ON THE SPY-TRAIL.
I.
Jimmy had been saving up his pocket-money and his mother had begun to get rather anxious; she thought he must be sickening for something.
He was. It was for a dog, any dog, but preferably a very fierce bloodhound. He had already bought a chain; he had to have that because the dog he was going to buy would have to be held in by main force; it would have to be restrained.
But he didn't have to buy one after all; he had one transferred to him.
You see Jimmy was helping at a kind of bazaar in aid of the Belgian Refugees Fund. He had volunteered to help with the refreshment stall. There is a lot of work about a refreshment stall, Jimmy says. His work made him a bit husky, but he stuck to it and so it stuck to him.
He was very busy explaining the works of a cake to a lady when a man came up with something under his arm. It was a raffle. You paid threepence for a ticket, and would the lady like one?
The lady said sho already had two tea-cosies at home; but the man explained that it was not a tea-cosy, it was a dog.
A dog! Perhaps a bloodhound! Jimmy trembled with excitement. Only threepence for a ticket, and he had a chance of winning it.
It seemed a faithful dog, Jimmy thought. It had a very good lick, too; it licked a sponge-cake off a plate, and would have licked quite a lot more from Jimmy's stall if it had had time.
Jimmy came third in the raffle.
But the man whose ticket won the dog said he didn't care for that kind of breed, by the look of it, and gave way in favour of the next.
The next man said he wasn't taking any shooting this year, and he stood aside. The dog was Jimmy's!!
With trembling hands he fastened on the chain—to restrain it. Then he asked the man whose ticket had won the raffle if it was really a prize bloodhound.
The man looked at the dog critically, and said it was either a prize bloodhound or a Scotch haggis; at any rate it was a very rare animal.
Jimmy asked if he would have to have a licence for it, but the man said it would be best to wait and see what it grew into. All good bloodhounds are like that, Jimmy says.
Jimmy ran all the way hom; he couldn't run very fast, as the bloodhound tried to slide on its hind legs most of the way, it was so fierce.
Jimmy knows all about bloodhounds, how to train them. He is training his to track down German spies, amongst other things.
He knows a way so that if you say something—well, you don't exactly say it, you do it by putting your tongue into the place where your front tooth came out and then blowing—a really well-trained bloodhound will begin to shiver, and the hair on the back of his neck will go up. You then go and look for someone to help you to pull him off the German's throat, and ask the German his name and address, politely.
Jimmy taught his bloodhound to track clothes by letting it smell at a piece of cloth. It brought him a lot of clothes from nearly a quarter of a mile away. They were not the right clothes though, and Jimmy had to take them back. The woman wanted them—to wash over again, she said. She doesn't like bloodhounds much.
Jimmy says you ought to have the blood of the victim on the cloth.
Jimmy has trained his bloodhound to watch things. It is very good at watching. It watched a cat up a tree all one night, and never left off once; it is very faithful like that. And it bays quite well, without being taught to. It bayed up to four hundred and ten one night, and would have gone past that but a man opened a window and told it not to. He sent it a water-bottle to play with instead.
Jimmy's bloodhound is a splendid fighter. It fought a dog much bigger than itself and nearly choked it. The other dog was trying to swallow it, and Jimmy had to pull his dog out.
Jimmy says he has only once seen his bloodhound really frightened. It was when it followed Jimmy up into his bedroom, and saw itself in the mirror in the wardrobe. Jimmy says it was because it came upon itself too suddenly. It made it brood a great deal, and Jimmy had to give it a certain herb to reassure it.
Jimmy takes it out every day, searching for German spies. It goes round sniffing everywhere—in hopes. It is a very strong sniffer and full of zeal, and one day it did it.
A man was looking at a shop-window, where they sell sausages and pork-pies. He was studying them, Jimmy says. Jimmy says he never would have guessed he was a German spy if his bloodhound hadn't sniffed him out. It walked round the man twice, and in doing so wrapped the chain round the man's legs. Jimmy says it was to cut off his retreat. The man moved backwards and stepped on the bloodhound's toe, and the bloodhound began to bay like anything. Jimmy says it showed the bloodhound was hot upon the scent.
It then sniffed a piece out of the man's trousers.
There was another man there; he was looking on and laughing. He said to Jimmy, "Pull in, sonny; you've got a bite."
But he stopped laughing when the German spy tripped up and fell on top of the bloodhound; for the German spy shouted out, "Ach, Himmel!" The man who was looking on shouted, "What ho!" and put all the fingers of both hands into his mouth and gave one terrific whistle. The bloodhound held on tightly underneath the German, baying faithfully, till the policeman came and forced them apart. The German spy never said anything to the policeman or to the man or to Jimmy, but it seemed he couldn't say enough to the bloodhound. He kept turning round to say things, as they came into his head, on his was to the police-station.
Jimmy asked the German if he could keep the piece of cloth his bloodhound had sniffed out.
Jimmy had made the piece of cloth into a kind of medal with a piece of wire, and has fastened it to the bloodhound's collar. Jimmy says if he gets a lot of pieces of cloth like this he is going to make a patchwork quilt for the bloodhound.
Jimmy's bloodhound is hotter than ever on the trail of German spies.
If you are good you shall hear more of it another time.
Manager (to dragon). "What's the meaning of this? Where's your hind legs?"
Dragon. "They've enlisted, Sir."
