CHAPTER XIIDR. MADDEN COMES HOME
Poppyand I were doing a sort of double-decker stunt now. We had to in riding with old Goliath, for he took up two-thirds of the seat. But we didn’t kick, however crampy it was for us. As a matter of fact, we were only too glad it wasn’t any worse. Think what might have happened to us if old heavy-weight had been tending to business, as official toll collector, instead of scheming to his own escape. Br-r-r-r!
I guess, if the truth were known, we acted kind of simple. You know how it is with a fellow when he gets caught with his fingers in the company jam jar. We didn’t know what to say. And every minute we expected old blunderbuss to get his memory to working on our trickery, as he had overheard it, and start bawling us out.
But to our surprise he was as nice as pie. Either he had completely forgiven us, we decided, or in some dumb way had failed to catch on. So it wasn’t hard for us to put away our uneasiness. More than that, in our happy-go-lucky way, we brought out apair of perfectly good grins. And to that point, I don’t know how any kid with fun in him could have ridden beside that old geezer without grinning. Say, that wassomeride. First a tree would jump at us out of the darkness, then the corner of a house, then a hunk of sidewalk. It was a lucky thing for all of us that the whole town was asleep. For otherwise we might have been jailed for intoxicated driving, or whatever you call it—like the time back home when Paddy Gorbett drove into the Presbyterian church and started bawling the minister out because the garage was full of pews.
To a rosy view of things, how handy old Goliath would be, we thought, if the Galloping Snail got another balky spell. Big as he was, he could push beautifully. If necessary, with so much muscle, he couldmakethe old engine zip whether it wanted to or not. So it couldn’t put anything over on us. We really were lucky in having him along, we concluded. And most wonderful of all, we had saved our two dollars, though not in the way we had schemed. To this point, however, as you will see, our joy soon lost its jiggles. Like the man with the nest of rotten eggs, we had counted our savings before they were hatched.
Having navigated into one end of Main Street and out the other, without upsetting anything any bigger than the car itself, the driver suddenly rememberedthat he had a duty to perform and stopped outside of town.
“Boys,” says he in that deep drawl of his, “we want to be fair an’ square. Fur in startin’ out in any undertakin’, this ’un unexcepted, a feller never gits very far who isn’t fair an’ square.”
“Meaning which?” says Poppy suspiciously.
“We owe the town two dollars. An’ it’s our bounden duty to pay it. Then we kin leave here with a clear conscience.”
“Forget about your conscience,” says Poppy quickly, “and throw in the clutch.”
“No, I kain’t do that. In runnin’ away from my wife, I’ll have enough on my mind without wantin’ my conscience to further prick me in the thought that, through me, these pore suckers, who don’t git six square meals a year, was cheated out of eight good soup bones.”
The upper deck nudged me.
“I know a good scheme, Mr. Goliath.”
“Um.... Hopple is my name—Samuel Cassibaum Hopple.”
“Well, Mr. Hopple,” came the foxy plan, “knowing the layout as you do, suppose you go back and ask Noah if we can’t have a special evening rate—a dollar and ninety-eight cents, or something like that. As you’re leaving with us, I think the gang in the arkought to sort of set up the treats. Don’t you?”
But old Samuel Cassibaum Goliath Hopple was no dumb-bell. Not on Tuesday evening, anyway.
“Um ...” came sharply, to let us know that he was setting his big foot down and wanted no further nonsense from us. “You jest come across with that two dollars an’ quit tryin’ to work me.”
“But, listen—” Poppy hung on.
“They hain’t nothin’ to ‘listen’ to. We owe the money. An’ bein’ an honest an’ upright man, I hain’t a-goin’ to have it on my conscience that I skipped out an’ never collected it. It’s my last duty.”
But Poppy was as hard to corner as a lost collar button.
“You sayweowe the town two dollars. All right. How much do you weigh?”
“Me?” came in surprise. “About three hundred pounds.”
“Jerry and I together don’t weigh that much,” says Poppy. “So, according to weight, you pay a dollar and we pay fifty cents apiece.”
But did old hefty fall for that clever little scheme? Not so you could notice it. Nor did he let us argue the matter further. Put up and shut up, were the orders we got, so, though we hated him now, we “put up,” as he expressed it, and thus saved our hides.
Taking the key of the car with him so that we couldn’t skin out, he was gone at least ten minutes. But if he woke up the gang in the ark to deliver the two dollars to them, there were no distant lights or sounds to prove it. Certainly, we didn’t hear any elephants or camels doing their stuff. The big boy was wiping his eyes when he came back. Even when a fellow’s wife had the rolling-pin habit, he told us sadly, blowing his nose, there was a certain amount of regret in leaving her.
Then on we went into the night, the old bus rattling and groaning as though each minute would be its last. But it held up, which showed that old Goliath was bringing us good luck, even though we had lost our two dollars. So it wasn’t right for us to hate him. Anyway, as I told Poppy, though the collection of the two dollars had seemed unnecessary to us, the big one had done what he thought was right. And when a fellow does that you’ve got to give him credit for it.
It was our scheme now to take the old geezer home with us and put him up for the night. Ma Doane wouldn’t care. And with a “spook” to catch and various other mysteries to solve, it wasn’t a bad plan, as you can see, to have a big guy like that on our side. If we went to Pardyville in the morning, he could go with us. Or if he was ready at breakfasttime to go back to his wife and let her lovingly use the rolling pin on him, that was all right, too. We weren’t particularly interested in his plans.
Presently we met a horse and buggy in the sandy trail. I thought of Lawyer Chew right off. That was natural. But it wasn’t old fatty. Pulling out to let the rig go by us, and stopping for safety, I had the queer feeling, as our skinny light struck the buggy, that a pair of gimlet eyes were boring holes through us. Who was this thin-faced, foreign-looking man, I wondered, uneasy in the meeting.
Goliath then told us that it was Dr. Madden of Neponset Corners.
“I used to see a lot of him before he went to Europe. Guess he jest got back. Some one told me he was expected home to-day.”
I had forgotten that Ma Doane had spoken of this doctor. But Poppy hadn’t. Bu-lieve me, that kid doesn’t forget about anything.
“Isn’t this the doctor,” says he, “who took care of the old man in the big stone house before he died?”
“Um.... Reckon you mean Mr. Corbin Danver. Yes, Dr. Madden had that case.”
“Is he a friend of Lawyer Chew’s?”
“Who? Madden? Possibly. I kain’t say.”
“Do you know Lawyer Chew very well?”
“Humph! I know him by hearsay an’ sight. An’ that’s enough fur me.”
“You don’t think much of him?”
“No, nor of snakes, nuther.”
“Do you like Dr. Madden?”
“Him? Wa-al, I might like him better if he wasn’t so kind o’queer.”
“Queer?” says Poppy.
“He’s got queer eyes fur one thing.”
“Eyes that look a hole through a fellow, huh?” I put in.
“Exactly. He gives you the feelin’ when he’s around you that he’s constantlylookin’fur somethin’.”
“And you never heard,” pressed Poppy, “that he and Lawyer Chew were particularly chummy, or that they were mixed up in any kind of property deals together?”
“Nope.”
“Dr. Madden went to Europe right after Mr. Danver’s funeral, didn’t he?”
“Ye-es, I think he did. That same week, as I recall.”
“Did you ever hearwhyhe went to Europe?”
“It was told ’round here that he had gone away fur a rest.”
“Why? Was the case out here in the country a bad one?”
“The doctor an’ old Mr. Danver were great friends. An’ I guess it was an awful blow to the younger one when the old man died so suddenly.”
“Oh!...” says Poppy, and his hand tightened over mine. “Then Mr. Danver and the Doctor were great friends, huh?”
“So I heerd. I know the doctor came out this way an awful lot.”
“And did he tell around himself that he was going to Europe to rest?”
“He didn’t tellme. I jest heerd it.”
“Lawyer Chew may have told it.”
“Mebbe.”
“Did you ever hear,” Poppy further questioned, “that the doctor had any pets?”
“Pets? What do you mean?—dogs and cats?”
“Yes, or ... possibly a gander.”
“Agander! I never heerd ofanybodyhavin’ a pet like that.”
“Neither Dr. Madden nor Lawyer Chew?”
“No, sir, nor nobody else. Them things people don’t make pets of.”
What was Poppy’s idea, I wondered, in asking all these questions. Did he imagine that there was something crooked in the millionaire’s death, and that the lawyer and doctor, living in the same town,were mixed up in some evil scheme to get the dead man’s property?
Those boring eyes! Somehow the memory of our meeting with the man in the buggy gave me the creeps. Could it be, I further asked myself, that the doctor had known that we were heading for the big house, many of whose secrets undoubtedly were open to him. And didn’t he want us there? Yet the man’s eyes were naturally queer, old Goliath had told us. They seemed always to belookingfor something. Looking for what? Did thesomething, whatever it was, connect up with the millionaire’s sudden death? And had the search for the mysterioussomethingtaken the dead man’s medical friend to Europe?—and this, within a day or two after the funeral?
Poppy, too, had inquired about pets. Did he have the crazy idea that there was some secret connection between the returned doctor and the puzzling spotted gander? And, further, did my chum think that the gander, granddaughter and doctor were secretly mixed up together to a sort of common end?
Crickets! Maybe they did connect up, was my jumping thought. For certainly, as we knew, they all had come into the neighborhood at about the same time—taking it for granted that the granddaughter wasn’t more than twenty miles away.
Another thing, as the family doctor, the man with the thin face and eagle eyes knewwhythe millionaire had died; or, to put it another way, he knew what had caused the rich man’s sudden death. The question was, did Lawyer Chew know, too?