CHAPTER XITHE CAT KILLER
Duringthe next hour Bill Hadley did a lot of noisy stomping around. For that’s his way of working. He has the idea, I guess, that it makes him seem important.
But so far as I could see no new clews were added to the ones that we already had picked up, except that he found out the truth about the dead cat. And right here comes a strange part of my story. Can you imagine a one-armed man strangling a cat? If a job like that were wished onto me I think I’d needsixhands. For I know something about cats! How then had this geezer managed it one-handed? And awful as it was to think about, an act so inhuman as that, why had he done it?
No doubt it was all imagination on my part, but during the time that we were in the yard, hedged in as we were by a black thicket of crouching bushes and quivering overhead leaves, I had the shaky feeling that a pair of burning eyes were secretly watching us. But we could pick up nothing with our flashlights. I was glad, though, to goinside. Walls gave me a safer feeling. A one-armed cat killer! Br-r-r-r! None of that grab-it-by-the-neck-and-drag-it-around stuff for me.
It was Mr. Weckler’s library safe, Bill said, that had gotten the burglar’s eyes. But so far as we could see the safe hadn’t been opened, which led us to the belief that the defeated housebreaker had been scared away right after the attack.
“The dum cat is what gits me,” says Bill, all tangled up in that angle of the mystery. “I kin understand the attack on old Weckler—the chances are he heard noises below an’ come down here to investigate, to the unfortunate result that we already know—but I kain’t fur the life of me figure out why the geezer killed the cat. Did he do it first off on coming into the house, to keep it from yowling? Or did he do it after beanin’ the old gent? An’ why in time did hestrangleit? If he wanted to kill it, why didn’t he jest whack it in the head?”
“This isn’t the first queer thing that the robber has done,” says Poppy. “For the other night he broke into our cellar and strewed pickles all over the floor.”
“It could ’a’ bin the same geezer,” waggled Bill, on getting the whole story. Then he walked around shaking his head, as though he were more puzzled than ever.
At four-thirty old Mr. Weckler was no closer toconsciousness than when we had carried him upstairs, so there was no hope of getting any early help from him on the mystery. The nurse told us that steps were being taken by the doctors for an early operation. The poor old man! I kind of choked up when I looked at him, so still and white. I thought of the time my dog was run over by the garbage wagon. And I wished with all my heart that this awful accident hadn’t happened. For he had been good to us. In fact, few men would have done the things for us that he had done. For most men are too busy with their own work to give much thought or help to a boy’s schemes.
We solemnly buried the dead cat beside the onion bed in the weedy garden. It was daylight now. And as there was nothing more for us to do here, as I could see, I passed the suggestion to Poppy that we beat it for home and have a beauty nap. But he shook his head, telling me that he wanted to stay here and have an early talk with Mrs. Clayton, who was sleeping off the effect of Doc’s medicine. Getting his promise to meet me at Sunday School, I went off with Bill in the flivver. Dad got up when he heard me come in. And learning that Mother was sleeping, I quietly slipped into my own bed. Nor was I more than five or six minutes getting my snoozer cranked up.
I was up again at nine-thirty. And after a latebreakfast of my own making I dolled up in my best duds and sashayed down the street to the Methodist church. People in the street were talking with considerable excitement about the attempted robbery. But I didn’t say anything. For a good detective doesn’t run around blabbing his stuff.
Presently I met Mr. Stair.
“Well,” says he, thinking that he was pulling something clever, “how’s Aunt Jemima this morning?”
I felt like telling him, “None of your beeswax.” But I held in. For a boy doesn’t gain anything by being sassy to older people.
But when Bid Stricker percolated into the summer scenery and tossed some more of the “Aunt Jemima” stuff at me. I took after him lickety-cut I couldn’t run him down, though, for I had on my tight leather shoes. So I gave him a few rocks to remember me by. One of these flying rocks went kersmack! into the tin stomach of Doc Leland’s old Lizzie as it gurgled around a corner. Gee! Doc almost swallowed his false teeth. Then, in the thought that he had a blow-out he socked on the brakes with such force that his hat and nose glasses shot right over the top of his head into the back seat.
“Just my confounded luck,” he wheezed, throwing the jack and other tire tools out of the car. Carryingthe jack from wheel to wheel, and finding all four tires full of air, he stood and stared.
“I’ve had punctures,” he rumbled, “that I never heard. But this is the first time I ever heard one that I haven’t got.”
Grinning, I asked him how Mr. Weckler was.
“Him?” he slam-banged the jack and other stuff into the back of the car on top of his straw hat. “Oh, he’s jest about the same. Opened his eyes once an’ started talkin’. But it was stuff we couldn’t make any sense of fur the most part.”
“And he hasn’t told you yet who hit him?”
“Nope.”
At the church Poppy led me quickly into the basement, as he wanted to talk with me in secret behind the furnace.
“Jerry,” came excitedly, “I’ve found out something. Did you know that this river pirate of yours used to raise cucumbers?”
“Who? Old Peg-leg Weir?”
He nodded.
“Mrs. Clayton told me about it. And later on I got the full particulars from old Mr. Hartenbower.”
Mr. Silas Hartenbower, I might say, is a centenarian, or whatever you call it. Last June the whole county turned out to celebrate his one-hundred-and-second birthday. That was the afternoon Red Meyers and I made the bet to see whocould eat the most pink ice cream. The big pig! He won.
“I didn’t take much stock in that pirate story when you first dished it out to me,” says Poppy. “For it sounded fishy. But when Mrs. Clayton told me about the pirate’scucumbers—and when I heard about theiron moldfrom Mr. Hartenbower—oh, baby!”
Here a big yellow cat meandered around the furnace and took a curious squint at us. It strangely reminded me of Mr. Weckler’s cat. But when I reached down to pet it, it ran and jumped into an open window, the sill of which was on a level with the outside yard.
“It’s Mr. Hartenbower’s story,” says Poppy, “that old Peg-leg Weir covered up his unlawful river work for years by making a pretense of raising cucumbers for a living. Every summer he had a big bed of cucumbers back of his house—probably in the very same place where Mrs. O’Mally has her big patch. As he always had plenty of money, the neighbors got the idea that his cucumber seed brought a fabulous price. Hence the cucumbers were something extra-special, they thought. But the patch was left strictly alone when one farmer, who tried to snitch a peck or two of the cucumbers to get some of the seed for his own use, went home with a charge of bird shot in hislegs. That was Mr. Hartenbower, himself, then only twenty-two years old. The next winter the truth came out about the pirate. A posse of angry farmers surrounded his house, determined to capture him, and it was then, I was told, that he was shot down. Some battle, I guess. Mr. Hartenbower searched the house for cucumber seed. Couldn’t find a one. He did find a queer iron mold, though. Out of curiosity he later filled it with melted lead. And when he took the lead piece out of the mold, what do you suppose it was?”
“Bullets?” says I, remembering stories I had heard about early pioneer days.
“No,” he shook his head, “it wasn’t bullets. It was a little cucumber, about an inch long.”
I stared at him. And I could feel my eyes growing as big as his.
“As you can imagine,” he ran on, “I almost fell off my chair when old Mr. Hartenbower told me about the lead cucumber. For the truth fairly jumped at me. Our gold cucumber was a part of the pirate’s hidden treasure! Cucumbers having been his hobby, he had made a mold in which to cast his gold in the shape of little cucumbers, though what his object was I can’t imagine. But he did it—I’m dead sure of that. Gold cucumbers! Hundreds of them probably. If only we can find them. Eh, Jerry, old pal?”
Upstairs, in the opening of Sunday School, they were singing “Love Lifted Me.” So, with the pipe organ booming away like a bull with a burr under its tail, and a hundred kids yipping out the “Love-Lifted-Me” stuff at the top of their voices, I felt safe in doing some excited yipping myself. Treasure hunters! That’s what we were now. And to think only a few hours ago we had let ourselves get excited over a dinky little pickle business! Why, if we could find the pirate’s gold cucumbers we’d have a thousand times more jack in our pockets than a pickle store would earn for us in a thousand years. Automobiles! Airplanes! Motor boats! Candy and ice cream by the ton! We could buyanything, no matter what it cost. For gold cucumbers would be worth as much, pound for pound, as gold money. We knew that, all right.
The cat that I have mentioned, after washing itself, had gone to sleep on the sunny window sill. And now, as a long iron thing, like a pair of tongs, came stealthily through the window, inch by inch, and closed, with a snap like a fighting dog’s teeth on the furry neck of the luckless animal, I let out a screech that must have lifted the whole Sunday School to its feet.
Then, to my further horror, the struggling, gurgling, choking cat was whisked through the window and out of our sight.