behind the piled magazines against the rear wall the five leaders of the Annex Gang waited grimly, hardly daring to breathe. They had recognized the intruders. The Spadina Gang had tracked them down after all.

      The boy with the second flashlight came over to one of the piles of magazines to pick up a comic book from the top and look at it. As he did so, he suddenly saw the rigid body of Fatty, its eyes glaring upwards.

      The boy gave a yelp and almost dropped his flashlight, retreating several paces into the centre of the room.

      “Look out!” he yelled. “There they are!”

      It was the signal the Annex Gang had been waiting for. Before the boy