The Brown Fox Mystery (20 page)

“Oh, brother!” said Socker Furlong, and his eyes flitted from Sandy MacHatchet to Lieutenant Martin, and then to the two state troopers. “I hope all you flat-footed gentlemen are taking this all in!”

“Then,” Djuna said with a grin at Socker Furlong, “just to make sure that Jones and Baldwin were up to something that didn’t have anything to do with the sawdust they were shipping away, I asked the freight agent if he would telegraph to Raritan and ask the agent there if any of the sawdust they had shipped there had been called for.

“He didn’t want to do it at first, but after I told him it might help us to find Miss Annie he said he would. The freight agent at Raritan said none of the sawdust had been called for, and that the firm it had been sent to wasn’t even in the telephone book. So then I was
sure
those men had gone back to the icehouse through the woods so that they could finish whatever they were doing,” Djuna explained.

“Why didn’t you come and tell us these things, Djuna?” Lieutenant Martin said sternly.

“Because he was afraid you might butt in and spoil things!” said Socker Furlong with a grin.

“No, that wasn’t the reason,” said Djuna earnestly. “A few minutes later I had a telegram from Socker saying he and Mr. MacHatchet—”

“Sandy, to you, young fellah!” said Sandy.

“—saying he and
Sandy
would arrive in Lakeville as soon as possible. I asked the station man about trains they could get and he told me there was one at eight-thirty last night and another at one this morning. I knew that Mr. Furlong and Mr. MacHatchet would understand how I’d figured out things because—because I’ve worked with them before, and I thought you and Captain Ben, and everyone, would think I was crazy if I began to tell you about things I couldn’t prove, and about Miss Annie’s long summer underwear,” Djuna said.

“Thanks, pal!” Socker Furlong put in. “Those are the kindest words I’ve heard in a long, long time.”

“Besides,” Tommy said, “when I asked Mr. Holsapple, the Chief of Police, what we could do he said, ‘You can go home and keep out of the way.’”

“Why, Mr. Holsapple!” said Socker Furlong in mock horror. “If you aren’t careful you’ll be out of a job when they make Djuna and Tommy the Chief of Police!”

Mr. Holsapple, who was a man not much given to laughter, said,
“Humpph!”
And then he grinned, sheepishly as everyone began to laugh at him.

“Go on, tickle me some more, Djuna,” Socker commanded.

“Well,” said Djuna, “after Tommy told me what Mr. Holsapple had said we asked Miss Winne to ask Captain Ben if he’d meet Socker and Sandy at one of those trains. She said she would, so we got that long length of rope out of Captain Ben’s boat—he’d gone out with a search party looking for Miss Annie—and went home. I didn’t know yet what I was going to do because I knew I didn’t dare go near the icehouse in the daytime, so I decided to wait until Mr. Furlong and Mr. MacHatchet arrived.”

“That’s the boy!” said Socker. “Don’t ever do nuthin’ till Socker comes!”

“So, then we went home and made ourselves some lunch,” Djuna continued, “and then we went up to the McKelveys’ to see if we could borrow Andy’s heliograph.”

“It’s mine, too!” said Don from the corner in which he was sitting, listening with wide ears.

“It
was
part yours!” Djuna said, as he grinned at both Andy and Don. “Lame-Brain smashed the mirror with a bullet.”

“My father can fix it up easy,” said Andy, “if just the mirror is smashed.”

“I hope you get well soon, Miss Annie,” Betsy McKelvey said. She had been sitting very still for a long time listening to things she didn’t understand very well and thought it was time for her to say something. “Because,” she finished, “all my cookies are gone.”

“I think I’ll be able to bake you some tomorrow, darling,” Miss Annie said with a smile.

“It seems to me,” said Mr. Holsapple, the Chief of Police, “that this inquiry is getting a little off the track. Now, I—”

“Just keep your badge on, Mr. Holsapple,” said Socker. “You’ll learn a lot of things you never knew before this is over.”

“What—what is a heliograph?” Clarabelle Smith wanted to know.

“It’s a mirror you signal with,” Djuna said. “That’s the way I signaled to Tommy this morning.”

“Oh, I know,” said Clarabelle. “The Greeks used to use them.”

“I don’t know,” Djuna said doubtfully. “But Mrs. McKelvey lent it to us and we came home to practice with it because I thought we might need it. We practiced for quite a while, until Tommy could read what I sent without any trouble at all.

“Then we got ourselves some supper and waited for the eight-thirty train to arrive. After it came we waited and waited, but Mr. Furlong didn’t come, so we finally decided to go to bed. Tommy set Miss Annie’s alarm clock for five-thirty so we could get up early to go over to Lakeville to find Mr. Furlong and Mr. MacHatchet.

“But after we got in bed and I began to think about Miss Annie I couldn’t go to sleep,” Djuna went on. “I was afraid Jones and Baldwin might finish whatever they were trying to do and then might do something awful to Miss Annie. I just couldn’t lie there any longer without doing something, so I got up.”

“I bet you knew before you went to bed that you were going to get up!” Tommy interrupted accusingly. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“No, I didn’t,” said Djuna. “I didn’t know what I was going to do but I knew I had to do something. I knew that if I woke you up you’d want to go with me and that if you did it would be twice as dangerous for both of us. And if they captured both of us there wouldn’t be anyone to give the alarm.”

“You didn’t tell me a lot of the things you’ve just told now,” said Tommy.

“I wasn’t
sure
of
any
of them!” Djuna said. “The only thing I was sure of was that no one ever called for the boxes of sawdust Jones and Baldwin sent to Raritan. Everything else was just guesses.”

“You can do my guessing for me any time you want to, Djuna,” said Socker Furlong.

“After I got up I wrote a note to Tommy that I pinned to my pillow because he was going to call me after the alarm went off,” Djuna said. “I told him I’d signal to him from the cupola of the icehouse, or if I didn’t signal to get Captain Ben and the police anyway and come there to look for me.

“I took the rope, the heliograph, my hunting knife and two cheese sandwiches for Miss Annie and went up the old corduroy road behind the cottage to the icehouse.

“I peeked under some canvas Jones and Baldwin had put over the door to keep their lanterns from showing and saw them digging in the bare earth in the icehouse. I crept along the front of the icehouse and heard Lame-Brain snoring on the platform. Just then the moon came out from behind the clouds and—”

“My gracious! Weren’t you scared, Djuna?” asked Mrs. Smith, with her eyes wide.

“Scared!”
said Djuna, and he closed his eyes and shuddered. “I was so scared I was afraid my heartbeats would shake the icehouse when I climbed up the rickety old ladder on the front, and along the ridgepole to get to the cupola.”

“But you kept right on going, although you were scared to death,” said Socker Furlong. “
That’s
what counts!”

“Well,” Djuna said with considerable embarrassment, as everyone stared at him admiringly, “I guess that’s all.”

“All!”
said Lieutenant Martin. “Why, you’ve just begun. Just what happened after you got on the roof?”

“Golly, I whispered through the ventilator slats in the cupola to Miss Annie but she couldn’t answer me because she was gagged and her hands were tied. But I was awful glad when she just moaned. I took out a couple of the slats and crawled in to find her lying on the bare floor. She was sort of numb from being tied up so long, so after I took the gag out of her mouth and took the cords off her wrists we just sat there and hugged each other. I was awful glad to find her!” said Djuna, and he smiled at Miss Annie.

“Your voice, when you whispered through the slats, was the most beautiful thing I’ve
ever
heard, Djuna,” Miss Annie said so intensely that her voice trembled. “I asked him how he knew I was there and he said he guessed that I
had
to be there.”

“Miss Annie didn’t tell me she had pushed her underwear through the slats to signal with it,” said Djuna. “I—”

“It didn’t seem to be a very fitting time to be talking about my long underwear,” Miss Annie put in primly.

“Miss Annie told me she hadn’t been bound and gagged when Captain Ben and I went to the icehouse to look for her, the afternoon she disappeared,” said Djuna. “She told me she didn’t call to us for help because she knew Jones and Baldwin were armed and might kill us if we tried to rescue her.”

“I thought I was never going to see Djuna again when they left that afternoon,” Miss Annie said as she smiled at Djuna fondly.

“Just what did you expect to accomplish the afternoon you went there, Miss Annie?” asked Lieutenant Martin.

“I hoped to scare them away before Djuna got all mixed up with them,” she answered. “I told them that people suspected that they set Captain Ben’s boat on fire, because I knew Djuna suspected that they had, and I suggested that they better get out of Lakeville before the police caught them.”

“She took a bag of cookies with her, too,” said Djuna with a snicker, “to get ’em in a good humor!”

“I did not!”
said Miss Annie indignantly. “I—I—well, it was a good thing I took them or I wouldn’t have had anything to eat all day!”

“What did they say, Miss Annie, when you suggested that they better leave Lakeville?” Socker Furlong asked.

“They didn’t say anything to me,” said Miss Annie. “They just treated me as though I was some kind of a dumb animal. After they’d whispered to each other for a few minutes they put a long ladder against the platform underneath the cupola and told me to climb up it. I told them I’d do no such thing, and the one who called himself Baldwin jabbed a gun in my ribs and said, ‘Climb!’ out of the corner of his mouth.
So
, I climbed!”

“Thank you, Miss Annie,” Lieutenant Martin said after a moment of silence while they all thought about Miss Annie climbing the long ladder to be imprisoned in the cupola. “Then what happened?” the Lieutenant added, turning to Djuna.

“Nothing,” said Djuna. “We both went to sleep and when I woke up it was twenty minutes of six. I got my heliograph and lined up Tommy, who was standing on our dock waiting for my message, in the sights, and flashed him a message. I told him Miss Annie was there in the cupola and told him to get Captain Ben and the police, and to be careful because the men were armed and dangerous.

“But Lame-Brain saw Tommy waving his arms on our dock and he thought maybe Miss Annie had got loose and was signaling again. He went out on the dock and when he saw me signaling he smashed the heliograph with his rifle bullet. I took another quick look through the slats and saw that Tommy and Champ were on their way to Lakeville, and Lame-Brain took another shot at me that landed just above my head. I was scared to death then, because they knew I was there and I was afraid Captain Ben and the police would never get there in time to save us.”

“What did you do?” asked Sandy MacHatchet, a little breathlessly.

“I just waited to see what would happen,” said Djuna. “Lame-Brain rushed in to tell them that I was there and they said they’d have to get away fast before the police got there. But they decided they would get even with us first and put the ladder up to the platform. Jones was coming up the ladder with a gun in his hand when I sneaked down the short ladder to the platform and pushed the ladder off. The ladder fell over and it stunned Jones pretty bad. Baldwin and Lame-Brain got him up on his feet and told him to start ahead and they’d follow in a minute. Then, Baldwin sent Lame-Brain out to the cookhouse to get a can of kerosene and they set the place on fire. Baldwin said that if we burned up with the building no one would know what they were after, and they could come back later and find Old Man Winne’s money.”

“They didn’t try to get up the ladder again?” asked Lieutenant Martin.

“No,” said Djuna. “I told them I had a gun and would shoot them if they tried it again. Of course I didn’t have a gun, but they thought I did. After they set the place on fire they ran. I put a blindfold over Miss Annie’s eyes and helped her down to the platform and tied Captain Ben’s rope around her waist and under her arms. Then I ran the rope through a pulley beside the platform and had Miss Annie sit down on the edge of the platform. I didn’t dare just let her down from the platform. I was afraid the rope might slip and I’d drop her.

“So, I went down the ladder on the front of the building, and ran into the icehouse and slipped the end of the rope through a ringbolt I’d seen the afternoon I was there with Captain Ben. Then, it was easy. After Miss Annie slipped off the edge of the platform I just eased her down to the ground, and carried her out as Captain Ben’s boat arrived,” Djuna finished with a little grin.

“Sure, it was
all
easy!” said Socker Furlong. “If I live to be a million years old, kid, I’ll never—”

“But what about the fortune my father buried in the icehouse?” Miss Winne called out to interrupt Socker.

“That,”
said Socker Furlong, “is something Tommy will have to tell you.”

Everyone stared at Tommy now, and the one who was staring the hardest was Djuna, as it became Tommy’s turn to squirm uncomfortably.

“Chattering chimps!”
said Tommy. “I didn’t do anything. It was Champ!”

“Okay, Tommy,” Lieutenant Martin said, as Champ, the little black Scotty, came strutting into the center of the room as his name was spoken. He looked around at everyone and then sat down at Djuna’s feet.

“Well, you see,” said Tommy. “After I got to Lakeville this morning I ran like anything until I could find Captain Ben. When I gave him Djuna’s message he hurried and got the State Police, and Mr. MacHatchet and Mr. Furlong at the hotel. Lieutenant Martin and a half dozen troopers got in a car and started for the old corduroy road to head off Jones and Baldwin, and Lame-Brain, if they tried to escape that way. I hurried back down to the dock with Champ so I’d be ready to go when Captain Ben started across the lake with his boat.