There was a lot of discussion about this, and Homer kept insisting that we'd all forgotten about the seven dollars we'd spent on flowers for Constable Billy Dahr when he was in the hospital for two weeks after stepping in a bear trap out by Turkey Ridge. Finally Mortimer moved that we call for a count of the cashbox, and Homer pulled himself wearily out of his chair.
"I don't know whether I've got the strength for this treasurer's job any more," he groaned. "Excuse me, Mr. President," he said, as he climbed up onto the packing crate in front of Jeff. We all sat there in silence while Homer reached up and flipped a switch on the light cord dangling just above Jeff's head. Then he climbed down off the packing crate and walked over to the corner of the barn, where we keep our safe. He spun the dial quickly and opened the heavy door. Then he reached inside and brought out a little remote control box for a TV set.
"Wait a minute!" Jeff cried. "Charlie and Dinky, get the window shades."
Dinky and I pulled the shades down on all four windows, and Mortimer put the crossbar up to barricade the door. Then Homer pointed the remote control box at the peak of the barn roof and pressed one of the buttons. The rope ladder, coiled at the peak of the roof, popped open and the weighted end of it plopped to the floor. Homer walked over and climbed slowly up it until he had reached the huge crossbeam that buttresses the roof just over the packing crate. He flung himself over the beam and shinnied along it to the point where it joined with one of the roof stringers. There he flipped another switch and our cashbox, dangling on the end of a fine steel cable, was lowered gently to the top of the packing crate in front of Jeff. Jeff got up and walked to the safe, drew the cashbox key from it, and held it up for everyone to see. Then he returned to his chair, turned the key in the lock of the cashbox, and looked up at Homer.
"OK!" he said.
Homer pointed the remote control box in his direction and pressed the other button. The lid of the cashbox flipped open. Jeff dumped the contents out in front of him and methodically counted the money while the rest of us sat there with our arms and legs crossed and repeated the count after him.
"Three dollars and eighty-seven cents," he announced. "Homer was pretty near right."
"I am right!" came Homer's voice from the rafters. "We never count those two Indian-head pennies. That's our reserve for bad debts."
"OK, OK!" said Jeff. "The matter is closed." He put the money back in the cashbox and signaled Homer to raise it again to the roof.
"Can I come down now, Mr. President?" asked Homer.
"Yes!" said Jeff.
Despite our shortage of funds we all agreed that we should make the trip to Claiborne to attend the White Elephant Auction. If we couldn't manage to buy the Japanese submarine, at least we could find out who did get it.
"I move that we take all our money with us and let me handle the bidding," said Freddy Muldoon, standing up on his chair to give himself a little better position to argue from.
"That's a great idea!" Mortimer Dalrymple cut in, with his usual sarcasm. "You're a born loser, so we won't have to argue about how much money we have any more."
"OK, Mr. Bigmouth," Freddy shot back. "Maybe I'm not the world's best horse trader, but at least I know a jackass when I see one."
Mortimer came up out of his chair like a whirling dervish, and Henry and I grabbed him just in time to prevent mayhem. Freddy stood fast, with his hands on his hips and that sneering look on his face again, while Jeff rapped his gavel on the crate. When the commotion had died down, little Dinky Poore stood up, at his most truculent, and said, "Mr. President, I second the motion, whether anybody likes it or not!"
In the Mad Scientists' Club, when anybody seconds a motion it's almost sure to pass. The reason is that Freddy and Dinky vote in favor of almost everything, and Jeff Crocker, the President, only votes in case of a tie. So anybody making a motion knows that he has three votes to start with. And if somebody is dumb enough to second his motion, he knows that he's got it made because four votes are already in the bag. But if Freddy or Dinky makes the motion, it's a little different of course. You might say that they face an uphill fight.
In this case, I felt a little sorry for Freddy, so I voted in favor of letting him handle the bidding for the submarine. After Henry and Homer and Mortimer had all voted "no," it was up to Jeff Crocker to decide the issue. He flipped a coin and it came down "heads" and he figured that was a good omen. So he voted in favor of Freddy risking our three dollars and eighty-five cents.
By ten o'clock Saturday morning we were all piled into Zeke Boniface's wheezing old junk truck, Richard the Deep Breather, jolting along on the seventy-five-mile drive to Claiborne. Dinky and Freddy were crouched down behind the seat of the open cab, playing mumblety-peg on the wooden truck bed and exchanging conspiratorial whispers. The rest of us didn't pay too much attention to them. We were too busy figuring out how we would load the submarine on the truck and haul it back to Mammoth Falls, if we were lucky enough to get it. We had brought along the overhead traveling crane rig that Zeke uses to lift engines out of cars, but we were only guessing at how big the sub was, based on Henry's research.
Mortimer Dalrymple had insisted on rigging a hammock between the two chain slings of the traveling crane so he could be comfortable during the trip. Mortimer likes his sleep, and he can catnap right through a club meeting or a dogfight; take your pick. But he didn't get too much sleep on the way to Claiborne. We had the crane stanchion lashed down securely to the truck bed, so he wasn't in any danger, but he took some pretty violent lurches (Henry called them "yawing moments") when Zeke threw Richard the Deep Breather into fast-breaking curves on the Claiborne Road. When he pulled into Claiborne, Mortimer was pretty seasick but he'd be the last one to admit it, and the rest of us wouldn't embarrass him by noticing it unless there was some real fun in it. At least he'd escaped the bumps and jolts that the rest of us had to suffer.
The White Elephant Auction was being held in front of the American Legion Hall, because the submarine was the biggest thing on the list and the Legion didn't want to bother moving it off its concrete pedestal unless they were sure it was sold. When Zeke wheeled Richard the Deep Breather into the parking lot there was already a crowd of two or three hundred people gathered in front of the place. The auctioneer was having lunch at a hot-dog stand and just marking time until the appointed hour for the auction to begin. We were a little dismayed to see the size of the crowd, but the auctioneer was licking the mustard off his lips with double relish, knowing he had a good thing going.
After we had something to eat we mingled in the crowd and left matters in the hands of Freddy and Dinky, who had all our money. We saw them whispering to each other on the edge of the crowd, and then Freddy got down on all fours and crawled through people's legs up to the front. He ended up to the right of the auctioneer's stand, and Dinky popped up in front of the crowd on the left. A whole bunch of worthless junk was sold at ridiculous prices before the auctioneer got around to mentioning the submarine. It was already three o'clock and Freddy had pulled the last hot dog out of his pocket and eaten it, and was looking around for something to drink, when the auctioneer climbed down off his stand and rapped his gavel on the hull of the sub.
"Ladies and gennemun!" he cried. "Here is the piece de resistance of the afternoon. What am I offered for this genuwine trophy of war brought back from the far Pacific by the valiant sons of Post 1142 of the American Legion? This is a real conversation piece. Ladies: If you have a real handyman around the house, he can convert this historic tub into the most unique outdoor barbecue you have ever seen. With this symbol of America's triumph over the forces of evil in World War II installed in your backyard you will be the envy of your neighborhood. Other women will pull out their hair competing for invitations to your evening soirees."
"Blah, blah, blah, blah," said Mortimer. "How about getting down to business?"
Finally the auctioneer pounded his gavel on the rusting hull again and rasped, "What am I offered?"
"Five dollars!" came
a squeak from the right side of the semicircle of onlookers. All eyes turned to where Freddy Muldoon stood, looking as nonchalant as his pudgy frame would allow, with one foot crossed over the other and his arms folded in front of him.
"Has he gone nuts?" Mortimer gulped. "That's more money than we have."
"Maybe the truck ride affected his brain," Homer offered. "We'd better go pull him out of there."
"Leave him alone!" Jeff snapped. "We all promised to let him handle this."
The auctioneer paused in mid-sentence. "What was that, my young friend?"
"Five dollars!" Freddy repeated. The auctioneer snickered indulgently. "Did you hear that, ladies and gennemun?" He laughed. "We have one of the last of the big spenders with us here today -- one of America's great natural comedians -- and he offers a paltry five dollars for this priceless relic of the late great war." He beat a tattoo on the steel hull of the submarine with his gavel. "Ladies and gennemun!" he cried in a loud voice, raising his hands high in the air and blowing all his words out through his nose. "Ladies and gennemun, I tell you what I'm gonna do. I ordinarily would treat such an offer with the disdain that it deserves. But I can go along with a gag as well as the next one. And just to indulge our young friend here - whom I am sure must be the grandson of the late great Oliver Hardy - I will open the bidding for five dollars!" Again the gavel descended upon the rusty hull, which was still ringing from the last blow. "Do I hear ten dollars?"
"Four fifty!" came an even squeakier voice from the left of the crowd.
The auctioneer's jaw dropped. "What was that?" he asked incredulously.
"I bid four dollars and fifty cents!" said Dinky Poore in a slightly louder voice. There was a laugh from the crowd.
The auctioneer snickered condescendingly again. "I must apologize, ladies and gennemun," he said, fixing a baleful glare on Dinky Poore, "but I didn't realize that we were also honored with the presence of the grandson of Stan Laurel. It isn't every day that you find two jokers in the same deck!" Sweeping his hat from his head, he made an elaborate bow in the direction of Dinky. "Are you aware, young man, that I already have a bid of five dollars?"
"That old tub ain't worth five dollars," said Dinky. "I bid four dollars and fifty cents."
The auctioneer clapped his hat back onto his head. "Do I hear ten dollars?" he shouted, banging his gavel on the hull again.
"I think he's right!" said Freddy Muldoon. "I bid four dollars, even."
"Wait a minute!" shouted the auctioneer, pointing his gavel at Freddy. "You can't pull that on me. You already bid five dollars for this item."
"I changed my mind," said Freddy.
"Do I hear seven-fifty?" shouted the auctioneer.
"Make it three and a half and I'll take it!" Dinky shouted back, cupping his hands to his mouth to make himself heard above the laughter of the crowd.
"Three dollars, even!" Freddy hollered.
"Two seventy-five!" countered Dinky.
"I'll go two fifty, and that's my final offer!" Freddy bellowed.
The auctioneer rapped his gavel on the submarine's hull so hard that the head came flying off. "Sold, sold, sold!" he shouted, pointing the broken handle at Freddy Muldoon. "Sold for two dollars and fifty cents before you can open your big mouth again!"
"I'll take it!" said Freddy. He marched up and put two dollar bills down on the auctioneer's table. Then he turned to Dinky Poore. "Can you lend me fifty cents?"
"Sure!" said Dinky, pulling out a handful of small change, and the crowd roared as he dumped the coins onto the table.
"Get this thing out of here before I change my mind!" fumed the auctioneer.
"Right away, sir!" said Freddy and Dinky.
We needn't have worried about how we were going to load the sub on Zeke's truck. There must have been fifty people from the crowd trying to get a handhold on it to help us ease it onto the truck bed after we got it suspended in the slings of the traveling crane. We threw a big tarpaulin over it and drove right back to Mammoth Falls, where we parked it in Zeke's junkyard. We had a lot of work to do on it before we could take it to our hideout, because the first thing we had to do was get it in condition to operate.
Our hideout was made to order for the job we had in mind. It's a real cool cavern hidden from view behind the huge falls where Frenchman's Creek plunges over a precipice about a mile northwest of Strawberry Lake. These are the falls that gave the town its name, and they're a big tourist attraction. But very few people know about the cavern. Almost nobody ever visits it because you have to swim under an overhanging ledge of rock to get to the entrance. Once you get through the narrow opening you're in for a surprise. The cavern widens out into a high-ceilinged chamber with a floor of fine white sand that must have been deposited there when the creek bed was a good deal higher than it is now. The floor of the chamber drops off suddenly after about sixty feet, and there's a deep pool of clear green water dividing the chamber in two. It must be fed by subterranean streams and connected with the lower level of the creek, because the water in it is always the same level as the creek. The place would be a real mecca for sightseers if the town would ever build a covered walkway to the entrance, like they have at Niagara Fails, but they've never had the money.
It's cool as a cucumber inside the cavern, and the temperature stays pretty much the same all year round. We use the place as a summer clubhouse sometimes, because it can get pretty hot in Jeff Crocker's barn, and the cavern is a great place to sleep on muggy summer nights. We've fitted it out with a lot of equipment, and we get electricity for free from a generator driven by a waterwheel we installed under the falls. The pool makes a great swimming hole, of course, and we have a first-class diving board set up at one end of it. The only problem is we don't get much of a suntan.
While we still had the sub in Zeke's junkyard we took all its running gear apart and cleaned and lubricated all the moving parts. We went over the hull with steel brushes and rust remover and laid on heavy coats of white lead paint. We cut away the net cutter and torpedo guards on the bow with a blowtorch and cut out the torpedo tubes. This gave us a lot of room up front that would have been wasted space. Colonel March at Westport Field helped us get the plexiglass nose section from an old B-17 Flying Fortress in a surplus property sale, and with a little cutting and bending we were able to fit it to the nose of the sub pretty smoothly. When we got finished, she looked pretty sharp with her forty feet of gleaming white hull and her clear plastic nose.
We weren't finished yet, but we decided to move her to the hideout because too many people were snooping around the junkyard to look at her, and we had to throw the tarpaulin over the hull so often that it interfered with our work. Especially, we had to keep an eye peeled for Freddy's cousin Harmon and his gang. They kept turning up at the yard, one or two at a time, pretending to be looking for some piece of junk they knew Zeke didn't have. And one day we saw the whole gang looking at us through field glasses from the edge of a cliff on Turkey Hill. Actually, they weren't any trouble to us, because they couldn't mess around the sub while we were there during the day, and at night we just plain didn't worry about them. Zeke Boniface has a big German shepherd dog named Kaiser Bill who roams the junkyard all night long. He isn't mean, but he's about one hundred and ten pounds of gleaming white teeth, and he has a way of discouraging people who wander too close to the yard at night.
We named the sub Lady Go Diver, which was a name Dinky had suggested, and painted it on both sides of the bow section. On the conning tower we painted the Mad Scientists' Club symbol, which is a test tube crossed over a telescope superimposed on a skull. After we had put new batteries in her and tested the electric motor, we figured we were ready to move her into the cavern under Mammoth Fails to add the finishing touches.
Don't ask me how we got her into the cave. That's our secret. But after we got her in there we could take our time making the rest of the modifications without a lot of people nosing around. Without the torpedo tubes in her she could carry four or five
of us easily. We figured on fitting out the bow section as an observer compartment and installing two big searchlights for underwater illumination, one in the bow and one in the conning tower. We also were bargaining with the National Guard Armory down on Vesey Street to get the bulletproof windows out of an old World War II tank they had, so we could install them in the conning tower to give us observation in all directions.
We were getting along pretty well with the work, when one morning we discovered sandy footprints on the hull of the submarine leading to the conning tower. There was sand down inside the controls compartment, too, so we knew somebody had been there. We always cleaned up carefully after finishing work, because Henry and Jeff believe in running a taut ship. We checked her over very thoroughly, and as far as we could tell everything was in working order and nothing was missing. Whoever had been there had just been a curious snooper, apparently. All the same, it worried us.
"It must have been somebody in Harmon Muldoon's gang," said Dinky Poore. "Nobody else would have feet that dirty."
"Very good thinking!" said Mortimer, with his usual sarcasm.
"I bet they're planning an act of sabotage," said Freddy darkly.
"I don't think they'd be that foolish," said Henry. "Whoever came in here was a pretty good swimmer. We know that. And he also had to be pretty curious. If it was somebody from Harmon's gang, I'd say they were just green with envy and wanted to get a look inside the sub."
"Don't be too sure," warned Freddy. "I wouldn't trust that Harmon with my pet snake."
"Let's stop worrying about who it is, and figure out what we're gonna do about it," said Jeff Crocker.
"Maybe Zeke would lend us Kaiser Bill and let him sleep in here every night," Homer suggested.
"That's a good idea," Jeff agreed, "but he needs him down at the junkyard."
"I move that Freddy and Dinky sleep here every night until we're finished with the work," said Mortimer.
"I move that Mortimer Dalrymple take the sub down to the bottom of the lake every night and stay there until morning," said Freddy Muldoon.
New Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club Page 4