“We can’t have that,” said Freddy. “What’s the matter with the crickets?”
“They knocked off at six-thirty. Said they’d only work an eight hour night.”
“My goodness,” Freddy said, “this is a war; they’re not working in a factory!”
“Yeah, Webb had an argument with them about that. They claim it’s the same as any orchestra, and they’re working under musicians’ union rules. You’d better let ’em alone or you’ll have a strike on your hands. Anyway, Webb’s there; I don’t guess Anderson’ll get much sleep.”
“What can Mr. Webb do?”
“What can he do!” Jinx exclaimed. “Say, you ought to see it. Why don’t you go pay Anderson a little call? Just go to the door of the lounge and look in. You can make some excuse—tell him you want to borrow a cup of flour or something. Come on—it’s worth it.”
Freddy hesitated, but he didn’t think that Mr. Anderson would dare do anything more than possibly order him out, so he and Jinx walked down to the hotel. They went quietly up on the porch and looked into the lounge. Mr. Anderson lay on his back on the settee, asleep with his mouth open. Freddy looked inquiringly at Jinx, and the cat pointed up at the ceiling, where he saw two little black spots. Then they moved, and he realized that it was the Webbs.
As he watched, Mr. Webb spun down on a long strand directly above Mr. Anderson’s face. Halfway down he stopped and waved a couple of legs at Freddy, then went on and anchored the strand cautiously to the man’s left ear. At the same time Mrs. Webb ran a line down to his right ear, and then between the two lines, and just an inch or two above his face, they wove a web. They worked fast, and when the web was finished, they ran swiftly up to the ceiling and cut the two lines loose, so that the whole web dropped down across the sleeper’s face.
Mr. Anderson’s nose wiggled, his eyelids twitched, and then as the web settled closer across his mouth, he woke with a sort of snarl and started up, clawing at his face.
“Good morning,” said Freddy pleasantly.
Mr. Anderson swung round, still brushing at the cobweb. “You!” he said. “What are you doing here?”
“Me?” said Freddy. “Nothing. I was just taking a walk and I thought I’d drop in. Sorry if I woke you. I hope you slept well, your first night in Lakeside?”
Three seconds later the two animals were tearing up the trail towards camp, followed by the infuriated roars of Mr. Anderson and also by several stones, which whizzed and clipped through the foliage above them.
“I wonder what upset him so?” said Freddy when they slowed down out of range.
“I can’t imagine,” said Jinx. “Maybe he didn’t sleep well.”
Then they both burst out laughing.
“Just the same,” said Jinx, “you’d better not pull that one again. If he’s that mad after one night, what’ll he be in a week?”
“That’s what I want to find out,” said Freddy.
Chapter 18
The Camphors were at breakfast, and Freddy and Jinx joined them. Georgie had finished and gone for a swim in the lake. “I warned him he oughtn’t to swim on a full stomach,” said Miss Minerva, “but he was rather impertinent to me, so I didn’t insist.”
Mr. Camphor laughed. “What Georgie said was that it depended on what your stomach was full of. He said he realized that with six of Aunt’s flapjacks inside him he’d probably sink before he took two strokes, but he’d take one of the cork canoe cushions to hold him up. He was just trying to be funny, Aunt.”
“I wasn’t angry,” she said. “What’s bothering me is these wasps. There’s one on the edge of your plate now, Freddy.”
“Oh, don’t worry about him,” Freddy said. “He’s come to help us. Hello, Jake. You missed a lot of excitement last night.”
“That doesn’t bother me,” said the wasp. “I can always stir up a little of my own if I feel the need of it. Where’s this guy you want punctured?”
“He’s up at the hotel. Big red-faced man—you can’t miss him. I think you and the boys better go bother him a little—you know our plan—but don’t sting him yet. We’re saving that for later.”
At half-past eight the plumbers and carpenters came back, and after that there was so much hammering and sawing and banging on pipes that Freddy knew Mr. Anderson wouldn’t get much sleep. But what about the DDT? They could put his car out of commission so he couldn’t drive to town for it himself, but he’d only ask the carpenters to bring him a bottle of it.
It was Miss Minerva who solved that problem. And when, at eleven o’clock, the mice reported that Mr. Anderson had started for Centerboro, she said: “You leave it to me. Jimson, I’ll need your help. Come along.” And they started down to Lakeside.
When Mr. Anderson came back an hour or so later, he got out of his car to find Miss Minerva lying at the foot of the porch steps, groaning.
“Well, ma’am, what are you doing here?” he asked unsympathetically.
“Oh dear, oh dear,” Miss Minerva moaned; “it’s my ankle. I fell off the porch. I called and called, but the workmen are all inside eating their lunch and they didn’t hear me.”
“I guess you didn’t call very loud,” said Mr. Anderson. “Well, what do you want me to do?”
“Want you to do!” she snapped. “I want you to pick me up—help me back to camp. What sort of man are you anyway, when you see a lady in trouble, to stand there and ask questions?”
“I’m a very busy man,” he replied. “You had no business on my porch in the first place. I’ll send one of the men for your nephew.”
Miss Minerva didn’t want that at all. “You’ll help me yourself—now,” she said. “Or I’ll sue you for damages. This porch is unsafe and I can prove it.”
It probably occurred to Mr. Anderson that to have to defend a lawsuit against a former guest wasn’t the best way to open a hotel season. “Very well,” he said grudgingly, and put down his packages on the porch.
Mr. Camphor, hiding behind a bush, watched them start up the path. Mr. Anderson’s arm was about Miss Minerva’s waist, and hers was about his neck, as she hobbled along, leaning heavily on him. “Looks like Lovers’ Lane,” said Mr. Camphor sentimentally. Then as they disappeared, he came out, picked up the bottle of DDT and poured the contents out on the ground, after which he took it down and filled it with lake water. When Mr. Anderson came back a little later he carried the bottle into the hotel.
The hourly reports from the mice were as follows: One o’clock: Mr. Anderson spraying room. Two o’clock: After giving the carpenters some instructions, Mr. Anderson lay down for a nap, but was disturbed by wasps, which kept zooming down at him from the ceiling, then flying away before he could swat them. Three o’clock: Mr. Anderson still awake. Tried to smoke, but crickets had chewed holes in the sides of his cigars so they wouldn’t draw. Four o’clock: A Mr. and Mrs. Edipus came from Centerboro to take the place of the Joneses. Mr. Anderson told them what they were expected to do, then went for a walk in the woods. We have now lost contact with the enemy.
So Freddy sent the wasps to reconnoiter, and presently they came back to report that Mr. Anderson was lying down asleep under a tree. “Shall we poke him up a little?” Jacob asked.
“You save your stings till he’s so sound asleep we can’t wake him any other way,” Freddy said. “Georgie, where are those squirrels who were around begging for cold flapjacks this morning? Get hold of them, will you?”
So Georgie rounded up the squirrels, and Freddy made a deal with them. They took some small stones in their cheek pouches, and went up in the tree under which Mr. Anderson was asleep—with his mouth open, as usual. They got on a branch right over his head and tried to drop the stones in his mouth.
Squirrels are pretty good at this. The first two stones hit Mr. Anderson’s chest and only made him grumble a little, but the third one was a bull’s-eye, and he gave a gulp and started up to glare wildly around and wonder what it was that he had swallowed, and that he could still feel going down. Then he looked
up and saw the squirrels. He yelled at them and shook his fist, but squirrels just think that kind of thing is funny; they chattered back mockingly, so he got up wearily and went in search of another tree. And the squirrels followed him.
Squirrels are pretty good at this.
After about an hour of this Mr. Anderson went back to the hotel. The workmen had gone, and the mice reported at six o’clock that Mrs. Edipus was cooking supper. At seven, Mr. Anderson went to bed, giving the Edipuses strict orders that he was not to be disturbed. At seven-five the crickets tuned up.
Jinx kept watch again that night. “I wouldn’t miss it for eight pounds of prime catnip and two quarts of cream,” he said. “I haven’t had so much fun since Mrs. Wiggins fell out of the swing.” The others went to bed, but about one in the morning Jinx waked them up. “Anderson just came out and got in his car and drove off,” he said. “He’s probably gone home to Centerboro to get a good night’s sleep in his own bed.”
“Good gracious, that’ll spoil all the good work we’ve done,” said Freddy. “How about the Edipuses?”
“Oh, they weren’t as tough as the Joneses. They left at midnight.”
Mr. Camphor crawled out of his sleeping bag. “I know what we can do,” he said. “Come on, Freddy. Aunt Minerva, you build up the fire—big, big, so it looks like a house burning up from off Centerboro way.” Without explaining further, he ran down and he and Freddy got into the canoe and paddled across to his house. “We don’t really need to hurry,” he said. “It’ll take Anderson half an hour to get home and we’ll allow about twenty minutes more for him to get to bed and asleep, before we phone. It’ll make him madder if we wake him up than if we catch him just as he gets in.”
They went up to the house and roused Bannister, and Mr. Camphor gave him his instructions. Then, when they figured Mr. Anderson had had time to get to bed, Bannister phoned.
He had to ring about twenty times, but at last Mr. Anderson answered.
“Sorry to bother you, sir,” said Bannister. “This is Mr. Camphor’s butler, up at the lake. There’s a big fire over on the north shore—looks like a house burning. I understand you’ve bought Lakeside, and I thought.… Oh no, sir; I’ve never seen a campfire as big as that, and Mr. Camphor and his friends should be asleep at this hour.… I can’t see, sir; Mr. Camphor has our telescope with him. It’s right in the direction of Lakeside.… No sir, I didn’t call the fire department; I thought I should call you first.… Yes sir? Thank you, sir.” And Bannister hung up.
“Well, Bannister—thanks,” said Mr. Camphor. “We’ll have to get back. Anything new?”
“No, sir. Miss Elmira got off safely this morning. Very quiet day, sir. Very pleasant.”
“Good. Come along, Freddy.”
Miss Minerva had certainly built up a real fire. The flames leaped to treetop height, and the glare must have been visible for miles. The canoe was almost back to the camp when Freddy heard in the distance the faint wail of a siren. “They’ll have seen the glow by this time,” said Mr. Camphor as they beached the canoe. “Well, let’s pull it apart a little, and get into our bags.”
Ten minutes later, when the fire truck came roaring and shrieking and bounding down the rough road and pulled up beside the hotel, the fire had sunk down, and everyone in the camp was apparently asleep. Everyone except Freddy and Jinx, who had circled around through the woods back of the hotel, and were hiding behind a shed near the end of the road.
The firemen piled off the truck, whose searchlight was playing over the front of the building. Then Mr. Anderson drove up behind them, and they surrounded him in an angry group, demanding to know why they had been pulled out of bed when there wasn’t any fire.
“You saw it yourselves,” he protested. “The sky was all red.”
There was plenty of argument back and forth, and then the firemen called Mr. Anderson a lot of names and piled on the truck and drove roaring and shrieking and bounding home.
As soon as Mr. Anderson went indoors, Freddy came out of hiding. Very cautiously he lifted the hood of the car, disconnected all the wires he could reach, unscrewed everything unscrewable and loosened everything loosenable, and then went back to camp.
Chapter 19
Jinx’s report at breakfast time was a very favorable one. Mr. Anderson had tried to take a nap in the lounge, but the cricket treatment soon drove him out. He went to his car and tried for half an hour to get it started. Then he looked under the hood. “And I never heard anybody say such things about anybody as he did about you, Freddy,” said Jinx. “He’s pretty sure you did it. And he’s coming down here this morning. You’d better be ready to duck.”
“We’ll be ready for him,” said Freddy. “What happened after he gave up trying to start the car?”
“He was so sleepy that he could hardly stand up. He stumbled around and sort of collapsed in one of the chairs on the porch. The crickets were hollering good, but I guess he was so tired that he went to sleep anyway.” Jinx grinned maliciously. “He looked real cute—so sort of innocent and unprotected—I thought maybe if I sang him a little lullaby, he’d rest better. Wow! He like to went through the ceiling! Of course I was pretty close to his ear—I didn’t want him to miss any of my clear, bell-like tones.
“So then he staggered in to get his pistol. But Homer and the mice found it in a drawer yesterday, and they also found an open pot of glue the carpenter had been repairing something with. So they sort of put two and two together, and poured the glue over the pistol.” Jinx laughed again. “Anderson felt in the drawer and got his hand on the pistol all right, but it took him ten minutes and practically his entire vocabulary to get it off again. The glue had only partly set.”
“Golly!” said Freddy. “What an awful night! I feel sorry for the poor man.”
“Well, I don’t,” said the cat. “Don’t forget, he was going to cheat us out of our homes, just as he did poor Mrs. Filmore, and make beggars of us all. And all we’ve done is cheat him out of a couple nights’ sleep. But you’ve got to let Jacob take over now—noise won’t keep him awake much longer.”
“Where is he now?” Mr. Camphor asked.
“Wandering around, here and there. He’s so groggy that even the mice and Homer aren’t afraid of him. Eek nipped his ear once and woke him, and then when he dropped off again, Homer kind of slithered over his face. Boy, that got results! I don’t think he likes snakes. He’s out in the woods somewhere, but the squirrels are keeping up the good work.”
“I think I hear him coming now,” said Miss Minerva. And sure enough, up the path came Mr. Anderson. He stopped a little way off, leaning with one hand against a tree, and with his head thrust forward peered vaguely at them with red-rimmed eyes. He looked completely exhausted.
“Good morning, Mr. Anderson; lovely day, isn’t it?” said Mr. Camphor.
Mr. Anderson clenched his fists. He pulled himself together and strode towards them. “You, pig,” he said thickly to Freddy. “What did you do to my car?”
Freddy glanced inquiringly at Mr. Camphor, and Mr. Camphor nodded slightly. Their look said that they were agreed that the time had come for a showdown. For they both knew that although their plan had been to get him so mad that he would do something completely foolish, he was really too exhausted to be mad now. Indeed, they could use his exhaustion better than they could perhaps have used his anger.
Freddy stood up. “I disconnected a lot of things,” he said boldly. “Why?”
“Why? Why?” Mr. Anderson shouted hoarsely. “Because I’m going to put you where you belong—behind prison bars, that’s why.”
“How are you going to prove I did it?” Freddy asked. “Fingerprints? But I haven’t got fingers—only trotters.” He held them up.
“You’ve admitted it in front of witnesses,” said Mr. Anderson. “I guess that will be enough proof.”
“But only,” Miss Minerva said, “if the witnesses heard him say it. We didn’t hear anything like that, did we, Jimson?”
“Cer
tainly not,” said Mr. Camphor.
“So that’s the way it is,” said Mr. Anderson. “You’re all in it together.”
“That’s it,” Mr. Camphor said. “Quite illegal. If you can prove it. Just as your scheme to get this hotel, and later to get my house and the Bean farm, was quite illegal. We couldn’t prove it either. But now your rats have been driven off, your ghost scheme has exploded, and it’s our turn. How do you like it?”
And then Mr. Anderson’s temper flared up and his self-control, weakened by lack of sleep, vanished entirely. “I’ll show you how I like it!” he roared, and started for Mr. Camphor.
But Miss Minerva, who had been scrubbing out the frying pan, got up and stood in his way.
“One side, woman!” he shouted. “I wouldn’t like to strike a lady.”
“I wouldn’t like to strike a gentleman,” said Miss Minerva. “But I guess there’s no danger of that.” And as he tried to brush past her, she lifted the frying pan and brought it down with a loud dong! on the top of his head.
She lifted the frying pan and brought it down with a loud dang!
At another time the blow wouldn’t have bothered Mr. Anderson much. But his head was already swimming with exhaustion, and the shock of it was just enough to make him completely dizzy. He staggered, turned half round, then fell flat on his face.
“Dear me!” said Miss Minerva. She looked with surprise at the frying pan, then set it down gingerly on the ground. Mr. Anderson shook his head two or three times, then got slowly to his feet.
“You’ll regret this, ma’am,” he said. “You’ll regret it all your life.”
“Yes,” she said, “I expect I shall. I’ll regret that I didn’t hit harder.”
“Sit down, Anderson,” said Mr. Camphor sternly. “I’ll get you some coffee. We want to have a talk with you.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk with you,” Mr. Anderson said. “Why, confound you, you silly little red-headed donkey, do you think you’re going to make any terms with me? I’ll smash you …” He stopped abruptly, as Miss Minerva again picked up the frying pan.
Freddy Goes Camping Page 13
