Mystery of the Pantomime Cat by Enid Blyton

away,
longing for twelve o'clock to come, so that they could tell Fatty and the
others all that they had found out.
    "We did very well, actually," said Daisy, when they got
to Bets' playroom and sat down to talk things over. "Only we found out
things we didn't like at all. That handkerchief, Bets! I do feel so
guilty. I'll never, never do a thing like that again in my life."
    Larry and Pip came along about ten to twelve. They looked pleased
with themselves.
    "Hallo, girls I How did you get on?" said Pip. "We
did very well!"
    So they had. They had hiked down to the Little Theatre, and had
gone to the booking-office to book the seats for the afternoon's show. But the
office was closed. Blow!
    “Let's snoop round a bit—because if any one sees us, we can always
say we've come to buy tickets, and we were looking for some one to ask,"
said Pip. So they left the front of the theatre and went round to the back,
trying various doors on the way. They were all locked.
    They came to the car park at the back of the theatre. A man was
there, cleaning a motor-bicycle. The boys had no idea who he was.
    "That's a fine bike," said Pip to Larry. The man heard
their voices, and looked up. He was a middle-aged man, rather stout, with a
thin-lipped mouth and bad-tempered lines on his forehead.
    "What are you doing here?" he said.
    "Well, we actually came to buy tickets for this afternoon's
show," said Larry. "But the booking-office is shut."
    "Of course it is. You can get the tickets when you come along
this afternoon," said the man, rubbing vigorously at the shining
mud-guards of the motor-bicycle. "We only open the booking-office on
Saturday mornings, when we expect plenty of people. Anyway, clear off now. I don't
like loiterers—after that robbery on Friday I'm not putting up with any one
hanging around my theatre!"
    "Oh—are you the manager, by any chance?" said Larry, at
once.
    "Yes. I am. The Man in the News! The man who was doped and
robbed last Friday!" said the manager. "If I could only get my hands
on the one who did that job!"
    "Have you any idea who did it?" asked Pip.
    "None at all," said the manager. "I don't really
believe it was that idiot of a Boysie. He'd never have been able to do all
that. Anyway, he's too scared of me to try on tricks of that sort—but he might
have helped some one else to do it. Some one he let in that night, when the
theatre was empty!"
    The boys were thrilled to hear all this first-hand information.
"It said in the paper that Boysie—the Pantomime Cat—brought you in your
cup of tea—the one that was drugged," said Larry. "Did he, sir?"
    "He certainly brought me in the tea." said the manager.
"I was very busy, and only just glanced up to take it—but it was Boysie
all right. He was still in his cat-skin so I couldn't mistake him. Too lazy to
take it off. That's Boysie all over. I've even known him go to bed in it. But
he's queer in the head, you know. Like a child. He couldn't have done the job
by himself, though he must have had something to do with it—he's so easily
led."
    "Then—somebody might have come back that night—been let in by
Boysie—your tea might have
    been drugged—and taken up by Boysie to you as usual, so that you
wouldn't suspect anything," said Larry. "And, as soon as you were
asleep, the one that Boysie let in must have crept up to your room, taken down
the mirror, got the key from wherever you keep it, and opened the safe—and got
away before you woke up."
    "That's about it," said the manager, standing up to
polish the handle-bars. "And what's more, it must have been one of the
cast, because no one knows so much about things as they do—why, whoever the
thief was even knew that I didn't keep the safe-key on my key-ring—I always
keep it in a secret pocket of my wallet. And only the cast knew that for once
in a way I hadn't put Thursday's takings into the Bank, because they saw me
coming back in a temper with it, when I found the Bank was closed!"
    The boys drank all