Freddy and the Ignormus

by Walter R. Brooks

  “There—there must have been a lot left over,” said Minx.

  “There was,” said Freddy. “There was. But when there was too much, we’d give a party. Just for cats. I’ve seen eight hundred cats sittin’ in the great palace banqueting hall, bein’ served ice cream by footmen in blue plush breeches and powdered wigs. ’Twas quite a sight.”

  “I—I guess it was,” said Minx feebly.

  “Sure, tell us about some more of the fine places you’ve lived in, me handsome kittycat,” said Freddy.

  “No-no,” said Minx. “I guess I won’t now.”

  “In that case,” said Freddy, taking off his cap, and laying aside his Irish brogue, which wasn’t very good anyway, “I’ll just thank you for the entertainment and go on home.”

  “Freddy!” said Mrs. Wiggins. “Well, who’d have thought it!”

  “Pooh!” said Minx. “I knew him all the time!”

  “Yes, you did!” said Georgie.

  “I did so!” sputtered the cat. “I guess I can tell a pig from a man! Why, once when I lived in Paris, there was a pig dressed up as a—”

  “Sure, was there indeed?” interrupted Freddy, putting on his cap again and bending down close to Minx. “I remimber him well. Me own brother, he was. And was his uniform blue with white stripes?”

  “Oh, keep still,” said Minx crossly. “If you’re just going to make fun of me, I won’t tell you any more.”

  “Fine,” said Freddy, taking off his cap again. “That’s just what we wanted. Well, goodnight, all.” And he strolled off.

  Chapter 9

  When he had taken off his disguise and folded it carefully away in moth balls, Freddy went up to the house. “Might as well get it over,” he thought. But Mr. Bean was sitting on the kitchen steps, peacefully smoking his aftersupper pipe. Evidently he hadn’t discovered the loss of the gun. So the pig went down to the cowbarn to talk over his discoveries with Mrs. Wiggins, who had been his partner in the detective business. Mrs. Wiggins wasn’t brilliant—few cows are—but she had common sense, which Freddy had found by experience was a good deal more helpful.

  “Looks as if the Ignormus was in the house when you were in the cellar,” she said. “And he tried to scare you with the hose, and with that warning note. And yet—”

  “Yes?” said Freddy.

  “Well,” said the cow, “it doesn’t make sense. By all accounts, the Ignormus is pretty terrible to look at. Something like a hippopotamus with wings and horns, I gather. Now why should an animal like that take the trouble to push pieces of hose around and write notes? Why wouldn’t he just come to the head of the cellar stairs and say, ‘Grr-r-r!’”

  “Golly!” said Freddy. “That’s right. You mean—?”

  “Gracious, I don’t know what I mean.” said the cow. “I just say what I think. You’re smart. It’s up to you to find out what I mean. It just seems to me that if I were as ferocious looking as all that I’d be proud of it. I wouldn’t hide in the woods and just let people wonder what I looked like. I’d come out and show myself and scare ’em into fits.”

  “Maybe he’s ashamed of being so homely,” said Freddy.

  “Who’s to say he’s homely, when there’s only one of him? If he had brothers and sisters, why some might be homelier than others. Take cows, now. I know that, as a cow, I’m not specially handsome. No real style, you might say.”

  “I think you have lots of style,” said Freddy politely.

  “Then you’re not as smart as I think you are,” said Mrs. Wiggins. “What I mean is, if I were the only cow in the world, I might go around thinking I was pretty good looking, because there wouldn’t be any other cows to compare me to. And the Ignormus may be the same way. He doesn’t know what a good looking Ignormus really looks like.”

  “I see what you mean,” said the pig. “Well then, if he’s not ashamed of being homely, why did he go to all the trouble of writing that note, when he could have scared us worse by just letting us see him?”

  “My guess is,” said Mrs. Wiggins, “that he isn’t ferocious looking at all.”

  “Well,” said Freddy, “I’ve never believed that there was an Ignormus. Not really. But the next thing to there not being one, is being one who is little and timid. My goodness,” he said suddenly, “remember that funny animal with white tail and whiskers I told you was down at the bank? Could that be him?”

  “Why not? And maybe that white feather you found was out of his tail.”

  “Animals don’t have feathers,” said Freddy.

  “You mean you’ve never seen one with feathers,” said the cow. “But you’ve never seen the Ignormus either, so how can you tell?”

  “I guess I’d better go back and think this over,” said Freddy. He went down to the pigpen, and settled himself comfortably in his old rocking chair with his hind trotters on the desk beside the typewriter, and sank into deep thought.

  When he woke up the level rays of the rising sun were trying to get through the dusty window panes beside his chair, and turning them to gold. “My goodness,” he said to himself, “I’ve been thinking all night!” He sat up and rubbed his eyes, and then suddenly jumped up and ran to the door, for someone had knocked. “Hello, Robert,” he said. “Well, this is an early call. What’s on your mind?”

  The big collie came in and sat down. “Plenty,” he said. “I suppose you haven’t heard, since you just woke up.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t asleep,” said Freddy. “Been sitting here thinking out a problem all night.”

  “Well, then maybe you heard something during the night. Footsteps—somebody moving around?”

  “Can’t say I did. But you see, when I’m thinking, I’m pretty concentrated. Outside noises just don’t mean anything to me.”

  “I guess I was thinking the same way last night,” said the collie. “Anyway, a lot of oats were stolen from Hank’s bin, and two of Mrs. Bean’s best sheets and Mr. Bean’s two Sunday shirts off the line, and Mr. Bean’s gun from the closet off the kitchen. How they ever got the gun I don’t know, for Georgie and the two cats and I were all asleep in the kitchen. We might not have heard anybody in the barn, or out in the yard, but I don’t see how a thief could come through the kitchen and not wake us. But he did.”

  “Mr. Bean’s gun, eh?” said Freddy. His legs felt weak, and he sat down quickly in the rocker.

  “Yes. And Mr. Bean’s pretty mad about it. He just looked at Georgie and me and said: ‘Thought you two were watch dogs!’ And then he puffed on his pipe until I thought he’d set his whiskers afire, and went out to the barn. It’s terrible, Freddy. I’ve had the job as watchman on this place for eight years, but nothing like this has ever happened before.”

  Freddy gave a deep sigh. “Well,” he said, “I can explain about the gun. I took it.”

  “You took it!” Robert exclaimed.

  So the pig explained. “It isn’t right,” he said when he had finished, “for you and Georgie to be blamed for it. I’ll go see Mr. Bean and tell him now.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Robert. “Even if you tell him about the gun, there’s the oats and the washing for him to be mad about. If you could get busy and detect where they were, and bring them back, and maybe the gun too, why he wouldn’t get mad at you, and he wouldn’t be mad at us any more.”

  So Freddy decided maybe that was best. He was perfectly willing to own up about the gun, but he would have to talk to Mr. Bean if he did, and Mr. Bean was rather old-fashioned and didn’t think that animals should talk. It always made him uneasy when one of them forgot this and said “Good morning” to him. He thought animals should be seen and not heard.

  So Robert and Freddy went up to the barn. A lot of the animals were standing around discussing the robbery. They made way for Freddy, eyeing him respectfully, and he heard someone say: “Oh, I’m glad he’s come! He’s the great detective, you know. He’ll soon find out who the thief is.”

  Hank, the old white horse, was standing beside the oat bin. “Well, Freddy,” he sa
id, “this is a fine how-de-do.”

  “Pretty serious,” said the pig. “Now, Hank, did you see or hear anything during the night that made you suspect anything was going on?”

  “Can’t say as I did,” replied the horse. “You can’t hardly expect me to see much in a dark barn at night, specially as I was asleep and had my eyes shut.”

  “Were there any suspicious noises?” asked Freddy.

  “Plenty of ’em. But you know how it is; all noises at night are suspicious. And this old place is full of ’em—creakings and crackings and scamperings and groanings. Laws, if I paid any attention to ’em, I wouldn’t get a wink of sleep.”

  “Not much help to be got out of you,” said Freddy. “Well, here’s some oats spilled on the floor. And some more over there. That shows the way the thief went. Let’s look outside.”

  “Aha!” he said importantly when he had pushed through the crowd of animals by the door. “Here’s another lot. Well, if the thief was as careless as that all the way home, we can find out who he was, all right.”

  The trail was very easy to follow. Every little ways a few grains of oats had been dropped, and Freddy walked along steadily across the barnyard, followed by the crowd of admiring animals.

  “Isn’t he just wonderful?” said Alice. “I saw those oats myself, but I never thought what they meant.”

  “Freddy reminds me at times so much of our Uncle Wesley,” said Emma. “He’s so quick at seeing things. Of course he hasn’t the dignity, the—the distinguished air.”

  “Well,” said her sister, “you could hardly expect that from a pig.”

  The route taken by the thief, however, first began to puzzle Freddy, and then to alarm him. For it went straight down to the pigpen. There were two rooms to the pigpen: the large room that Freddy called his study, and a smaller room at the back called the library, in which he stored extra disguises, old account books from the bank, and his Complete Works of Shakespeare in One Volume. There was a little door from the outside into the library, and right in front of it was a handful of oats. And it was here that Freddy made his mistake.

  Instead of opening the door, he stopped and turned to the other animals. “Guess this is a blind trail,” he said. “Whoever stole the oats must have made it to mislead us, and then carried off the oats in some other direction. We’d better go back and try again.”

  “Well, I dunno,” said Hank. “If a trail leads up to a door, and the door’s shut, the natural thing is to open it, isn’t it? I dunno, but it seems that way to me.”

  “Pshaw! “said Freddy. “The robbers would hardly hide things they stole right in the detective’s own house, would they?”

  “Doesn’t seem so,” said Robert. “Not if the detective was sitting up all night, thinking. So why not open the door?”

  “Sheer waste of time,” grumbled Freddy. “But if you insist—” And he flung the door open. On the floor was a bundle of something tied up in a sheet. Jinx ran forward and clawed one corner loose, and a trickle of oats ran out.

  “Well, for goodness sake!” said Freddy weakly.

  “You may well say ‘For goodness sake!’” remarked Henrietta drily. “I guess you may do a little explaining, too, Freddy.”

  “You may well say ‘For goodness sakes!’”

  “Explaining!” said Freddy. “What can I explain? This is as much of a surprise to me as it is to you. I wish somebody would explain it.”

  “Doesn’t look to me so hard to explain,” said Robert, looking severely at the pig. “Looks to me as if you were a little careless, letting those oats spill out when you were carrying them down here last night.”

  “Me?” exclaimed Freddy. “You think that I stole them? What on earth would I do with oats? Pigs don’t eat oats.”

  “No,” said the dog, “but you’ve got to pay back oats and com and nuts and things to all the animals that lost their property in the bank robbery. You could use the oats for that. Then you wouldn’t have to spend the money you earned.”

  “Rubbish!” said Freddy crossly. “The robbers just planted this stuff in my house to make it look as if I’d stolen it. Are you animals going to be foolish enough to fall for a trick like that?”

  He looked around at his friends, but they all shook their heads doubtfully. “It looks funny, Freddy,” said Hank, and Robert said: “You told me you were awake all night. Wouldn’t you have heard the robbers, then, if they were dragging this sheet in here, just on the other side of a thin partition?”

  “Well, I don’t know that I was awake all night,” said Freddy. “I no doubt dropped off for a few minutes now and then. When I’m thinking out some difficult problem, I find that it helps to knock off thinking and take a little nap. And then go at it fresh again.”

  He tried to make it sound as reasonable as possible, but Henrietta said: “Pooh! Why didn’t you open this door right away, then, if you were so innocent?”

  “To tell you the truth, I was afraid of finding just what we did find. When the trail of oats led to my door, I knew pretty well what to expect, and I knew you’d be suspicious of me.”

  “Well, we are all right,” said Henrietta bluntly.

  “You admit yourself you took the gun,” said Robert. “Why wouldn’t we think you took the other things, too? We know you, Freddy, and we’re all fond of you, but you must admit things look very queer.”

  “Well—” said Freddy, and then he stopped. For there came Mr. Bean, following the trail of oats from the barn. He came along slowly—though not as slowly as Freddy had—and he came to the open door, and he looked in, and he saw the oats. He puffed hard at his pipe for a minute, and then he looked at all the animals in turn, and last he looked at Freddy. “Humph!” he said disgustedly. “Stealing, hey? I wouldn’t have thought it of you …” Then he shook his head sadly and turned back to the house. And after looking sympathetically at Freddy for a minute, the animals followed him.

  Up to this point Freddy’s friends hadn’t really been very serious in all the things they had said. They had felt that it was rather fun to catch the pig in an embarrassing position, but they hadn’t really believed that he had stolen the oats. But when Mr. Bean seemed so sure, some of them began to be doubtful. “No robber is going to take the trouble to steal oats and then hide them in the pigpen, instead of taking them home and eating them,” they said. “And why should anyone want to cast suspicion on Freddy anyway? What would it get them?”

  “Oh, pooh,” said Jinx. “Who ever heard of a detective detecting himself. If he’d stolen the things, he wouldn’t lead everyone right to where he’d hidden them.” But still the animals were doubtful. So Jinx turned back.

  “Look, Freddy,” he said, “we’re for you. We know you’re no thief. But just the same there will be a lot of talk, and you’re going to be the unpopular pig around here unless you catch the thief.”

  “You’re telling me,” said Freddy, bitterly. He seldom used slang, and it shows how upset he was that he used it now.

  “Yes, I am,” said the cat. “You’ve got to get busy. Come on, Freddy. You know what they used to say about you: Freddy always gets his animal. Trot out the old Sherlock Holmes stuff. I’m with you to the last claw. I’m not much at detecting, but if it comes to a scrap—boy, Jinx is there!” And he arched his back and spat ferociously.

  Freddy laughed. “I haven’t exactly been idle,” he said, “though I don’t know that what I’ve found out makes much sense. But come into the study and let me tell you about my last trip to the Big Woods.”

  So they went into the study and Freddy hung a sign on the outside of the door which said: In Conference: Do Not Disturb. Farm animals are very curious, and if when they saw this sign they had really thought there was a conference going on, they would have come in with some excuse or other in order to get in on it. But they had learned by experience that when the sign was there, Freddy was usually asleep. And that, of course, was nothing to be curious about. So Freddy was pretty sure they wouldn’t be interrupted.
r />   Chapter 10

  A couple of hours before this conference started, Mr. Webb, the spider, had set out from the cowbarn where he lived with Mrs. Webb, to call on Freddy. Usually when he had something to tell Freddy, he would swing down a long strand of his web onto the nose of one of the cows, and if she didn’t sneeze and blow him halfway across the barn, he would walk up to her ear and ask her to get Freddy to come see him. But this was a confidential matter, and after talking it over with Mrs. Webb, he decided that the best plan was to see Freddy himself.

  From the cowbarn to the pigpen wouldn’t have been a long walk for you or me, but for a spider it was a tiring and even rather perilous journey. Getting through the grass of the barnyard was like forcing a way through a jungle. He had to push and clamber with all eight legs working hard. When a grass stalk leaned in the direction he was going, he could climb it and walk to the end and drop off, maybe six inches or a foot farther on. And there was always the danger that some careless animal might step on him.

  But Mr. Webb was a courageous insect, and where duty was concerned nothing was allowed to stand in his way. He climbed up on to the outside of Freddy’s study window just three hours after setting out. “And very good time too,” he panted, and then without waiting to catch his breath he began walking up and down the window to attract the pig’s attention.

  The window was so dirty that Mr. Webb couldn’t see in, but he knew by the sound of voices that Freddy was there. Then he realized that if he couldn’t see Freddy, Freddy couldn’t see him, so he slipped through a crack above the window and walked up on to the ceiling of the study. Then he spun a long strand and dropped down on it, and began swinging back and forth between the two animals, who were deep in conversation.

  At first they didn’t notice him, then Jinx saw something swoop past his nose and, thinking it was a fly, made a pass at it. Luckily he missed, and as the spider swung back, Freddy said: “Why, it’s Webb! Hello, Webb; you’re surely not hunting for flies in this beautifully spick and span apartment, are you?”