Free Mystery of the Strange Messages by Enid Blyton

round him.
    Poor Ern! He really had thought that the washing blowing in the
darkness on the line was somebody in the yard. When he saw his uncle staggering
into the kitchen with the washing dragging behind him on the broken line, he
knew there was only one thing to do—and that was to rush up to his bedroom and
lock himself in!
    That means going without his supper—but at least he still had his
precious notebook and at least he was safe from his uncle's anger. Judging from
the noise downstairs he was lucky to have escaped in time. Why, oh why had he
ever said he would come and help his uncle? Never again, thought poor Ern.
Never again!
    Meantime Fatty was feeling that he had come to a full stop where
the mysterious notes were concerned. They hadn't found a house called The
Ivies, or even one with ivy growing up it that had been called The
Ivies. Neither had they found the right Smith. Was there anything else to do?
    "Only one thing," thought Fatty. "And that will be
a terribly fiddling job. I'd better try and get the letters and words off, that
are stuck on to the sheet of writing-paper. I might find something printed on
the other side to help me—I might even find out what newspaper they come from.
If it was, say, a Bristol paper, the odds are that the writer of the notes
comes from Bristol—or if it turns out to by a Manchester paper, maybe he comes
from Manchester. Not that that will be much help."
    So he went down to his shed that evening and set to work. It was
indeed a horribly fiddling job. In the middle of it, his lamp flickered and
went out.
    "Blow!" said Fatty, and gathered up his things by the
light of a candle and went indoors. He sat himself down in his bedroom to
finish the job.
    He found a few interesting things as he tried to get the pasted-on
letters off the strips they were stuck on. The word "goon" for
instance, which was, in every case, apparently part of a whole word—it was not
made of four separate letters. Fatty stared at it. "Goon". It must be
part of a whole word. But what word had "goon" in it. He couldn't
think of any.
    As he went on with his work, a tap came at the door, and his
mother came in. "Frederick, have you taken my library book?" she
asked. "Good gracious, whatever are you doing? What a mess!"
    "I'm just solving a—well, a kind of puzzle really," said
Fatty. His mother picked up the cut-out piece of paper he had just put down—the
bit with "goon" on.
    "Goon," she said. "What a funny puzzle, Frederick.
Is that part of 'Rangoon' or something?"
    "Rangoon!” said Fatty. "I never thought of Rangoon. It's about the only
word ending in 'goon', isn't it. Mother? Has Rangoon been in the papers much
lately? Has anything happened there? Would the name be printed a lot in our
papers?"
    "Well no—I can't remember seeing anything about
Rangoon," said his mother. "Oh Frederick—you have got my
library book! Really, that's too bad of you."
    "Gosh, sorry, Mother—I must have brought it up by
mistake," said Fatty. "It's almost exactly like mine, look."
    "Would you like me to stay and help you to sort out this
queer puzzle?" asked his mother. "I like puzzles, as you know."
    "Oh no. Mother, thank you, I wouldn't dream of bothering
you," said Fatty, hastily, afraid of some awkward questions as to where he
had got the "puzzle" from. "It's hopeless, really. I expect I'll
have to give it up."
    And that is exactly what poor Fatty had to do, after struggling
with it for at least two hours. There was nothing on the other side of the
pasted-on letters that could help him to identify any newspapers—only odd
letters
    that might have come from any part of any paper. It was very
disappointing.
    "That idea's
no good then." said Fatty, putting the bits and pieces back into the
envelope. "Waste of two hours! I'm at a dead-end. Can't find any clues at
all—and even when there was a chance of actually seeing that fellow who
delivers the notes, Ern doesn't see him. He must have had forty winks—he
couldn't have