"Do keep in one place, you silly cuckoo!" said Jimmy. "You make
me feel all jumpy. He had indeed jumped rather violently. "Here,
walk between Cathy and me.

"What would you do?" repeated Gerald, from that apparently
unoccupied position.

"I'd be a burglar," said Jimmy.

Cathy and Mabel in one breath reminded him how wrong burgling
was, and Jimmy replied:

"Well, then a detective."

"There's got to be something to detect before you can begin
detectiving," said Mabel.

"Detectives don't always detect things," said Jimmy, very truly. "If
I couldn't be any other kind I'd be a baffled detective. You could be
one all right, and have no end of larks just the same. Why don't you
do it?"

"It's exactly what I am going to do," said Gerald. "We'll go round
by the police-station and see what they've got in the way of
crimes."

They did, and read the notices on the board outside. Two dogs had
been lost, a purse, and a portfolio of papers "of no value to any but
the owner." Also Houghton Grange had been broken into and a