“When you’re all through snorting,” Henrietta said acidly, “how about doing something about my children?”
“That’s right,” Freddy said. “We’re wasting valuable time. Georgie, how about that strange scent you thought you picked up?”
The little brown dog said: “It’s right here, if you want it. ’Tisn’t marshmallow or cabbage; for my money it’s rat.”
“Rat!” said Freddy incredulously, and Jinx said: “Pooh, there hasn’t been a sign of a rat around here in a year.”
“O.K.,” said Georgie. “Have it your way.”
“Georgie’s right,” said Robert, the big collie. “Hadn’t we better trail him? Because he may not yet have—” He stopped, with a glance at Henrietta.
“May not have eaten them—that’s what you mean,” said the hen flatly. “Well, let’s say it right out and then get going, not stand here talking all night.”
So the two dogs started on—sniff, sniff, sniff—up along the edge of the barnyard, and through the pasture toward the woods, and the others followed.
If the robber was a rat, Freddy didn’t have much hope of getting the two chickens back. Rats sometimes steal young chickens, but they seldom carry them far. There were several puzzling things about the affair. How had a rat managed to carry off two chickens? And why had he selected, as one of them, Little Broiler, who, although his mother’s favorite, was a scrawny little creature? Why, with thirty-five to choose among, hadn’t he picked out a plumper specimen for his late supper?
The trail led across the brook below the duck pond, and then up into the woods. Here Mrs. Wiggins turned back. “You folks go on,” she said. “Last time I was up in these woods I sprained a horn, catching it on a branch, and that was daylight. I’ll go round up some of the rabbits and see if they’ve seen anything. It’ll be daylight in another hour.”
Freddy didn’t like dark woods much either. It wasn’t that he was a coward. Faced with a real danger, he could be as brave as anyone. Or almost. But he had a vivid imagination, and to such people imaginary dangers are much more awful than real ones. He knew that if he went into the woods he would begin trying to scare himself, he would imagine gnarled, taloned fingers reaching out to clutch him from behind every bush, and hideous false faces peering around tree trunks. The very thought of what he would try to make himself see made his tail come uncurled.
Yet the Great Detective must not falter. So when the dogs went sniff-sniff up into the deeper gloom among the trees, with Jinx and Willy beside them, ready to pounce, and with Charles, poked along by Henrietta, following after, he gave a sigh and went on.
“It’s rat all right,” said Robert in an undertone. “Scent’s easier to get on these damp leaves.”
These woods of Mr. Bean’s were fairly open; even though he could see very little in the blackness, Freddy managed to follow without stumbling. His imagination, however, was getting in some good licks. There was a gorilla with horns grinning horribly at him from that dark clump of bushes that he could just make out close to his right hand. And that faint, regular sound—heavy, soft footsteps padding remorselessly along behind him! At any moment a great dry claw might fall upon his shoulder, and pull him back—A twig, released by someone ahead, whipped back and slashed him across the nose, and he gave a sharp squeal of terror.
At any moment a great dry claw might fall upon his shoulder.
The others stopped. “Hey, we ought to be quiet,” said Robert reprovingly. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing—er—nothing,” Freddy stammered. “I just—well, it was just something that—that came back to me suddenly.” It certainly had come back suddenly, he thought. And then he heard the regular sound again and realized that it was his heart.
“We’re coming out on the back road,” said Georgie. “That’s why it seems lighter now.”
They came out close to a little bridge that carried the road over the brook, and Charles said: “Ha, how well I remember this historic spot.” He struck an attitude. “You recall, no doubt, my friends, how on a certain day I here met and defeated a full-sized rat in fair and open combat. On that day I struck a blow for freedom that was heard around the civilized globe. The name of Charles—famous already in legend and story—”
“Psst! Pipe down,” Freddy whispered. “Something up the road there. Looks like a car. Move up along the ditch and let’s see.”
It was a car, all right. As they crept closer, a starter whined, the engine started, then, without putting on its lights, the car gathered speed as it moved off towards town.
The dogs began sniffing around where the car had stood, but Henrietta said sarcastically: “I thought we were looking for rats. What do we care about the car? The rat didn’t drive away in it.”
“No,” said Robert, “but he was right up here by it. That’s funny—he was all around it. There’s a queer smell here, too. Not rat. Something different.”
“Funny, I smell it, too,” Freddy said. “It’s familiar, somehow. Now, where—”
“Hey!” Georgie called. He was up by the stone wall. “Your rat’s gone in here, I think.” And he began to dig furiously at the foot of the wall where there was an old woodchuck hole.
The others moved up, but scattered when the stones and earth from Georgie’s digging flew about their ears. “Take it easy!” Freddy said. “You can’t dig him out; you’ll have this old wall down on top of you before you get a big enough hole to get at him.”
“That’s right,” said Robert. He sniffed at the hole. “He’s there all right, but we’ll just have to sit and wait till he comes out. That’s your job, Jinx.”
“Let me try,” said Willy. He put his head down the hole a little way, then drew it out. “Well, I’ll try it. I’d like a bigger hole though, if you’ve got one in stock. Look, if I get stuck you’ll have to pull me out. I’ll thump my tail twice—then you pull.” He went down the hole again. Five feet of him disappeared, then he stopped.
For a long minute nothing happened. The ten feet of Willy that had not gone down the woodchuck hole moved a little, then was still, then wriggled more violently. And then the tail thumped twice. “He’s stuck!” said Freddy. “Catch hold, everybody.”
They all rushed forward—then stopped and stared at one another. On a snake, of course, there isn’t anything to catch hold of.
“For Pete’s sake,” said Jinx, “what are we going to do? I can’t pull on anything unless I get my claws into it. Could you get a hold on his tail with your jaws without biting him, Freddy?”
“I don’t see how,” said the pig. “But if we can’t take hold of him, he’ll have to grab hold of us. I wish he could hear us. But maybe this will work.” He went over and pulled a rail off the fence on the other side of the road, and dragged it across Willy. The snake seemed to understand, for he immediately whipped a double coil around it. “All right,” said Freddy, “now catch hold of the rail. No, get on this side and push.” And all pushing, they dragged Willy out, like a cork out of a bottle. Then they left the rail and ran up to the front end of the snake to see what had happened. He couldn’t tell them, for he had a large, mean looking rat in his mouth.
“Well, upon my soul,” said Freddy, “if it isn’t our old friend Simon!”
CHAPTER
8
Simon was the head of a large family of rats which had given the Bean animals a great deal of trouble in the past. Time and again they had been driven away from the farm, only to return when they were least expected. The old Grimby house, up in the Big Woods near where Uncle Ben was working on his space ship, had been their headquarters for a time. That house had burned down last year. But the cellar was still there, and part of the floor hadn’t burned. When Willy pulled Simon out of the woodchuck hole, Freddy wondered if the rats had moved back into their old home.
The boa put his captive down in the road. He said: “I guess this guy just ducked down that hole when he heard us coming. Nobody’s been living in it for a long time. It’s just a dead end and there
’s no sign of chickens.”
It was beginning to get light now. Simon knew he had no chance to escape; before he could take two jumps either Jinx or Willy would pounce and drag him back. He snarled at them and started to say something, but before he could begin Henrietta was on him, tearing at him with beak and claws and beating him with her wings. “Where are my children?” she screamed. “You tell me what you’ve done with them, or I’ll—”
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” Freddy said, “and she’ll only get hurt.” For the rat was defending himself by slashing at her with his long yellow teeth. The pig nodded to Willy, who quickly threw a loop about the hen and held her tight.
When the boa had squeezed her a little to make her keep quiet, Freddy said: “Well, Simon, last time I saw you, you promised Mrs. Bean that you wouldn’t ever come back to this farm—remember? How about it?”
“Well, well,” said Simon, pretending to recognize the pig for the first time, “if it isn’t Freddy the Snoop! Peeked through any good keyholes lately, Freddy? Aren’t you kind of off your beat? This road doesn’t belong to old Bean. I’ve as good a right here as anybody.”
“Well, well, if it isn’t Freddy the Snoop.”
“Sure,” said Freddy. “But you didn’t have a right down by our hen house tonight. You didn’t have a right to kidnap two of Henrietta’s children.”
“Dear me,” said the rat, “are two of them missing? Kidnapped, I think you said? That grieves me deeply.” He giggled maliciously. “It’ll grieve the kidnapper more, if he tries to eat them, for a scrawnier lot I never saw.”
“Look, rat,” said Jinx, “Henrietta heard the revolving door squeak. She looked and found two chickens missing. She sent for us, and Robert and Georgie trailed you up here. We’ve got you dead to rights.”
“The silly part of your story is about trailing me,” said Simon. “Those two couldn’t trail a regiment of skunks across a field, even if they were only two feet behind. I haven’t been near your old hen house. If I want to exercise my jaws I can find an old boot somewhere to chew on; I don’t have to ruin my digestion on a lot of rubber bands with feathers on ’em.”
“O.K.,” said Jinx, “you asked for it.” He knew that Simon, like most rats, was ticklish, and now he pounced on him and tickled him unmercifully. Simon wriggled and screeched, and all the time Jinx talked to him: “How do you make those noises, Simon? … Boy, you sure get some queer sound effects … I like to hear ’em … Of course I’ll stop—any time you’re willing to tell the truth, eh? … That’s pretty; let’s do that one again.”
At last the rat couldn’t take any more, and he gasped that he’d talk if only Jinx would quit.
He had indeed, he said, been down by the hen house. But he hadn’t been inside. He had been passing by, and it had been just an impulse that had led him to stop in and look over a place where he had spent so many happy hours in the past.
“You never spent any happy hours in our hen house,” said Charles.
“The farm, you stupid cock-a-doodle, the farm!” Simon snapped. “It was my home, in better times,” he said, becoming sentimental again. “My family was born and raised there, in peace and contentment; no doubt we would still be living there if it were not for the envy and spitefulness of this cat here. And the silly ambition of this dumb pig to be a great detective. Had to detect something, so he discovered rats in the stable! About as clever a feat as discovering cows in the cow barn! And then he must drive us out, although the good Mr. Bean never grudged us the little grain we ate.”
“Yeah?” said Freddy. “I suppose that’s why he nailed tin over the rat holes.”
“How little you understand him!” said Simon. “It was a game between us. All done in a spirit of good sportsmanship.”
“Sure,” Freddy said. “We’re all good sports together. Well, you were just passing by. Where had you come from? Where were you going? And what have you done with those two chickens?”
“You’ve no right to ask me any questions at all—” Simon snarled.
“O.K., jinx,” put in Freddy.
“But,” the rat added hastily, “I’ve nothing to hide. I came from Centerboro, where I went to have a look at those Martians, in the circus. And I was going back to where I have been living the last two years, and it’s none of your business where that is; it’s nowhere near the Bean farm. As for those chickens, I know nothing about them.”
They questioned him some more, but that was all they could get out of him. Though he did admit that he had investigated the mysterious car that had driven off towards Centerboro when they had appeared on the road. “There was a man in it,” Simon said, “and I thought he was asleep. If you want to know where the chickens are, you’d better find out what he’d been up to. I heard something moving ahead of me when I came up through the woods. Probably he stole your little darlings.”
Jinx wanted to tickle him some more, but Freddy said no, and they took him down to the barn and padlocked him into an old parrot cage. There was really no proof against him, nothing to connect him with the theft of the chickens except the fact that he had been in the barnyard. He hadn’t eaten them. If he’d stolen them, where were they?
Freddy wanted to go back to bed. But before he did he stopped in the cow barn to see Mrs. Wiggins. She had nothing to report. The rabbits she had interviewed had seen nothing, and only two had heard some squawking up in the pasture. Yes, it might have been chickens. But any bird, waked up suddenly, might make a noise like that.
Freddy was pretty discouraged. “Seems as if we ought to have done something,” he said. “Henrietta’s in a terrible state. She wants to have Simon executed or something. But we really haven’t got anything on him.”
“She’ll never get any information out of him if she has him executed, that’s one thing sure,” said the cow. “Not that you’d get anything out of him except lies, anyway. I’ll go down and have a talk with her. Maybe I can calm her down. And you go get some sleep.”
“I couldn’t sleep a wink,” Freddy said. “Not with all this on my mind.”
Mrs. Wiggins was considerate, even for a cow. She didn’t even smile. “Well, you try, anyway,” she said.
So Freddy went up to the pig pen. Since he couldn’t sleep, he didn’t go to bed, but sat in his comfortable big chair. And three minutes later his head had fallen back and his eyes were shut and his mouth was open and he was breathing slowly and I’m afraid rather noisily. He certainly must have been pretty tired to act like that when he was wide awake.
Seven hours later, at noon, he was still so wide awake that Jinx, having knocked twice, came in and had to shake him hard before he opened his eyes.
“Wake up, my dear old Sherlock,” said the cat. “Awake! Arise! To arms, my snoopy old sluggard! Your lordship’s carriage awaits.”
Freddy said: “Umph! Ah! Evenin’, Jinx. Jus’ doin’ a little thinkin’.”
“Well, snap out of it,” Jinx said. “The time for thought has passed, the time for action has come. So open your eyes and shut your mouth and quit snoring. Mr. Boom has sent his car for you. He wants you right away.”
“Wants me?” Freddy said. “What for?”
“Ask Herc. He’s driving. But if you can get anything out of that dumb man-mountain you’re smart, even for a pig.”
“I’d better go,” Freddy said. “But if you get time, Jinx, I wish you’d go up to the Big Woods and scout around. I’ve got a hunch you might fall over a rat or two.”
Jinx said he would, and Freddy went out and got into the long, glittering car with the Boomschmidt arms on the door panels. He would have ridden in front, beside Mr. Hercules, but the latter said no, he must sit in back. In the fields they passed were cows and horses, on the walls and in the trees were chipmunks and squirrels and birds; all of them knew him, and waved; and Freddy waved back, graciously and with deep and lordly bows. He was having a lot of fun, pretending to be a king receiving the acclaim of the populace, until, as they got nearer town, they began to overtak
e people who were going in to the circus. These were mostly strangers, and although they had certainly heard of Freddy, they didn’t recognize him, and many of them laughed, and two little boys thumbed their noses at him.
“Good gracious,” Freddy said to himself, “I’d like to think that my crown isn’t on straight, but that wasn’t meant for the king, it was meant for me!” He glared at the little boys. “Wretched little brats!” The rest of the way he looked straight ahead with a very severe expression on his face. To his disgust, people laughed more than ever. I don’t suppose you can blame them, for it was rather unusual to see a pig riding in the back seat of a luxurious limousine.
Now amid all this laughter Mr. Hercules had said nothing, but just before they got to the circus grounds, Freddy saw the strong man’s shoulders shaking, and heard the familiar “Uh! Uh!” that meant he was laughing, too. This was too much. “Look, Herc,” the pig said, “either you quit this silly laughing or else pull up and let me out. I’ll walk the rest of the way.”
Mr. Hercules shook his head. “Can’t hulp ut,” he said. “Every time uh think o’ moosiludge uh have tuh laugh!” And he shook some more.
“Oh,” said Freddy, “if that’s all it is! I thought … But it’s time you were getting over that joke, isn’t it?”
“Nope,” said the other, “ ’s funny. Uh, uh!”
The main show was just starting in the big tent, and a line several hundred yards long was waiting to file through the Martian side show. Freddy found Mr. Boomschmidt sitting at his desk in the trailer where he and Mademoiselle Rose lived, pasting newspaper clippings in a scrapbook. He had his hat on the back of his head and he looked worried.
“Go see Garble, Freddy,” he said. “He claims a gang of rats attacked his Martians last night and carried off one of ’em. Anyhow, one of ’em’s missing. He says he’s going to leave the show because he claims I haven’t provided protection for his Martians. Well, we’d lose a lot of money, but ’tisn’t that so much as—my goodness ! can’t you hear what people would say?”
Freddy and the Men from Mars Page 5
