Page 9 - Billy the Cat and Katie

The young man downstairs was somewhat surprised when William jumped on his back, dressed
in his black catsuit. His helmet was stored in the toolshed so William had to be very careful not
to be seen. The man was very shocked when he was knocked cleanly off his feet and realised
that if he stayed he was likely to be caught by the police so tried to make a run for it. The suit
gave William enormous strength and agility and the man struggled to free himself. They tussled
along the hallway back towards the kitchen where William momentarily lost his grip and where
the burglar suddenly grabbed a large knife from the rack on the table, throwing it straight at
William. It all happened in a fraction of a second and the burglar’s face told the story. The knife
didn’t hit its intended target, instead it stopped in mid-air as William caught it by the blade in
his gloved hand. In the shaft of moonlight coming through the kitchen window the stunned
burglar could just make out a figure dressed in black, his face partially lit by the moonbeams
reflected in the long blade of the kitchen knife. He didn’t hang around to find out who the
mystery figure was and turned and ran as fast as his feet could carry him.

Standing in the dark holding the knife William quickly surveyed the scene. The burglar had
forced the back door open with a large screwdriver and dropped a small bag containing gloves,
a glass cutter and a small leather-bound notebook. Slipping the notebook into a zip pocket in
his catsuit William replaced the knife into the rack on the table and turned to slip quietly back
upstairs but he was surprised to find another figure in the kitchen doorway.

Switching on the light Kathleen was standing directly in William's way, very determined to ask
her cousin exactly what he was doing dressed like that and who she saw running away across
the garden. She was just about to say something when they both heard footsteps coming from
upstairs, it was Aunt Mabel who'd heard the commotion and was coming to see what was
happening. To Kathleen's amazement William sprung from the floor in the dark straight up to
the top of the stairs in one bound, a distance of about 20 feet, just in time to dive through his
open bedroom door and narrowly avoiding his aunt coming the other way.

A few moments later he arrived in the kitchen wearing his dressing gown, pretending to have
just woken up and looking surprised at the scene of an attempted burglary. Seeing there was
more to this than could be explained straight away Aunt Mabel telephoned the police who
arrived only 15 minutes later. Bill and Harry, constables Wright and Baker knew Aunt Mabel
very well as her husband had been a police sergeant in Burnham before he was killed in an air
raid during the war. They looked around and found the bag and its thievery contents, footprints
in the flower beds leading to and from the house and also a small leather-bound notebook that
William had quietly slipped back into the bag after reading through the contents very quickly. If
the name inside the notebook was to be believed the burglar was known to the police as
Charlie Robins, a small time villain with previous convictions. They'd go straight over to his
house and confront him with the evidence.

Back at the police station, Charlie couldn’t stop talking about the figure in black. He'd already
admitted the attempted burglary and described the other figure as best he could, the way that
he'd been knocked off his feet and held so tightly by someone who couldn’t have been much
taller than himself, just 5 feet 10 inches. Charlie was stocky and very muscular, a very strong