Freddy and Simon the Dictator

by Walter R. Brooks

  “Dear me,” said Mr. Camphor, “did I really? But of course I was bored. Nine out of ten political speeches are just a lot of hot air. Good gracious, even my own speeches bore me to death. I can hardly keep awake to finish them.”

  “Very damaging admission,” said Colonel Buglett.

  “I don’t see it,” said Mr. Camphor. “I should think the audience, being bored too, would feel sympathetic towards me.”

  Judge Anguish said: “Political speeches are not supposed to say anything important. The perfect political speech expresses a lot of noble but very vague sentiments in extremely high-flown language. That’s what brings out the votes.”

  Freddy thought of the flowery speeches that his friend Charles, the rooster, made, and of the enthusiastic applause they brought out, although ten minutes after Charles had finished, nobody could remember what he had said.

  “General Wiggins had several other objections,” Freddy went on. “He said that he esteemed you highly as an assistant, but that there were several things about you that made you undesirable as a figure who must appear dignified on public platforms and on public occasions. The General mentioned specially that at a rally in Syracuse you slapped two babies instead of kissing them—”

  “Of course I slapped them,” said Mr. Camphor. “When I started to kiss them, they bit me.”

  “He also said,” Freddy went on, “that he felt that your habit of eating gumdrops in public was highly undignified. Particularly, when someone in the audience asks you a question, and you can’t get your jaws apart to answer it.”

  “I have always eaten gumdrops,” said Mr. Camphor. “I am very fond of gumdrops. Particularly the licorice ones. If I have to give up gumdrops in order to become governor, then I renounce the honor. As to dignity, I have never pretended to be dignified. When dignity is needed, I summon my butler. That is what I hire him for. Bannister!” he called.

  A very tall man in a black coat with tails came out of the house and crossed the terrace to stand beside Mr. Camphor’s chair. He was so dignified that he didn’t look at Mr. Camphor; he held his head up very high and looked out across the lake. “You rang, sir?” he asked.

  “I yelled,” said Mr. Camphor.

  “Just so, sir,” said Bannister.

  “We need a little dignity, Bannister.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the man. “Thank you, sir.” And he continued to stand staring out superciliously over the water.

  “By George!” Senator Blunder exclaimed. “You really haven’t much dignity, Camphor. I never realized it before.”

  “It’s what I’ve been telling you,” Mr. Camphor replied. “I’m not fit to be governor.”

  “Now, now,” Judge Anguish interrupted, “you promised, Camphor. And it’s too late to change now. Why, we’ve got the ballots all printed with your name on them. Do you realize what that costs?”

  “And there’s no reason why you can’t lay off gumdrops, at least in public, for a while,” put in Mr. Slurp.

  “He can’t lay off giggling,” said Freddy. “That’s the thing that seemed most serious of all to General Wiggins. It doesn’t matter whether he’s addressing the legislature or laying a cornerstone—he giggles all the time. Even in church, he giggles. The General says we don’t want a giggling governor.”

  “Certainly not,” said the Judge. “But is that so, Camphor? I hadn’t noticed that you giggled.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Mr. Camphor. “Can’t seem to help it, somehow. At the solemnest moments. Te-hee! There I go now. Hee-hee-hee!” He giggled violently.

  “Good gracious!” Senator Blunder exclaimed. “This is serious! I’m glad we found it out. Still … Camphor’s the man we want. Isn’t there some cure for it—can’t something be done, Dr. Hopper? We can keep him away from babies, and we can make him promise to swear off gumdrops. Can’t you give him some treatment for these giggles?”

  Before Freddy could reply, Bannister suddenly spoke. He didn’t move, and his eyes still looked off across the lake. “Laugh and the world laughs with you,” he said.

  Freddy remembered how fond Mr. Camphor and Bannister were of proverbs. They were always arguing about them, and testing them out to see if they were true. Now Mr. Camphor stopped giggling. “Maybe you’re right, Bannister,” he said, “but it isn’t so that giggle and the world giggles with you. The world just thinks you’re silly.”

  “Dear me,” said Mr. Slurp; “what do you think, gentlemen—it’s pretty late in the day to drop Camphor from the ticket, but after all—a giggler!”

  “Not dignified, no,” said Judge Anguish. “But perhaps there’s been too much dignity in government. We like it. But do the people like it? You know, gentlemen, I have a hunch that they’d like a little less dignity and more giggles. Yes, gentlemen, that gives me an idea. The first new idea in politics in a hundred years. There’s our slogan: ‘Laugh and the world laughs with you.’ And instead of making the usual speeches, all full of campaign promises, Camphor will tell jokes and giggle. Camphor, the giggling governor! It’s a natural, gentlemen. It will be a landslide!”

  “I believe you’re right, Anguish,” said the Senator; and Colonel Buglett said: “You’ve got something there.” Mr. Slurp and Mr. Glockenspiel nodded approval.

  “Shucks!” said Mr. Camphor disgustedly. He looked up at Bannister. “Oh, go away,” he said. “You and your dignity!”

  The committee had gone into a huddle. Each one had a favorite joke that he was trying to suggest for Mr. Camphor’s speeches, and each was laughing so hard at his own joke that he heard nothing the others said. Bannister glanced at them, then bent down. “He who laughs last, laughs best,” he said. He winked at Freddy, whom he had, of course, recognized, since he had seen the Dr. Hopper disguise before. Then he bowed stiffly and turned and marched into the house.

  CHAPTER

  4

  While the committee were roaring and laughing at their jokes, Mr. Camphor motioned Freddy to come down to the other end of the terrace.

  “What do we do now?” he asked. “My goodness, it gets worse and worse. Now I’m not only going to be governor, I’m going to be a giggling governor.”

  The pig said he was sorry. “They were the best things I could think of offhand. Don’t worry, Jimson. I’ll think of something.” So he thought for a minute.

  Mr. Camphor could see that he was thinking, because he shut his eyes and put on a fiercely determined look. But when presently he opened his eyes, he shook his head. “No good,” he said. “Thinking’s like fishing. You bait your hook and throw it in the water, but if there aren’t any fish around, you naturally can’t catch anything. There isn’t an idea around anywhere right now. I’ll try again later.”

  So Mr. Camphor sighed and said: “Well, come in the house then; I want to show you something.”

  In the living room, a lady was sitting by the window, reading. She was rather fluttery looking; there were little ribbons all over her dress, and as she read, her hands kept moving and fluttering, and she nodded, and pursed her lips, and laughed a little tinkling laugh all the time as if she were trying to entertain a visitor instead of reading a book.

  “Miss Anguish,” said Mr. Camphor, “may I present Dr. Henry Hopper? This is the Judge’s sister, Miss Lydia Anguish, Henry.”

  Miss Anguish jumped up, and the book fell on the table, and several bits of ribbon floated off her dress. “Oh, dear me,” said Miss Anguish; “how very interesting! Not Henry Hopper, the distinguished movie actor?” And she reached out to shake hands. She held her hand so high up that Freddy had to stand on tiptoe to take it.

  “Movie actor? … No,” he said. “Is there a Henry Hopper in the movies? I don’t remember seeing him.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, and gave a tittering laugh. “You look so much like a distinguished movie actor that I just thought that you—well, that you must be one. And then if you were, why then your name would be Henry Hopper, because that is your name.”

  “Er—yes, so it would,” sai
d Freddy. Then he repeated, “So it would,” because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. He glanced sideways at Mr. Camphor, but Mr. Camphor was looking up at the ceiling, with his mouth pursed as if about to whistle. Then Freddy caught sight of himself in the mirror. There was certainly nobody in the movies who even remotely resembled what he saw—unless it was one of the dwarfs in Snow-White.

  Miss Anguish was looking expectantly at him but he couldn’t think of anything else to say. To conceal his embarrassment, he picked up the book she had dropped. He was surprised to see that it was one of the series of books in which his own adventures had been related by a Mr. Brooks, the official historian of the Bean farm, who occasionally came out and spent a week or so at the farmhouse.

  “Such an interesting book,” said Miss Anguish. “Have you read it? All about animals that talk. Imagine!”

  Mr. Camphor’s eyes came down from the ceiling and he said: “It’s all true, too. I know those animals; the pig, Freddy, is quite a friend of mine. He lives only a few miles from here.”

  “Oh come, Jimson—really!” said Freddy. “You mustn’t expect us to believe that stuff.”

  “What’s so incredible?” said Mr. Camphor. “You can talk; pig can talk. He’s rather your build too, Doctor. If you’d like to see him and talk to him, Miss Anguish, I’ll drive you down someday. Maybe he’d recite some of his poetry for you.”

  “A poetic pig!” Miss Anguish exclaimed. “What won’t they think of next!”

  “You oughtn’t to talk like that, Jimson,” said Freddy, when they had gone through into the dining room. “Somebody’ll get on to me if you aren’t careful.”

  “That one wouldn’t get on to anything if you dressed up that horse of Bean’s in a toga and introduced him as Julius Caesar. If she didn’t quite see the likeness, you could point out that Hank has a Roman nose. Oh, probably I shouldn’t have done it, Freddy, but I couldn’t resist it; you look so darned funny in that outfit. … Oh dear, I hope I haven’t hurt your feelings!”

  “It isn’t me you’re laughing at—it’s the disguise,” said Freddy. “I’d probably laugh at you if you were disguised as a pig. I’d be sore if you laughed at my looks when I didn’t have the disguise on, though.”

  “I guess people only look ridiculous when they try to look like something they aren’t,” said Mr. Camphor. “Whether it’s false whiskers they put on, or just a very noble and heroic expression. Like that rooster friend of yours when he makes a patriotic speech. He’s probably patriotic all right, but his speeches are just too patriotic to be true.

  “But here, Freddy, this is what I wanted to show you.” He opened a drawer in the sideboard and took out a white handkerchief. It had the initials W.F.B. embroidered in one corner. “Those are Mr. Bean’s initials, aren’t they?”

  “Sure. It’s his handkerchief.”

  “I was afraid so. Well, Freddy, five hundred dollars was stolen last night from the top of the dresser in Senator Blunder’s room, and this handkerchief was found on the floor in front of the dresser. Now in the first place, if Mr. Bean was going to rob my house, he wouldn’t be foolish enough to leave his handkerchief behind. And in the second place, Mr. Bean is an honest man and wouldn’t rob my house anyway.” He hesitated a minute. “I guess I didn’t need that part about the first place, did I? However, Senator Blunder doesn’t know Mr. Bean, and he wanted to call the police in right away. But I persuaded him to wait a while.”

  “How did he know the initials were Mr. Bean’s?” Freddy asked.

  “He went through all the B’s in the Centerboro phone book till he found somebody they fitted. I told him I knew Mr. Bean and I was sure he was too busy on his farm to go in for burgling, and I said he was a good party man and had always voted for Senator Blunder—did he, do you know, Freddy?”

  “Have no idea.”

  “Well, let’s hope he did. Because it wasn’t until I said that a headline in all the papers—Prominent Republican Jailed for Theft—might have a bad effect on the election, that he agreed to wait a few days. But I had to promise that if I couldn’t find the thief and get the money back, I’d make up the five hundred myself. So I hope you can find the thief, Freddy. But I guess it’ll be quite a job. You don’t really think it could be Mr. Bean, do you?”

  “It wasn’t Mr. Bean,” said the pig. “This handkerchief proves it.”

  “My gracious, it would prove it was Mr. Bean to a policeman. Of course, Mr. Bean is our friend, and we know he doesn’t go round burgling houses; but I don’t see how his leaving his handkerchief here proves that he doesn’t.”

  Freddy said: “Look at the handkerchief. It’s clean. But it hasn’t been ironed. What does that tell you?” And when Mr. Camphor just looked blank, he went on. “It tells you that Mr. Bean didn’t drop it there. Because when Mrs. Bean does a washing, she hangs it on the clothesline, and when it’s dry, she takes it in and sprinkles it and irons it, and puts it away. There’s no way that Mr. Bean would get a clean handkerchief but by going to his bureau drawer and getting one that had been ironed. Unless he took an unironed one off the line, and Mrs. Bean wouldn’t let him do that.

  “But there was somebody that took a handkerchief off the line the other night. A bunch of rabbits deliberately pulled Mrs. Bean’s clothesline down, and some things were stolen.”

  A bunch of rabbits deliberately pulled Mrs. Bean’s clothesline down.

  He went on and told Mr. Camphor about the trouble on the farm and the mysterious speaker at the Grimby house meetings, who was trying to stir up the animals to revolt and task over the farms from their human owners.

  “You know,” he said, “this sort of thing has been tried before. Remember when Mr. Anderson and the rats drove everybody out of that summer hotel across the lake and took it over? And tried to scare the Beans out of their house? And the time that woodpecker came and made himself dictator, and tried to build an animal empire out of the F.A.R.?

  “But this seems to me more serious. This time somebody’s trying to set the animals against the humans, make an animal empire in which the humans will work for the animals, instead of the other way round. It won’t work, of course. The humans will win out in the end. But there’ll be an awful lot of trouble if we can’t break it up here, before it gets started.”

  “It’s a long way from stealing Blunder’s money to building an empire,” said Mr. Camphor. “And the idea of a rabbit burglar is almost as incredible to me as a rabbit emperor.”

  “Well, for one thing,” Freddy said, “whoever is stirring up all this business isn’t a rabbit, I’m sure. And the burglar wasn’t necessarily a rabbit, either. There were lots of other animals at that meeting. Couldn’t a squirrel have got in the Senator’s window last night?”

  “The window was open. I suppose he could. But the important thing is to get the money back. Do you think you can, Freddy?”

  “It’ll be a job. My guess is that the burglars had two objects in stealing the money: to put some cash in their war chest, and to start stirring up trouble among the humans. That’s the way the Communists do; they go into a country and get everybody fighting everybody else, and when the whole country is in an uproar, they step in and seize the power and anything else that isn’t nailed down. And the way this speaker up at the Grimby house is talking to the animals is the Communist way. Tell a big lie, and the first time, nobody believes it much. Like the Beans having rabbit stew. But keep repeating it, and by and by somebody says: ‘I wonder if maybe they did have rabbit stew!’ And then it’s told and repeated so often that everybody comes to believe it.”

  “Well, my goodness, Freddy,” Mr. Camphor said, “I think you ought to go back home and put a stop to these revolutionists. That is much more important than my little troubles. I’ll get out of being governor some way. No, no; you go on back. And if in the course of your work you do find the money—well, I’ll be very grateful.”

  But Freddy shook his head. “There’s nothing much I can do right now,” he said, “that the A.B.I.
can’t do better. It’s a question of getting more information about whoever runs these meetings. And about—oh, a lot of things. I can just as well stay up here for a few days and let Mr. Pomeroy gather the facts for me. Because we can’t take any action until we know a lot more than we do now about who’s back of this business. And in the meantime, we can work out some scheme to get the committee to withdraw your name from the ticket.”

  “My goodness, if giggling won’t make them drop me, I don’t know what else we can do. How silly can a governor get?”

  “I’ll think of something,” said Freddy. “In fact,” he added suddenly, “I have thought of something. Come on back out on the terrace. Now you back me up in everything I say—O.K.?”

  “Sure, sure. Shall I giggle?”

  “No, they like that. Be very solemn and serious. This’ll fix ’em.”

  As they went back through the living room, Miss Anguish looked up. “Oh, Dr. Hopper,” she tittered, “do sit down beside me and tell me all about Hollywood. I’m sure you must have had some perfectly thrilling experiences.”

  “I assure you, ma’am,” said Freddy, “all I know about the lives of film stars is what I see on the screen. I have never been in Hollywood.”

  Miss Anguish drew her chin in and the corners of her mouth went down and her lower lip was pushed out, as she looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “Oh, you just say that!” she said with a sniffle. “I think you’re mean!”

  Freddy looked at Mr. Camphor, but the latter just shrugged. So Freddy shrugged back, and then he sat down beside Miss Anguish and said: “But perhaps you’d be interested in my last year’s trip through the solar system.” And he told her of the attempt which Mr. Bean’s Uncle Ben and some of the animals had made to reach Mars, in the Benjamin Bean Space Ship. The story of this has been related elsewhere, and so I won’t repeat it. Miss Anguish was thrilled by it, but when Freddy had finished, and rose and excused himself, she said: “Well, if you must go … But you must promise to come back later and tell me about your adventures in Hollywood.”