Freddy and Simon the Dictator

by Walter R. Brooks

  He went to the door and flung it wide open.

  “Oh, shut up, cat,” said Freddy. “How do you do, Miss Anguish. Hello, Jimson. Wish I’d known you were coming, I’d have picked up a little. I’ve had the chickens staying with me this week and the place is in rather a mess.”

  “Thought maybe you and Jinx had been having a pillow fight,” said Mr. Camphor, and Miss Anguish said: “Oh, dear me, Dr. Hopper, I’m so glad you didn’t pick up! It’s nice to see your place just as you live in it. As another great poet sings: ‘It takes a heap o’ livin’ to make a house a mess.’” She fluttered about, looking at everything. “And this is you, isn’t it?” she asked, stopping at a snapshot of Hank, hitched to the buggy. “Younger, I suppose. You’re rather slimmer.”

  Freddy started to explain, but she had fluttered on and was looking out the window. “And this lovely picture window. What a charming view!”

  The window was small and the view so distorted by the crinkly panes and so dimmed by dust and cobwebs that you couldn’t recognize anybody through it if they came close and peered in at you. Freddy liked it for that reason; he said his friends looked more interesting and—some of them—handsomer, when seen through it. He explained this to Miss Anguish, who for once seemed to agree; she said: “And all those little creatures walking around out there. Are they supposed to be chickens? There’s one with four legs. And—how interesting—there’s another with two—no, three—heads. Dear me!”

  Mr. Camphor said; “If those chickens are staying with you, I suppose they’ll be coming in to go to bed pretty soon. It’s after eight. I guess we’d better be going. Miss Anguish was anxious to see your little house—”

  “I’d heard so much about it,” said that lady. “Quite, quite charming! And to see you actually in the throes of composition—turning out one of your lovely poems! I wonder,” she fluttered; “would you make just a tiny one for me? Just for me alone?”

  “My goodness,” said Freddy, “I don’t know. I never …” He was very much flattered. “I wonder,” he thought. “What rhymes with ‘Anguish’—‘languish?’ No. How about ‘Lydia?’ Let’s see. Lydia’s hideous—oh, golly! But wait.” Then aloud, he said:

  “In comparison with Miss Lydia’s

  All other faces are hideous.”

  Miss Anguish clapped her hands with delight. “How sweet! Such a pretty compliment! Oh I can’t tell you how—” She broke off, for outside there was a sudden outburst of flapping and squawking, and then a heavy knock at the door. “Open up, pig,” called Mr. Garble’s voice. “We know you’re in there.”

  CHAPTER

  17

  Jinx ran to the window. It was beginning to get dark, but he could make out a mob of animals —cows and horses. “We can’t escape,” he said. “We’ll have to open up. Too bad the dogs aren’t here. You know where they are, Freddy?”

  “Two regiments, Bosco’s and Robert’s, have been mopping up to the east, north of Centerboro. They plan to make a sweep south of the lake and then up around the west end and drive the cattle up through the woods back where they came from. Look, Jinx; Garble doesn’t know you’re here. Go in the other room and get into the wig drawer. Curl up and cover your nose and your paws and if he searches, he’ll think you’re a black wig. Then you can get away and warn the dogs.”

  It was the sensible thing to do and Jinx did it. Then Freddy opened the door. And immediately as Mr. Garble, with a pistol in his hand, entered the pig pen, Miss Anguish gave a loud scream and threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, save me, save me!” she wailed. “Save me, my noble deliverer, from these terrible kidnappers!”

  Unfortunately, Mr. Garble was prepared for something of the kind. He swung her aside and kept the pistol trained on Freddy and Mr. Camphor, so that they didn’t dare make a rush at him.

  “Save me and take me back to my brother, Judge Anguish. He will repay you well,” she went on. And then she gave a scream and, letting go of Mr. Garble, climbed up into Freddy’s easy chair, holding her skirts tight around her, as Simon, with Zeke and Ezra and half a dozen of his children and grandchildren, came in.

  Simon showed his long yellow teeth in a malicious smile. “No cause for alarm, ma’am,” he said. “Old Simon wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “Well, I’m not a fly,” she quavered. “And I don’t like rats, either.”

  “Maybe when you’re better acquainted with us, you’ll like us better,” said Simon. “You’ll find me a kindly old fellow, ma’am. Old Simon the Dictator. Dear, dear; it’s the ex-Dictator now, I’m afraid. Yes, Freddy, old friend, we’re pulling out. Your side has won, for the time being. So make the most of it while you can. When your friend Camphor here gets his votes for animals through—well, suppose old Simon runs against him on the animal ticket. Eh? Governor Simon—how does that sound?”

  “Nauseating,” said Freddy.

  Simon’s whiskers twitched angrily, but he controlled himself. “Dear, dear; such a fearless pig! Eh, Mr. Garble?”

  “You talk too much, Simon,” said Mr. Garble shortly. He frowned at them for a moment, then he said: “We’re taking you all with us. We had intended to capture only the pig, but I think we will hold you all to ransom, since we are fortunate enough to find you here.”

  He turned to Miss Anguish. “Did I understand you to say that these people had kidnapped you? If so, we have rather turned the tables on them, haven’t we?”

  Miss Anguish rushed at him again but he held her off. “Oh, I knew you would help me!” she cried. “You have such a kind face!”

  “Wow!” said Freddy, and even Simon looked startled.

  “I will help you if you will help me,” said Mr. Garble. “I’ll be frank with you, ma’am, and with you, Mr. Camphor. I need money. Now that our scheme to have the animals take over has broken down, there is a warrant out for my arrest, and I’ve got to get out of the country. I suppose your brother, Miss Anguish, will pay five thousand dollars for your release? Mr. Camphor also can no doubt arrange to have that amount conveyed to me. As for the pig—”

  “I haven’t got any five thousand dollars,” said Freddy.

  “Perhaps Mr. Bean would think you were worth that much,” said Mr. Garble. “Though I am inclined to doubt it. However, should he not be inclined to ransom you, we shall have to find another way of disposing of you,” he added with a mean smile.

  There was a silence while they looked at one another hopelessly. Then Miss Anguish said: “Oh, thank you, thank you! I knew you would take me away from these terrible people. Take me back now, and my brother will be only too glad to pay you whatever you ask.”

  “I’m afraid it isn’t as simple as that,” said Mr. Garble. “If I take you back to him right away, he might feel that I wanted too large a reward. He might even call the police and accuse me of kidnapping, instead of these other gentlemen. No, I think we’ll just take you to a safe place and release you when we have the money.

  “But we’re wasting time. Kindly come along.” And he turned towards the door.

  “Wait a minute,” Freddy said. “If we’re going to be away for some time, I’d like to pack a bag. And Mr. Camphor—he hasn’t even a toothbrush. I want to put in a few things for him.”

  Mr. Garble said all right, but to hurry up, and Freddy went into the other room. He got out an old carpetbag of Mr. Bean’s, and then he looked in the wig drawer. “Quick!” he whispered. “Into this bag, Jinx!” And the cat jumped in and Freddy snapped it shut.

  “Into this bag, Jinx!”

  The bag with Jinx in it was heavier than it looked, and Freddy had to pretend to swing it as he came out into the other room. Mr. Garble drove them out of the front door at the point of the pistol. Mr. Camphor’s car was just outside; he had driven it straight up the hill from the barnyard. At an order from Mr. Garble, the cows and horses trotted off up the hill.

  “Mr. Camphor will drive,” said Mr. Garble. “In beside him, pig.” Then he and Miss Anguish and the rats got in the back seat. And when they were out on th
e road: “You know where my sister’s house is? Drive there. I should tell you,” he added, “that my sister is away and will know nothing about my holding you for ransom, so that when you are released, it will be useless to have her arrested.”

  Now that Jinx had heard where they were going, Freddy wished that he could let the cat escape. Thus the dogs could be warned and there would be a chance for a rescue. But the bag was in the back seat.

  They drove into Centerboro and, by back streets, to Mrs. Underdunk’s house. This was a big old-fashioned brick house with steep pitched slate roof. With the pistol at their backs, they were marched through the kitchen door and down the cellar stairs. Freddy remembered that cellar, and not with pleasure. He and Bloody Mike had been locked in the jam closet, as has been told elsewhere. They had managed to escape, but Freddy didn’t see how he was going to manage to escape a second time. He didn’t see how he was going to raise the ransom money either. He’d be nailed up in a crate again and shipped off to Mr. Garble’s uncle in Montana. Indeed, in a dark corner of the cellar he saw the selfsame crate that a year or so ago he had only at the last moment been released from. There were the labels on it: “Mr. Orville P. Garble, Twin Buttes, Mont.,” and, “Fragile. Do not Crush.” This time he’d really go.

  Mr. Garble got pen and paper and had Miss Anguish write a note to her brother, stating that she was held prisoner, and would be released when $5000 was brought to the Grimby house at midnight three days later. A similar note was written by Mr. Camphor to his aunt, who was spending the summer at Lakeside.

  “You want to write a note to Mr. Bean, pig?” Mr. Garble asked.

  “No,” said Freddy. “Mr. Bean can’t raise that kind of money, and I wouldn’t want him to if he could. Not for me. But I’ve got $50 in the First Animal Bank. If you want to let me go, I’ll go right out there and get it and bring it back to you. I’ll promise to go and come right back without saying a word to anybody.” But to himself, he said: “I could write a message on a piece of paper.”

  He didn’t really expect Mr. Garble to fall for this, and Mr. Garble didn’t. “I guess we won’t put such a strain on your honesty,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to put temptation in your way. You might decide to telephone the sheriff or somebody, and then think how you’d hate yourself tomorrow morning. No, we mustn’t let you break your word. And, in fact, I think we’ll let your fifty go. I need the money all right, but it’s worth fifty to me to know that you won’t be around here any more. I’ve a long score to settle with you, pig. And there’s the crate over there in the corner that’ll settle it. You see, I kept it. I knew some day I’d get you back in it.” He scowled vindictively at Freddy.

  After a moment, he turned to the others. “Miss Anguish, I have prepared rooms for you and Mr. Camphor on the third floor. You will be quite comfortable. Both rooms are lighted by skylights—no windows—and even if you managed to get out on the roof, you could only slide down and fall twenty feet to the ground.”

  “Look here, Garble,” said Mr. Camphor; “you can’t get away with this. The police will have you twenty-four hours after we are released.”

  “My dear fellow,” said Mr. Garble, “twenty-four hours after you are released, I will be out of the country. You will remain locked in your rooms here for several days after the money is paid. When I am safely out of the country, the sheriff will get a telegram telling him where you are.”

  “But your sister. I understand she’s away, but—”

  “She knows nothing about this,” Mr. Garble interrupted. “And she can prove it. She won’t be back from California until it’s all over.”

  “All very well,” said Mr. Camphor, “but the disgrace! She may have a solid brass alibi, but people are going to think she knew all about it.”

  “On the contrary, people are going to be very sorry for her, having a criminal for a brother. It isn’t as if she’d ever been popular here, you know. If she had, people might enjoy pulling her down. No, my guess is she’ll be really quite sought after.”

  “And where are you going to put me?” Freddy asked.

  “Why, we’ll let you have the run of the cellar for a day or two. Chance to get acquainted with your new home,” he said, indicating the crate.

  None of them could think of anything more to say, and Freddy was anxious to get the carpetbag open and consult with Jinx. To his dismay Mr. Garble picked up the bag. “I’ll show you your rooms,” he said, and with the pistol, motioned Miss Anguish and Mr. Camphor to precede him up the cellar stairs.

  CHAPTER

  18

  Up in the little room with the skylight, Mr. Camphor sat down on the bed—there wasn’t any chair—and considered. The five thousand dollar ransom didn’t bother him—he was a rich man and would gladly have paid many times that to get out of the fix he was in. Judge Anguish too was rich; there was no need to worry about his sister. But how about Freddy? Freddy was his friend, and a friend was worth many times five thousand dollars.

  “I’ll tell Garble,” he said to himself, “that I’ll put up the five thousand for Freddy. I suppose I should have told him before, and saved Freddy the worry he’s going through, but if Garble thought I would spend that kind of money on a pig, he might raise my ransom to twenty-five thousand, and I want to get out of this as cheaply as I can.”

  This train of thought was interrupted by a faint meow. Mr. Camphor got up. He looked under the bed, under the dresser, and in all the dresser drawers. No cat, but the meowing continued. “Funny,” he thought; “it sounds almost as if it came from that carpetbag, but I never knew a toothbrush to meow before.” He sat down, but as the sound continued, he got up and opened the bag. And out sprang Jinx.

  “Whew!” said the cat. “Stuffy in there. I used to like the smell of mothballs but I guess I’m cured. I can see how a moth might feel about ’em. Well, what do we do now?”

  “Well, if we could get out, we ought to warn the sheriff. But the only opening in the room is one pane of the skylight that slides aside. You could crawl out and maybe get on the peak of the roof. Then if you yelled, maybe somebody’d bring a ladder and get you down.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  But when Jinx got out, the pitch was too steep to be climbed. His claws wouldn’t hold him on the slates.

  “I guess that’s that,” said Mr. Camphor. “We might as well settle down and play tick-tack-toe. Got a pencil?” But neither of them had a pencil.

  But Jinx caught sight of a hot-air register set in the wall. “What’s this?” he asked.

  Mr. Camphor explained that it was the opening of a duct that brought hot air up from the furnace in winter. “This register pulls out,” he said. “Look here. But there’s just this narrow oblong tin duct that goes down through the wall to the furnace. It’s probably too narrow for you, and if you slid part way down and got stuck, you’d just have to stay there.”

  “Not if you tear up the bed sheets and make a rope, and I hang on to one end with my claws and you let me down. I don’t think it’s too narrow. If it is, I’ll yell and you pull me up. But if it works, where do I come out?”

  “You ought to come out in the cold-air duct that brings fresh air in from outdoors. It might be open; sometimes it’s kept open in the summer. O.K., let’s try it.”

  Cats can make themselves pretty thin. Although the duct wasn’t much more than three inches wide, Jinx went down without sticking. He went down past the furnace into a sort of tin box, which was the intake for cold air, but there was no way out. The metal slide that could be opened to let fresh air in was shut.

  He was about to give the two tugs on the bed sheets, that was to be the signal for Mr. Camphor to pull him up, when he heard voices. They seemed to be very close to him, but then he realized that they were coming down through a hot-air pipe from one of the rooms above him. These pipes were just like speaking tubes, and anyone in the furnace could hear everything that went on in the house. The voices were those of Mr. Garble and Simon.

  “It’s not
my fault that the scheme failed,” Mr. Garble was saying. “It was nobody’s fault. Nobody could have foreseen that the stupid loyalty of the dogs would smash our plans.”

  “All very well, Mr. Garble; all very well,” said Simon. “But you brought us back from Montana to take part in the scheme—your scheme. And now it has failed, and what are you going to do for us? You are going to run for it and leave us holding the bag. You know, Mr. Garble, it would be a very neat solution of our troubles if we were to turn state’s evidence—to drop in on the sheriff this evening, say, and tell him a few things. Eh?”

  “You wouldn’t get much out of that,” Mr. Garble replied.

  “Satisfaction, Mr. Garble. The satisfaction of knowing that you, our comrade in arms, were safely and comfortably housed for the next twenty years or so. Eh?”

  Mr. Garble was silent for a time, then he said: “You don’t seem to realize, Simon, that I’m on the run myself. But …” He hesitated a moment. “But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I told Camphor that as soon as the ransom was paid, I was going to skip the country. But I’m not skipping. Not for six months, when the hullabaloo will have died down and I’ll have had time to grow a beard. I’m going to stay in the cave, up at the west end of Otesaraga Lake. Back of the hall where we held our meetings, there are two rooms. I just found them by chance. They open about five feet from the floor when you squeeze in behind that big stalagmite that looks like a pipe organ. Nobody will ever find you there. I’ve stocked them and fitted them up in the last month or two. I’m going to hide out there. And you can hide out with me, and after I leave, you can use the place. Live there. No one will ever find you if you take ordinary precautions, and you can raid nearby farms in perfect safety.”

  Jinx didn’t wait for any more. He gave two tugs on the rope of bed sheets, and Mr. Camphor pulled him up. And then they sat up until after midnight, working out a plan of action.