Page 10 - Billy the Cat and Katie

person but his opponent was slim and slightly built and yet just as strong as he was. When
Charlie described how the figure in black caught the knife in mid air the police Inspector was
very interested. It seemed to him as though the mystery man also didn’t belong in the house
and sent his constables back to look around again and ask Aunt Mabel, Kathleen and William
some more questions.

On the way home from school later that day Kathleen walked with William and he explained
about the suit and his father's inventions and promised to show Kathleen everything the next
day. The coming weekend was when Aunt Mabel went into Burnham to get her hair done and
as today was Friday they'd be alone for most of the following day. Kathleen would find out
exactly what her cousin was hiding.

As they approached the house they saw a police car outside and hurried inside to find Aunt
Mabel sharing tea and biscuits Bill and Harry. They'd been looking around and hadn't found
anything else but would like to ask William and Kathleen if they'd seen anything at all. Both said
they'd been asleep and had been woken by a noise so really didn’t see anything at all. Harry
explained to them all that Charlie Robins had said he was jumped upon by some kind of have-a-
go hero who'd stopped him in his tracks, in fact he'd been scared out of his wits and had run
away looking over his shoulder all the way back to his house. William had to smile at this and
kept his face turned away from the adults but Kathleen could see the look on his face. It was
William who'd chased away the burglar, but how?

It was 1950, just five years after the war and Burnham was thriving. It was quite a large Surrey
town and remarkably unscathed having being more or less overlooked by the efforts of the
Luftwaffe. There was only one large crater in the municipal park where a huge bomb had been
dropped by a German plane, which had it delivered its cargo just a few hundred yards to the
North would have destroyed the railway yard which was on the mainline to London. The town
itself was always busy and Burnham was full of families with children whom attended the
numerous local schools, including Burnham Academy where William and Kathleen went. It was
a nice and safe town usually but recently there had been a spate of thefts and burglaries which
the police had put down to the prosperity of the area. Wealthy areas apparently attracted
undesirables who wanted a slice of the cake but weren’t prepared to earn their income in an
honest way. It was this situation that William and Kathleen found themselves in when they
returned from school on that Friday. The police obviously had an interest in the hero figure but
believed him to be an adult and so there was no suspicion of William or Kathleen being
involved. Bill and Harry finished up their tea and after saying goodbye they went back to the
police station, none the wiser as to the identity of the mysterious figure in black. The whole
thing was put down to Charlie Robins making up a story to cover up the fact that he’d left
evidence of his own identity at the scene of the crime, but William knew better.

Chapter 4 - The Secret