So they walked down to the houseboat. Freddy was horrified to see the state everything was in. The deck was all tracked up with mud, the white table and gay canvas chairs were covered with fish scales, a few fish heads still lay about in corners, and the white paint about the door was grimy with dirty fingerprints. As Mr. Camphor looked about with a frowning face, Horace came out of the living room.
“This is Horace, Mr. Camphor,” said Mr. Winch. “My boy. A good hard worker, Horace is. A chip off the old block, sir.”
“He’s a rather dirty chip,” said Mr. Camphor.
“The dirt of honest toil—nobody can object to that,” Mr. Winch protested. “He’s been trying to clean up after this pig.”
“You can’t clean a pigsty without getting your hands dirty,” said Bannister.
“Eh? Is that a proverb, Bannister?” Mr. Camphor asked.
“Well no, sir. Not exactly. That is, I just made it up.”
“Well, don’t make up any more. We have plenty of old ones to examine into without making up new ones. And it’s not a very good one anyway.”
“Yes, sir,” said Bannister. But Freddy noticed that he wrote it down just the same.
Mr. Camphor went into the living room, and the others followed him. There was a good deal of mud in here too, on the chairs even, and everything was in disorder. Some of the books had been pulled out and leaves that had been torn out of them were scattered about. Mr. Camphor gave an angry exclamation as Mr. Winch pulled open the bedroom door and pointed to the unmade bed, from which a mud-spotted down quilt trailed on the floor.
Freddy started to protest again. He had never left the bed like that, he said. But since he had been locked up in the house, Horace had been sleeping here, and—
“Lies, all lies!” Mr. Winch interrupted. “Ain’t it a cryin’ shame—him so young, and the truth just ain’t in him.”
But Mr. Camphor’s eyes had fallen on the portrait of the man in armor. “How did that get down here?” he asked.
“I carried it down,” said Freddy. “The rats had gnawed a hole in it.”
“There ain’t any rats in the house,” said Mrs. Winch.
“Put his foot through it, carryin’ it down, more likely,” said Mr. Winch.
“And I thought you said you hadn’t been around anywhere in the house?” said Mr. Camphor.
Freddy didn’t want to say anything in front of the Winches about the secret passage. “I went up in the attic on account of the rats,” he said. “I thought I’d repair this as well as I could but of course with his face gnawed away, I didn’t know what he looked like, so I painted it with the vizor down.”
“I can see you painted it,” said Mr. Camphor, “and a very good job too. But I’m not very well satisfied with your explanation. Mrs. Winch has been in my employ a number of years. I have no reason to doubt her word that there are no rats.”
“But there are rats,” Freddy insisted. “If you’d just go up in the attic, sir—”
Horace and his father had been exchanging meaning looks, and now Mr. Winch went hurriedly into the bedroom, then called to Mr. Camphor. “Come in here, sir. Here’s something you ought to see.”
They all went in. Mr. Winch pointed to a drawer which he had opened in the bureau. “I guess this proves what kind of a caretaker the pig is. Lucky I thought to look around a little.”
There were some clean sheets and pillowcases in the drawer, and on top of them lay several coins.
“My 1776 dollar!” exclaimed Mr. Camphor. “And good gracious, my gold rising sun doubloon! Well, that seems to—ha, to prove it. What have you to say now, pig?”
“And look here,” said Mr. Winch. “Is that the dish from your desk?” And he pointed to a small blue dish full of peanuts which stood on top of the bookcase. Freddy was almost certain that it had not been there when they came in, but there was not much good saying so now.
“Well, pig?” said Mr. Camphor.
“Oh, I don’t know what to say!” said Freddy desperately. “Whatever I tell you, these people will say I’m lying. They’ve just ganged up on me. I don’t know how those things got here. I didn’t take them.”
Mr. Camphor shook his head. “Seeing is believing,” he said. “Make a note of that, Bannister. I guess you took them all right, and all the other things that are missing. I realize that I made a mistake in picking you as the one to take care of this estate.”
“Care killed the cat,” put in Bannister.
“Oh, shut up, Bannister,” said Mr. Camphor irritably. “That hasn’t anything to do with it. A little more dignity, please, and a little less irrelevance.
“I could, of course,” Mr. Camphor went on, “turn you over to the police. But I am not going to do that. And I will tell you why. The loss of the few things that I have missed doesn’t mean much to me. I am a rich man—”
“A good name is better than great riches,” said Bannister.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” said Mr. Camphor crossly. “I said I was rich. Who said anything about my good name? Anyway, Camphor’s a good name, isn’t it? Dear me where—ha, where was I? Oh, yes. Well, I’m going to let you go. I’m going simply to discharge you without references. Now go back to your farm, and don’t come around here again.”
“You mean I’m—I’m free to go?” stammered Freddy, who felt that a trial and a long term in jail was the least he could expect.
“You hadn’t ought to let him go, Mr. Camphor,” said Mr. Winch. “Now if I was in your place—”
“Well, you’re not,” snapped Mr. Camphor. “And if you were, I hope you’d wash your face and scrub those spots off your vest. Or else wear a veil.”
Mr. Winch drew himself up and tried to look dignified. “Mr. Camphor, sir, these are my working clothes. This—if I may put it that way—is my working face. If there’s dirt on ’em, it’s honest dirt, and will be took off when work is over.”
“Yes, yes; I daresay.” Mr. Camphor looked at him thoughtfully. “But you have suggested that you might take over the job of caretaker here—”
“At great personal sacrifice,” put in Mr. Winch, “and only in order to be near my dear wife.” And he leered at Mrs. Winch.
“I don’t imagine your sacrifice is more than you can bear,” said Mr. Camphor. “The pay is good. And I was saying that the work required of you here is not of a specially dirty kind. So I do not see that there will be any need for your accumulating as many kinds and varieties of dirt as you now seem to have distributed over your—ha, your person. In short, I think that before starting on your duties, a good soapy shower is advisable.”
“April showers bring May flowers,” said Bannister.
“I doubt, Bannister,” Mr. Camphor said, “if even after an entire month of showers Mr. Winch can be expected to produce a very flowerlike appearance.—Why, what is the matter?” For at the word “shower” Mr. Winch had turned pale and sunk into a chair. Horace, who had been listening, slipped quietly outside.
“Nothing, sir. Nothing,” said Mr. Winch, re covering himself. “May have had a touch of the sun this morning. I shouldn’t worked so hard in the hot sun, but you know how it is, sir: you hate to leave a job unfinished.”
Mr. Camphor seemed little impressed by this noble sentiment. “Well,” he said, “we will go back to the house. As for you—” He turned to Freddy, “—I shall expect you to be packed up and out of here in an hour.” And he led the way outside.
There was nothing else for Freddy to do. He packed up his paints and his few small belongings in a little suitcase he had brought with him, and went out. Elmo and Waldo were sitting on the bank. He looked at them, but they didn’t say anything. Freddy didn’t say anything either. What was there to say? But it hurt him when, as he passed them, they hopped around and turned their backs to him. He stopped.
What was there to say?
“I suppose you heard the whole thing,” he said. “And you can think what you want to. But I’ll be back again. I’m not through with the Winches yet. Or
Simon and his gang either.”
But the toads neither turned around nor replied.
Freddy climbed the bank, but as he started up the drive, Bannister, with a finger to his lips, slipped out from behind a bush. “Excuse me,” he said, “but that quotation—about the purse being trash, you know. I didn’t get that all down, and I wonder if you’d be good enough to tell me where I can find it? I’m sorry to ask you when you’re in trouble, but—well, there’s no time like the present, is there?”
So Freddy told him. And when Bannister had thanked him, he went on out of the gate.
Chapter 9
Those had been very brave words with which Freddy had said goodbye to the toads, but as he trotted out into the road with the suitcase in his mouth he realized that he had nothing to back them up with. He had been fired for stealing, and he couldn’t even prove his innocence, much less take any measures against either the Winches or Simon. Like all people who lead very active lives, Freddy had had his ups and downs, but J. doubt if he had ever before felt quite as down as he did at this minute.
A sharp Pssssst! from a bush beside the road startled him, and he looked around to see two yellow eyes in a small black face among the green leaves. Then Jinx bounded out into the road.
“Hi, old pig!” said the cat, slapping him on the back. “Golly, we’ve been worried! We thought the old sausage grinder had got you at last.”
Freddy winced. It is not very tactful to mention sausage or bacon to a pig. But he was fond of Jinx, and so glad to see him that he couldn’t be offended. Jinx always talked in a rather rough way, anyway.
Freddy put down his suitcase. “I’ve had an awful time,” he said.
“Hi, Number Seven!” Jinx called, and a rabbit bounded out into the road. “Back to the farm and tell ’em Freddy’s safe.” And the rabbit saluted and then leaped the ditch, and Freddy watched him speeding away southward across the fields like a stone skipped over still water. “Number Eighteen!” called Jinx, and another rabbit appeared. “Stand by for orders.” Then he turned to Freddy. “What do we do—move in on these birds right away? We can have everybody up here in an hour.”
“No,” said Freddy. “It isn’t as simple as that. How long have you been here, Jinx?”
“Since yesterday. Breckenridge told us you were in some sort of trouble, so I came up with some of the others. I called at the door first—”
“Yes,” said Freddy. “I heard about that.”
“That dirty-faced boy—I recognized him, but I didn’t let on, and of course he didn’t remember me—he gave me some song and dance about you moving away. We knew it was the bunk. So most of ’em went back, and I stayed on guard with some rabbits for messengers. Breckenridge’s aunt—the one that lives up near Saranac—is sick again, so he had to go up there. That’s why you didn’t see him again. But suppose you give me the low-down.”
“I will,” said Freddy. “But I want to get back to the farm. I’ll tell you as we go along.”
“You can’t talk and carry that case,” said the cat. “See that clump of trees? Bill’s over there, and Peter’s behind the wall across the field. We thought if either the boy or the man came out we could jump out and muss ’em up. We didn’t want to go inside till we found out where you were. But we’d planned a little commando raid for tonight.” He raised his voice and gave a long “Miaouw!” and a goat dashed out from the trees, and a bear came lumbering from behind the stone wall towards them.
When these two had greeted Freddy and told him how glad they were that he had escaped, Peter, the bear, picked up the suitcase and they all started off homeward. On the way, Freddy told his story. “You see,” he said, “it won’t do much good to raid the place and drive the Winches away. I’ve got to prove to Mr. Camphor that they lied about me, and I’ve got to get back the stuff they stole, too.”
“They probably sold it,” said Bill.
“They may have sold some of it,” said Freddy, “but my guess is that Mr. Winch stole mostly things he could take back home and use, like those suits of clothes. He isn’t really a professional burglar.”
“Just a sort of hobby with him, eh?” Bill remarked.
“You might put it that way. And another thing: I heard their car driving off and coming back about once every day they were there, so I think they stole a lot more things than Mr. Camphor missed. After all, he didn’t have time to look around much. And that house is just crammed with things. You could take ten truckloads out and it still wouldn’t look as if anything much was missing.”
“Well, we know where Winch lives,” said Jinx. “We had enough trouble there when we went to Florida.”
“Sure,” said Peter. “We’ll hitch up Hank to the old phaeton and go down there and get the stuff.”
“Something like that,” said Freddy. “We’ll have to work out some plan together. But right now—well, I’m so glad to be getting home that I’d rather not think about those people for a while.”
So the rest of the way they told him all the farm gossip.
When they had gone over the hill through the Big Woods, and were coming down through Mr. Bean’s woods, Freddy said he’d like to avoid the duck pond on his way back to the pigpen. “Uncle Wesley will want to hear all about it,” he said, “and he’ll have a lot to say, and I don’t want to talk about it right now.” So they didn’t follow the brook down, but came out of the woods higher up, where Mr. Bean had planted his big Victory Garden.
Some of the vegetables were already coming up, and Freddy stopped to look at the neat rows of green shoots. “My goodness,” he said, “Mr. Bean certainly does plant straight rows! And how nice they look!”
“Yeah,” said Bill, “and they’re going to look a lot nicer if Mr. Webb gets his ideas across.” Mr. Webb was a spider who lived in the cowbarn in the summer. He was small and plump and black and he had eight legs, and his wife, Mrs. Webb, looked just like him, except that she wore bangs. They were very popular.
“What do you mean?” Freddy asked.
“Come over here,” said Jinx, and he led the pig around to where, on one side of the garden, two tall dead stalks of last year’s goldenrod were still standing. Between them he could see that something was hung, something that shivered and shimmered in the light breeze. And then he saw that it was a sign, woven of spider web, like the signs that are sometimes hung out above the streets at election time, telling you who to vote for.
Freddy went closer and read it. “Patriotic Mass Meeting. Tonight at 8:30. All Bugs, Beetles and Caterpillars Invited. Fireworks, Music, Dancing. Mr. Webb will speak.”
“I don’t get it,” said Freddy. “What’s he going to talk about?”
“I think he’d like to tell you about that himself,” said Jinx. “He’s been hoping you’d get back, so you could help him. For one thing, he wants you to type out some signs like this for other meetings. It took him and Mrs. Webb two days to weave this one, and then a horsefly got into it and they had to spend another day repairing it. He wants you to fix up a megaphone, too. If they have a big meeting, those in the back rows won’t hear much.
“Look, Freddy. He’s asked the animals to stay away, because he’s afraid that if we came we might step on some of the audience and squash ’em. But if you make him a megaphone and bring it up tonight, he’ll be willing to let you stay and you can hear what it is all about.”
Freddy agreed, and they went on down to the pigpen, where he thanked them for their help, and said he guessed he’d go in and rest a while, as he was pretty tired.
“O K,” said Jinx. “But don’t forget the megaphone. Mustn’t let the old boy down.”
So a little after eight that evening, Freddy started out. He had the megaphone with him. He had made one the summer before for Jerry, an ant who had lived with him for a while. It was just a cone of stiff paper. If Mr. Webb got down in the narrow end, even with his little voice everything he said would come out good and loud.
When he got to where the sign was hung, beside the garden, he f
ound that hundreds of bugs had already assembled. It was beginning to get dark, and he had to walk very carefully not to step on any of them. He didn’t see the Webbs anywhere around, but as he tiptoed along, two large beetles stopped in front of him and waved their feelers.
“Evening, Freddy,” said the larger one. He had a rather husky voice which could be heard plainly without using the megaphone. “I’m Randolph—I guess you remember how you helped me with my legs, don’t you?”
“Of course,” replied the pig. “Nice to see you again.”
“This is my mother,” said Randolph, and the other beetle tried to drop a curtsey, and immediately sat down hard and then fell over on her back.
“Drat it!” she said.
“Never could get mother to use her legs properly,” said Randolph as he rolled her right side up again. “Shove that megaphone around for me, will you? I’m master of ceremonies tonight. Webb’ll be along any minute now, so I’d better get ’em ready for him.”
“Never could get mother to use her legs properly.”
Freddy pushed the large end of the cone around so that it faced the open space where the audience was to sit, and then Randolph went to the small end and chewed a hole there and spoke through it. “Ladies and gentlemen! Your attention, please!”
The crowd of insects, who had been hopping and crawling around, stopped and turned towards the speaker.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Randolph, “as you know, our distinguished friend, Mr. Webb, has called this meeting for a purpose. What that purpose is, he will himself explain to you presently. But it is no secret that his message is a patriotic message. Mr. Webb, with the able assistance of his wife, has gone to considerable trouble and expense to provide you with an evening of very superior entertainment, a veritable galaxy of stars, such a display of talent as I venture to say has never before been brought together. But I must ask you to remember that the real purpose of this meeting is a serious purpose, that Mr. Webb’s message is of vital importance to each and every one of you, as well as to the great nation of which you and I are humble citizens. Enjoy yourselves, therefore, but when you go home, give serious consideration to the words that Mr. Webb has spoken.
Freddy and Mr. Camphor Page 7