From somewhere across the lake came a faint hollow thump or knock, and at once Bannister stopped paddling. “Did you hear that?” he said in a low voice. “Someone hit a paddle against the gunwale of a boat.”
They listened, but it didn’t come again, and Bannister went on, but more slowly. “Why only once?” he said. “If it’s someone rowing or paddling carelessly, you’d hear it again.”
“Well, what of it?” said Freddy. “Lots of people must use this lake.”
“Summer people,” Bannister said. “But it’s too early for them. There’s nobody at the Boy Scout camp down at the outlet. If it was an hour or two earlier, it might be somebody trying to get a look at a deer. I don’t say it’s any of our business, but under the circumstances, let’s get in under the shore where they won’t have us against the starlit water.” He paddled on, swiftly and noiselessly.
Halfway between Jones’s Bay and Lakeside they slid in under the loom of the trees that overhung the water and sat silently waiting. A very faint red glow came from somewhere near Stony Point.
“Mr. Camphor hasn’t got a very big fire,” Freddy whispered.
“Better not whisper, sir,” said Bannister. “A whisper carries farther on a still night than if you just speak low.—Ha! Look out there—down the lake a little!”
At first Freddy couldn’t see anything but the reflection of the starlit sky in the water. Then at one spot the stars quivered and shook. Something had disturbed the smooth lake surface. And then a patch of darkness, blotting out the starshine, moved across the water. It glided in towards the Lakeside dock.
They saw a flashlight flicker; someone was walking up the dock towards the hotel. “We’d better get Mr. Camphor,” Freddy murmured, and Bannister’s paddle slid into the water. The canoe swung round and moved back towards Stony Point.
Mr. Camphor walked down to meet them as they beached the canoe. “My goodness, you’re late,” he said. “But Bannister, why did you come over? How are you going to get back?”
“Not so loud!” said Freddy. “Our friend is up at the hotel. Look, I want to do a little sleuthing.” He took off the coonskin cap and handed it to the butler. “You be Dr. Hopper for a while. Sit by the fire with Mr. Camphor, but not so close that anybody can see you very well. I’ll be back.” And he sneaked off up the path to Lakeside.
He crept around to the back of the hotel and crouched under the office window. There was no light inside. The shade was still pulled down, but through the broken pane he could hear a voice speaking in a sharp whisper. “I don’t intend to tell you where Ezra is, my friend. He’s locked up in a safe place. Nothing will happen to him if you obey my orders.”
“Oh now, Mr. Eha, sir,” said an oily voice which Freddy recognized as that of his old enemy Simon; “it isn’t that we don’t trust you; it’s that you don’t trust us. We rats are for you a hundred per cent. We’ve done everything you’ve asked us to …”
“I don’t trust anybody,” the whisperer interrupted. “As long as you obey my orders, I’ll supply you with food—better food, I may point out, than you’ve ever had before in your lives. And Ezra will be well treated. But if you fail to carry out orders—well, you know what will happen to him.”
“But why are you suspicious of us?” Simon whined. “We have been loyal …”
“I don’t expect loyalty; I expect obedience. This is a business arrangement. Each of us has agreed to do certain things. And I intend that you shall carry out your side of the bargain.
“But that’s enough about that,” he said. “Our job here is about done. Mrs. Filmore has been driven away. A day or two more and the hotel will belong to me. Tonight I will take you back to your cottage. Tomorrow night we go to Camphor’s. We’ll start on that place at once. There’s nobody there but old Camphor, his butler, and the two old maid aunts. We’ll proceed in the same way—do enough damage to make the house unlivable, and scare ’em out with the usual ghost stuff. It should take about six weeks. Then we’ll move on to the Bean farm.”
“Ha! The Bean farm!” Simon snarled. “Ever since that fat-faced Freddy and his friends drove us off the place I’ve been waiting to get even. I swore I’d come back some day and live in that barn.”
“You do what you’re told and you’ll get the barn,” said Mr. Eha. “I’ve promised you that. But we’re wasting time. I’ve got to get rid of this camping party. They’re too much interested in what’s been going on at the hotel.”
“If you take my advice you’ll shoot ’em,” said Simon. “They’d be easy to pick off, sitting around their fire.”
“Your advice is stupid,” the other whispered. “A shooting would bring the state troopers up here. They’d talk to Mrs. Filmore, and policemen don’t believe in ghosts, particularly ghosts that shoot off guns. Now you get the rest of your gang and go on down to the dock and wait for me.”
“You going to leave those things here?” said Simon. “Suppose Camphor comes in here and finds them?”
“After the scare I gave him last night?” said Mr. Eha. “He wouldn’t come into this room again after dark for a thousand dollars. Get along.”
Freddy left the window and crept around the far side of the hotel until he reached a corner from which he could see both the front door and the shore end of the dock. Pretty soon there was a scrabbling and scampering on the porch, and he could just make out the dark forms of the rats as they came out of the door and hurried down to Mr. Eha’s canoe. He thought there were about twenty of them. A minute later a figure appeared in the doorway. Even though Freddy knew what it was, it was pretty terrifying. It was draped in something white that fluttered in a very ghostly manner. But the head was the worst. It was the head of some kind of demon, with great round eyes and long tusks, and it glowed with a sort of smoky luminosity.
Freddy shuddered in spite of himself. “Luminous paint, I suppose,” he thought. “Golly, wait till Mr. Camphor and Bannister see that goggling at them! They’ll just give one squawk and fall right over on their faces.” He giggled nervously. “Boy, I’d like to see ’em!”
But when the figure moved on down the path toward the camp, he went up the steps and into the house. For if Mr. Eha had left something in the office, now was his chance to see what it was.
Of course he couldn’t see a thing. The office was pitch black, and it wasn’t much fun feeling around in the darkness from which that horrifying figure had come. As a banker, Freddy didn’t take much stock in ghosts, but as a poet, he had a lively imagination, and he began to think of all the things that he might find: of fingers that might tap him confidentially on the shoulder, of cold hands that might clasp his wrist, of thick, oily groans that might come from that far corner. Then he fell over something and gave a groan himself, for there was a thump, and jaws snapped shut on his leg.
Freddy was good and scared. He thought of steel traps. He thought of alligators. He lay there for a moment and cold perspiration ran down his back under the heavy wool shirt. But the jaws didn’t do anything, and they weren’t very tight. He drew his leg out cautiously, and then felt around on the floor. A suitcase! It had been open when he fell over it, and the lid had come down and caught him.
Freddy was good and scared.
Freddy felt foolish, and you can’t feel foolish and afraid at the same time. He got up and went through the suitcase, feeling of every article. There were some pieces of cloth, and a small bottle, and several things that he couldn’t identify. There were two false faces, and remembering the advice he had once given some one—or someone had once given him—to walk right up to a ghost and say Boo! he took one of them out and put it on. On the back of a chair was a coat—it was certainly Mr. Eha’s, but the pockets were empty except for a few slips of paper, which Freddy took. He didn’t have any matches, so he couldn’t see what they were. He felt of the coat, but the cloth was—well, just cloth. There was nothing he could recognize it by if he saw it again. And yet, wasn’t there something he could do, he wondered, so that if he ever did see i
t again, he would know that the wearer was Mr. Eha?
“Oh, dear,” he thought, “if I only had a knife I could make a little cut somewhere, maybe on the back where he wouldn’t notice it. Then if we just watched for that coat …” He felt in all his pockets. Some string. Half a candy bar. And what was this in the upper shirt pocket? “Good gracious,” he said, “three mothballs! No wonder this shirt never gets the smell aired out of it.” And he was just about to throw them away when he had an idea, and he slipped the mothballs into the outside breast pocket of Mr. Eha’s coat.
Chapter 9
If Mr. Eha had been a real ghost, he could have flitted from Lakeside down to Stony Point and scared Mr. Camphor and Bannister into roaring fits before Freddy had finished exploring the suitcase. But being just a man wrapped up in a sheet and wearing a false face, he had to go pretty slowly along the narrow trail. Freddy overtook him just as he came within sight of the campfire and stopped behind a tree to look over the ground.
Freddy stopped too. The fire had died down to a bed of coals, and Mr. Camphor, who of course had had nothing to eat all day, was mixing flapjacks with the flour Bannister had brought in the canoe. He put a spoonful of batter in the frying pan and held it over the coals, just as Mr. Eha moved out from his tree.
Bannister was sitting on a log a little back from the fire, and when he caught sight of that ghastly figure, he didn’t make a sound, he just fell backwards off the log and lay there with his hands over his face.
Mr. Camphor saw the movement from the corner of his eye. “Tired?” he asked, and flipped the pancake and caught it neatly. “Why don’t you spread out a blanket and take a nap?”
Bannister didn’t reply. Mr. Camphor waited till the flapjack was done, slid it onto a plate, and spooned more batter into the pan. Then as he looked around to see why the butler didn’t answer, he saw the ghost.
“Wow!” he shouted, and jumped up. But he kept hold of the frying pan, though it shook in his hand. He wasn’t so much scared as startled, for he knew this time that there was a man behind the mask.
“Ha!” he said. “A denizen of the underworld! A what-you-may-call-em from the deep dark forest. Approach, what-you-may-call-em, and give me your message.” He turned towards Bannister. “Hey, Banni … that is, Dr. Hopper, we’ve got company.”
Mr. Eha had no intention of coming closer to the light of the fire. He was probably pretty disappointed at the failure of his scheme. Crouching behind his bush, Freddy tried hard not to giggle. “This Eha,” he thought, “isn’t very bright. I suppose he figured they’d just dash for the canoe and paddle off.”
But Mr. Eha stood his ground. There wasn’t much else he could do. If he tried to run, in that sheet, with a heavy mask over his head, they’d catch him in ten seconds. He began to fumble under the sheet—and Freddy got ready to jump out. Mr. Eha probably had a gun.
But he didn’t produce a gun. He took a step forward, and said in a sharp whisper: “Beware, rash mortal! The powers of darkness are all around you. Hark, do you not hear them muttering together? Begone, ere worse befall you.”
“Very fancy language,” said Mr. Camphor. “And as nothing has befell yet, why not sit down and have a flapjack with us?”
“Needs must when the devil drives,” came a shaky voice from behind the log.
“Ha, do you think so, Doctor?” Mr. Camphor said. “We’ll look into that one.” He got up and walked slowly towards Mr. Eha, shaking the frying pan a little to loosen the half-cooked flapjack. “Come along, try these,” he said. “I assure you they’re very good.” And then suddenly with an overhand flip of his arm, he threw the flapjack—plop!—straight into the demon’s face.
He threw the flapjack—plop!—straight into the demon’s face.
Now the under side of the flapjack was toasted a light brown, but the upper side was still uncooked, and it plastered the eyes and nose of the mask with sticky wet dough. Mr. Eha gave a muffled growl and clawed at the dough and then Mr. Camphor threw himself on him, and Bannister rose from behind the log and brought him to the ground with a remarkable flying tackle.
“First down for our side,” Mr. Camphor panted, as the sheeted figure struggled desperately to get away.
“Give the devil his due, sir,” said Bannister. “And I’ll hold his legs while you do it.”
“I know a better one,” Mr. Camphor gasped. “The devil’s not as black as he’s painted. We’ll have a look and see. Wait till I get … mask off.”
There was plenty of fight in Mr. Eha, but he couldn’t get it out—he was wrapped too tightly in the sheet. Mr. Camphor got a hand free and ripped off the false face but under it was a black mask, with eyeholes, that fitted over Eha’s forehead and eyes and nose. And before Mr. Camphor could get that off, Freddy appeared.
Now Freddy had forgotten that he still wore the false face that he’d found in the suitcase, and he didn’t at all realize what he looked like when he came tearing out to the rescue. Mr. Camphor had been prepared for a man disguised as a ghost. But when he and Bannister looked up and saw this undersized creature with the head of a gorilla rushing apparently to attack them, it is not surprising that they jumped up and backed away in terror. And then before Freddy could figure out what was the matter and take the false face off, Mr. Eha had scrambled to his feet, and the last they saw of him that night was the flicker of a flashlight and a vanishing flutter of white down the trail that led to Lakeside.
Chapter 10
At the first pale glimmer of dawn Freddy crawled out of his sleeping bag. Mr. Camphor, in the other bag, and Bannister, rolled up in a blanket, seemed to be having a snoring competition. Freddy listened a minute and awarded the prize to Bannister—his snores weren’t as loud, but they had more variety. Then he went down and washed in the lake.
The light was growing, and the eastern sky began to glow red, as if some giant had opened a furnace door behind the hills. Freddy sat down and watched it and sniffed the fresh morning smells of water and pine and spruce and damp earth, and he thought: “My goodness, I didn’t know camping was so nice. But am I hungry! Don’t suppose I ought to start the fire till they get up though. Maybe I won’t be so hungry if I make up a poem.”
So he started one. It went to the tune of Mandalay. He sang it:
By the old hotel at Lakeside, looking southward ’cross the sea,
There’s a bright campfire a’burning, and I know it burns for me.
For the wind is in the pine trees, and the murmuring needles say:
Come you back, you pig detective—come you back to Jones’s Bay;
Come you baaaack to Jones’s Ba-a-a-ay!
Then he went on with the chorus, a little louder. And gradually—as sometimes happens to poets—his hunger for breakfast got mixed up in the poem, so that the chorus went like this:
Oh, the road to Jones’s Bay! Where the flying flapjacks play!
You can hear the bacon sizzling from your bed at break of day.
On the road to Jones’s Ba-hay, we will sing and shout hooray;
A-and when your breakfast’s ready, they will bring it o-on a tray!
“Well, well,” he said, “I guess I’d better do something to take my mind off my stomach.” There was a cold flapjack left over from last night lying on a plate beside the fireplace. He picked it up and took a bite out of it, but even the sharpest appetite will blunt itself on a cold flapjack. He started to throw it in the lake, then put it in the frying pan and practiced flipping it. He thought he would practice until he could make it turn three complete somersaults without missing the pan when it came down, and would then astonish Mr. Camphor with his skill.
But after ten minutes he had dropped the flapjack so many times that it was about worn out. And the snoring competition in the lean-to was still going on. He thought: “My gracious, I’m neglecting my detective duties. They won’t wake up for another hour. I’d better go up and snoop around the hotel.” So he did.
It wasn’t very good snooping. The office and the lounge offer
ed no clues. It wasn’t until he started down the dock that he found the handkerchief. An ordinary white handkerchief with EHA marked on one corner in indelible ink. “So Eha is really his name,” he thought. “But what does that get me? I still don’t know where he lives.” And he was thinking this over when a little squeaky voice said somewhere: “Help!”
Freddy looked all around but couldn’t see anybody. “Where are you?” he called.
“In the boathouse.”
There were a number of canoes and row-boats on racks in the boathouse. Back of them, and hung from a hook in the ceiling was a big rat trap—a square wire cage with a spring door. In it was a rat.
Rats look a good deal alike,—and so for that matter do squirrels and pigs and elephants. But when you get to know them, you find that they differ in looks as much as people do. Freddy had known Simon and his family pretty well, and he recognized this rat at once as Simon’s son, Ezra, the one that Mr. Eha was holding as hostage for his family’s good behavior.
As soon as he saw Freddy, Ezra sat up and put his forepaws against the wire and began begging to be let out.
Ezra put his forepaws against the wire and began begging to be let out.
“Now wait a minute,” said Freddy, realizing that the rat hadn’t recognized him, “if Mrs. Filmore caught you in this trap, I can’t let you out without her permission.”
“Mrs. Filmore didn’t have anything to do with it,” Ezra squeaked. “Who are you, anyway? I never saw you before.”
“Well, I know who you are,” said Freddy. “If I’m not mistaken, you’re closely related to a rat that lived in my barn all one winter. Old Simon. Fine, sturdy old fellow, Simon; we got to be great pals. You look enough like him to be his son.”
Freddy Goes Camping Page 6