CHAPTER V

OLD CALEB’S QUEER STORY

I’ve got a pretty good head on me. In solving mysteries I can think things out pretty good. Still there are times when my mind goes jumpy. If a mystery takes a sudden surprising turn I get excited. I was that way now.

The stuttering parrot’s “blood” talk had befuddled me. Like Scoop, I couldn’t make sense of it. And I was disappointed, too, in the thought that now Poppy Ott’s father would lose out on the thousand-dollar reward that the Cedarburg woman had offered for the return of her stolen mino bird. I had wanted Mr. Ott to get the thousand dollars so that Poppy could have a good home like the rest of us. But if this bird of the Cap’n wasn’t the stolen mino bird--if, instead, it was a real black parrot, as Poppy declared--it was a cinch that the old detective wouldn’t be able to turn it in for the big reward.

Our new chum looked sort of crushed.

“Poor Pa,” says he. “It’ll pretty nearly flatten him out when he learns that he has been trailing the wrong parrot. It’ll be an awful blow to him.”

As I say, we didn’t go back to bed that night. We were too excited to be sleepy. At daybreak we were still talking about the mystery. Going outside, we searched the alley. But we found no clews.

Mr. Ott got up at six o’clock. He was all right now, only his head ached. At first he was suspicious of us and snapped us up when we tried to quiz him. But Poppy made him understand that we were his friends.

To our disappointment the old man couldn’t tell us very much about the spy.

“It was a man, a’ average-sized man, an’ that’s all I know,” says he. “I seed him at the windy. He was lookin’ inside. I got up behind him to show him my star an’ arrest him on suspicion. An’ then he turned quick-like an’ hit me on the haid with a club.”

“Did he say anything to you?” says Scoop.

“No, he jest turned quick an’ hit me.”

“And you didn’t see his face?”

“No.”

Nothing was said to the old detective about the stuttering parrot. In planning things Scoop had asked Poppy not to tell his father about the hidden parrot until we had had a chance to talk with the Cap’n. For the hidden parrot was the Cap’n’s secret. And we had no right to peddle the secret without our old friend’s permission.

Breakfast over, Poppy started off with his father, then came back.

“I want to thank you fellows,” says he earnestly, “for taking me into your gang. I don’t look like much. But you won’t be sorry you picked me up, I can tell you that much.”

“Can’t you take your pa home and come back?” Scoop invited. “You can help us solve the mystery.”

“I’m going to look for a job.”

Red is a dumb-bell in blurting out things.

“Before you start looking for a job,” says he, “you better go home and put on your Sunday clothes.”

Poppy’s face reddened.

“_These_ are my Sunday clothes,” says he, looking down at himself. “And they’re my Monday clothes and my Tuesday clothes, too.”

“I’ve got a lot of clothes at home,” says I quickly. “And if you’ll let me, I’ll take you home and fix you up. For, as Red says, you’ll stand a better chance of getting a good job if you look neat.”

“I’ll be back,” says he.

The Cap’n didn’t come home to breakfast. That puzzled us. And then, to our surprise, old Caleb Obed came around for his regular morning checker game.

Scoop stared at the pottering newcomer.

“I thought you and the Cap’n had gone fishing,” says he.

“_Me?_” says old Caleb, cocking his glass eye at us. “_Me_ an’ the Cap’n, you say? No, sir, it wasn’t _me_ an’ the Cap’n--it was jest the Cap’n, himself.”

“He isn’t home yet,” says Scoop.

“Um ...” says old Caleb, waggling. “Skeered to come home, he be. That’s what’s keepin’ him away. He’s skeered that I’ll up an’ beat him like I did yesterday. I guess he knows _now_ who’s the best checker player in this town. I showed him up yesterday, I did. Seven games it was, an’ I beat him every one. _He_ didn’t git a game even.”

Scoop winked at us as a signal for us to keep still and let him do the talking.

“Say, Caleb,” says he, “do you happen to know what the Cap’n feeds his black parrot for breakfast?”

Old Caleb’s jaw dropped.

“Heh?” says he, staring.

“I suppose we ought to take good care of the parrot,” says Scoop, “until the old man gets home.”

Caleb’s face was full of suspicion now.

“How come,” says he, with narrowed eyes, “that you-all know ’bout that pesky par’ot? I thought it was a secret.”

Scoop grinned.

“Some parrot, isn’t it, Caleb? It’s the first stuttering parrot I ever saw.”

“Yes,” says the old man, in a sudden talkative streak, “an’ it’s the only _black_ par’ot in the whole world. Ham Tinkertop could ’a’ sold it fur a lot of money, I guess, it bein’ a freak. But, no, sir, he wouldn’t let it go. He had a reason fur keepin’ it. I heerd him talkin’ ’bout it to the Cap’n the last time he was here, which was the summer the Cap’n got stuck in the rat hole in his kitchen floor with his peg-leg and had to be sawed out. ‘Boaz,’ says Ham to his brother, only he didn’t say it jest like that, fur you know what a awful stutterer he was, ‘Boaz,’ says he, ‘strange as it may seem to you, knowin’ what you do ’bout Solomon Grundy, they hain’t a man in the world outside of yourself that I think as much of as I do of that thar par’ot. That’s a fact. An’ if you’ll give him a good hum when I’m daid an’ gone, with no ill feelin’ ’gainst him fur what you know ’bout him--only keepin’ a sharp eye on him, of course, so he won’t do nobody any damage--if you’ll do that, Boaz,’ says Ham to the Cap’n, with me a-listenin’ in, like I say, ‘I’ll promise to make over my life insurance money to you.’”

Scoop gave us another wink.

“I’ve often wondered,” says he to the talkative one, “how much money the Cap’n brought home from his brother’s funeral.”

“Two thousand dollars,” says old Caleb promptly. “I was with him the day he put the insurance money in the bank.”

Scoop laughed.

“Gee! I wish some one would will _me_ two thousand dollars for taking care of a parrot. The Cap’n’s lucky.”

A queer look flashed into the old man’s wrinkled face.

“Um.... Mebbe the Cap’n’s lucky. An’ mebbe he ben’t.”

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

The old man started for the door.

“I come here to play checkers,” says he, snappish-like, “an’ not to tell secrets.” He paused in the doorway, his beady eyes hidden under shaggy brows. “But let me give you young fellers a pointer,” he added. “Don’t you git too clost to that thar par’ot. It _acts_ all right; an’ you _think_ it’s all right. But it’ll nab you in a minute if it gits a chance. An’ if that happens you’re a-goin’ to be sorry, I kin tell you that much.”

“Well,” says Scoop, when the old gossip had taken himself away, “I guess we know now where the parrot and the money came from.”

“And we know why the parrot stutters,” says I, thinking of the Cap’n’s stuttering brother, who undoubtedly had taught the bird to speak.

“It’s a disappointment to me,” says Scoop, “that there isn’t some connection between this bird and the stolen mino bird. I had hoped for a lot of mystery.”

“How about the man at the window?” says I. “_He’s_ a mystery.”

“Sure thing,” says Red.

“I wonder who he is,” says Scoop, thinking.

“And _I_ wonder,” says Peg, “what old Caleb meant by that queer talk of his. You could think from his warning that the stuttering parrot was some kind of a peril.”

“Maybe the parrot has a bad disease,” says I. “Maybe that is why the Cap’n has been hiding it.”

“If it has a harmful disease,” says Scoop, “it ought to be killed.”

“But the Cap’n was paid two thousand dollars for taking care of it. See? He doesn’t dare to kill it.”

Suddenly, as though it knew what we were talking about, the black parrot lifted its voice in its wall hole.

“B-b-blood! B-b-blood! Give me some b-b-blood!”