The Green Turtle Mystery (3 page)

But Djuna had already pushed open the sagging front gate and was walking boldly up the weed-grown gravel path that led to the front door. Ben stayed where he was, unable to move for worry.

Djuna marched up the steps of the porch, crossed to the front door, and knocked on it loudly.

There was a moment’s pause, then he could hear someone turning the door knob from inside. The door swung open.

In front of him stood a little girl, a very pretty little girl, who was carrying a small oil-lantern in one hand. She lifted it to see who was at the door, and the light fell upon her smiling face and shining curls.

“Oh,” she said, “how do you do?”

Djuna pulled off his cap. “Excuse me,” he said, “can you tell me who lives here?”

“
We
do,” said the little girl. She seemed to think this was answer enough.

“Oh!” said Djuna. “Well, is your father’s name Mr. Brown? I’m looking for Mr. Brown.”

Before the little girl could answer, Djuna heard heavy footsteps hurrying across the bare floor of the room overhead, and a man’s voice, a voice that came floating down from the top of the stairway.

“Who is that?” it shouted down angrily. “Who you talking to, Maria?”

“It’s just a boy,” the little girl called back. “He wants to know where Mr. Brown lives.”

“He don’t live here!” the angry voice shouted. “Shut that door, Maria! Shut it right away, you hear me?”

Djuna wanted to gain time. “Oh, gee, my shoestring’s untied,” he said quickly. He bent over and retied his shoestring, then straightened up.

The little girl looked frightened. Djuna started to speak, but she shook her head and motioned to him to go away. And before he could make up his mind what to do next, she had pushed the heavy door shut.

Djuna ran back down the path, as fast as he could, in the dark. Ben jumped to his feet as Djuna reached the gate.

“Who were they?” he cried, in an excited whisper. “I saw somebody open the door!”

“Let’s get away from here and get some help!” whispered Djuna. “Hurry!”

The two boys ran as hard as they could until they came to the next corner, where there was a street lamp. Here Djuna stopped long enough to say; “There was a little girl there, and there was a man upstairs that yelled at her and made her shut the door. We’d better find a policeman right away!”

“My gosh!” said Ben, “I’ll tell you what we’d better do—we’d better go to Socker Furlong’s house right away, and tell
him!
He said in that piece he wrote for the paper that there
wasn’t
anybody in the house at all, and if those people in there now have a
right
to be there, they’re going to be awful mad! And I guess Mr. Canavan would fire him right away, he would be so mad when he finds out that Socker went to the ball game instead of going to see if the house was
really
empty!”

“Where does he live?” asked Djuna. “Is it very far?”

“It’s just a block from here,” said Ben. “Come on, run!”

They dashed on, but Ben had gone only a few steps when he stopped short and gave a groan. He dug wildly into his pockets.

“Oh, my gosh!” he wailed. “There was a hole in my pocket and Waterbury has got out and gone! Oh, for Pete’s sake, I’ll bet he got out while we were hiding there by the fence, and by this time he’s crawled off into the long grass, and now I’ll
never
find him!”

Djuna grinned comfortingly. “Oh, yes, you will,” he said confidently. “I’ll bet you a million dollars that turtle is in that house, right this minute. Just you wait. But the
first
thing we’ve got to do is to get help!”

And, side by side, the two boys ran desperately on.

“W
E TURN HERE
,” Ben gasped as the two boys came to a cross street. A street light played on a sign that read Pewter Platter Alley. “It’s that big house across the street.”

They ran up the steps and stood panting for breath as Ben pulled the porcelain handle of the bell and heard it jangle dismally some place in the basement. After waiting impatiently for a few moments they tried to peek through the lace curtain that covered the inside of the upper part of the glass door. The dim light from a single gas jet cast flickering shadows in the hallway so that they could see only a few feet.

“Ring it again,” Djuna said. “There must be
somebody
here.”

Ben rang it again, but after the bell had ceased to jangle the only thing they could hear was the beating of their own hearts.

“Whatta youse want?” a sharp voice said suddenly, behind and below them. They were both so startled that their noses flattened out against the glass of the door before they whirled around to see a dim figure standing at the basement door beside the brownstone steps.

“We–we’d like to see Mr. Furlong, please,” Ben said when he could speak.

“Jus’ a minute,” the man said and disappeared.

“Gee! He scared me,” Ben said. “He sounded as though he came right up out of the ground.”

“He scared me, too,” Djuna said, and he giggled. “I guess we have ghosts on our minds.”

They heard someone coming up the inside stairs from the basement and then heard a voice shout, “Mr. Furlong! Mr. Furlong! Mr. Furlong!” three times, as fast as he could say it.

“A-l-lways in a hurry,” Socker Furlong’s voice said, from some place in the shadows. “What’s on
your
merry mind, Mr. Tinker?”

“A coupla kids to see youse,” Mr. Tinker replied.

“Send ’em up,” Socker said.

Mr. Tinker opened the door but he didn’t say anything. He just made a motion toward the stairs with his thumb and Ben bolted toward them with Djuna right behind him. They took them two steps at a time and found Socker Furlong standing in the open doorway of a lighted room at the front of the second floor hallway.

“Well, curl my whiskers if it isn’t old Ben Franklin himself,” Socker Furlong said and would have said more if he hadn’t been overwhelmed by a flood of words from Ben.

“Mr. Furlong,” he panted. “There were lights everywhere! Upstairs and downstairs and all over. And when Djuna went up to the door a little girl answered it and her father shouted at her to shut it, quick!”

Socker Furlong put his arms up in front of him and cowered his face behind them as though to ward off the avalanche of words until both Djuna and Ben couldn’t help laughing.

Then Socker took his arms down and he began to laugh too as he read the excitement in their faces. “Come in, my little panting papooses,” he said. “And Ben, you’d better let your pal Djuna do the talking. I’m afraid you’ll slip a sprocket, or something.”

The boys went into Socker Furlong’s room but they didn’t sit down when he invited them to because they were too excited to sit down.

“Somebody had better tell you pretty quick, Mr. Furlong,” Ben said, earnestly, “because that house is just
full
of people. You said in your story there wasn’t anybody in it, and if they complain to Mr. Canavan he’s going to be awful mad!”

The grin disappeared from Socker Furlong’s face and he sat down in a chair with all his weight and stared at Ben with eyes that were round.

“Eh?” he said and then he looked at Djuna almost beseechingly.

“What Ben means, Mr. Furlong,” Djuna said, “is that there are people living in that haunted house on Carpenter Street that you wrote a story about for your paper.”

“Great suffering sassafras!” Socker Furlong said and he reached for his shoes. “Give, Djuna,” he added.

“I went over to see Ben’s turtle, Waterbury, swim for a while this evening,” Djuna said, “and when Waterbury decided to go to bed Ben said he’d walk a little way with me. Just as we came in front of the haunted house we saw lights moving around in it and–”

“All over it!” Ben put in, excitedly. “Dozens of them!”

“Sh-h, Benjamin,” the reporter said. “You’re muddle-gooping the story.”

“There were several lights,” Djuna said, upholding his friend, “and they were moving around from place to place. Ben had said that no one lived there, so I–”

“He walked right up to the front door and knocked on it!” Ben gasped, looking at Djuna as if he couldn’t believe himself what he was saying.

“Plucky lad,” Socker Furlong said and he smiled at Djuna. Djuna squirmed for a moment under his gaze and plunged into his recital again.

“I went up to the door and knocked,” he said, “and a little girl opened it. I asked her who lived there and she said, ‘
We
do.’ I told her that if her father’s name was Mr. Brown I’d like to see him. Before she could answer some man yelled at her from upstairs. He wanted to know who she was talking to.”

“Gee, was he mad!” Ben said. “I could hear him way out on the sidewalk.”

“She told him I was looking for Mr. Brown,” Djuna went on, “and the man shouted down that he didn’t live there and told her to shut the door. He did sound awful mad, and the little girl looked awful scared.”

“And no doubt,” said Socker Furlong, “this damsel in distress had long shining hair and was very beautiful?”

“Yes,” Djuna said, and he scowled a little. “I guess so. I don’t know.”

“Then what happened?” Socker asked as he put on a necktie and reached for his coat.

“
We ran!
” Ben said. “We started to get a policeman, and then I thought we ought to tell you first, because of that story.”

“Your consideration for people in distress is touching, Benjamin,” Socker said as he reached for his hat. “And believe me, brother, when Mr. Canavan hears about this I’ll probably have to get a shine box like yours, Djuna. Anyway, it’s warm and I can sleep in the park. Come on, boys, let’s go and take a look at this house that will probably haunt me for the rest of my life.”

They all went down the stairs and out onto Pewter Platter Alley. Socker Furlong walked so fast that the boys had to take a skip every few steps to keep up with him.

“Am
I
the bright boy? Won’t I
ever
learn?” the boys heard Socker ask himself as they hurried along. “And it wasn’t a good baseball game, anyway. Only three hits and no runs. Bah!”

Djuna looked over at Ben and they both snickered.

“I guess you’re pretty mad at yourself for not coming out to look at the house instead of going to the ball game, aren’t you, Mr. Furlong?” Ben said.

“Mad?” Socker said. “If I was any madder I’d bite myself.” Suddenly, he slackened his stride and looked down at Ben and said, “Hey! I thought you told me you went past that house every day, and that you were certain it was empty. You said no one lived there.”

“No one ever
did
live there, Mr. Furlong,” Ben insisted. “Just like I told you, I go by it a million times–well, a lot of times–every day and nobody has ever lived there since I was a little boy, since I can remember. That’s why it’s so awful. We’ve never had any ghosts in our neighborhood. I won’t dare go by there any more.”

Socker Furlong laughed.

“Do you think that little girl was a ghost, Djuna?” he asked.

“No sir,” Djuna said, stoutly. “She was just a little girl. But what I don’t understand, Mr. Furlong, is–”

“Here it is, Mr. Furlong!” Ben said in an excited whisper. “This is the place.”

Just as they stopped to look the moon came out from behind a cloud to silhouette the dejected old house against the night sky. The rusty hinge of an old shutter wheezed dismally as the night wind stirred it. A dog lifted its head to howl long and dolefully in the distance and the old house seemed to become a part of the mournful sound. Except for the creaking shutter not a thing moved, and there was not a light in it.

“Gosh, but it’s spooky!” Ben whispered and he moved over closer to Socker Furlong. And even Socker Furlong’s voice sounded hollow and hushed as he gazed at the dilapidated old place and shook his head in bewilderment.

“Listen, boys,” Socker said as he looked at the luminous dial of his wrist watch and then looked at each of them, “you wouldn’t be trying to fool me, would you? That place looks as though there hadn’t been anyone in it since I fell out of my go-cart. You’re
sure
you saw lights in there?”

“Honest, Mr. Furlong!” Ben said. Djuna didn’t say anything; he was just staring at the place with the same expression of bewilderment he had shown when Ben first told him about it.

“Maybe they’ve all gone to bed,” Ben added in a moment.

“It’s only half-past nine,” Socker said and he lifted the latch on the rusty iron gate and pushed it inward. The gate voiced its protest with a clanking squeak and Socker said, “Come on. I don’t imagine they’ll shower blessings on us if they are in bed.”

The reporter led the way up the weed-grown gravel path and mounted the steps to the front porch without any thought of stealth. Djuna and Ben waited on the edge of the porch, poised for instant flight, as Socker pounded on the front door with his ham-like fist and the noise cannonaded through the empty house like the roll of distant guns. They waited in hushed silence for some sound of life within the house but only the sound of its emptiness came back to them.

“What are you going to say if someone does come to the door?” Ben said in a whisper that was so loud that it startled him.

Socker answered him by pounding on the door again, long and insistently this time. And again only the awful stillness of the place came back to them.

After he had knocked hard for the third time he said, “‘Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.’” He went down the steps and turned and looked up at the boarded windows. There was no sign of life anywhere.

“Say, Mr. Furlong,” Djuna said, “do you suppose the man who wants to rent the house, the man who told you it was haunted, might have been in there when we came by?”

Socker Furlong stared at Djuna in the dim light for a moment and then he said, “Could be. Come on up to the drug store on the corner and I’ll buy you a soda or a sundae, or what-have-they, and I’ll see if I can find him in the telephone book.”

They went out the gate and closed it carefully behind them. For a moment they all stared at the big, black house, and it stared back at them.

When they arrived at the drug store both Djuna and Ben ordered a banana split when Socker said they could have anything they wanted. They forgot all about the haunted house while they watched the pleasant man in the white coat behind the counter split two bananas and put two big dippers of ice cream on each one of them, and then cover them with chocolate marshmallow and chopped nuts, and crown them with a big, red maraschino cherry.