CHAPTER VUNCLE BEN
Mrs. Ransom hurried along the meadow path on her way to the house of Constable Juke. The constable was not like a regular policeman. He did not wear a blue uniform with brass buttons, and he did not walk up and down the street swinging a club. He was just a farmer, and when he was called on to arrest anybody, as he was once in a while in Cresco, he just went out in his regular working clothes and took the person to the jail.
“Say!” exclaimed Tom, as he watched Mrs. Ransom hurrying away, “I’d better go home, I guess, Ted, and so had you.”
“What for?” asked Ted. “Let’s go and see Constable Juke arrest the burglars that robbed Miss Ransom’s store.”
“Nope! I’m going home!” declared Tom.
“But what for?” asked Ted again.
“’Cause,” explained his playmate, “if burglars robbed Miss Ransom’s store maybe they robbed our house, and maybe my mother would want me to help catch ’em—or, anyhow, go after the constable for her. And maybe they robbed your house, too, Teddy. You’d better go home.”
Ted looked down at his clothes, which were only partly dry and which still had much mud on them.
“No, I don’t b’lieve I’ll go home yet,” he said. “I’ll stay out in the sun till I get dryer. Anyhow, our house wasn’t robbed. I was there all night, and no burglars came in. We have a tramp at our house,” he added. “You know—the one I told you about.”
Tom thought for a moment.
“Say!” he cried, “maybe he’s the man that took the things from Miss Ransom’s store. Tramps rob places, don’t they?”
“Maybe,” agreed Ted. “But I don’t believe this tramp did. He’s a nice looking man. Anyhow, Miss Ransom saw him on our lawn, and he wasn’t in her store. I guess it was somebody else.”
“I guess it was, too,” agreed Tom. “Anyhow, I’m going home to see if we had any robbers. If we had, I’ll tell you about it, and then we can go off in the woods and hunt for ’em!”
Both boys looked across the meadow to the house of Constable Juke. They could see, even from where they stood, Mrs. Ransom going into the yard, and after they had watched a little longer, they saw a man come out and speak to the woman who kept the candy and notion store.
“That’s Constable Juke now,” said Tom.
“And she’s telling him all about the robbers,” added Ted.
“I’m going to hurry home,” went on Tom. “And if there’ve been any robbers at our house I’ll go and tell the constable, too.”
“No, don’t do that!” cried Ted.
“Why not?” asked his chum.
“’Cause we want to catch ’em ourselves. If you find out your house has been robbed, you come and tell me and we’ll hunt the burglars. We won’t say anything about it to Constable Juke till we catch the burglars.”
“Say, that’ll be fun!” cried Tom, his eyes opening wide. “Won’t everybody be s’prised?”
“They surely will,” cried Ted. “You hurry back now, and then come an’ tell me.”
Tom ran off across the meadow, and Ted walked slowly up and down in the sun, waiting for the mud to dry, so it could be brushed off. But, after a while, he grew tired of this.
“I guess it doesn’t show much now,” he said to himself as he tried to turn around to look at his back. “Anyhow, I’m going to tell mother I fell in. Besides, she can see I did. I might as well go home now and see if we had any burglars. I don’t see how we could, but maybe we did,” he added, half wishing this would be so. “Then Tom and I could catch ’em all together.”
So, not waiting for Tom to come back, Ted hurried home. Out in front of the house he saw an automobile, which he knew was not his father’s.
“Oh, maybe there’s a policeman in there now about the burglars!” thought the little boy. But, as he entered the house, he heard the voice of Dr. Whitney. It was the doctor’s automobile out in front.
“Yes, I think he will do very nicely now,” Ted heard the doctor saying.
The doctor and Ted’s mother came out of the room where the sick man had been put to bed.
“Hello there, Curlytop!” cried Dr. Whitney to Ted, as he ruffled up the tangled curls of the little fellow. “Well, where have you been, in swimming?” the doctor asked with a laugh, as he noticed the mud on the boy and the wet clothes.
“I—I wasn’t swimming,” said Teddy. “I fell in—off the raft.”
“Dear me, Theodore Martin!” cried his mother. “What do you mean? What raft?”
Of course Teddy had to tell all about it then, but he hurried over the accident in the water as fast as he could, for he had other news.
“What do you think?” he exclaimed, before his mother could say anything about his having fallen off the raft. “Miss Ransom’s store was robbed and she’s gone after Constable Juke, and maybe Tom Taylor’s house is robbed, too, and the burglars took a queer box from Miss Ransom that her brother brought from away off and Tom and me—I mean Tom and I are going to——”
Teddy stopped just then. There were a number of reasons for this. One was that he was out of breath, from having talked so fast.
Another was that he thought, just in time, that he had better not say he and Tom were going to try to find the burglars—for that is what Ted had on the tip of his tongue to say next. Another reason for stopping so quickly was that his mother held up her hand, just as a policeman at a busy street crossing holds up his hand to stop the automobiles. Whenever Mrs. Martin did that, Teddy knew he must calm down. And he did this time.
“Theodore Baradale Martin!” said his mother slowly, “what does all this talk mean about burglars?”
“It’s true, Mother!” exclaimed Teddy. “Miss Ransom’s store was robbed, and the burglars took some money and a queer box and—and——”
“Yes, it’s true,” said Dr. Whitney, nodding his head as Mrs. Martin looked at him. “I heard something about it as I was coming here just now, but I didn’t pay much attention. I didn’t hear anything about Tom Taylor’s house being robbed, though, Teddy.”
“Well, maybe Tom’s isn’t,” answered the Curlytop lad. “He’s gone home to find out about it.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Martin with a smile. “Well, there haven’t been any burglars here, I’m glad to say. Now, Teddy, you go and get washed and put on clean clothes. Then you go out and help Jan take care of Baby William.”
“Yes’m,” said Teddy. But he made up his mind that as soon as he could he would see Tom and find out if any burglars had been at his friend’s house.
That afternoon nearly everybody in Cresco knew about Mrs. Ransom’s store having been robbed. But that was the only place in the town that had been entered. Much to the disappointment of Ted and Tom, no burglars had been at the Taylor house. And the story of the robbery at Mrs. Ransom’s was very simple. As a matter of fact no one knew anything about it.
The woman who kept the store counted up the money in the drawer and she found that some had been taken. Then she looked around her house and shop and found that some silver spoons were gone, and also some things from the store.
“But what I miss most of all,” she said to Mrs. Martin, when she came over to talk about her loss, “is a queer box my brother, who used to be a sailor, brought me from a far-off land. The box was made in Japan, and if you didn’t know how to open it you could try all night and never get the cover off or the little drawer out.”
“Was anything in the box?” asked Mrs. Martin.
“Yes, there was a picture of my brother and some other things I wanted very much to keep to remember my brother by.”
“Is he dead?” asked Teddy softly.
“Well, I’m afraid he is by this time,” said Mrs. Ransom. “You see, my brother is a sailor. He went off on a voyage a good many years ago, and I haven’t heard from him since. I guess he was shipwrecked. He gave me that box just before he went away for the last time, and his picture was in it. That’s why I thought so much of it, and why I feel so sorry that the burglars took it. They could have my spoons, the money and everything else, if they’d give me back the queer box with the puzzle top. Nobody knows how to open it, except the man who made it, my brother John and myself.”
Mrs. Ransom could not tell how the burglars got in. There was no sign of a door or a window being broken, and Constable Juke, who came over to look at the store, said he guessed the robbers (or robber, if there was only one) must have sneaked in when Mrs. Ransom was out for a little while, and so have taken the things.
“But I’ll keep my eyes open for the robber,” he promised, “and if I see him around I’ll arrest him and get back your spoons, Mrs. Ransom.”
“Get back Brother John’s queer box,” begged the storekeeper. “I want that more than anything else.”
She went back to her little shop, the constable went home, and Ted, Janet, and Baby William sat down to supper.
“How is the sick man?” asked Daddy Martin, when he came home.
“Much better,” answered Mother Martin. “Dr. Whitney says he’ll soon be sitting up.”
“May we go in and see him?” asked Teddy.
“Yes, I think so,” answered their mother.
Two days later Ted, Jan, and Baby William were allowed to go into the room where the “tramp,” as the children often called him, was sitting up in an easy chair. He looked much better than when he had been carried in a few days before.
Ted and Jan stared at the invalid, who was fast getting better. And Ted suddenly exclaimed:
“Why, he’s Uncle Ben!”
“Uncle Ben!” repeated his father. “What do you mean?”
“Why, he looks just like the picture of Uncle Ben in our photograph album,” went on Teddy. “Doesn’t he, Mother?”
Mrs. Martin looked closely at the man, who had a bushy, brown beard.
“I have been puzzling my head, trying to think whom you did look like,” she said to the stranger. “Now I know. It is Uncle Ben!”