The Mystery of the Man in the Tall Black Hat (9 page)

He looked around for the can which he had taken to Mud Lake and finally found it in the woodshed. Rounding the corner on his way out, he almost ran into Barney.

“Where did you come from?” he asked in surprise.

“I don’t get it, Tod. Mom was so fussy about my resting, but this morning all she did was yell at me. She finally hollered at me to get out before I drove her batty.” Barney laughed.

“Well, I was just getting ready to go get something for the tadpoles to eat besides each other. Come on.”

“I didn’t bring anything this time, Tod.” Barney held up his empty hands.

“Not even a strainer?” Tod grinned.

“I didn’t know we would be going anyplace. Besides, Mom kicked me out so fast I didn’t have time to think of anything.” He giggled.

“Hey, Barney,” Tod said as they started down the driveway, “we’re having a treasure hunt next Saturday afternoon. Mr. Taylor told us about it last night. We’ll have clues and a real treasure at the end. Do you think you could come?”

“I think I’d like that.”

“And, Barney. Eat a lot of lunch first. I don’t know when we’ll have refreshments.” He slapped Barney good-naturedly on the back.

They soon passed Donna’s house, then left the main road and followed the winding trail through tall brush and into the cover of fir trees. The ground dropped abruptly as the trail led to the lake edge. They continued around the lake until they came in sight of Mr. Shafer’s small cabin.

“Look.” Tod pointed. “See where those water lilies are? The lake is real shallow beyond them. We might find polliwogs there, too. If we borrow Mr. Shafer’s rowboat it won’t take long to row to the end of the lake.”

They walked a little faster, rounded the head of the marsh, and soon recognized Mr. Shafer sitting before his cottage in an old kitchen chair. He waved as he saw them approach.

“You fellows haven’t been around for a while. Gets sort of lonesome without company around here,” he said as he stood up and shook their hands.

Tod glowed inside. Mr. Shafer had a way of making him feel very grown-up. “We’ve been sort of busy, I guess,” he said.

Mr. Shafer sat down and tipped back until his chair rested on the two back legs. “What have you been doing that keeps you so busy?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye.

“We’ve been catching polliwogs,” said Barney eagerly.

“Polliwogs, eh? Going to see them turn into frogs, I’ll bet.”

“That’s what we came to talk to you about. We want to go to the end of the lake and see if we can get something for them to eat. Maybe we can get some polliwogs, too,” explained Tod.

“Tell you what. Why don’t you take my boat and row down to the end of the lake?”

“Could we? We were hoping you’d let us. Thanks, Mr. Shafer.”

Tod and Barney raced down the bank to the small wooden dock which Mr. Shafer had built at the lake edge. The weatherworn rowboat floated alongside in the quiet water.

Tod waited for Barney to get settled in the back before he unhooked the loop which Mr. Shafer used to secure the boat to a post. Barney held onto the dock as Tod stepped into the boat and seated himself between the oarlocks. He let go, and Tod pushed the boat away from the dock with one of the oars. A moment later he was dipping the oars rhythmically as they glided out across the water.

“How about over there?” Barney pointed, as they neared the end of the lake.

“That looks like a good place.” Tod looked over his shoulder. “Watch for logs and stuff in the bottom. I don’t want to run into anything.”

“It’s clear. Just keep going straight ahead. OK, now turn toward shore.”

Tod pulled hard on the right oar letting the other drag in the water. He pulled again on both oars until the prow of the boat scraped against the muddy shoreline. Dropping the oars, he jumped lightly from the boat and dragged it further up onto the beach. Barney stumbled the length of the rocking boat and stepped out at the edge of the marsh.

“Look, Barney, someone’s waving.” Tod was looking toward Mr. Shafer’s house.

“Isn’t it Tricia?” asked Barney, shielding his eyes from the sun.

Tod sat down on the shore and took off his shoes and socks. He picked up the can and started along the shore, Barney following.

“Look!” cried Barney suddenly. “There must be a million!”

Just ahead the water was black with polliwogs. Tod stepped into the water and scooped the can into the wriggling mass and lifted it out.

“That was easy!” he exclaimed, as the boys watched the tadpoles flop about in the can.

“We’ve got to get something for them to eat. That’s the really important thing.”

The shoreline was thick with grasses and slimy bits of decayed matter on which the polliwogs seemed to be feeding. Tod reached down and gathered some into his hand and dumped it in with the tadpoles.

“I sure hope this is what they eat,” he commented, as he dipped his hand into the lake again.

They walked back to the boat, and Tod tossed his shoes and socks in. Barney climbed in and sat down, and Tod handed him the can of polliwogs.

“OK, Tod. Shove off.”

Tod pushed, and the boat slid easily back into the water. He jumped in just as his feet touched the water’s edge. A short time later they were back at the dock securing it to the post.

While the girls got into the boat and rowed out onto the lake, Tod showed Mr. Shafer the contents of the can.

“They’ve had plenty to eat besides each other,” remarked Mr. Shafer. “They look well fed.”

He leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. “Donna and her friend were telling me about some strange character you saw recently.”

“Nobody believes us, Mr. Shafer. Maybe we’d just as well forget it.”

“No. I’d like to hear about it.”

Tod told him about the three occasions when he had seen the man in the stovepipe hat. When he had concluded he asked, “Did you ever hear of mental patients wandering away from the hospital grounds?”

“Guess I have. Now there was one time when this old guy came by here. We sat and chatted for—oh, I’d say an hour or more. Really friendly, too.” Mr. Shafer gazed across the lake as though he were thinking. “Found out later he came from there.”

“Do you think the man in the stovepipe hat could be a mental patient?”

“Let me tell you something, son. There are a lot of people walking around who aren’t in mental hospitals that do mighty peculiar things. There’s an old saying, ‘Everybody is a mite crazy except thee and me, and sometimes I’m not sure about thee.’”

The boys laughed.

Mr. Shafer sat forward and looked across the lake. “Did I ever tell you about the woman who collected old bottles? Every bottle she ever emptied, and some besides—catsup bottles, mustard bottles, pop bottles, or whatever—she washed them and stored them away.”

“Did she ever use them for anything?” Barney asked, his dark eyes serious.

“Can’t say as she did. The last I heard she had so many bottles they overflowed her house and she was living on her front porch.”

“You’re making that up, aren’t you?” asked Tod, seeing the twinkle in Mr. Shafer’s eyes. A moment later all three were laughing so hard that tears came to their eyes.

“Mr. Shafer,” Tod asked when they had settled down again, “do you believe us? That we saw the man in the stovepipe hat like we said?”

“I can’t say you saw him or you didn’t see him. I’ll keep my eyes open, though. I’d like to meet this stranger all dressed up in fancy duds like that.”

Tod and Barney felt that at last someone believed that they might have seen the man.

When they reached the Mitchells house they immediately went around the woodshed to their polliwog pond and dumped the contents of the can into it. Tod adjusted the flow of water from the reservoir they had made, and for the next little while they watched the performance of the polliwogs as they skittered back and forth.

Suddenly Tricia rounded the corner of the woodshed and flopped down onto the grass. Donna was right behind her.

“What’s the rush? You act like somebody was after you.”

“We saw—him!” gasped Tricia. “The man—in the tall—black hat!”

“Where?” asked Tod excitedly.

“On the way—back from—Mr.—Shafer’s.”

“Hold up!” ordered Tod. “Catch your breath and then tell us.”

“OK,” said Tricia at last. “We were coming along the path toward home, just walking along as usual, when all of a sudden we went around a bend.”

“You know,” said Donna, “right after you leave the woods and come to where all the tall bushes are along the path.”

“When we rounded the bend, there he was,” Tricia continued. “He was walking the same way we were going. It was just like you said. He had on this black suit—sort of shiny—and he was wearing a black hat—tall-like—and he was swinging this cane in his hand.”

“We were afraid he’d see us, so we ducked back around the bend. We decided to wait until he had gone on ahead,” added Donna. “We stood there real quiet for a little bit. When we started out again he wasn’t anywhere in sight.”

“Well, I’m sure glad you finally saw him.” Tod sighed with relief.

“Now what are we going to do, Tod?”

“We’ve got to do something!” exclaimed Tricia.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do. Nobody sees him long enough to find out anything. Maybe you should have followed him.”

“Are you kidding? How come you didn’t follow him when you had a chance?” asked Donna.

“There must be some kind of pattern that we can figure out,” Tod said thoughtfully. “First we saw him at Mud Lake, then the gravel pit, up on the Hillsdale road, and now close to Carp Lake.”

“And he disappears whenever anyone sees him,” added Donna.

“But he doesn’t know we see him.” Tod was puzzled. “Wait! Barney, when did we see him?”

“The first time was Saturday—” He was about to continue when Tod interrupted.

“I don’t mean what day. It was in the afternoon. Every time it was in the afternoon!”

“What does that prove, Tod?” asked Tricia.

“I don’t know exactly. It might not mean anything at all, but maybe he just wanders around in the woods, say, from two until four o’clock.”

“And the rest of the time he must be living somewhere,” Donna commented. “But we know everybody around here. If any of the families had someone visiting, we’d be sure and find out.”

“Especially if it was the man in the stovepipe hat.”

“Unless they were trying to hide him for some reason,” said Tod.

“Why would anybody do that?” asked Barney.

“If you had a queer man like that staying at your house, would you go around broadcasting it?” asked Tricia wrinkling her nose.

“I guess not, come to think of it,” Barney laughed.

“In that case even the people we know might be hiding him,” Donna ventured.

“So, we’ll just have to keep our eyes open and our mouths closed until we can learn something,” Tod cautioned. “And if he’s not living around here, then he has to be from the mental hospital!”

It was Friday. Tod and Barney decided to go back up past the house where J. J. Fitzsimmon lived in hopes of catching a glimpse of the strange man in the tall black hat. As they neared the house they lowered their voices. Tod’s heart felt like it jumped into his throat and left a big lump when he heard a rustle and cracking of twigs behind him. A moment later, the reddish brown dog that he and Tricia had seen on Sunday bounded out of the woods.

“Hi, MacDuff,” Tod said as he reached over and stroked the dog. “You scared me.”

MacDuff wagged his tail and jumped with delight, first at Tod and then at Barney. Before Barney realized what was happening he had lost his balance, and MacDuff stood over him licking his face. Tod couldn’t help but laugh.

When Barney was finally able to get up, the dog sat thumping his tail triumphantly against the gravel road.

“You know,” said Tod, looking at him. “I think he looks thinner than he did on Sunday. Better go home, MacDuff, and get something to eat. Come on Barney, let’s go.”

The boys started on up the road with MacDuff following.

“Go home, MacDuff,” ordered Tod. The dog paid no attention but continued to follow. They walked about half a mile with the dog still at their heels.