At this Leo rose and bowed selfconsciously.
“The other,” Charles went on, “is a new friend, not known yet to many of you, although one to whom I, as a father, bear an overwhelming debt of gratitude. For it was he and his comrades who at risk of life and limb assisted in the gallant and daring rescue of my two dear children from the evil house of Underdunk. My wife Henrietta and myself owe to this new friend, for the return of our two precious darlings, far, far more than we can ever repay. I refer to the ambassador from Mars, the Honorable Two-clicks.”
Mrs. Webb, who was sitting on the Martian’s shoulder, translated this, and Two-clicks rose and waved his feelers in a gracious gesture of acknowledgment.
There was a great deal of applause, and Charles, wiping a tear from his eye with a small handkerchief which he produced from under his wing—he had brought it especially for this purpose—went on. “We of the F.A.R., therefore, will have as allies, if it comes to war—and I am afraid it will—we will have as allies not only ferocious and relentless lions and tigers, implacable rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses, savage hyenas and fierce and bellicose elephants, but Martians, too, will be our brothers in arms. Think of it, my friends: our ally will be the planet Mars! Why the very stars in their courses will be fighting for us!”
“Who we going to fight—the dictionary?” said a harsh voice, and Charles looked up to the rafter from which Old Whibley was staring down at him with fierce yellow eyes.
Charles glared back at him. “The voice which you just heard, my friends,” he said, “is that of my aged and sagacious colleague, old hooter Whibley. As usual, he is attempting with sarcastic remarks to stir up trouble and dissension in a meeting which has but one purpose: to consider means of repulsing the attacks of a vicious enemy.”
“Who?” said Whibley. “Whoo?”
Charles began to get mad. “What’s the idea, sitting up there and hooting? Go on back to the woods, if you—”
“Who?” the owl interrupted. “I’m asking who we’ve got to fight! You go on ranting about an enemy, and you still don’t tell us who the enemy is. When is that to be revealed—in the next installment?”
Charles lost his temper. “If you’ll shut up and let me talk, I’ll tell you! The rats! That’s who the enemy is. Heavily entrenched on our very borders, they have already raided deep into our territory. Are we to sit here idle, with folded claws—or paws, as the case may be—”
“Don’t forget hoofs,” put in Whibley, and Uncle Solomon gave a peal of his tittering, derisive laughter. “Perhaps,” said the screech owl, “you could somewhat abbreviate your remarks by using a collective noun—say, for example, ‘with folded extremities.’” And he tittered again.
“Oh, shut up, both of you!” When Charles got really mad his speeches went all to pieces. “You owls make me sick, you’re always so—”
“Perhaps I had better explain,” Mrs. Wiggins interrupted. “As Charles says, it’s those rats again, Simon and his gang.” And she quickly outlined the situation. “And now,” she said, “I want to remind you that once, several years ago, the rats held this very house, and we attacked it and defeated them. But at that time the house was standing. Today only the cellar is left; the rats have certainly dug themselves in, and an attack would merely drive them into their holes—holes so narrow that it would be impossible to pursue and capture them. So has anybody a plan?”
Charles was smarting from the treatment which the owls had given him. He hopped up on the dashboard of the old phaeton, and shouted: “Yes! I have a plan, and it is the only plan worthy of the glorious F.A.R. What! Shall we allow a mob of cheap gangster rats to defy the authority of our powerful state? We were not always so fearful. Not in the old days would we have stood aside, hat in hand, and let these robbers plunder and destroy our broad lands. No! Better to languish in chains in the dungeons of the Grimby house; better, I say, to lie stricken on a well-fought field, than to cringe and basely surrender to an enemy whom we have twice before defeated in battle. I call for an immediate attack on the Grimby cellar! I call for an immediate vote! And I publicly brand those who vote for appeasement as cowards and dastards!”
“Yes, I have a plan.”
Freddy looked at Mrs. Wiggins. “The old fool!” he said angrily, as the animals began cheering wildly. “Now he’s done it! All the birds and mice and rabbits that know they can’t get in the fight anyway will vote for the attack.”
And indeed that was what happened. “Pah!” said Old Whibley disgustedly. “Come along, Vera. Coming, Sol?” And the three owls floated silently out into the night.
Matters brought up before the general meeting of the F.A.R. were always decided by vote. Usually the wiser and more sober animals were able to discuss such matters, and see that no rash decisions were taken. But when they were taken, there was nothing those who had opposed them could do. Charles had forced the issue. And his success had so gone to his head that he was now shouting: “If our appointed leaders hang back, my friends, I myself will lead you! Yes, with this beak and these claws I will smite the foemen. You know me, my friends; you know that I will not fail you. You know the story of that great duel at the bridge on the back road. Follow me, my friends, and where you see my tailfeathers floating above the fight, follow me on to victory.”
He would have gone on, but Henrietta, irritated by a repetition of his bragging reference to the fight with the rat, jumped up beside him and cuffed him so soundly with her wings that he fell off the dashboard. “You noisy old rattle-beak!” she exclaimed. “Now shut up and let somebody with some sense talk, or your tailfeathers will float above the fight all right, but they won’t be attached to you. You silly braggart!”
So then Freddy got up, and when he had managed to quiet the audience down somewhat, was able to persuade them that the attack on the cellar would have to be put off for three days. In that time, he hoped, they might be able to do something that would make the battle unnecessary.
CHAPTER
19
The next day Mr. Garble came back to Centerboro. His uncle had paid for his ticket home by plane. He got over to the circus grounds as soon as possible, and found Mrs. Peppercorn taking in the half-dollars at the Martian tent. She had become very much attached to the Martians, and liked being with them so well that she had agreed to stay on until they left. Mr. Garble didn’t like the arrangement, but he liked being with real Martians even less, and he went so far as to offer her a cent on every dollar she took in. But she refused it. “I like being with ’em,” she said.
“Well, I don’t,” he said. “But as long as they’re making money for me … How long are they going to stay?”
“You better ask them,” said the old lady.
“I don’t want to go near ’em,” he said, and shuddered. “How you can like them! …”
“A long time you have to be around of ’em, [she said],
Before you get really found of ’em.”
A shadow fell across the tent door, and a heavy voice said: “Uh, uh! If ’tain’t ol’ Moosiludge! Uh, uh.”
“Oh, gosh!” said Mr. Garble hopelessly. “You still harping on that?”
“Yuh,” said Mr. Hercules, “ ’s funny.”
And then Mr. Garble had an inspiration. It was about the only good idea he had ever had, and it seems almost too bad that it turned against him in the end. He said: “Look, Herc, I heard one yesterday—golly, this will kill you!” He began to laugh, and Mr. Hercules looked happily expectant. “Listen, Herc. There were these two Irishmen, Pat and Mike. Mike said: ‘Begorra, Pat, ’tis a foine day.’ And Pat said—” He broke off, to roar with laughter. “Golly, I can’t—can’t—oh, ho, ho, haw!”
“Yuh, wha’d he say, Muster Garble?” Mr. Hercules asked, grinning broadly.
Mr. Garble mastered his mirth. “He said: ‘So ’tis, Moike. So ’tis, if it don’t rain.’” And then Mr. Garble broke down completely and slapped his thigh and shouted and sobbed. “Herc, Herc,” he gasped, “isn’t that a wonder—is
n’t that a dandy?”
Mr. Hercules’s face broke into a sympathetic smile. He even managed to laugh slightly. “Uh, uh!” Then he stopped, looking puzzled. “Yuh,” he said doubtfully, “but … yuh, ‘if it don’t rain.’ Uh, uh, ’s funny, Uh guess. Only … wull, ‘if it don’t rain’—Uh don’t quite see …”
Mr. Garble was still doubled up, trying to control his merriment. “Think it over, Herc. You’ll get it. And when you do—oh, boy!” And he went off, waving his arms and shouting: “Haw, haw, haw!” till the line of people waiting to see the Martians stared after him in amazement. Mr. Hercules, too, stared, then with a puzzled shake of his head went off to think it over.
Mr. Garble got in his car and drove to Dixon’s diner and had a couple of hamburgers with lots of onion, and a cup of coffee, and then he drove around to the Big Woods by the back road to see Simon. Within two minutes his presence there was reported to Freddy by Mr. J. J. Pomeroy, a robin who was one of the sentinels posted along the edge of the woods to keep an eye on the rats. Mr. Pomeroy was head of the A.B.I., the Animal Bureau of Investigation, and had under him a large corps of birds, small animals, and bumblebees. The information had been brought to him by a bumblebee named Hector.
Bumble bees make excellent spies. They go blundering along, bumping into things and buzzing importantly, apparently absorbed in their own rather stupid business. Nobody pays much attention to them. But they have sharp eyes and are good listeners. Nobody fools a bumblebee, not for a minute. Having reported, Hector returned at once to the enemy stronghold. He banged around close to a wide crack in the cellar foundation, apparently interested in a clump of dandelions. Several of the rats saw him, as did Mr. Garble, but neither rats nor Garbles know much about nature, or they would have known that no bumblebee would touch a dandelion with a ten-foot pole. Hector heard the entire conversation between Simon and Mr. Garble.
It was an angry conversation and they did a good deal of yelling; for Mr. Garble was mad because the rats had let themselves be kidnapped and replaced by real Martians, and Simon was mad because he didn’t know where Zeke and Banjo and the three other rats had gone to. Of course neither of them knew about Freddy’s scheme to substitute Horribles for rats, not that the four missing rats were still shut up in a rat-trap in Willy’s cage. And of course each accused the other of knowing all about what had happened, and of lying about it.
“Well, you’re no use to me any more,” Mr. Garble said. “If you’d stayed where you agreed to, we could have made a lot of money together. As it is, these Martians will probably go back home in a few days, and the fun will be over. I gave you the Big Woods, and this house, and you can have it for all of me—though I don’t think your title to it will stand up in the law courts.”
“Well, you’re no use to me any more!” Mr. Garble said.
“It had better stand up,” Simon retorted. “Try to get it back and the story of a lot of your business deals will be published in the Bean Home News.”
“Pooh!” said Mr. Garble. “An animals’ newspaper!”
Simon and the other rats backed away from him. “When you say ‘Pooh’ like that, move back, will you? You’ve been eating onions,” Simon said. “We don’t like onions. We may be rats, but we have to draw the line somewhere.”
Mr. Garble laughed. “You don’t draw it at thievery, but you do at onions! That’s a laugh. Well, I’ve told you you can have this place, I don’t want it. But don’t threaten me with that barnyard sheet.”
“It was not a threat, it was a promise,” said Simon. “And remember, what is in the Bean Home News one afternoon is in the New York Times next morning. So I suggest that you make a strong effort to find Zeke and Banjo and the rest of them.”
“Sure, sure,” said Mr. Garble. “I’ll make a strong effort.” He blew in Simon’s face and then laughed. “Is that strong enough for you?”
Hector reported this to Mr. Pomeroy, who at once reported to Freddy. Freddy and Jinx and Mrs. Wiggins and Leo, who had come out to the farm to represent the circus in the council of war, had a long talk. And the result of it was that Freddy got Mr. Bean’s permission and hitched up Hank to the phaeton and drove into Centerboro, where he stopped at the grocery store of Mr. Henry Molecule, and asked about the price of onions.
“Well, sir,” said Mr. Molecule, “I got a few here in the store, but they ain’t very good. The new ones aren’t in yet.”
“I don’t care about new ones,” said Freddy. “Any old onions will do.”
Mr. Molecule laughed. “I got plenty of old ones, all right. Ten bags that are going bad on me. But I’m afraid I haven’t got any you’d want.”
“I’ll take the ten bags,” said Freddy, and Mr. Molecule stared, and said: “Well, you can have ’em for nothing—save me drawing them to the dump.”
So Freddy and Mr. Molecule and Mr. Molecule’s helper put clothespins on their noses and loaded the onions into the phaeton, and Freddy drove out of Centerboro and up the back road between the Bean Woods and the Big Woods. There he unloaded the onions beside the bridge, covered them with a lot of old sacks, and came home. And he smelled so, just from being near the onions, that Mrs. Wiggins made him stand outside the doorway while he talked.
In his absence another report had come in. Hector had learned from a couple of young centipedes, who had just set up housekeeping under the second cellar step, that the rats planned another raid for that night. A meadow on the west side of the farm was planted to corn, which was now about six inches high, and they were going to pull it up.
“That’ll be fine,” Freddy said. “But now we’ve got to get some volunteers to cut up those onions. They’ll smell twice as bad when they’re chopped up.”
“Oh no they won’t,” Mrs. Wiggins said. “Because if what I smell now with you standing there outside the door is any sort of faint suggestion of what they’re like now, you won’t scare up a single volunteer to even go and look at ’em.”
“Sure is pretty rich,” said Jinx. “But how about Sniffy and his family? They aren’t what you’d call exactly sensitive to odors.”
Sniffy Wilson and his wife Aroma were the parents of a large family of skunks who had been on the farm many years.
“Get hold of ’em, will you, Jinx?” Freddy said. “I want to go see Whibley. If Simon leads that raid tonight, and I’m pretty sure he will, maybe Whibley could capture him. When he escaped we lost the only thing we had to bargain with. We ought to get him back if we can.”
Uncle Solomon was calling on Old Whibley when Freddy stopped by the tree in which the owl had his nest and tapped on the trunk.
The two owls were sitting on a high branch close to the nest. Neither of them appeared to have noticed Freddy’s presence, but Whibley said: “Do you—ah—notice anything, Sol?”
The screech owl lifted his beak and sniffed. “H’m,” he said. “Now that you mention it, yes. There is obviously something rotten in the state of Denmark.”
“That’s from Shakespeare,” said Freddy.
“Dear me,” said Uncle Solomon, looking down at the pig for the first time. “This smelly person appears to have the rudiments of culture. And from which play was the quotation, odoriferous one?”
“It’s from Hamlet,” said Freddy. The Complete-Works-of-Shakespeare-in-One-Volume was one of his most prized possessions, although it had been used for a long time to prop up the broken leg of his bed.
Old Whibley’s enormous yellow eyes looked down at him now for the first time. “And did you perfume yourself to come up here and engage in a literary discussion?” he asked.
“It’s onions,” said Freddy. “And I wanted to ask you—”
“Onions!” Uncle Solomon exclaimed, and tittered sarcastically. “No onion that ever grew—no, not the rankest of its species, ever could knock a grown owl off his perch at thirty yards. Yet this onion, with which you have apparently anointed yourself, very nearly did just that at a hundred, as you approached. And now will you kindly absent yourself? And downwind, if you p
lease.” His chilly little laugh rippled out again.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” Freddy exclaimed. “Sure, I smell of onions. Spoiled onions. I got ’em to use against the rats. Now if you’ve had your fun, will you listen to what I have to say?”
“Been listening,” said Whibley. “All we heard was quotations from Shakespeare. Very interesting. Happy to know you have literary tastes. But why not go home and read your Shakespeare instead of coming here and smelling up the woods?”
“The rats are raiding Mr. Bean’s corn tonight,” Freddy said. “Simon will probably lead them. If we can capture him—”
“You propose to smother him in onions?” the screech owl asked. “An excellent idea. I shall be happy to assist. Eh, Whibley?”
“We’ll be up at the cornfield,” Old Whibley said. “Well, what you waiting for? Promised, didn’t we? Go on, take that smell out of these woods.”
CHAPTER
20
So the skunks cut up the ten bags of onions with knives which Freddy had borrowed from Mrs. Bean. They cut them into quarters and put them back in the bags. But even for them it was a terrible job, and for it, later, the whole family was awarded the Benjamin Bean Distinguished Service Medal. For three of the younger ones were overcome and had to be given artificial respiration to bring them to, and all the others felt queer for weeks afterward. They smelt queer, too.
Then ropes were attached to the bags and when the spies brought word that the rats had left on their raid, all the larger farm animals hauled them up to the Grimby house and dumped them down into the cellar. When the rats came back after a couple of hours, they were laughing and singing. And Simon was with them. For he was a wise old rat, and although he didn’t know how closely the A.B.I. watched all his activities, he did know that he was being spied on. And so at the last moment he changed his plan of campaign, and instead of going to the cornfield they went in the other direction and pulled up an acre of young cabbage plants. And Mr. Pomeroy did not learn of this in time to tell the owls, who were patiently watching an empty cornfield.
Freddy and the Men from Mars Page 12