We all said how sorry we were, but he wouldnt say a word back to us. He was most awfully sick to think hed been the one buried, when it might just as well have been one of us. I felt myself that it was hard lines.
So you were digging for treasure, said Albert-next-doors uncle, wiping his face again with his handkerchief. Well, I fear that your chances of success are small. I have made a careful study of the whole subject. What I dont know about buried treasure is not worth knowing. And I never knew more than one coin buried in any one gardenand that is generallyHullowhats that?
He pointed to something shining in the hole he had just dragged Albert out of. Oswald picked it up. It was a half-crown. We looked at each other, speechless with surprise and delight, like in books.
Well, thats lucky, at all events, said Albert-next-doors uncle.
Lets see, thats fivepence each for you.
Its fourpencesomething; I cant do fractions, said Dicky; there are seven of us, you see.
Oh, you count Albert as one of yourselves on this occasion, eh?
Of course, said Alice; and I say, he was buried after all. Why shouldnt we let him have the odd somethings, and well have fourpence each.
We all agreed to do this, and told Albert-next-door we would bring his share as soon as we could get the half-crown changed. He cheered up a little at that, and his uncle wiped his face againhe did look hotand began to put on his coat and waistcoat.
When he had done it he stooped and picked up something. He held it up, and you will hardly believe it, but it is quite trueit was another half-crown!
To think that there should be two! he said; in all my experience of buried treasure I never heard of such a thing!
I wish Albert-next-doors uncle would come treasure-seeking with us regularly; he must have very sharp eyes: for Dora says she was looking just the minute before at the very place where the second half-crown was picked up from, and she never saw it.
CHAPTER 3. BEING DETECTIVES
The next thing that happened to us was very interesting. It was as real as the half-crownsnot just pretending. I shall try to write it as like a real book as I can. Of course we have read Mr Sherlock Holmes, as well as the yellow-covered books with pictures outside that are so badly printed; and you get them for fourpence-halfpenny at the bookstall when the corners of them are beginning to curl up and get dirty, with people looking to see how the story ends when they are waiting for trains. I think this is most unfair to the boy at the bookstall. The books are written by a gentleman named Gaboriau, and Alberts uncle says they are the worst translations in the worldand written in vile English. Of course theyre not like Kipling, but theyre jolly good stories. And we had just been reading a book by Dick Diddlingtonthats not his right name, but I know all about libel actions, so I shall not say what his name is really, because his books are rot. Only they put it into our heads to do what I am going to narrate.
It was in September, and we were not to go to the seaside because it is so expensive, even if you go to Sheerness, where it is all tin cans and old boots and no sand at all. But every one else went, even the people next doornot Alberts side, but the other. Their servant told Eliza they were all going to Scarborough, and next day sure enough all the blinds were down and the shutters up, and the milk was not left any more. There is a big horse-chestnut tree between their garden and ours, very useful for getting conkers out of and for making stuff to rub on your chilblains. This prevented our seeing whether the blinds were down at the back as well, but Dicky climbed to the top of the tree and looked, and they were.
It was jolly hot weather, and very stuffy indoorswe used to play a good deal in the garden. We made a tent out of the kitchen clothes-horse and some blankets off our beds, and though it was quite as hot in the tent as in the house it was a very different sort of hotness. Alberts uncle called it the Turkish Bath. It is not nice to be kept from the seaside, but we know that we have much to be thankful for. We might be poor little children living in a crowded alley where even at summer noon hardly a ray of sunlight penetrates; clothed in rags and with bare feetthough I do not mind holes in my clothes myself, and bare feet would not be at all bad in this sort of weather. Indeed we do, sometimes, when we are playing at things which require it. It was shipwrecked mariners that day, I remember, and we were all in the blanket tent. We had just finished eating the things we had saved, at the peril of our lives, from the st-sinking vessel. They were rather nice things. Two-pennyworth of coconut candyit was got in Greenwich, where it is four ounces a pennythree apples, some macaronithe straight sort that is so useful to suck things throughsome raw rice, and a large piece of cold suet pudding that Alice nicked from the larder when she went to get the rice and macaroni. And when we had finished some one said
I should like to be a detective.
I wish to be quite fair, but I cannot remember exactly who said it. Oswald thinks he said it, and Dora says it was Dicky, but Oswald is too much of a man to quarrel about a little thing like that.
I should like to be a detective, saidperhaps it was Dicky, but I think notand find out strange and hidden crimes.
You have to be much cleverer than you are, said H. O.
Not so very, Alice said, because when youve read the books you know what the things mean: the red hair on the handle of the knife, or the grains of white powder on the velvet collar of the villains overcoat. I believe we could do it.
I shouldnt like to have anything to do with murders, said Dora; somehow it doesnt seem safe
And it always ends in the poor murderer being hanged, said Alice.
We explained to her why murderers have to be hanged, but she only said, I dont care. Im sure no one would ever do murdering twice. Think of the blood and things, and what you would see when you woke up in the night! I shouldnt mind being a detective to lie in wait for a gang of coiners, now, and spring upon them unawares, and secure themsingle-handed, you know, or with only my faithful bloodhound.
She stroked Pinchers ears, but he had gone to sleep because he knew well enough that all the suet pudding was finished. He is a very sensible dog. You always get hold of the wrong end of the stick, Oswald said. You cant choose what crimes youll be a detective about. You just have to get a suspicious circumstance, and then you look for a clue and follow it up. Whether it turns out a murder or a missing will is just a fluke.
Thats one way, Dicky said. Another is to get a paper and find two advertisements or bits of news that fit. Like this: Young Lady Missing, and then it tells about all the clothes she had on, and the gold locket she wore, and the colour of her hair, and all that; and then in another piece of the paper you see, Gold locket found, and then it all comes out.
We sent H. O. for the paper at once, but we could not make any of the things fit in. The two best were about how some burglars broke into a place in Holloway where they made preserved tongues and invalid delicacies, and carried off a lot of them. And on another page there was, Mysterious deaths in Holloway.
Oswald thought there was something in it, and so did Alberts uncle when we asked him, but the others thought not, so Oswald agreed to drop it. Besides, Holloway is a long way off. All the time we were talking about the paper Alice seemed to be thinking about something else, and when we had done she said