“That’s the talk, mouse,” said Jinx. “Come on, get busy, Freddy. Hey, what’ll we take? Do you think he’ll miss these cuff links?”
“He might not,” said the pig. “Razor? No, we want him to miss it tonight, and he probably won’t shave till morning.”
“How about the toothbrush?” said Eeny. “He’ll certainly miss that.”
“Yes, he’ll miss that all right. But nobody could imagine Mr. Winch stealing a toothbrush. It’s about the last thing he’d ever take. Why can’t we roll up the whole case and take it along? He’s sure to miss something in it. Then we’ll hide it in Winch’s room and bring something of his back here so it’ll look as if he’d dropped it when he was hunting around.” As he talked, he pulled out a dresser drawer and tumbled the contents about. “And then we’ll sneak back into the passage and listen to the fun.” He turned to glance at the door by which they had entered, and then suddenly fell back against the dresser. “Oh, golly!” he exclaimed. “We’re sunk!”
At the consternation in his voice, Jinx and Eeny turned quickly towards him, then, following the direction of his horrified stare, towards the door into the secret passage. And they saw at once what had happened. Without their thinking anything about it, the door had swung shut behind them with a faint click, as they entered. And now there was no door. Merely a panel in the wall, like every other panel all around the room. There was no knob or latch or anything.
“I ought to have remembered,” said Freddy. “We should have propped it open. Of course. A secret door wouldn’t have a knob on the inside. And now how do we get out of the house?”
Chapter 13
Freddy knew that there must be a secret spring somewhere near the door. If they could find it and punch it, the door would open and they could get back into the passage. “I wish we dared turn on a light,” he said, for although it was only a little past six, the heavy rain clouds had rolled up so thickly that it was almost as dark as night. And though they hunted over every inch of the paneling they couldn’t find any spring.
“This is bad, Freddy,” Jinx said. “If you’re caught here now, Mr. Camphor will be surer than ever that you are a thief. The mice and I are all right; we’re small and dark; we can sneak around and hide and wait for a chance to escape. But you’re so large and white.”
“If anybody sees you,” said Eeny, “you could go. ‘Who-o-o!’ and pretend you’re a ghost.”
“Yeah,” said Jinx sarcastically, “or he could climb up on the bed and act like a pillow.”
Freddy had abandoned the search for the spring and had gone into the closet where Mr. Camphor’s suits were hung up. He came out pulling on a pair of dark trousers. “At least I can put on something dark,” he said. “Thank goodness Mr. Camphor is a small man. Well, we’ll have to give up our plan now, and—”
A warning squeak from Cousin Augustus interrupted him, and the mouse darted towards them. “Someone coming,” he whispered, and indeed they could hear footsteps coming up the stairs.
Jinx and the mice dove under the bed and Freddy ducked back into the closet just as the hall door opened and Bannister came in. The man picked up a cigar case that was lying on a table by the window, but as he turned to go he noticed the open dresser drawers. Then he saw the things that had been tossed out of the suitcase. “Dear me!” he said. “Good gracious! Tut, tut, tut!”
He stood for a minute frowning around at the disorder of the room. “Those Winches!” he said under his breath. “Couldn’t be anybody else. And I told Mr. Camphor—” He stopped with a fearful glance towards the bathroom door. It was plain what he was thinking. Perhaps the thief had not had time to escape. Perhaps he was hiding in there. He took a step forward, then stopped. “H’m, no,” he muttered. “Discretion is the better part of valor.” And he went hastily out of the room.
Freddy came out of the closet putting on a dark coat. He had found an old cap which was pulled down over his eyes. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here. And we’d better split up. It’s every animal for himself now. If we get away, we’ll meet in the entrance of the secret passage.”
Jinx and the mice hurried down the hall towards the stairs, for if they could reach the ground floor they would have a chance of finding an open door or window. But Freddy didn’t dare follow them. Besides, he wanted to hear what Mr. Camphor would say when he found that someone had been going through his things. He went back and hid in a linen closet next to Mr. Camphor’s room.
Pretty soon, footsteps came upstairs and went in next door. Freddy put his ear to the wall and heard Mr. Camphor say: “Yes, yes, Bannister; I can see for myself that someone has been here. But why do you think it was Mr. Winch or Horace? They’re in the kitchen, and Mrs. Winch says they’ve been there all the time.”
“Blood is thicker than water,” said Bannister.
“I suppose you mean that she won’t tell on her own relatives,” said Mr. Camphor.
“Of course she won’t. And another thing, sir—she’s afraid of them. I’ve seen the way she looks at them. And my guess is that they had a lot more to do with all the things that were stolen from the house than the pig did. All those suits of yours, sir. What would a pig want with suits? He couldn’t wear them.”
“Oh, couldn’t he!” Freddy thought. “It’ll be just too bad if they catch me now, and with one of his suits on. I’d never be able to prove my innocence after that.”
“Well, I don’t know, Bannister,” said Mr. Camphor. “It’s true, I liked that pig. He seemed a very sensible animal. And I certainly couldn’t ever get very fond of Mr. Winch or that dreadful boy. But there are lots of people I’m not fond of who aren’t thieves. What’s that?” he exclaimed suddenly.
Freddy had got a crick in his neck from holding his ear to the wall, and in turning to get the other ear into position had knocked over a broom.
“Oh, golly!” he thought. “Now I am in for it!”
And he certainly was. A few seconds later the door of the closet was pulled open.
“You!” shouted Bannister. “Come out!” He held a large poker which he shook threateningly at the pig.
Freddy was pretty scared, but he did not lose his head. In his detective work he had often worn disguises of different kinds, and he knew that it was fairly easy to make people think he was a boy or a very small man, if he acted the way they would expect a boy or a man to act under the circumstances. In a coal mine, for instance, you expect to see miners, and if you saw a pig in working clothes, with a pickaxe over his shoulder, the chances are that you wouldn’t notice that he was a pig. Because you don’t expect to see a pig in a coal mine.
Now Mr. Camphor and Bannister obviously expected to see a burglar come out of the closet, so Freddy decided at once to act as much like a burglar as possible. And there was just the chance that he might manage to fool them. He hunched his shoulders and kept his head down as he slouched out into the hall.
“What are you doing there?” Bannister demanded.
Freddy keyed his voice to a whine, as unlike his regular tones as he could make it. “I ain’t done any harm. I ain’t stolen anything, Mister.”
“Bring him in here,” said Mr. Camphor from the bedroom door. “Let’s take a look at him.”
Bannister motioned Freddy into the bedroom. Fortunately it was now pouring hard outside. The rain drove and rattled against the windows, and it was so dark that whatever look they took at him certainly wouldn’t be a very good one.
“Sit down in that chair,” said Mr. Camphor, and with a sinking heart Freddy saw him pull the chain of the lamp on the table beside him.
But the light didn’t go on. Mr. Camphor tried it twice, then he tried the overhead light, but nothing happened.
“That’s a fine thing!” he said. “Lights go off just when we need them. I suppose it’s this storm. Well, young man,” he said sternly, “what have you got to say for yourself?”
It seemed to Freddy as if Mr. Camphor was always asking him this question. “I ain’t got any
thing to say,” he whined. “I just come to visit my uncle.”
“I’m not your uncle,” said Mr. Camphor.
“No, Mister. Old Winch is my uncle. I come to visit him.”
Bannister and Mr. Camphor looked at each other. And Mr. Camphor said, “And did you expect to find him in the linen closet?”
“I thought it was the door to the back stairs,” said Freddy. “That’s why I went in there.”
“That’s not very likely,” Mr. Camphor said. “And it doesn’t explain what you were doing upstairs in the first place. Or what you were looking for in my dresser and my suitcase. Come, come, my man; you can hardly expect us to believe that you’re anything but what you appear to be.”
“And you certainly appear to be a burglar,” said Bannister. He turned to Mr. Camphor. “‘Burglars of a feather,’ you know, sir.”
“It’s ‘birds of a feather,’ Bannister,” Mr. Camphor corrected him. “Yes. Quite so. They flock together, you think?”
“Yes, sir. I mean if this burglar is Mr. Winch’s nephew, it is quite likely that Mr. Winch is also a burglar. In his spare time, at least.”
“That’s an interesting thought,” said Mr. Camphor. “And in that case, Mr. Winch may very well have sent him up here while we were at supper. H’m. Bannister, you watch this fellow while I go down and call the police.”
“Better let me go down, sir,” said Bannister. “The stairs are dark, with no lights on. You might slip—”
“Oh, of course if you’re afraid to stay with him!” Mr. Camphor said.
“Who—me, sir? Afraid of a burglar? I’d as soon be afraid of a mouse as this fellow! I was merely thinking of your welfare. If you were to fall on the stairs! Old bones are brittle, sir.”
“My bones are no older than yours,” Mr. Camphor snapped. “Now you do as I tell you.” And he went out into the hall.
Bannister pulled a chair into the doorway and sat down on it. He had a tight grip on the poker, and he watched Freddy narrowly. But presently, a puzzled frown appeared on his face. “Something familiar about you, burglar,” he said. “Something—h’m, seen you before. But where? Take that cap off and let’s have a look at your face.”
“I don’t want to take it off,” said Freddy. “My—my hair isn’t brushed.”
“I guess you’re no relative of the Winches if you’re so particular about your hair,” said Bannister. “Maybe you look like your uncle; maybe that’s where I think I’ve seen you before.”
Freddy didn’t answer. In the shadows behind Bannister’s chair he had seen something. It was hardly even a movement—just a slight deepening of the shadows, but he thought he knew what it meant. A mouse, or a black cat, moving in the dimness, would make just such a flicker, so faint that the next moment you were sure that you had seen nothing.
And then he saw the mice. They had crawled up the back of the chair and were sitting on top of it, and on a level with Bannister’s ears. They were poised there for a moment, and then they jumped. Eeny landed on Bannister’s right shoulder, and Cousin Augustus landed on his left shoulder, and they scampered quickly up his neck and across his ears to the top of his head and jumped off again on to the chair back. And at the same moment, Jinx, just behind the chair, let out an ear-piercing screech.
Most people will yell if a mouse runs across their face; and I guess most people will jump if a cat screeches suddenly behind them. But for a second—and it was a good long second, too—Bannister just didn’t move a hair. Then he just sort of exploded. He let out a yell that made Jinx’s shriek sound like a three months old kitten crying, and he shot up out of the chair to his full height and about a foot beyond it, for both feet left the floor. But when they came down they were running, and as soon as they hit the floor again Bannister tore once right around the room, and then out the door and down the hall. He was gone almost before the poker hit the carpet.
He shot up out of the chair …
“Run, Freddy!” called Jinx. But Freddy didn’t need any instructions. He dashed down the hall, throwing off the coat and cap, and he fell halfway down the stairs before he got to his feet. But somehow he managed to get the dark trousers off before he reached the bottom. “You never know what you can do till you try,” he thought.
From somewhere in the front of the house he could hear Mr. Camphor shouting into a phone, so he turned and made for the kitchen. This wasn’t as foolish as it may seem, for he knew that although the Winches were in the kitchen, he could get past them before they could grab him, and the kitchen door opened outward, and had a latch that could be quickly lifted.
And that was the way it happened. The Winches jumped to their feet, but Freddy darted through, with Jinx beside him. And before they knew what had happened, the two animals were safe outside.
“Down to the secret passage,” Freddy panted. “They won’t find us there. Oh, golly, where are the mice?”
“Don’t worry about them,” said the cat, loping along easily beside Freddy with his ears held close to his head to keep the rain out of them. “Those lads can take care of themselves. Boy! Did we give old Bannister a lift! He went up like a skyrocket. Lucky we came back to see where you were.”
“You certainly saved me just in time,” said Freddy. “And it was a good thing the lights went off, too. I suppose it was the storm.”
“Storm, nothing!” said the cat. “I turned ’em off. We were poking around in the cellar and I saw the switch. I thought it might be just as well to cut the lights off. I don’t know much about electricity, but boy, I know more than I did! Because I touched the wrong thing first. Next thing I knew, I was sitting across the cellar with sparks hopping around in my whiskers like those trained fleas of Johnny’s. But I went back and got it right the next time.”
Freddy saw that Jinx expected to be praised for this courageous action, and indeed he deserved praise. So as soon as they reached the shelter of the passage entrance, he praised him. He praised him up and down and crossways, and pretty soon Jinx got tired of it. “Oh, lay off,” he said. “I’m not as wonderful as all that.”
Freddy grinned. “All right,” he said. “Then let’s get along upstairs.”
“Upstairs!” Jinx exclaimed. “You mean we’re going back up again? Didn’t you have enough fun last time, so you want to try it over? What do we do—keep this merry-go-round up all night?”
“Oh, shut up,” said Freddy good-naturedly. “And come on.”
Chapter 14
Freddy had lost his flashlight, so he and Jinx had to feel their way through the passage and up the stairs. Even a cat cannot see anything in complete darkness, although all cats pretend that they can. But they reached the first landing without making any noise. Light was coming through the little hole from the kitchen, so they knew that someone had gone down to the cellar and thrown the switch on again. But they couldn’t hear any voices, so they went on up to, Mr. Camphor’s door.
Freddy cautiously opened it a crack and peered in. There was no one there. But from under the bed came a faint, inquiring squeak, and as Freddy pushed the door a little wider the two mice ran over to him.
“We thought you’d come back for us,” they said. “Are you going on with your plan now?”
“We can’t take the chance,” Freddy said. “Too many people roaming around the house. But I think it’s a good idea to stick around and see what happens. Bannister has begun to get suspicious of the Winches, and maybe Mr. Camphor will too.”
So they went back into the secret passage and waited. They waited for more than an hour before anything happened. Then they heard footsteps and voices, and several people came into the bedroom.
Very carefully, Freddy opened the door a crack. And the first person he saw was his old friend, the sheriff, from Centerboro. Evidently Mr. Camphor had sent for him.
Mr. Camphor was there too, and Bannister, and the Winches.
“Well, sir,” the sheriff was saying, “you say you caught this feller in the linen closet, and then while you was telephon
in’ me, and while your butler, here—Bannister, is it?—was standing guard over him, he escaped.”
“That’s it, sheriff,” said Mr. Camphor.
“He came right through the kitchen,” Mrs. Winch said. “And what’s more, we recognized him. He was that pig, Freddy.”
“That’s right,” said Mr. Winch.
“Ah,” said the sheriff. “Former caretaker here, wasn’t he? And you fired him because he’d been stealin’ things. Now that’s a funny thing, Mr. Camphor. I’ve known that pig for a number of years, and I ain’t ever known him to do a dishonest thing. When I heard about this yesterday, I said to myself, ‘Sheriff,’ I said, ‘there’s something funny about this.’ Why, I’d trust that pig with my last cent.”
“Just shows you how wrong you can be about people, sheriff,” said Mr. Winch.
“I ain’t usually very wrong about people,” replied the sheriff, and he looked very hard at Mr. Winch, who after a second dropped his eyes and blew out his moustache in an embarrassed way.
“No,” the sheriff went on, “I had a lot of experience sizing up people.” And he continued to stare, until Mr. Winch, to hide his embarrassment, turned and caught the dirty-faced boy a clip alongside the head. “Don’t fidget, Horace!” he said crossly.
“Well, sheriff,” Mr. Camphor said, “I had somewhat the same feeling about that pig. And I may say I was very much disappointed when I found out that he was not to be trusted. And you tell me he has never been known to steal things before?”
“There always has to be a first time,” put in Bannister.
“Maybe,” said the sheriff. “But if that’s so for Freddy, it’s so for everybody here—including Mr. Camphor. I suppose you wouldn’t care to say that Mr. Camphor is going to begin takin’ things?”
Freddy and Mr. Camphor Page 10
