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still snored, and his mouth was half open. Ern felt he was safe.
    He slipped into the office, and opened the drawer of the desk. He slid the notebook into the drawer - but before he could close it a wrathful voice fell on his ears.
    “Ho! So that’s what you’re doing - snooping and prying in my private papers! You wicked boy - my own nephew too, that ought to know better.”
    Ern felt a sharp slap across his left cheek, and he put up his hand. “Uncle! I wasn’t snooping! I swear I wasn’t.”
    “What were you doing then?” demanded Mr. Goon.
    Ern stood and stared at his uncle without a word to say. He couldn’t possibly own up to having taken the notebook - so he couldn’t say he was putting it back! Mr. Goon slapped poor Ern hard on the other cheek. “Next time I’ll put you across my knee and deal with you properly!” threatened Mr. Goon. “What are you snooping for? Did that cheeky toad of a boy tell you to hunt in my desk to see what sort of a case I was working on now? Did he tell you to find out any of my clues and give them to him?”
    “No, Uncle, no,” said Ern, beginning to blubber in fright and pain. “I wouldn’t do that, not even if he told me to. Anyway, he knows the mystery. He’s told me about it.”
    Mr. Goon pricked up his ears at once. What! Fatty had got hold of another mystery! What could it be? Mr. Goon could have danced with rage. That boy! A real pest he was, if ever there was one.
    “Now, you look here,” he said to Ern, who was holding his hand to his right ear, which was swollen with the slap Mr. Goon had given it, “you look here! It’s your duty to report to me anything that boy tells you about this mystery. See?”
    Ern was torn between his urgent wish to be loyal to Fatty, the boy he admired so tremendously, and his fear that Mr. Goon might really give him a thrashing if he refused to tell anything Fatty told him.
    “Go on,” said his uncle. “Tell me what you know. It’s your bounden duty to tell a police officer everything. What’s this here wonderful mystery?”
    “Oh - it’s just lights flashing on Christmas Hill,” stammered poor Ern, rubbing his tear-stained face. “That’s about all I know, Uncle. I don’t believe Fatty knows much more. He’s given me a notebook - look. You can see what’s written down in it. Hardly anything.”
    Mr. Goon frowned over the headings. He began to plan. He could always get this notebook from Ern - and if the boy refused to give it to him, well then, as an officer of the law he’d get it somehow - even if he had to do it when Ern was asleep. He gave it back to Ern.
    “I’ve got a good hard hand, haven’t I, Ern?” said Mr. Goon to his nephew. “You don’t want to feel it again, do you? Well, then, you see you report to me all the goings-on that those kids get up to.”
    “Yes, Uncle,” said Ern, not meaning to at all. He backed away from his uncle. “There aren’t any goings on just now. We hadn’t planned anything. Uncle. You came and interrupted us.”
    “And a good thing too,” said Mr. Goon. “Now you can just sit down at the kitchen table and do some holiday work, see? Time you did something to oil those brains of yours. I’m not going to have you tearing about with those five kids and that dog all day long.”
    Ern went obediently to the kitchen and settled down at the table with an arithmetic book. He had had a bad report from his school the term before, and was supposed to do a good bit of holiday work. But instead of thinking of his sums he thought about the Find-Outers, especially Fatty, and the Mystery, and Flashing Lights, and Kidnappers and Robbers. Lovaduck! How exciting it all was.
    Ern was worried because his uncle wouldn’t let him go out. He couldn’t get in touch with the others if he didn’t go out. Suppose they went to look for those flashing lights and didn’t let him know? Ern felt he simply couldn’t bear that.
    All that day he was kept in the house. He went to bed to dream of tigers, crocodiles, Fatty reciting verse and somebody kidnapping his