CHAPTER XX

WHAT WE CAPTURED

Doc Leland had me lay down on a couch in his office while he doped my ankle with medicine.

“Um ...” says he, in the course of his work. “How does that feel?”

“It stings,” says I, fidgeting.

“Of course it does. But that hain’t a-goin’ to kill you.”

I was told then that I would be all right again in a few days, but I wasn’t to do any more swimming in the creek. For the sluggish stream was full of poison, Doc said.

The meeting was going on in the room. And from the earnest conversation of the business men I gathered that they were up in arms over old Caleb’s spree. It was a disgrace to the community, Mr. Ellery declared.

“I’ve got a boy growing up,” says he, meaning Scoop, “and if I am to expect him to properly respect his country’s laws, and abide by them, I’ve got to do my part, as a parent and citizen, and you fathers have got to do the same, to see that the laws are obeyed. In short, gentlemen, we’ve got to set our growing boys a good example in law enforcement and cease this milk-and-water attitude of ours toward a vicious traffic that we know exists in our midst. That is why I suggested this informal meeting.”

“I have said right along,” says Mr. Fisher of the Chamber of Commerce, nodding in approval of Mr. Ellery’s speech, “that we could stop the moonshine traffic if we got together.”

Bill’s face reddened.

“Is that an insinuation, Fisher, that I hain’t bin doin’ my duty?”

“Not at all,” says Mr. Ellery quickly. “We didn’t get together to-night to criticize anybody but ourselves. The point is, as I see it, that we, as a community, have been entirely too lackadaisical in our support of our officer.”

“Until lately,” says Bill, “we hain’t had an awful sight of ‘moon’ in town. As fur old Caleb’s case, I’ve got a’ idear who sold him the stuff. But if we were to raid the guy I doubt if we’d git any evidence. Fur them fellers is reg’lar snakes in coverin’ up their tracks.”

“Who is this bootlegger?” says Mr. Fisher.

Bill gave a name that surprised and excited me.

“Why! ...” says I, drawing the attention of the men to my couch. “Maybe this bootlegger is the burglar.”

There was a moment’s dead silence.

“By gum,” says Bill, giving me a warm look, “I never thought of _that_.”

Doc’s office adjoins the emergency rooms. And at this point the public health nurse tapped on the connecting door and entered.

“I thought you might want to know,” says she to Doc, “that Cap’n Tinkertop has partially regained his senses. He tells a queer story about a ghost--as I understand it, the ghost of a dead sailor brother. It might quiet him if you were to talk with him.”

“Um ...” says Doc. “So he’s got somethin’ to tell us about a ghost, has he? That must ’a’ bin the ‘it’ that he seen night before last.”

Here the Cap’n himself pottered into the room, having gotten out of bed of his own accord.

“Caleb,” says he huskily, searching the room with restless troubled eyes. “Caleb. Hais any of you gentlemen seed anything of ol’ Caleb Obed? I’ve bin lookin’ fur him. But I kain’t find him.”

Doc got the trembling patient safely into a chair.

“Saturday,” says the old man, mumbling to himself. “Ham said--I was to give him--the money--on Saturday night. Ham said----”

“He’s talking about his brother,” says I to Doc.

“But his brother’s dead.”

The old man’s ears caught this.

“Yes,” says he, nodding slowly, “my brother’s daid. Ham, I mean. But he come back. He allus said he would, an’ he did.” Again the troubled eyes searched the room, as though the muddled brain was seeking a way out of its confusion. “Don’t you un’erstand? It was his _ghost_ that I seed--his _spirit_. I woke up sudden. An’ thar he was at the foot of the bed. An’ he said--he said--I was to give him back--his money. He said--I haid lost his par’ot--I haidn’t kep’ my part of the ’greement--an’ I was to give him back his money--on Saturday night.”

Mr. Ellery had been listening attentively.

“What money is he talking about, Jerry?”

I explained about the insurance money.

The merchant gave a dry laugh.

“I never was quite foolish enough to believe in ghosts,” says he, “and particularly am I unwilling to take stock in a ghost that tries to collect its own insurance money.” He paused in deep thought. “I wonder,” he went on, “if we aren’t in touch with some kind of a scheme to defraud the insurance company that carried the two-thousand-dollar policy. To that point, this man Ham may not be dead at all. He may have faked a death, scheming to recover the insurance money in trickery from his not overly bright brother.”

Bill was grim now.

“I’m beginnin’ to think,” says he, waggling, “that they is some close connection between this bootlegger an’ the Cap’n’s ghost. Fur, as Jerry says, the robberies followed this feller’s appearance in town, so why not this other trick, too? Anyway, this bein’ Saturday night, we’ll jest do a little investigatin’ in that quarter.” Pausing, he looked at me and laughed in his rough way. “How would you like to git in the Cap’n’s bed ag’in, Jerry?”

“Nothin’ doin’,” says I, shivering.

“No? Well, calc’late we’ll have to use Fisher then. Fur he’s jest about the Cap’n’s size. Come on, men.”

“I’m going, too,” says I, jumping up.

I looked for my chums in the street, but to my disappointment they were nowhere in sight. Presently we turned the corner into School Street. In the Cap’n’s store Mr. Fisher got into the old man’s bed, as I had done the preceding night, while the other men distributed themselves throughout the store in good hiding places. I was in the bedroom closet with Bill. And, boy, maybe you think I wasn’t excited!

There was a long wait. At least it seemed like an age to me. I heard the sitting-room clock strike eleven; then eleven-thirty.

Suddenly a hand pressed mine in the dark.

“There!” says Bill, breathing the word in my ear.

I had heard the sound, too--some one, or _something_, was on the roof. Yet I had to stretch my ears to detect the light, muffled footsteps. We heard the scuttle open. There were parrot-like footfalls in the attic. Then the trapdoor in the sitting-room ceiling was drawn up. Following a short, deep silence, a rope fell with a slight thud to the floor. To a deep sleeper all of these sounds would have passed unnoticed.

We had left a lamp burning low in the room. And through the crack in the closet door I now saw the dead sailor’s “ghost” approach the foot of the bed, white-faced, its eyes staring and glassy, its breast bared to show the tattooing. At this point the bed creaked slightly. Afterwards the men joked Mr. Fisher, accusing him of shivering. And to that point maybe he did shiver. It wouldn’t have been so very surprising. Even with my hand in Bill’s I sort of shivered myself.

“B-b-boaz Tinkertop,” stuttered the ghost, in a graveyard voice, “you have lost my p-p-parrot. You have let it fall into e-e-evil hands. So, having broken your s-s-solemn promise to me, I d-d-demand my money back. _Give me my m-m-money!_”

Here Bill threw open the closet door and flashed his gun.

“Hands up!” he roared, which was a signal for the other men to tumble into the room.

Well, my story really ends with the “ghost’s” capture. As you probably have guessed, the “ghost” was the Indian medicine man. But the captured one was no real Indian--he was a younger black-sheep brother of the Cap’n’s, a man long since disowned by his two older law-abiding brothers. At one time he had been a character actor in an Indian play, which explains how the “Indian” idea had become fixed in his head. Of a naturally tricky mind, traveling around the country in his later years in Indian disguise selling fake medicine publicly and moonshine secretly was stuff to his liking.

Angered in getting no lawful share of his oldest brother’s life insurance money, he had thought up the scheme of stealing the death parrot from its new owner and playing “ghost,” knowing how very superstitious the Cap’n was. It was to find out where the black parrot was hidden in the store that he had spied through the alley windows. Fortunate for his evil purpose he had seen us take the strange parrot out of its wall hole, as I have written down. That was on Monday night--his first night in town. On Tuesday night he had robbed the brickyard safe. Having found in old Caleb a steady customer for his moonshine, he had gone to the old bachelor’s home late Wednesday night, hoping to sell still more liquor. In the open house he had seen the stuffed black parrot, and, stealing it in a queer turn of humor, had directly afterwards switched it for the sooted parrot. In stealing the live parrot that night he had thought, of course, that he was getting possession of Solomon Grundy. Later that same night he had robbed the Meyers’ home. And how the sooted parrot got away from him there you already know.

To-day as a result of his evil life he is in jail. The money that he stole from the brickyard safe was recovered, and out of the three thousand dollars we got five hundred dollars. Dad groaned in paying us this big amount of money. But he had promised us one hundred dollars apiece if we captured the burglar, so he had to keep his word.

Poppy rented a home on Elm Street with his share of the money and stocked the house with stuff to eat. He bought some second-hand furniture, too. However, he didn’t have to buy very much furniture, for our folks gave him a lot of stuff. Mr. Ott, of course, was freed, but I really think he was sorry to leave his comfortable cell. Strange to say a warm friendship had sprung up between the old man and Bill. And to-day these two men get together and talk “detective” stuff by the hour. Poppy says, though, that his father, now a regular employee of Dad’s, has given up all hope of ever being a successful sleuth.

A rough man, Ham Tinkertop had taught his weird parrot its “blood” talk. And it was the sailor, tattooed himself, who had tattooed his two brothers and old Caleb. There was no mystery in the tattooing on the Cap’n’s and old Caleb’s breasts, nor was there any mystery in the dead sailor’s odd picture. As for the new grave, it was generally concluded that old Caleb had been drinking when he had ordered the grave dug. I am glad to write down in conclusion that we got the old man to sign a temperance pledge. And he has kept his word, too. To-day he hates the filthy stuff. I wish all men hated it. For, as Dad says, moonshine is poison. And the thing for a fellow to do, if he has any pride in himself, is to leave it alone. Bu-lieve me, I’m never going to act smart when _I_ grow up and drink any of the rotten stuff.

If Mrs. Strange ever got track of her stolen mino bird I never heard about it. It wasn’t her dead bird that old Caleb had. I sometimes think it was a lucky thing for me that her bird was stolen. For it was through the bird’s theft that Poppy came to our town to live. I sure do like that kid. I never expect to have a pal that I like any better. And he feels the same way toward me. It’s bully to have a pal like that. So, as I say, I can’t feel sorry that the Cedarburg woman’s bird was stolen. What was her loss was my gain.

Able again to take care of his bird business, the Cap’n confessed to us one morning that in his fear of the death parrot he had secretly advertised the bird for sale. He knew he was doing wrong. His conscience had hurt him, he said. And this probably explains why he had been so terror stricken when the dead man’s accusing “ghost” came.

That same week we captured Solomon Grundy in Bid Stricker’s hen house. Bid himself had earlier caught the bird, and, in an intended trick on the parrot dealer (he had found out somehow that the Cap’n had lost a black parrot), had put the bird in the old man’s bed, not knowing that the storekeeper had been taken to the emergency rooms. The enemy chief kept out of our sight while we were in his yard. He has given us a wide berth ever since his recent “adventure” in digging up a certain “buried treasure” consisting of four five-cent toy wheelbarrows!

Oh, yes, in conclusion I must tell you about poor Red. I slipped into his yard the Monday after Bart Tinkertop’s arrest, and there sat funny face on the back porch steps polishing silverware to beat the cars. He had a cushion under him. His aunt was on the porch feeding crackers to her half-starved parrot. And when I meandered around the corner of the house she looked at me as though I was some miserable thing that the cat had dragged in. So I promptly meandered back home again.

I don’t like that woman!

And that is all for this time. In another book, POPPY OTT’S SEVEN-LEAGUE STILTS, I will tell you how my new chum and I went into business and made considerable money. Boy, did we ever have fun! A smart rich kid who thought he was better than us tried to kick our business in the seat of the pants. But, bu-lieve me, _he_ got a kick in the seat of the pants before we got through with him. The things Poppy did, with my help, make a mighty interesting story, I think. There is a strange old man in this new book. Br-r-r-r! Through him we became entangled in a most amazing and most bewildering mystery. Talk about a shivery adventure! If _you_ don’t shiver when you read this new book, the title of which I have given above, I’ll miss my guess.

THE END

Transcriber’s Note:

Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These, as well as jargon, dialect, obsolete and alternative spellings, were left unchanged.

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_. Obvious printing errors, such as missing or reversed order letters and punctuation, were corrected. Eight misspelled words were corrected.