“The clock is gone,” he panted.
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Wiggins. “He couldn’t if he wanted to. And besides, he isn’t that kind of a rooster. I’m going out to see for myself.”
The other animals followed her, and when they came to the place where the phaeton had been left, there was no phaeton there. But they found prints of muddy shoes all about the place, and the marks of the wheels in the muddy road were as plain as plain could be, so that they very soon knew what had happened.
“Charles and Henrietta were sleeping under the shawl,” said Eek. “They made us get out. Probably they were captured in their sleep and didn’t have a chance to call out to us.”
“Here’s one of Charles’s tail feathers,” cried Alice. “He wasn’t captured without a struggle, you may be sure of that.” She was a great admirer of Charles.
“We’d better start right away to follow these wheel marks,” said Robert. “If we can find where the carriage has been taken to, maybe we can rescue them.”
So they followed the marks on down the hill, and they led straight back the way the animals had come from Florida, until they came to the road that went down to the house where the man with the black moustache lived. And they turned down that road.
None of the animals said very much as they plodded along through the mist to the rescue of their friends. For they knew now that the man with the black moustache had stolen the carriage, and he was a dangerous and desperate character whom it would be hard to get the best of. Even Mr. Webb was worried. “He’s a bad man,” he said to his wife. “He’d squash a spider as soon as look at him.” And Mrs. Webb shuddered.
Pretty soon they came near the house, and Jack said: “You’d better let me go ahead now, because I used to live here and I know my way round.” So he led them by a back way round to where they could peek in the barn window, and sure enough, there was the phaeton, standing on the barn floor beside the rickety automobile. But the gold was not in it, and there was no sign of Charles and Henrietta.
Although the mist was so thick that they could not be seen from the house, they did not dare stay near the barn for fear that the man with the black moustache might come out and find them there. So the four mice said they would sneak up to the house and try to get in and find Charles and Henrietta, and the other animals went back and waited for them a little way down the road.
After quite a long time the mice came back, and the animals all crowded round them eagerly. “Did you see them?” they asked. “Are they all right? Did you find where the money is?”
“We didn’t find out anything,” said Eek. “We didn’t even get into the house. I never saw such a house! Not a crack to get in by anywhere, and all the old mouse holes with pieces of tin nailed over them. We couldn’t even get down the chimney, because there was a fire in the stove. He certainly is a mean man!”
“They’re there, though,” said Quik, “because we heard them talking. And Charles is there too, because we heard him crying.”
“Poor thing” said Mrs. Wiggins. “But we’ll get him out, if we have to tear the whole house down with our horns and claws and beaks and hoofs! Won’t we, animals?”
“We will! We certainly will!” cried the determined travellers.
“But the first thing,” she continued, “is to find out where Charles and Henrietta are, and the second thing is to find where the money is; then we can make a plan. Has anybody anything to suggest?”
“I want to suggest something,” shouted Mr. Webb. But nobody heard him. So he crawled down into Mrs. Wiggins’s ear and stamped around until he tickled her, and then told her, and she told the others. He had an idea that he could get into the house through a keyhole, if Robert would carry him up to the door.
This seemed a good idea to everyone except Mrs. Webb, who thought it too dangerous. Indeed, she burst into tears at the very thought. “No, no, Hubert,” she sobbed. “I can’t let you go. You said yourself he was a wicked man. Suppose he should see you and hit you with a newspaper or something. I should never forgive myself if I let you go.”
Mr. Webb, however, was firm in his decision, as spiders are apt to be, and, having kissed his weeping wife tenderly on the forehead, he jumped down on to Robert’s back and they started.
At the front door he got down, and while Robert hid behind a bush to wait for him, he crawled up and squeezed in through the keyhole. It was gloomy inside, because the windows were rather dirty, but that didn’t bother Mr. Webb, and he walked up the wall as easily as you would walk up your own front steps, and then he walked across the ceiling to the front parlour, where he heard voices.
The reason he walked on the ceiling was because that was the safest place for him to be. He knew that on the walls or the floor he was much more likely to be seen, but people hardly ever look up at the ceiling except when they are in bed. And then, too, if you see a spider on the floor, it is easy to run over and step on him, but that is a pretty difficult thing to do if he is on the ceiling.
So Mr. Webb walked boldly into the front parlour on the ceiling. The man with the black moustache and the dirty-faced boy were sitting at a table counting the gold coins they had stolen from the animals. They would count twenty, and then they would wrap them up in a piece of newspaper and pack them away in a big canvas bag. But they didn’t get on very fast because they both counted out loud, and they kept mixing each other up and having to start all over again. Mr. Webb watched them for a while; then, hearing a noise in the far corner of the room, he walked over and saw Charles and Henrietta lying, with their feet tied, in a box beside the stove. Charles was lying on his back and staring gloomily at the ceiling, but Henrietta was picking busily with her beak at the knots in the string, and Mr. Webb saw that she had very nearly got herself loose.
All at once Charles caught sight of the spider. “Hey!” he shouted. “Mr. Webb! Oh, my golly, I’m glad to see you! How did you find us? Are the others all here?”
“What’s the matter with those chickens?” said the boy. “Do you suppose one of ’em’s laid an egg?”
“Eighteen, nineteen, twenty—it’ll be the last egg it ever lays, then,” said the man with a coarse laugh. “Day after to-morrow’s Sunday,” he added meaningly.
Mr. Webb hurried down the wall and climbed to the edge of the box. “For goodness’ sake, Charles, keep still!” he whispered. “Henrietta, do you think you can get those strings off?”
Henrietta nodded without stopping her work.
“Very good, then,” said Mr. Webb. “Get them loose enough so that you can get out of them quickly, but don’t take them off, because it might be noticed. And I’ll see what I can do. Cheer up, Charles,” he added, slapping the unhappy rooster heartily on the back. “We won’t desert you.”
On the wall, in a gilt frame, was a large picture of a man with a grey moustache, who was the father of the man with the black moustache and the grandfather of the dirty-faced boy. Mr. Webb walked down into the darkness behind this picture, and sat down cross-legged on the dusty picture wire and tried to think of a plan. But though he thought of a good many, there was just one thing the matter with all of them—they wouldn’t work.
“I’m wasting precious time here,” he thought. “I’d better go back and tell the animals and let them try to think of something, since I can’t.” And he started up the wire toward the ceiling.
But just at the edge of the picture frame he caught sight of a fly. The fly was sound asleep. It had had a very hearty breakfast that morning of jelly and cream and egg that the man with the black moustache had spilled on the table-cloth at his breakfast, and it had flown up on to the picture frame to take a little nap before going down to lunch on more jelly and cream and egg.
Mr. Webb, however, had not had any breakfast, so he crept up quietly behind the fly and grabbed it by the leg. The fly buzzed and struggled, but Mr. Webb held on, and then it stopped struggling and said: “O, Mr. Spider—good, kind Mr. Spider, please let me go. Please don’t eat me. If you won’t eat me
, I’ll do anything you want me to.”
Now most spiders would not have paid any attention, but would have gobbled the fly up then and there. But Mr. Webb had a very kind heart, and married life had further softened him, so that he paused. And while he was pausing, a thought came to him.
“If you’ll give me your word to do exactly as I tell you,” he said, “I’ll let you go. What’s more, I’ll go away out of this house and won’t come back again. But if you don’t do it, then I and my wife and all my relations will come and live in this house and eat you all up.”
The fly promised, and Mr. Webb let him go. “Now,” he said, “you go out and get all your relations and neighbours and meet me in the hall, and I’ll tell you what I want you to do.”
So the fly slipped outdoors through the keyhole in the front door, and pretty soon he came back, and with him were all his family and neighbours. Young flies and stout, middle-aged flies and old grandfather flies with no teeth and old grandmother flies with the rheumatism in their wings—they came pouring in through the keyhole and formed in a wide circle around Mr. Webb on the hall ceiling. And Mr. Webb made a long speech and explained the situation and told them just what they were to do. And immediately they started in to do it.
First they flew into the front parlour and lit on the ceiling. Then when Mr. Webb saw that Henrietta had untied the last knot and had got Charles’s feet as well as her own free, he said: “Go!” And the flies jumped into the air and began whirling round the room, buzzing as loud as they could. And the youngest and most active ones pestered the man and the boy. Two or three of them would light on the man’s nose and dance round with all six feet so as to tickle as much as possible. And when he raised his hand to brush them off, they would fly over and tickle the back of the boy’s neck. In a few minutes both the man and the boy were pretty nearly crazy. They stopped counting coins, and folded up newspapers and tried to slap the flies, but as soon as they did that, all the flies would go up to the ceiling. And then as soon as they laid the newspapers down, the flies would start in again.
“Phoo!” said the man. “Whoosh! Get away, you things! I don’t see where they come from. There wasn’t one here five minutes ago.”
“It’s no good trying to swat them,” said the boy. “Poof! Get out of my ear! They seem to be trying to get out of the window. Let’s open it, and maybe they’ll go out.”
The man looked at the window, where forty or fifty flies were walking round on the glass. “If it weren’t for those animals, I’d open it,” he said. “But I’m afraid they’ll be round here somewhere after their gold. They’re a pretty smart set of animals, and I shan’t feel safe until we have taken the gold into the village to-morrow morning, and put it in the bank. You remember what they did to us last fall.”
“I’d rather have forty animals in here than all these flies,” said the boy. “Besides, we can watch, and if we see them coming, we can slam the window down again.” And he went and unlocked the window and threw it open, and stood beside it to put it down again when all the flies were out.
But although the flies streamed out by tens and dozens, as soon as they got outside, they went round to the front door and came in again through the keyhole, as Mr. Webb had instructed them to. So that although they had stopped bothering, there seemed to be just as many in the room as there were before. And for every dozen that flew out of the window, twelve came in through the keyhole.
“My goodness,” said the boy, “there’s no end to them.”
“Well, we’ll have to leave the window open, that’s all,” said the man. “Come, sit down and let’s get these coins counted.” And they started counting again, keeping a sharp look-out on the window.
Now, this was just what Mr. Webb had hoped they would do, and he motioned to Charles and Henrietta, who had been peering anxiously over the edge of the box. The man and the boy were watching the window, so that they did not see their two prisoners climb cautiously out of the box and tiptoe toward them. Charles was almost dead with fright, but he followed Henrietta until they stood just under the table. And then, at a signal from Mr. Webb, the flies all whirled down and began walking up and down the man’s nose and buzzing in the boy’s ears and generally plaguing them twice as much as they had before. And while they waved their arms to drive the flies off, and shut their eyes to keep the flies out of them, Charles and Henrietta hopped on the window-sill and down on the grass outside, and than ran for their lives.
Then Mr. Webb went out into the hall and the flies gathered round him, and he made them a little speech of thanks, and then dismissed them. As he followed the last fly out through the keyhole, he heard the parlour window go shut with a bang, and then the boy called: “Hey, pa! Pa! Look, pa! The chickens are gone!”
He chuckled to himself. “That’s a good job done,” he said. “But now how are we going to get the gold?”
XX
You may believe that Charles and Henrietta were glad to see their friends again, and that their friends were glad to see them. Charles shook hands with the dogs and Freddy and Hank and the mice, and Henrietta kissed the ducks and Mrs. Wiggins. She almost put Mrs. Wiggins’s eye out with her beak. Then she would have kissed Mrs. Webb, but Mrs. Webb begged to be excused.
“Now, animals,” said Robert, “we’ve got to hold a council of war. We’ve got to get that gold, and we’ve got to get it before to-morrow morning, because Henrietta says they intend to take it into the village and put it in the bank to-morrow, and if they do that, we’ll never see it again.”
“We’ve got to get into the house somehow,” said Jinx, “and it must be after dark, when they can’t see us get in. So the flies can’t help us any; they’ll all be asleep. Now, how can we make them open a window or a door?”
“Mr. Bean always opens a window for fresh air when he goes to bed,” said Hank.
“You can take my word for it, this man doesn’t do that,” said Henrietta. “I never smelt such a stuffy house in my life.”
“Mr. Bean spilt some grease on the stove once,” said Robert, “and he opened the window to let the smoke out.”
“Yes, but we can’t get in to put anything on the stove,” said Eek.
“Wait a minute,” said Jinx suddenly. “That gives me an idea. Yes, I know how we can work it,” he said excitedly. And he explained his plan, which, as you will see later, was a pretty clever one, even for a cat to think of.
Nothing could be done until late that night, so for the rest of the day the animals sat round in the woods, keeping well out of sight of the house. They tried to play games to pass away the time, but home was so near, and they were all so anxious to get there, and so impatient of the delay, that the games didn’t seem much fun. But at last the sun went down and the long shadows crept out of the woods and hid the grass and trees, and the stars began to wink and twinkle in the dark-blue sky. Even then the animals did not start to carry out their plan, and it was not until about nine o’clock, when the light in the house had gone out and they knew that the man and the boy had gone to bed, that Jinx said it was time to go.
Then they all went into a field that was near the house, and Freddy with his sharp nose and Hank with the toes of his iron shoes tore up by the roots a good-sized heap of grass. This they carried up close to the house, and then Jinx took as much as he could carry and climbed up the back porch on to the roof and dropped it down the chimney. Then he went down and carried up another piece, and he kept on doing this until the chimney was all plugged up.
Inside the house the man and the boy were sound asleep, with the bag of gold by the head of their bed. Fortunately for the animals, they had made up a big fire in the stove so that they wouldn’t have to build a new one in the morning, and pretty soon the smoke that couldn’t get up through the chimney began to pour out into the front parlour. And from the front parlour it went into the hall and up the stairs, and at last into the bedroom. And then it got into the boy’s throat and woke him up.
“Fire!” he yelled, jumping out of
bed. “Fire! Wake up, pa! The house is on fire!”
In a minute they were both up and rushing down the stairs in their white night-shirts, dragging the heavy bag of gold after them. Bump, bump, clink, jingle it went. They unlocked the front door and rushed out into the yard, and there they dropped the bag and sat down on it, panting. Then they looked up at the house.
“Why, the house isn’t afire!” said the man.
“Where does the smoke come from then?” asked the boy.
“I don’t know,” said his father. “Must be a fire somewhere. We’d better go back and see.” So they dragged the bag of gold back into the house, but they left the front door open behind them in case the fire should break out suddenly.
The animals, who had been hiding behind trees and bushes, now crept up closer to the door, and as soon as they heard the man and the boy moving round in the front parlour, they tiptoed into the house. Jinx and the mice hurried upstairs into the bedroom, and while Jinx carried the two pairs of shoes into another room and hid them under a bureau, the mice gnawed all the buttons off the clothes. Freddy and Robert and Jack hid under the dining-room table, and Hank hid most of himself behind the long velvet curtains at the dining-room window, although his head and tail showed. They made a good deal of noise getting in, but the man and the boy were talking excitedly and throwing up windows to let the smoke out, and didn’t hear them. Even when Mrs. Wiggins knocked over the umbrella-stand in the hall, they didn’t notice it.
When the animals were all in the house and Mrs. Wiggins had lain down in a corner of the dining-room with a red table-cloth thrown over her so as to look as much as possible like a piece of furniture, Jinx came to the head of the stairs and began to make noises. A cat can make terrible noises when he really tries, and Jinx was really trying. He moaned and groaned and howled and yowled, and in a minute the man and the boy came out into the hall. They were very much frightened, and the animals could see that their knees were shaking under the edges of their night-shirts.
Freddy Goes to Florida Page 10