Free Mystery of the Vanished Prince by Enid Blyton

that’s all. Have a look at his sleeping-bag. Did you ever see one like it?”
    Larry and Pip peeped inside the marvellous tent. Red-Hair pointed to a sleeping-bag at one side. It certainly was most magnificent, padded and quilted and marvellously embroidered.
    “Try it,” said Red-Hair. “I tried it once. It’s like being floated away on a magic carpet or something when you get inside - soft as feathers!”
    Pip wriggled inside. It certainly was an extraordinarily luxurious bag, and Pip felt that if he closed his eyes he would be wafted away into sleep at once. He wriggled down a little further and felt something hard against his leg. He put his hand down to feel what it was.
    It was a button! A very fine button too, blue, with a gold edge. Pip sat up and looked at it. Red-Hair glanced at it.
    “One of the buttons off his pyjamas,” he said. “You should have seen them! Blue and gold with those buttons to match.”
    “Do you think I might keep it as a souvenir?” said Pip. He really wondered if by any chance it might turn out to be a Clue!
    “Gosh - what do you want a souvenir for? Are you daft?” said the second boy. “Keep it if you want to. I don’t reckon Wah-Wah will want it again! If he loses a button he’ll be provided with a new set of pyjamas!”
    “Did he leave his pyjamas behind?” asked Larry, thinking it might be a good idea to look at them.
    “No. He went off in them,” said Red-Hair. “That’s what makes every one think he was kidnapped. He’d have dressed himself if he had run away.”
    Larry and Pip wandered out into the open air again. A loud voice suddenly hailed them.
    “Larry! Pip! What you doing up here?” And there was Ern’s plump face grinning at them from over the nearby hedge. “Come on over! We’ve got our tent here!”
     

A Little Investigation
     
    “Hallo, Ern!” said Larry, surprised. He had forgotten that Ern had been camping so near the big Camp Field. The faces of Sid and Perce now appeared, Perce grinning, Sid very solemn as usual.
    Larry and Pip said good-bye to Red-Hair and his friends and squeezed through the hedge to Ern. Pip had put the pyjama button safely into his pocket. He didn’t know whether it might be useful or not.
    Ern proudly showed the two boys his tent. It was a very small and humble affair, compared with the magnificent one they had just left - but Ern, Sid, and Perce were intensely proud of it. They had never been camping before, and were enjoying it immensely.
    There were no sleeping-bags in the tent, merely old, worn rugs spread over a ground-sheet. Three mugs, three broken knives, three spoons, two forks (“Perce lost his when he was bathing,” was Ern’s mystifying explanation), three mackintosh capes, three enamel plates, and a few other things.
    “Fine, isn’t it?” said Ern. “We get water from the tap over in the Camp Field. They let us use it if we just go straight there and back. But they won’t let the caravanners use it. So we get it for them, and in return they sometimes cook us a meal.”
    There were a good many caravans scattered about, and also one or two more small tents. The caravan standing next to Ern’s tent was empty, and a litter of papers was blowing about.
    “The people there have gone,” said Ern. “There was a woman and two kids - the kids were babies. Twins like Perce and Sid.”
    “Ar,” said Sid, who was following them about, chewing. “Ar.”
    “What’s he mean, arring like that?” asked Pip, annoyed. “Can’t he ever talk properly?”
    “Not while he has toffee in his mouth,” said Ern. “Ma don’t allow him so much when he’s at home, of course, so he talks a bit more there. But here, when he can eat toffee all day long, he never says much except ‘Ar.’ Do you, young Sid?”
    “Ar,” said Sid, trying to swallow the rest of his toffee quickly, and almost choking.
    “He seems to want to say something,” said Pip, interestedly. “Do you, Sid?”
    “Ar,” said Sid, frantically, going purple in the face.
    “Oh, it’s only to tell you about the