Freddy and the Perilous Adventure

by Walter R. Brooks

  Back at home, in what Freddy called his library, which was really just a shed built on to the back of the pigpen, were dozens of disguises, all neatly hung on hangers, which he used in his detective work. In any one of these he felt sure he could walk straight down the road without the slightest danger of being recognized. But without a disguise he was just a stray pig, and if the police were really looking for him, any stray pig was bound to be stopped and questioned.

  It was while he was hesitating at the edge of the woods that he saw the scarecrow. It stood in a field of young corn not far off. It was better dressed than most scarecrows, for it had on a long-tailed black coat and striped trousers, and on the head, which was a piece of white cloth tied around a bunch of hay, was a high silk hat. The whole thing was stuffed with hay, and held up by a stake, with a crossbar along which the arms were fastened. It was pretty well made, but whether it would really have scared crows much is another matter. Crows are not easy to fool.

  Freddy looked all around but nobody was in sight, so he ran down quickly into the cornfield, and in two minutes the scarecrow was just two sticks and Freddy was a very dressy little man who looked as if he might just have come from a wedding. “I’m sorry to do this,” he said to the sticks, “when somebody has taken so much trouble to fix you up, but I’ll bring everything back tomorrow.” He shook the straw out of the head, and tied the cloth around his neck like a stock, and then he drew on the white cotton gloves, gave the top of his hat a tap to settle it over his ears, picked up the crosspiece for a walking stick, and started down to the road. There was only one thing missing; the shoes. If he met and talked to anybody, he must remember to stand in the grass.

  “… I’ll bring everything back tomorrow.”

  For a while everything went very nicely. The people he met stared a good deal, and in the one village he passed through, several little boys followed him, making remarks, for as a usual thing, people as fashionably dressed as he was ride in large shiny automobiles, and do not walk along country roads. But he strode along, twirling his stick, and tipping his hat politely to the ladies, and nobody bothered him.

  Now Freddy had never worn a high silk hat before, and he was naturally anxious to know how he looked in it. But there weren’t any plate glass windows in the village, and he couldn’t go up to a house and rap on the door and say: “Please may I admire myself in one of your mirrors?” Yet people were so respectful to him that he thought he must look pretty nice. So a little way past the village he came to a pond, and he went over to it and crouched down at the edge and tried to see himself in the water.

  Well, he bent over too quickly, and the hat fell into the pond. So he fished it out and dried it on the grass, and after the ripples had cleared from the water he tried again. He bent over very slowly, but each time, just before he could tip his head far enough over to see his reflection, the hat began to slip.

  Then he tried holding it on. But the sleeves of the coat were much too long and too wide for him, so that although he could see the reflection of his face, the sleeves fell forward and hid the hat. And at last he gave it up.

  A little farther on he came to a barn, and on the side of the barn was a big poster advertising a circus. It showed lions and tigers and bareback riders and clowns, and in big red letters across the top it said: BOOMSCHMIDT’S COLOSSAL AND UNPARALLELED CIRCUS, and in smaller blue letters at the bottom it said: South Pharisee, Week of July 6th.

  “So that’s the circus the dirty-faced boy was talking about!” said Freddy to himself. “Oh dear, why couldn’t Mr. Boomschmidt have come through here later in the season? If I didn’t have all this balloon business on my hands I could have gone to South Pharisee, wherever it is, and seen the show and had a good time with all my old friends. But I guess it’s out of the question now.” He thought for a minute. “South Pharisee. Wasn’t that the town Breckenridge mentioned, where he thought we might find Uncle Wesley? H’m, that should be looked into.”

  Mr. Boomschmidt, the owner of the circus, was an old friend of Freddy’s, as were many of the animals in his show. Indeed, Freddy had once done him a great service, and as Mr. Boomschmidt was not the man to forget a service, however small, the Bean animals were always sure, not only of free tickets to all performances, but of all the lemonade and popcorn they could hold, whenever the circus came anywhere near Centerboro, as it did about once a year. Freddy was mournfully looking at the poster and picking out the pictures of his friends: Freginald, the bear, and Leo, the lion, and all the others, when a car drew up on the road behind him and a voice said: “Morning, stranger.”

  Freddy knew that voice. It belonged to his friend the sheriff. But Freddy did not turn round. For he knew that if there was a warrant out for his arrest, as the dirty-faced boy had said, the sheriff would have to do his duty and arrest him, no matter how good friends they were. So he only turned halfway around and saluted with his walking stick, and said in a deep voice: “Good morning, sir; good morning.”

  But the sheriff didn’t drive on. He got out and came and stood beside Freddy. He didn’t look at the pig, but just stood staring at the poster and pulling at his wisp of grey beard. And after a minute he said: “Stranger in these parts, aren’t you?”

  “I am, sir, and my name is Jonas P. Whortleberry,” replied Freddy, making up the first name that came into his head.

  “Dear me,” said the sheriff; “not one of the Albany Whortleberrys?”

  “Distantly related, I believe,” said the pig. “My own home is in Orinoco Flats,” he added, making up another name.

  “Fine, thriving community, I’m told,” said the sheriff.

  “My goodness,” thought Freddy, “I wonder if there really is such a place?” But it was such fun making up names, that he could not resist the temptation to go on. “I am just returning from my daughter’s wedding in Ishkosh Center,” he said. “My car broke down some distance back, and since, as the head of an important banking house, I get far too little exercise, I am walking on until my chauffeur effects the necessary repairs, when he will, I presume, overtake me.”

  “May I ask your chauffeur’s name?” inquired the sheriff.

  “Herman Duntz,” said Freddy without hesitation.

  “Ah, yes. Good sound stock, the Duntzes. My wife’s third husband was a Duntz.”

  This remark puzzled Freddy a good deal. In the first place, the sheriff wasn’t married, and in the second place, if he had been, could he have been his wife’s fourth husband? And in the third place, there weren’t any Duntzes anyway.

  “I think I must be getting on,” he said. “Good day to you, sir.”

  But the sheriff continued to stare at the poster without looking at Freddy, and then he said thoughtfully: “Yes, yes. So must I. You haven’t,” he said suddenly, “seen a pig anywhere up the road, have you? A handsome, decidedly intelligent looking pig?”

  Freddy, remembering the difficulty he had had trying to see just such a pig in the pond, said truthfully that he had not.

  “Ah,” said the sheriff. “Perhaps it is just as well. You see, I’m the sheriff, and while this pig is a good friend of mine, I’m looking for him, and if I see him—” He hesitated a minute. “—if I see him,” he repeated, “I’ll have to arrest him. Stole a balloon, they say.”

  “That—that’s a funny thing to steal,” said Freddy uneasily.

  “I can’t figure it out,” said the sheriff. “This pig—he’s as honest and open as the day. Well, sir, you’re a man of the world; I’d like your opinion. This pig—” And he told Freddy the story of the balloon ascension. “He was to bring the balloon down in a mile or two,” he concluded, “but he didn’t; he just disappeared—pig, balloon, ducks,—the whole kit an’ bilin’ of ’em vanished off the face of the earth. And this Golcher, he’s pretty mad. Naturally. The balloon’s his means of livelihood, and he was to get $200 for an ascension at Boomschmidt’s circus day after tomorrow. But what I can’t figure is what a pig, even a criminal pig, which this Freddy ain’t—what he
’d want with a balloon.”

  “Very odd business,” said Freddy, in his deep banker’s voice. “But I understand that these balloons are very tricky affairs. Isn’t it within the bounds of possibility that something went wrong? That, let us say, the valve cord got stuck, so that this—Freddy, I think you said?—couldn’t get down?”

  “Hadn’t thought of that,” said the sheriff. “Yes, it might be. Well, sir, it’s a bad business. Now if I was that pig—” He broke off. “But I’m keepin’ you, botherin’ you with my affairs—”

  “Not at all,” said Freddy. “Pray continue.”

  “Well, if I was that pig, I’d stay with that balloon, somehow, until I could bring it back and deliver it to Golcher myself. That’ll prove your—that is, the pig’s good intentions. Once he’s picked up by me, or the state police, it’s jail for him, and he can explain until he’s blue in the face—nobody’ll believe him. Even if he don’t get sent to prison, even if he gets off, people are always going to say: ‘That’s the pig that stole the balloon; keep your hand on your pocketbook.’ So my advice to him is—that is, my advice would be, if I could advise him, which of course I can’t, being out to arrest him—well, anyway, he hadn’t ought to try to go home. The police are watching the farm day and night.” He stopped abruptly and pulled out a silver watch as big as a saucer. “Must be gettin’ on,” he said, and turned away.

  Then he stopped and came back. “By the way,” he said, “if you got time, you ought to see this circus. Lions and tigers and fat ladies and performin’ snakes and land knows what all. First right and four miles straight ahead to South Pharisee.” He looked thoughtfully at the poster. “I expect that’s where I’d head for if I was that pig. He’s a great hand at disguises, and if he was to get himself up in something—oh, like what you got on, for instance; plug hat and tail coat and so on, I expect he’d be as safe there as anywhere. Golcher may be there, but Golcher is pretty nearsighted. If the pig didn’t go right up and kiss him, I guess Golcher wouldn’t ever recognize him. Well, good morning to you, sir.”

  Freddy looked after the sheriff’s car as it bounced up the road. The sheriff hadn’t looked at him once. “My, he’s a nice man,” said Freddy.

  Chapter 8

  When he came to the right hand road that led to South Pharisee and the circus, Freddy passed it without even turning his head. For if he turned his head, he knew he would turn the rest of himself, and then there he would be, marching right down towards the merry-go-round and the Ferris wheel and the clowns and the peanuts and all his friends—I mustn’t think about it, he said to himself. Duty is duty, he said. And he twirled his stick and went on across the valley.

  Early in the afternoon he came out of the woods into Mr. Bean’s upper pasture. There was the duck pond, where usually Alice and Emma were to be seen sitting side by side, like two marshmallows on a mirror. There was the familiar house, with Mrs. Bean shaking a tablecloth out of the kitchen window, and there was Jinx, the cat, walking across the barnyard. It was Jinx he particularly wanted to see, and he started to wave one of his white gloves to attract the cat’s attention when he stopped suddenly and crouched down. For off to the right, sitting under an apple tree in the meadow above the barnyard, were two state troopers.

  Freddy began to wish that he had followed the sheriff’s advice and gone to South Pharisee. Of course, if he had really stolen the balloon, as the sheriff had apparently thought, it would have been good advice to follow. But he wasn’t trying to escape from justice. On the other hand, he wasn’t going to let the police catch him if he could help it. And he had to see Jinx. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead with the white glove and tried to think of something.

  Now Freddy had a good deal of imagination, and people like that are apt to think up so many ways of doing a thing that they can’t decide among them, and then they don’t do anything. But he was also a pig of action, and so he discarded all the ideas that meant sitting around and waiting, and decided on the one that meant doing something right away. He scraped up some of last year’s hay and tucked it into his sleeves and his neck and under his hat, then when the troopers were looking the other way he walked out into the pasture. And when they turned towards him again, what they saw in the pasture was a scarecrow, standing with his arms stretched stiffly out, and with wisps of straw stuffing sticking out here and there.

  As soon as they turned their heads away, Freddy moved a little way down towards the barnyard, and then stood still when they looked in his direction again; and he kept on doing this until he had almost reached the fence which separated the pasture from the next field. He had only to cross this field, and he would reach the fence that ran around the barnyard, and he was pretty sure he could sneak along behind the fence and get into the barn without being seen.

  But all at once one of the troopers jumped up and, shading his eyes with his hand, stared hard in his direction. “That scarecrow has moved from where he was a minute ago, Bill,” he said.

  “Don’t be silly, Wes,” said Bill. “A scarecrow can’t move.”

  “Well, this one has. First he was up by the woods, now he’s almost down to that fence.”

  Bill got up. “Maybe somebody moved him,” he said. “What’s the difference! We’re looking for a pig, not a scarecrow.”

  “Sure we are. But it’s our duty to investigate anything peculiar, and I guess we’ll never see anything peculiarer than a walking scarecrow. Because maybe it ain’t a scarecrow after all.”

  “Peculiarer?” said Bill. “That ain’t a word.”

  They began arguing about it, while Freddy stood motionless. His arms ached so it didn’t seem as if he could hold them up another minute, and the hay in his coat collar and under his hat made him itch in seven different places, but he couldn’t scratch them. He was just getting ready to bolt back to the woods if the troopers started towards him, when a woodpecker came flying across the pasture. Freddy said in a sharp whisper: “Hey! Sanford!”

  The woodpecker looked around, banked sharply, and lit on the pig’s shoulder. “For Pete’s sake, Freddy, what are you doing out here in this get-up?”

  “Trying to get to the barn without the police catching me. But I guess it won’t work, and if I have to run for it, tell Jinx to meet me at the edge of the woods after dark, will you?”

  “Sure,” said Sanford. “But do you think they’ve spotted you?”

  “I’m afraid so. But wait a minute—listen!” Wes was saying: “But it can’t be alive, I tell you. Do you suppose that bird would be sitting on it if it were alive?”

  “Guess I saved you, Freddy,” said Sanford. “Maybe we’d better make sure. Suppose I drill a couple holes in your hat, hey? That’ll clinch it.”

  “It’ll clinch me,” said Freddy, with a nervous glance at the woodpecker’s sharp beak. “No, no; this hat’s pretty thin. I tell you what you can do, though,” he added, as the troopers sat down again under their tree; “go tell the animals. Maybe they can think of some way of getting rid of those men.”

  Nothing happened for ten minutes, and they were the longest ten minutes in Freddy’s life. His arms were getting numb now, and didn’t hurt quite so much, but he had to watch them so they wouldn’t just drop down all by themselves. In addition to the seven itches mentioned above, there were several new ones, and a fly had lighted on his nose. Freddy twitched his nose violently, but the fly just laughed and hung on. Then he walked slowly up the nose, dragging his feet.

  Freddy knew that fly. His name was Zero, and at one time they had had a good deal of trouble with him around the farm, until they had got a wasp named George to discipline him. After that Zero had kept away from the barnyard, and Freddy hadn’t seen him in some time.

  At first Freddy asked Zero politely to get off his nose. The fly pretended not to hear him. Then Freddy ordered him off. Zero walked down to the end of the nose and looked all around. “Strange!” he said to himself. “I could have sworn I heard somebody speak!”

  “Zero!” Freddy hisse
d. “Quit that tickling, will you? This isn’t any time for your silly jokes.”

  “That certainly is queer,” said Zero, and he began walking over Freddy’s face, pretending to look for the voice. “I heard it, just as plain as plain. Must be somewhere.” He looked in Freddy’s eye, and in his ear, and he crawled up under the edge of the hat, and at last he walked down and peered up one of Freddy’s nostrils. But this time he had overstepped, for at that precise moment Freddy’s self-control gave way in one tremendous sneeze. It blew Zero twenty feet in the air and sprained three of his legs and one wing, and he dropped into the grass and lay there senseless for quite a long time.

  Fortunately the men hadn’t noticed the sneeze. They were looking rather doubtfully at three cows who were coming slowly towards them from the barnyard. The cows were Freddy’s friends, and their names were Mrs. Wiggins and Mrs. Wurzburger and Mrs. Wogus. They came along slowly, pulling a bite of grass here and a sprig of clover there. They paid no attention to the troopers. They came up under the tree. And first Mrs. Wiggins stepped on Bill’s hat, and then Mrs. Wurzburger swung her tail around and hit Wes in the eye, and then Mrs. Wogus nudged Bill aside with her big broad nose to get at a patch of grass. The troopers picked up their hats and jammed them on their heads, and hitched back towards the tree.

  “Cows,” said Wes. “Do they ever attack people?”

  “What do you call this?” said Bill, crawling around behind the tree.

  “I dunno,” said Wes, crawling after him. “But I don’t like it.”

  Mrs. Wiggins and Mrs. Wogus came around the left side of the tree, and Mrs. Wurzburger came around the right side, and they lowered their heads and stared at the men.