“You didn’t hear that?” Mr. Anderson demanded. He started for the hall.
“I didn’t hear a thing,” she asserted.
Freddy grasped what he felt was his only chance. “Now if she only pretends not to see anything,” he thought. And as Mr. Anderson came out of the parlor door, the pig came with a sort of dancing step out of the closet. With his back to the gaping Mr. Anderson he danced down the hall, the cloak trailing on the floor behind him, and with a shrill squeal disappeared through the kitchen door.
He danced down the hall, the cloak trailing on the floor.
The sight of this hooded and dancing dwarf and the sound of his inhuman squeals was too much for Mr. Anderson. He ran back into the parlor, slammed the door, and put his shoulder to it. “You saw!” he gasped. “You saw that—that creature!”
Mrs. Church came to the door. “What creature?” she asked. “What are you talking about? I saw nothing.”
“You mean you didn’t see it—you didn’t hear it scream?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” she said. “Really, Mr. Anderson, this strikes me as a very silly attempt to frighten me.”
“Frighten you?” he exclaimed. He hesitated a minute longer, wiping his forehead, then went to the window, threw it up, and started to climb out.
“Wait!” said Mrs. Church. “You haven’t got the reward for returning the necklace.”
Mr. Anderson was outside by this time. “I’ll stay right here,” he said. “You can bring it to me.”
So Mrs. Church got her purse and went back to the window. “It has to be one third of the value of the necklace,” she said, “but I’ve decided to make it a little more.”
“That’s very good of you,” he replied.
“Not at all,” she said. “I’m sure you deserve something for your trouble.” And she put a dime in his hand.
He stared at it. “I don’t get it,” he said. “What’s this for?”
“I’m afraid, Mr. Anderson,” she said with a smile, “that you—or rather, the burglar, didn’t look very carefully at this necklace. I paid twenty-five cents for it. Really, I think ten cents is a rather generous third, don’t you? If you know anything about fractions,” she added maliciously.
“What!” he exclaimed. “I don’t believe you! This is a very shabby trick, Mrs. Church. I brought back your necklace in good faith—”
“Indeed?” she said. “Well, give me back the dime. And if you’d rather have the necklace, here it is. Now you and your burglar friend can sell it and live in luxury on the proceeds. Good day, Mr. Anderson.” And she shut the window.
Freddy came back into the parlor to find Mrs. Church shaking with laughter. “It was lucky you said you didn’t hear anything when I pulled that cloak down over my head,” he said. “I wonder what he thinks now. Of course that was all a lie about his mysterious visitor this morning who brought the stolen necklace. I had a report from Jacob just before I got here, and nobody has visited his house except the delivery boy from Molecule’s grocery. Anderson took that necklace himself. But I’d like to know how he got in.”
“So would I,” said Mrs. Church. “It’s a funny thing: all these burglaries I’ve been reading about in the paper lately—they seem to have been done in the same way: nobody can figure out how the burglars got in. But I don’t see how … unless Mr. Anderson is a member of a gang—”
“There couldn’t be any connection,” Freddy said. “I think Anderson just picked up your necklace in the course of doing his haunting. He just saw it and thought it was a good idea. And did you notice how red his eyes were? Do you think he’d been crying?”
“Maybe he got some pepper in them somewhere,” said Mrs. Church. “But Freddy, how could he get in?”
Freddy didn’t even try to look wise and put on the Great Detective expression. He just shook his head.
CHAPTER
11
The crime wave was something that had bothered Freddy a good deal. From Buffalo to Albany, from Watertown to New York, houses had been entered and valuables taken, yet the police had made no arrests and apparently hadn’t a single clue. Freddy didn’t see how Mr. Anderson could be responsible for all these thefts. It looked more like the work of a well-organized gang. If that was so, could Mr. Anderson have had anything to do with stealing Mrs. Church’s necklace?
Freddy read the accounts of the robberies in the New York papers and tried to figure out a theory about them. In his own newspaper, the Bean Home News, he wrote an editorial on that subject. “What are our police doing?” he asked. “Do we pay them to stand idly by when our citizens are daily victimized by gangs of bold and insolent criminals who laugh and giggle contemptuously at the minions of the law?” And so on. But of course he didn’t have any more idea than the police did what to do about it, for in not a single case was there a clue to show how the burglars had got in.
In the meantime the baseball practice had gone on, and it was now, in the games at the Bean farm with the Centerboro High boys, that all the practice in the mud and snow began to pay off. The Martians and the Boomschmidt brothers and the animals worked together as a team. The Martians still swung at everything, and Freddy let them. They got fewer and fewer hits, because Jason Brewer, who usually pitched for the school, had found out that they would reach as quickly for a ball six inches beyond the end of their bat as for one right over the middle. But Freddy still refused to correct the tendency. “You boys go right on swinging,” he said. “I don’t care whether you get hits or not—even when we play Tushville. You play it my way and we’ll win. I’m going to give you two signals: one, to swing at everything; two, not to swing at anything, not even the good ones. You leave the rest to Tushville.”
Every day or so one or two of the Tushville players, who were now almost ready to start their own playing season, drove over with Mr. Kurtz to watch and jeer at the Martian team. They laughed particularly at Freddy, who was of course pretty funny looking, in the long black coat, with the big spectacles, and the white beard that came foaming out under the battered hat. He nearly always had Jinx or Mr. Pomeroy with him to act as his eyes as he stumbled about, leaning on his stick and peering at the players he was trying to coach. Fortunately Jinx knew a good deal more about baseball than Freddy did—although if Jinx had been coach, it is doubtful if he would ever have thought up Freddy’s scheme for beating Tushville.
As the days got warmer, Freddy found his disguise more and more uncomfortable. At times he would turn the coaching over to Jinx and watch the practice as himself. One afternoon when practice was over he walked back to the flying saucer with Two-clicks. He hadn’t entirely given up trying to question the Martians about the whereabouts of Squeak-squeak, although they refused to answer, and indeed avoided his company where before they had seemed to like to be with him. So today he said: “What do you hear from Squeak-squeak?”
“We hear—is well,” said the Martian. Then, changing the subject: “You think we lick Tushers?”
“Sure,” said Freddy confidently. “We lick.” He had got in the habit of talking to the Martians in the same kind of broken English they used. Of course it wasn’t helping them to learn to talk good English, but it was fun, and they understood it better than correct speech. “You do like Mr. Arquebus say, we lick.”
Two-clicks shrugged all four of his shoulders. He was not convinced. But he didn’t say any more. He climbed up on the disk of the saucer, which was made of some light shiny metal like stainless steel, opened the door in the turret, and with a wave to Freddy vanished inside.
As the pig turned to go, he glanced at the edge of the saucer near where it rested on the ground. Along that edge was a rusty-red stain. And all at once it came to Freddy—the stain was paint from Mrs. Church’s tin roof, and it was out of the saucer, hovering close to the upper window, that the burglar had stepped when he stole the necklace.
So the Martians were the burglars! Freddy half turned to go back and confront Two-clicks with the proof of his guilt. Th
en he stopped. He had to think what he was going to do. So he went down to the cow barn to see Mrs. Wiggins.
“It looks pretty plain,” he said. “Anderson could have got into the house without leaving any tracks if they’d brought him in the saucer. That darn thing can hover like a helicopter. One edge touched the roof and the red paint stuck to it.”
“I guess Anderson was the ghost all right,” said the cow, “but maybe it was the Martians that stole the necklace. They seem like nice little fellers, but good land, we don’t know what kind of a bringing up they’ve had. Maybe they don’t think it’s wrong to steal.”
“I can’t really believe they would,” Freddy said. “They might think it was funny to play ghost.… Golly,” he said, “maybe Anderson made ’em do it. Maybe he threatened them somehow.”
“Look, Freddy,” said Mrs. Wiggins, “do you remember how Anderson got the rats to work for him? He kidnapped one of them, and locked him up, and then threatened to do something awful to him if they wouldn’t do as he said? Well, wasn’t it you that was telling me that criminals always follow the same pattern—go to work in the same way? Why couldn’t he have kidnapped Squeak-squeak?”
“I believe you’ve got it!” Freddy exclaimed. “My goodness, of course. And you remember the peanuts? He bought some the other day, and yet when I offered him some, he said he never used ’em. Who was he buying them for, then? If he’s got Squeak-squeak—”
“Good day, madam,” a voice interrupted. “Good day, pig. How is you both today?”
“Good day, Madam,” a voice interrupted.
Freddy turned to see Leo in the doorway. “How is you!” he exclaimed. “What kind of baby-talk is that?”
“I . have . to . talk . like . that,” said the lion. He spaced his words as if he was choosing them with great care, as if he didn’t know the English language very well. “Mist—that is—the chief said last night I talked too much. I said how can I stop? I have to talk when I have things to say. He said: ‘I know how. When you talk, leave out one let—one piece of the alphabet.’ I said: ‘O.K., I’ll leave out x. Or q.’ He said no, that wasn’t fa—honest. He said I should leave out the eighteenth piece.”
“Oh, I see,” said Freddy. “You’re leaving out r.”
“Yes. But I said I wouldn’t do it unless he did too. So he said he would leave out t. Boy, you should listen to him. Has he found some fancy words!”
“That sounds like fun,” Mrs. Wiggins said. “Guess I’ll try it. What letter shall I leave out?”
“Try e,” said Freddy. “Now let’s hear you say something.”
“All right,” said the cow. “This isn’t so hard. Mr. Boomschmidt—”
“You can’t say ‘mister,’” Freddy interrupted.
“Good land, of course I can. It’s just Capital M, r.”
“It has an e in it,” said the pig. “When you say it.”
“Oh, all right,” said Mrs. Wiggins slowly. “Captain Boomschmidt—” She stopped. “Oh, gracious! What was I going to say? It’s gone-No, no; it’s—Ha, I got it! it’s vanished—vanisht with a t—out of my mind. Whew! I mean wow! That’s too hard.”
“Well, you took the hardest letter,” said Freddy, who didn’t remind her that he had picked it out. “E is used oftener in English than any other letter.”
“Take s,” Leo suggested.
“But then I can’t talk about more than one of anything,” said the cow. “Plurals are made with s.”
“Shucks, there are lots of plurals without s—men, mice, oxen, women, deer—”
“But I don’t want to talk about mice and men and oxen all the time. Suppose I want to talk about pigs. Do I say pice? Or what would be the plural of henhouse? Henhice?”
“Well,” said Leo, “if you want to talk about two pigs, you can say ‘a pig and a pig.’”
“I could say two piggen.”
“The chief says that kind of thing is not allowed. I said: couldn’t I talk like folks down South: couldn’t I say: ‘Mistah Boomschmidt is heah’? But he said that wasn’t playing the game.”
“You could talk baby-talk,” said Freddy. “I saw thwee wats wunning awound on the wacetwack. Though I suppose it would sound kind of silly coming from a lion.”
“No,” said Leo, “he said that was out too. And I can’t talk Chinaman talk either. You know: ‘thlee lats lunning alound the lace tlack.’ Well, it’s kind of fun, at that. Why don’t you tr—attempt it, pig?”
“I will, later. Right now we’ve got to check on this guy Anderson. We’ve had a tail on him, but that hasn’t got us anywhere. We’ve got to get inside his house and search it. He may have Squeak-squeak locked up there. The A.B.I. has inspected the outside of the house and peeked in the windows, but to get inside we’ll have to use our own people. Are the Webbs home, Mrs. W.?”
Mr. and Mrs. Webb were two elderly spiders who lived part of the year in the farmhouse, and the rest of the time in the cow barn. They had traveled extensively, had taken the famous trip to Florida with the other animals, and had visited Hollywood—had even appeared in the movies. But you would never have guessed it from their conversation, for they were modest, home-loving people, who would have been ashamed to appear to brag about their experiences. Mr. Webb had even written a book, How to Make Friends and Influence Spiders, which Mr. Brooks, the historian of the Bean farm, was using his influence to get published. Mr. Webb felt that too many people disliked spiders, and were inclined to swat them with a rolled-up newspaper rather than to engage them in friendly conversation. As a spider, he felt that they could, and should, be treated with consideration, that their reputation for bad temper was unjust, and that their friendship could be valuable. “Remember,” he says in his introduction, “spiders are people. And people make good friends. Without people, you would have no friends; remember that.” “Remember,” he says again, “you have to make friends. Friends don’t just come ready-made.” Which is really a very deep saying.
“I think they are home,” Mrs. Wiggins said. “Webb,” she called, “come down here a minute. Freddy want—I mean would like to talk to you.”
And presently, spinning down on a long strand from the roof, came the spider. He landed on Freddy’s nose, crawled up to his ear, and said in his tiny voice: “Well, Freddy, what can I do for you?”
Mrs. Wiggins had told the Webbs about the ghost and the burglary at Mrs. Church’s, so that Freddy made his explanation as short as possible. “And we’d like you to search Anderson’s house. If you will, I’ll take you down there tonight.”
“Dear me,” said Mr. Webb, “Mrs. Webb’s Cousin Clifford and his wife are here on a visit for a few days. They live with Miss McMinnicle, down the road, you know. We can’t very well run out on them. Mother’s very fond of Cliff’s wife, though”—he gave a tiny snicker—“we feel that her hostess gift was perhaps a trifle on the ostentatious side. An enormous June bug—although really a couple of nice flies would have been enough.”
“Maybe they’d like to go along,” Freddy said. “Might make a nice change for them, and a touch of adventure. And of course, you’ll be perfectly safe.”
“H’m,” said Mr. Webb, “that might be an idea. Our little web is rather close quarters for four grown spiders, not to speak of the eight children. Wait a minute.” And he swarmed back up into the roof.
After a minute or two he was down again. “It’s all right,” he said. “They think it might be quite a little adventure for them. Mrs. Wiggins can look after the children. We’ll spin a web over there under the window, and they can play there till we come back. What time do you want us to be ready?”
CHAPTER
12
It wasn’t easy for the Webbs and their cousins to get into Mr. Anderson’s house. The windows were screened, the door fitted tightly at the bottom, and there were no cracks in the foundation wall. There appeared to be a fire in the furnace still, so the chimney was no good. To Mr. Webb, the tightness of the house seemed suspicious. “Man’s got something to hide,�
� he said, “when he takes such pains to keep even a spider out. Confound the fellow! What’s he afraid of?”
“Now, Father, don’t be impatient,” said Mrs. Webb. “All we’ve got to do is wait over the front door and drop on his hat when he comes home. In the meantime, we might have a nice game of twenty questions.” So Mr. Webb started, and he chose the first fly that Cousin Clifford had ever caught, and he was quite put out when, just as they’d reached the nineteenth question and hadn’t guessed it, Mr. Anderson came up the walk. But when he unlocked the front door the spiders dropped on his hat and were carried into the house.
It is quite a job to search a house. Mr. Webb stayed with Mr. Anderson and rode around on his coat collar, while the others started to search the living room. Cousin Clifford and his wife weren’t much help. Cliff was of a literary turn, and he got interested in the titles of the books in the bookcase, and even tried to crawl between the leaves of one or two to see what they were about. And his wife ran to each of the windows in turn, and then called out: “Oh, Clifford! Come see this beautiful view! Isn’t it picturesque? Isn’t it just like that lovely calendar in Miss McMinnickle’s kitchen? Oh, Clifford; I would like to live here. Couldn’t we, Clifford?” Mrs. Webb left them arguing and went on into the kitchen.
But it was Clifford’s wife who got them into trouble. Mr. Anderson went to the ice box and got out a bottle of root beer. He poured it into a glass and went into the living room and sat down. He drank half of it, and then he said: “Ha!” in a contented voice, and leaned back and closed his eyes.
Cousin Clifford’s wife said: “Oh, Clifford, I have never tasted root beer. I think I shall try just a teeny little sip.” And she dropped down off the window sill and ran across the floor and up Mr. Anderson to the glass around which his hand was still clasped. She got on the edge of the glass and leaned over to try to reach the root beer, which was nearly halfway down. And she fell in.
Freddy and the Baseball Team from Mars Page 7