CHAPTER XI

RED’S PREDICAMENT

We were sore at Bill Hadley now. And I must confess, too, that I was a little bit sore at Dad. This thing of locking up Poppy’s father was all wrong, we said--only, of course, not wanting to hurt me, the other fellows didn’t say very much about Dad’s part in the unfair arrest in front of me.

The law had it figured out that the dull-minded old detective knew more about the safe robbery than he was willing to admit. He was acting dumb to cover up, Bill Hadley said. But _we_ knew that the old man was innocent. And that is why we were so het up over his arrest.

Afterwards, when I had cooled off, I had to admit to myself that Dad had acted within his business rights in ordering the old detective’s arrest. For he didn’t know anything about the old man’s character except what we had told him. He had no proof that the odd-acting one wasn’t a crook.

But you know how it is with a boy in a case like that. He sort of lets his feelings decide things for him. And just now, as I say, in a steady belief in our new chum, our feelings told us that old Mr. Ott was wholly innocent of any unworthy part in the safe looting. And when Poppy made the vow in front of the town jail where the red water hydrant is that he’d go to the ends of the world, as it were, to bring the real thief to justice, and thus clear his father’s name, we told him, as loyal pals, to lead on and we would follow. We were with him until the last dog was hung, we said.

And of the four of us no one was more sincerely willing to accept the new leadership than Scoop, himself. I thought that was pretty fine and generous of my old chum. He had been the leader heretofore. But now he was cheerfully willing to let Poppy do the leading. He recognized Poppy’s right to leadership.

That’s the way for a boy to be, I think. The leadership “hog” doesn’t register with me at all. A fellow has got to give and take in this world. He can’t be the drum major and head the procession _all_ the time.

To go back to the old detective’s arrest, we were sore at Bill Hadley, as I say. Dumb-bell and bully that he was, he would get no help from us, we said, in hot conversation. We would keep away from him. We would work on our own clews and pick up new ones. And in the end we would show _him_ a thing or two about clever detecting.

You can see what I mean. _We_ knew about the spy. And, further, we knew that the spy, for unknown reasons, was interested in the Cap’n’s parrot. The spy, of course, was the man who had robbed the brickyard safe. We had little doubt about that. So all we had to do in order to capture the law breaker was to lay for him near the Cap’n’s store. We’d get him sooner or later.

But first, we said, we would find out all we could from the Cap’n about the mysterious prowler. And in that plan we agreed to meet at the bird store the following morning at nine-thirty.

Poppy went home with me that night. Mother let us sleep late. Breakfast over, we went up the creek to the jungle to take care of the rope-tailed horse and see that everything was shipshape around the wagon.

“You better lock up,” says I to Poppy, “and come home with me until your pa is free again. Bring your horse, too. You can keep it in Red Meyer’s barn. He won’t care.”

Going to the bird store, we found old Cap’n Tinkertop in a peck of trouble.

“It’s Solomon Grundy,” says he, pottering nervously about the room. “They’s somethin’ the matter with him. He hain’t actin’ like hisself at all.”

A wilted voice came out of the wall hole.

“Breakfast,” says the sooted parrot. “Polly wants breakfast.”

The troubled look deepened in the old man’s eyes.

“See?” says he, nervous-like. “They’s somethin’ the matter with that thar par’ot. He never acted meek like that before.”

Poppy grinned.

“Maybe he’s got the colic.”

“Um.... I wish he’d git the colic, or somethin’ worse’n the colic, an’ die. Yes, I do. It would be a big worry lifted off _my_ mind.”

Poppy got down to business.

“Did you ever try to sell your parrot?” says he.

The old man was caught off his guard in the direct question.

“Heh?” says he, staring.

“One time in the ‘for sale’ column of a newspaper,” says Poppy, “I saw an advertisement of a black parrot. Was it your parrot, Cap’n?”

The old man was still staring.

“Heh? Was it _my_ par’ot, you say? What’s that?” The wrinkled face changed quickly. “Of course it warn’t my par’ot,” came the sharp denial. “Now git out of here, you kids, while I do up my housework.”

He was lying to us. We could see that. And it was because he feared further unwelcome questions that he wanted to get rid of us.

But we didn’t budge.

“Night before last,” says Poppy, “a man was seen at your window. My father tried to arrest the suspicious-acting one and was knocked senseless. Now we’ve got to capture this prowler in order to get my father out of jail. Can you tell us who he is, Cap’n?”

Here a customer came into the store and drew its fidgeting owner’s attention. Nor would the old man let us question him further that morning. He was too busy to talk to us, he said, whenever we brought up the subject of the spy. The real point was that he didn’t want to talk to us. We realized that.

What was he covering up? Was it a crime of some kind? Did he know what the black parrot meant in its “blood” talk? And knowing the death parrot’s probably wicked secret, did he know, or suspect, who the spy was?

In regard to the newspaper advertisement, we were convinced, as I say, that the secretive one had openly lied to us. He _had_ advertised his black parrot for sale, notwithstanding his denial to us. We had proof against him in the shape of the clipping, itself. And, further, his actions had convicted him.

But it was hard for us to understand _why_ he had advertised the parrot for sale. It was contrary to his promise to his dead brother.

I went with Poppy that morning to visit his father in the town jail.

“This is a’ awful poor jail,” says the prisoner, his face clouded with dissatisfaction in his cramped quarters. “I never was in a worse one. No service at all. I didn’t even have a feather pilly under my haid last night. An’ they’s lumps like corncobs in the mattress.”

“Bill burnt up the pillows and the good mattresses,” says I, “to kill the bedbugs.”

The old man scratched himself.

“No runnin’ water, either,” says he. “Poor! Awful poor!”

“I’ll get you a drink,” says Poppy quickly.

“Um.... The toast was burnt this mornin’,” was the further complaint. “An’ I didn’t have enough butter on it. The coffee was muddy, too.”

I had come into the jail with a long face, wanting the prisoner to see that I was sorry for him. But now I had to grin. To hear him talk about the jail’s poor “service,” you could have imagined that he was the guest of honor in some swell hotel.

We questioned him about the robber, thereby getting a fairly good description of the law breaker. Burning eyes! Just as Red had spoken of the spy’s peculiar eyes, so also did the old detective now make similar mention of the safebreaker’s eyes. So we knew beyond all doubt that the spy and the robber were indeed one and the same person.

We covered the town that morning, searching for both the escaped black parrot and the robber. But to no success.

Poppy paid his father another visit that afternoon.

“Maybe this’ll help us,” says he, when we were all together again in the street.

“A cigar stub!” says Peg, seeing what the leader had.

“I got it from Pa,” says Poppy. “It’s the cigar the robber gave him in the brickyard office. Here’s the band. Now, let us find out who sells cigars like this.”

Well, we went to all the stores in town where cigars were sold. But the storekeepers all shook their heads when we showed them our band. They had no cigars like that in stock, they said.

“Which proves,” says Poppy, “that the robber is an out-of-town man, as we suspected.”

Mother had said that Red couldn’t take his meals at our house. But nevertheless I took him home with me that night to supper, along with Poppy.

There was a lot of talk at the table bearing on the safe robbery. Bill hadn’t captured the robber, Dad said. In this piece of news I winked at my chums.

“Has Bill got any clews?” says I.

“He has a good description of the man,” says Dad. “So it hadn’t ought to be much of a trick for the law to catch him.”

“I don’t suppose it ever occurred to Bill,” says I, “that the robber is probably disguised.”

Dad stopped eating and looked at me sharply.

“Disguised?” says he. “What do you mean?”

“Bill may have passed the man a dozen times to-day without recognizing him.”

“By George!” says Dad, excited. “I’ll tell him about that.”

I grinned.

“You can’t beat a Juvenile Jupiter Detective,” says I, bragging on myself.

“You admit it, hey?”

I put out my chest.

“I can’t deny the truth,” says I, still grinning.

“No? Well, Mr. Juvenile Jupiter Todd, what’ll you and your gang of sleuths take to capture this robber for me?”

“What’ll you give?” says I.

“Um.... Will a hundred dollars be too much?”

“A hundred dollars apiece?”

“Say, why don’t you stick a gun under my nose and hold me up right!”

“Make it a hundred dollars apiece,” says I, “and we’ll do the job for you.”

He laughed. He thought I was talking through my hat.

“All right,” says he, feeling safe in the generous promise. “If you boys capture the robber I’ll pay each of you a hundred dollars.”

Here Mother came into the conversation.

“Did I tell you, Donald,” says she to Red, who was doing a sword-swallowing act with his fork and a hunk of cake, “that I had a short letter from your mother to-day?”

“I suppose she wanted you to get after me,” says the freckled one, between bites, “and make me wash up and put on clean clothes.”

Mother laughed.

“She did say something like that. But I took it as a joke. What interested me in the letter was her account of a dream that your aunt had.”

Red grunted.

“Aunt Pansy is always having ‘dreams,’” says he. “Whenever she misses anything in her room at our house she ‘dreams’ that I took it and I get licked. Huh! Can I have another piece of cake, Mrs. Todd?”

“The dream was about the escaped parrot,” says Mother, passing the cake plate.

Red’s jaw dropped.

“Which parrot?” says he like a dumb-bell before I could kick him under the table.

“Why, your aunt’s parrot, of course. The one you captured yesterday.”

Red started breathing again.

“Oh, yes,” says he.

“Your aunt will be glad, I know, to learn that her parrot is safe in its cage. For in her dream she saw it in a black cistern.”

Red quit eating. He had lost his appetite.

“What’d I tell you?” says he, when we followed him into the yard.

I grinned.

“Aunty spank, hey, when she finds out that her ’ittle nephew put nasty soot on Polly’s tail!”

“Aunty will pulverize me,” says he, shivering. “Gosh! I knew I’d get into trouble in letting you fellows black up her parrot. I was a dumb-bell to consent to it.”

“Shucks!” says I. “Your aunt’s parrot will be safe in its cage by the time she gets home. So why worry? You aren’t in any danger.”

“You don’t know my Aunt Pansy! After dreaming that her parrot was in danger she’ll ask me a million questions about it. And if she finds the least trace of soot.... _Good_ night!”

Again we put in the evening at the Indian’s medicine show, after which, in a plan to lay for the spy, we headed for the Cap’n’s alley.

An automobile stopped near us under a street light.

“Maybe you’d like to take a little ride this evening,” says Mr. Meyers to Red.

“Where are you going?” says the latter.

“Over to Ashton and back.”

“What for?”

“To get your mother and your Aunt Pansy.”

Red stared.

“I thought Ma and Aunt Pansy were in Chicago?” says he.

“They stopped in Ashton on their way home this afternoon. I just got a telephone call from them asking me to drive over and get them.”

Red looked sick.

“You told me they weren’t coming home till Friday,” says he.

Mr. Meyers laughed. He likes to joke.

“Your Aunt Pansy got homesick for her parrot, I guess. She had a bad dream about it, you know. I told her over the telephone that you had caught the parrot for her. She says she’s going to give you a big kiss.”

“_Good_ night!” says Red, looking around for a nice comfortable place to faint. “I’ll get something, all right, but it won’t be a kiss.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, nothing.”

Red’s sister hasn’t any patience with small boys.

“Well,” says she, from the back seat of the car, “are you going with us, Mr. Importance, or aren’t you?”

Red sent them off without him. Then he turned to us.

“You fellows got me into this,” says he, “and now you’ve got to get me out of it.”

“Don’t worry,” says Poppy. “We can get your parrot easy enough. We’ll do that first.”

The bird store was in darkness. So we knew its owner was in bed. Sometimes he goes to sleep with his windows open. But we weren’t lucky to-night in finding an open window.

However, we knew a secret way into the house. So up the fire escape we went to the roof, the five of us, and down through the scuttle into the attic.

Poppy had a flashlight. He was the first one to drop into the sitting room through the raised trapdoor. I followed. Then Scoop and Red came down beside me. Peg stayed in the attic to help us up.

The black parrot was sound asleep in its cage. It didn’t see us at all.

“Grab it!” says I to Red, anxious to get away.

Poppy laughed.

“Be careful, though,” says he, “that it doesn’t ‘voodoo’ you.”

Red was afraid that when he touched the parrot it would wake up and nab him. So to save his hands he snatched a tidy from a chair and threw the cloth over the sleeping bird. The wrapped-up parrot was then handed to Peg, after which the big one gave us his hands and drew us into the attic. Closing the trapdoor, we got on the roof and soon landed safely in the alley.

The clock in the tower on College Hill donged eleven times. The spy was likely to be along any minute now. And in planning the prowler’s capture Poppy said that he and the other two would do the trip-up stuff with the ropes while Red and I cleaned the parrot.

Nobody was at home at the Meyers’ house. So that was the best place to wash the parrot, Red said. A few minutes later he and I turned in at the darkened house. The front-door key was in the mail box. Entering the house, we ran up the stairs to the bathroom.

In the lead with the parrot, my companion switched on the bathroom lights and gave the tidy a shake. Out came the black parrot. But instead of using its wings in its release from the tidy it dropped to the floor with a dull hollow sound.

“What the dickens?...” says Red, staring. Then he stooped quickly. “Jerry! _Look!_”

“The stuffed parrot!” says I.

I guess you can imagine how bewildered we were in learning that the bird that we had lugged home wasn’t the sooted parrot at all but old Caleb Obed’s stuffed mino bird.