CHAPTER XIV

THE VANISHED TOWNSMAN

At the breakfast table the following morning Dad joked me, in his usual jolly way, about my skinned nose, inquiring, chummy-like, if I had been in a scrap with the Stricker gang, to which I replied truthfully that I hadn’t.

Red was fidgety in the conversation. He was scared that the older one would pin me down and thus learn the truth about my nose scratches. So it was a relief to both of us when my talkative parent was called to the telephone.

“Who was it?” says Mother, when Dad came back to the table with a big grin on his face.

“Bill Hadley. He wants me to bring a few of our new talking-machine records down to the jail.”

“Talking-machine records?” says Mother, puzzled at the marshal’s sudden interest in music. “Why is he calling on _you_ for records?”

“Because his prisoner is partly my responsibility, I guess.”

“You mean Mr. Ott?”

“Sure thing. Bill says the old gent did a lot of kicking yesterday on the service he was getting. So our accommodating marshal has been stepping around since to redeem himself. He even has a Victrola in the cell now.”

Mother isn’t crazy over Bill, though she’s awfully chummy with his wife, an old school teacher of mine.

“What nonsense!” says she.

“I forgot to ask him,” says Dad, in continued laughter, “whether he wanted Caruso records or jazz.”

“Bill might better forget about his sense of humor and do his work,” says Mother stiffly, thinking of the burglar.

“Oh,” says Dad, who is never too busy or too worried to enjoy a good joke, “there’s time for a little fun on every job.”

Red and I had heard enough to want to get down town in a hurry. So as soon as breakfast was over we grabbed our caps and scooted into the street.

Bill Hadley scowled at us when we tumbled into the town hall where he has his office. That’s his way with kids. He does it to make us realize the importance of his position, I guess.

“What’s the idea of all the racket?” says he sharply.

“We came down to see the fun,” says I, grinning.

“What fun?”

“You know--what you told Dad over the telephone.”

That brought out a grin.

“Um.... Mr. Ott is busy with his mornin’ newspapers jest now. But I guess you kids kin take a peek at him if you’ll promise to be quiet an’ not disturb him.”

Tiptoeing into the back room where the steel jail cages were, I thought I’d die when I saw the way the prisoner’s cell had been dolled up. On one steel wall was a long pansy picture--“A Yard of Pansies” is the right name for it, I guess--and on the opposite wall was a “God Bless Our Happy Home” sampler. A fancy curtain hung over the steel door. The floor was covered with a swell red rug--as I remember, it was a rug with a picture of a pony in the center--and the cell was further brightened up with a reading lamp, a potted fern, a magazine table, a smoking stand, a talking-machine and an easy chair. Cooled by the breeze from an electric fan, the contented prisoner was now stretched at ease in the soft chair, his lap full of newspapers.

“Um....” says he, looking up and getting Bill’s eye. “I furgot to tell you, Mr. Hadley, that I don’t like tea of any kind. So don’t ever bring me none. Coffee is what I like, with a lot of rich cream in it--an’ not condensed cream, nuther.”

Bill gravely got out a memorandum book and pretended to write in it.

“Coffee,” says he slowly, “with a lot of cream in it--real cream from contented cows. An’ how much sugar, Mr. Ott?”

“Um.... Two spoonfuls, if you please.”

“Anything else?”

The old man pondered.

“I kain’t jest recollect anything special right now. But when Poppy comes around, you’re to send him right in. Fur I want to see him.”

“Very well, Mr. Ott,” says Bill, acting as though he was taking orders from a king.

Well, Red and I pretty nearly busted ourselves laughing when we were outside. Bill was funny, we said. But when Poppy came down the street with Scoop and Peg, and learned about the decorated cell, he was mad as hops.

“They’re making a monkey of Pa,” says he, his eyes flashing. “I wish I was big enough to lick the guy who started it.”

He hurried into the jail then. And I guess he told Bill Hadley a thing or two. For, bu-lieve me, that kid knew how to use his tongue. I’ll tell the world! And he wasn’t afraid of anybody, either.

Checked up by our new chum, I was ashamed of myself now to think that I had laughed on Bill’s side. As Poppy had said, the officer was making a monkey of the old prisoner, and that wasn’t the right thing to do. Still, I considered, as long as the old man had to be locked up in jail it was just as well that he had everything cozy and comfortable. That was a lot better for him than being discontented.

“Pa is nobody’s fool,” says Poppy, when he came back to us. “_He_ thinks the joke is on the marshal. And I’m not so sure that it isn’t.”

“I thought maybe he had something more to tell you about the safe robber,” says I.

“No. He just wanted to show me how his cell was fixed up. _I_ was mad about it. But he told me to keep my mouth shut. He knew what he was doing, he said.”

We started down the street then.

“I suppose you wonder where I was last night,” says Poppy, linking arms with me.

“Did you stay with Scoop?”

“I had to, when I lost track of you.”

“Red stayed at my house,” says I.

He grinned.

“If I had been there we could have had some fun, hey?--three in a bed.”

“Not _last_ night,” says I, serious.

“No?”

“Too many queer things happened last night for fun,” says I.

That turned his thoughts back.

“Did you know, Jerry, that we saw the spy last night? Sure thing. He came into the alley, but not far enough for us to trip him up.”

“We would have gotten him, though,” put in Scoop, “if Peg hadn’t coughed on a bug. He beat it then.”

“Didn’t you follow him?” says I.

“We tried to,” says Poppy, “but he was too slick for us.”

Here I told the others the truth about the Meyers robbery. Amazed at first at our surprising adventure, they almost threw a fit when they learned what a clever little “fixer” Red was.

“Oh, oh!” says Scoop, rocking his head in his hands. “Nobody at home! Kid, if ever there was a poor fish that flopped out of the frying pan into the fire it’s you.”

But this kind of talk didn’t upset Red. He stepped around as unconcerned as you please. Having escaped a licking in his trickery, everything was lovely with him now.

“Tra-la-la,” says he, showing off. “Listen to the praise I’m getting.”

“It’s the craziest scheme I ever heard tell of,” says Peg. “The idea of dumping all that stuff into a _cistern_! Ye bums and buttered biscuits! And the less credit to you, Red Meyers, it’s an out and out lie. Yes, it is. Letting your folks believe that they have been robbed is just the same as telling them a lie.”

“Tattletale!” says Red.

Peg colored up.

“No, I won’t tattle on you,” says he steadily. “But I can tell you this much, kid: If you don’t square yourself with your folks at the first opportunity you’re out of my gang for life. Get me? I may not be perfect, but I’m no sneak. And, further, you’ve got to buy your aunt a new parrot. I’ll help on that, for in coaxing you into the parrot fight I’m as guilty in the parrot’s death as you are.”

Poppy didn’t jump on Red like the others. That wasn’t his style. Anyway, he hadn’t known us for so very long and therefore was kind of careful in his talk to us.

“What became of the dead parrot, Jerry?” says he, getting my eye.

I shrugged.

“Ask Red,” says I. “He had it last.”

“Like fun I did,” says freckle-face, stiffening. “_You_ had it last. Don’t you remember?--I handed it to you when I locked the front door.”

“_I_ locked the front door,” says I.

“Yes, you did--_not_.”

“I did, too.”

“You didn’t.”

That’s Red for you. He’ll argue when he knows he’s wrong. Bullhead stuff, I call it. Of course, _I_ was right.

Poppy then questioned us about the burglar, wanting to know if we had gotten a look at the man’s face, or had heard his voice. And after considerable talk back and forth we came to the general conclusion that the man Red and I had seen and the man who had robbed the brickyard safe was unquestionably one and the same person. For the description of one fitted the other.

But it puzzled us to understand why the criminal was hanging around town. He had Dad’s three thousand dollars. Why then didn’t he play safe and beat it?

Was he waiting for a chance to steal the black parrot? Was there some secret reason--some very important reason--why he had to have the unusual parrot? And was it his scheme to get possession of the parrot, through hook or crook, and then make a break for safety?

In planning things our decision was that it would pay us to keep on guarding the alley. We would go there every night, we said. And sooner or later we would succeed in the criminal’s capture.

In the course of our conversation I mentioned old Caleb Obed.

“Do you suppose,” says I, “that the spy and old Caleb are in cahoots?”

Poppy got my eye.

“What do you mean by that?” says he quickly.

“Sometime last evening,” says I, “old Caleb switched birds on the Cap’n. In running off with the sooted parrot he thought, of course, that he had the real Solomon Grundy. Later on, as we know, the parrot turned up in the robber’s hands. So Caleb either gave it away or had it stolen from him.”

“That reminds me,” says Scoop, “that I tried to find old Caleb yesterday afternoon and couldn’t. Nobody around here seems to know where he is. So you may be wrong, Jerry, in thinking that he was in the Cap’n’s store last night.”

“But who else could have switched the birds?”

“Search me.”

“I bet it was old Caleb,” says Peg. “For he’s a deep one, let me tell you. I’ve had a hunch all along that he knows things that he doesn’t want us to know. And instead of giving all of our attention to the spy, it would be my suggestion that we keep an eye on the old man, too.”

Here a boy friend of ours came down the street on the run with a note for me.

“It’s from Cap’n Tinkertop,” says the kid, panting. “He says it’s important.”

I opened the note, wondering what had happened in the bird store to thus cause our old friend to write to me.

_Thirteen!_

This single word, written over the Cap’n’s sprawled signature, was the only message that the crumpled note contained. But I understood the message. And showing the others the note, which I knew was no trick of the Strickers’, I led my chums an excited and breathless race down the street to the bird store.

“Thirteen,” I might explain, is our danger signal. Known only to ourselves and to a few of our trusted friends, of whom the Cap’n was one, it was supposed to be used only in moments of great peril.

We found the bird-store proprietor quavering behind closed doors and drawn window shades.

“B’ys,” says he, in a husky voice, “I’m in a’ awful fix. I’m perty near crazy, I be. Jest look at me sweat! I’m wringin’ wet,” and he swabbed his drenched face with a soggy handkerchief.

There was an open traveling bag on a chair. And we saw that its owner had been packing it.

“I’m gittin’ ready to flee,” says he. “It’s that or go to jail. An’ I hain’t a-goin’ to let the law git its hands on me to hang me if I kin help it.”

“What have you done,” says Poppy, troubled, “that the law should be after you?”

The old man panted.

“It’s that blamed par’ot, b’ys.”

“Your black parrot?”

“Yes. It’s bin stole. Some one took it on me last night. But that hain’t the cause of my trouble. The thing that’s worryin’ me is what the par’ot did before it was stole.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s gone an’ voodooed a man. Yes, it hais,” the voice stiffened, as one of us laughed, “an’ you needn’t act smart ’bout it, nuther. It hain’t no laughin’ matter, let me tell you. Jumpin’ Jupiter--_no_! Fur if the man is daid, as I suspect, the only thing fur me to do to save my neck from the gallus is to git out of the country. Otherwise the law’ll take me in hand an’ hold me responsible, it bein’ my par’ot.”

“Oh, Cap’n!” says Poppy. “Don’t be a goose. There’s no truth in that crazy voodoo story. It _can’t_ be true.”

The packer went on with his work.

“Aw!... Come out of it, Cap’n. You don’t have to skin out of town. Of course not. You’ve just had a bad dream.”

The gingerbread eyes sought ours.

“B’ys, be you a-goin’ to stand by me?”

“Of course,” says Poppy quickly. “But----”

“They hain’t no ‘but.’ I know what I’m talkin’ ’bout. Somewhar at this very minute ol’ Caleb Obed is layin’ daid--struck down an’ killed by that thar devilish voodoo par’ot.”

“Caleb Obed!” came the cry from our new leader, looking at us.

“You b’ys don’t know it, but ol’ Caleb called to see me the afternoon I was down the river. Jest heow long he was in the store I kain’t say. No one to my knowledge saw him go in. But Matsy Bacon saw him come out. He was runnin’, Matsy saiz, an’ screechin’ to beat the cars. They was blood on his face. ‘The par’ot!’ he screeched. ‘The black par’ot!’ Wal, Matsy _he_ figured it out as heow the screecher was on another toot. ‘What’s the matter, Caleb?’ saiz he. ‘Be you seein’ black par’ots this time ’stead of green an’ yaller rattlesnakes?’ An’ then, so Matsy saiz, Caleb he screeched, ‘It flew at me an’ tried to kill me.’ After which, so Matsy saiz, the screecher went down the street on the trot, sort of limpin’ an’ staggerin’.

“Matsy told me the hul story this mornin’ when he was in the store. ‘Did you know,’ saiz he, thinkin’ as heow it was a good joke, ‘that one of your par’ots slivered a hunk of skin out of ol’ Caleb Obed the other afternoon?’ Figurin’ that Matsy was up to some kind of nonsense, I saiz, in fun, ‘So one of my par’ots bit a hunk out of ol’ Caleb, hey? Fine! Now I won’t have to buy the par’ot no fresh meat.’ Wal, we talked some more, me an’ Matsy. He told me ’bout seein’ Caleb come out of my alley door. I in turn told him how a certain par’ot of mine had bin took from my store last night between nine o’clock an’ midnight, only, of course, I didn’t tell him it was a real black par’ot, fur he never dreamed fur one minute that I had sech a thing in the store. ‘Mebbe,’ saiz Matsy, in further fun, ‘it was ol’ Caleb who hooked your par’ot on you in revenge; an’ mebbe he hooked the other par’ot, too.’ ‘What other par’ot?’ saiz I. ‘Last night,’ saiz Matsy, ‘they was another par’ot stole on Main Street.’”

“We know about that,” says Poppy, giving Red a queer look.

“Wal, Matsy an’ me we talked some more. An’ then, b’ys, it come to me all of a sudden that here was a test case. I warn’t scared at first like I be now, but I was awfully excited. An’ I lit out fur ol’ Caleb’s house on the trot, wantin’ to see fur sure that he was all right an’ haidn’t been voodooed. The nearer I got to his place the more fidgety I got. Suppose, I saiz to myself, that I should find him daid after all. Of course I wouldn’t, I saiz, tryin’ not to believe the voodoo story. But jest suppose I _should_. What would happen to me then? Wal, I come to Caleb’s house ... it was wide open ... but he wasn’t thar! He haidn’t bin thar, Paddy Gorbett told me, since day before yeste’day at three o’clock. I saiz, foxy-like, ‘When you seed him then, Paddy, did he have red paint on his face?’ ‘Was it paint?’ saiz Paddy. ‘I thought it was blood.’ I held myself steady, not wantin’ to git him suspicious of me. ‘Did he tell you,’ saiz I, ‘how the blood come to be thar?’ ‘No,’ saiz Paddy, ‘I didn’t talk with him.’

“An’ that, b’ys, is my story. Mebbe I’m a ol’ gilly, as you think. Mebbe they hain’t a particle of truth in the voodoo story. When I told you the story I didn’t half believe it myself. But now I’m preparin’ fur the worst. Yes, sir, I’m a-goin’ to git everything in readiness, without anybody seein’ me, so that I kin skin out on a moment’s warnin’. An’ thar is whar you kin help me. With your young legs you kin git ’round spry an’ cover a lot of territory. Besides, as I know, you’re perty smart at pickin’ up clews an’ sech. What I want you to do fur me is to find ol’ Caleb, or find his body. An’ if he’s daid, as I think, I want you to come here an’ tell _me_ first. As you kin see I’m innocent of any intended wrongdoin’--I’m a victim of circumstances, as the sayin’ is. An’ as an ol’ friend of yours who has always stood by you in thick an’ thin, an’ seein’ as heow you already know the par’ot’s secret, I feel I’ve got a right, under the circumstances, to ask this of you. Don’t repeat a word of what I’ve jest told you. But start out. An’ whether it’s a livin’ man that you find, or a chilled corpse, let _me_ know first. Give me two or three hours start, an’ then you kin go to the law with your story.”

We were sorry for the frightened old man. And we tried to tell him how foolish it was of him to think for one minute that old Caleb had actually been “voodooed.” There was another explanation for the vanished one’s disappearance, we said. But we couldn’t turn him.

“B’ys, you mean well enough, but you don’t know what you’re talkin’ ’bout. No, you don’t. I didn’t mention this part to you when I told you the voodoo story, but it’s a fact that Ham _he_ died sudden, too. An’ thar on the wall by his bed--I kin see it yet!--was a picture of a par’ot, drawn with charcoal. A black par’ot! An’ when they come to close his eyes they jest couldn’t make ’em stay closed at all--every time the eyes was pressed shet they’d pop right open ag’in, jest like the daid brain held a _secret_ that the eyes was tryin’ dumbly to tell about. It’s a part of the voodoo, b’ys--the starin’, glassy eyes. It was that way with Bige Morgan, an’ it was the same with Ham. You’ll see what I mean when you find ol’ Caleb. And in that p’int, mebbe you better git started in your search right away. I’ll wait here out of sight till I git word from you, good or bad, only I hain’t expectin’ nuthin’ but bad news, I kin tell you that much.”