Читать книгу The Mystery of the Disappearing Dogs - Arthur Hammond - Страница 5

The mysterious affair of the disappearing dogs, which startled a city when its story was finally told, had its beginning inside number 13A Bedford Road, Toronto.

Number 13A was derelict: a huge, rambling old house of dark red stone, standing on a corner lot in a large, overgrown garden. The iron fence around the garden was rusty, its black paint peeling off, and parts of it were broken and held together with wire. Inside the fence, top-heavy, ragged evergreen bushes leaned down toward huge, towering weeds. The windows of the house were boarded, their glass gone, and the door was sealed—nailed up against intruders.

It was a dead house, filled with ghosts of the past, its blank eyes looking somberly out at the signs of progress around it: the sleek automobiles, cruising past on their way to the expensive residential areas to the north; the rising yellow-brick apartment buildings on all sides; the glistening station of a newly-constituted subway down the street.

Yet its appearance of lifelessness and desolation, of waiting for the wrecker’s hammer, was not altogether accurate. In one part of the house, below ground level, behind the boarded-up, sunken windows of the basement, some figures who were anything but ghosts were moving about. They moved furtively, so as not to attract attention from outside, by the light of a guttering candle stuck in a bottle.

Another figure, hurrying along the street outside, paused by the house and looked around him quickly. Then he ducked into the garden through a gap in the fence and made his way urgently through the waist-high grass and weeds to a door at one side of the house, out of sight from the street. It was dusk of a late summer’s evening and the smell of fall was already in the air.

The hurrying figure looked around him again, then went quickly down four steps to the basement door and knocked three times. He waited, then knocked three times again.

There was a movement inside, the sound of feet coming to the inside of the door. Then, from near the keyhole, a voice spoke.

“Password?”

The figure on the steps outside knocked on the door again impatiently and bent down to the keyhole himself.

“Come on, Fatty,” he said. “Open up! It’s me. Something’s happened.”

The door didn’t budge. “Password?” the voice said again.

“For Pete’s sake!” the figure outside said irritably. “All right! Number Thirteen!”

“Lucky for some,” the voice inside whispered.

“Bingo!” the boy outside answered back. “Now open the door, huh?”

The door was slowly opened and quickly closed again as the figure on the steps slipped in. He was a young teenager, wearing jeans and a windbreaker over a plaid shirt. He was wearing glasses, too, with one of the lenses darkened because of a weakness in that eye. From this fact he had been given the name Black-eye, now shortened to Blackie, alias Pete Snow, Official Mascot-Keeper and one of the leaders of the Annex Gang, whose secret headquarters he had just entered. The Annex Gang was named after the area of the city they all lived in, north of the university.

The one who had let him in was Fatty, otherwise known (especially to his parents) as Mike Gzowski, Official Doorkeeper of the gang. He shook his head at Blackie and clicked his tongue. “You know you gotta give the password,” he said. “How am I to know who’s out there? It might be one of that Spadina mob.”

All round the basement room that Blackie had just entered were huge piles of old magazines and comic books that the gang had salvaged from beside the garbage cans in its area of the city. Sitting on one of these piles, over by the candle, looking at one of the evening papers which he had brought in with him from his paper route, was the organizer and democratically elected leader of the gang, the Professor, otherwise known as Tony Felucci. He had been nicknamed because of his ability to get straight A grades in school without even seeming to try, though in fact he studied hard at home.

He looked up as Blackie came in. “That’s right,” he said. “You know the rules. No one comes in without the password.”

Close by the Professor, whittling a piece of wood with a clasp knife, sat Red, the War Chief of the gang, a first-class athlete who could out-wrestle, out-box, outrun and out-climb practically every other kid within blocks. His nickname came from his cropped head of brilliant red hair, a sign of his Scots ancestry. His real name was Andy MacVicar.

Across the room from him, cooking something in a tin can at the fireplace was the only girl who was one of the leaders of the gang, Mary MacVicar, usually known simply as Red’s Sister. She had become a leader not only because she was a famous tomboy, who at one time or another had beaten up practically every girl—and some of the boys—in the neighbourhood, but also because Red’s parents had told him that he had to keep an eye on her, to keep her out of trouble. So Red wanted her along, and what Red wanted he could usually get.

The Professor folded his newspaper and looked up at the swirling blue smoke in the room, then at Red’s Sister’s back.

“What the heck are you doing, anyhow?” he said. “Trying to choke us or something?”

“I’m cooking some french fries,” she said without looking up. “Only I don’t have any fat, so I’ve got to boil ’em in water. I’ve got a wiener to eat with them.”

“Listen,” Blackie said impatiently, breaking in. “Something’s happened. I think somebody’s . . .”

“Just a minute, just a minute! Hold it!” the Professor said, putting his newspaper down and interrupting him. “You know the rules, Blackie. Everybody’s here now, so let’s run the meeting properly. We’ve only been waiting for you. Minutes of the last meeting first, then any new business.”

The Professor had once been to a Rotary Club meeting with his father and he tried to run the Annex Gang along the same, business-like lines. He had done a great job of organizing the gang, too, including collecting a subscription from every kid in the neighbourhood who wanted to join. But some of the gang sometimes thought that he carried things a bit too far, including Blackie.

“But this is urgent!” Blackie said. “It’s about Sput! Somebody’s . . .”

He was cut off by the Professor again. “You heard me. Minutes first, then any new business. There’s a place on the agenda for talking about Sput.”

Sput was the gang’s Official Mascot, a large black and white mongrel dog which went everywhere with the leaders of the gang and stood guard for them outside their headquarters when they were having a meeting. There were several other dogs attached to the gang, too, but Sput was the champion of them: bigger, stronger, faster, and, what was very important for any dog that wanted to go around with the Annex Gang, more patient than the rest. He had originally been called Spot, but later had been renamed in honour of the first dog in space, Sput being short for Sputnik. He officially belonged to Blackie, but his licence fee and dog tag were paid for with money out of the gang’s treasury and right now he was being trained as the gang’s official entry in the annual Dog Derby at the Canadian National Exhibition. The race was due to take place the following week, just before the end of the long summer holiday.

Blackie shrugged in disgust at being prevented from speaking a second time and turned his back on the other members of the gang. He picked up a magazine from one of the piles and began to flip through it.

The Professor eyed his back angrily and then turned to Red’s Sister. “Mary, have you got the minutes of the last meeting?” he said.

Red’s Sister straightened up from the fire, pulled a rumpled school exercise book out of the back pocket of her jeans and opened it. She was Official Secretary of the gang. The Professor now eyed the notebook sourly.

“Look at the state of that darn thing,” he said. “What’ve you been doing with it, cleaning your shoes on it or something? That’s supposed to be our official record book, not an old piece of used Kleenex. You’re a girl; you’re supposed to be neat and tidy. Why the heck don’t you keep it clean?”

Mary looked at the covers of the book and shrugged. She wiped it on the leg of her jeans. A new black streak appeared.

“Okay. Let’s have the minutes of the last meeting,” the Professor said with a sigh.

Red’s Sister cleared her throat and began to read.

“Meeting of the twenty-third of August,” she said. “The leaders of the Annex Gang assembled at headquarters at 8.30 p.m., but Fatty Gzowski was away because he was on vacation with his parents up at Muskoka. Absence excused.”

The Professor nodded and Fatty, who was still standing over by the door, made a little bow. Red’s Sister went on reading.

“A report was made by me—I mean by Red’s Sister—about some guys from the Spadina Gang who were on our territory on garbage day, taking magazines and comic books that people had put out. I told them—I mean Red’s Sister told them—to beat it, because these magazines and comic books belonged to us, and then they tried to dump me in a garbage can but I got away and, boy, I really hit that guy Frankie Horton when he tried to grab me!”

The Professor looked across at Red. “What happened about the Spadina Gang?” he said.

“We fixed ’em,” Red said in a satisfied voice. “Yesterday. Me and Fatty and a couple of guys from Hazelton Avenue went over to that new apartment block that’s being built on Spadina Road, where they have their headquarters. We did what you said. We took a whole lot of garbage, old shoes and stuff, and spread it all round the place where they meet, down in the basement. Then we chalked up that message on the wall that you gave us: ‘We hear you want our garbage. Here’s some more.’ Signed—‘The Annex Gang.’ ”

“Did any of them see you?” the Professor said.

“Nope,” Fatty said. “We made sure there was no one about before we went in.”

“Do they know where we’re meeting?” the Professor said. “They’ll probably try a revenge raid.”

Red shook his head. “I don’t think they know or they’d have raided us before this. But we’d better be careful from now on, because they’ll probably send out scouts to trail us here.”

“Right,” the Professor said, turning to Fatty. “Doorkeeper to use vigilance. Don’t let anyone in here without the proper password. And all of you watch out that you’re not followed when you come here, and make sure there’s no one around when you come in. If they break in here, they’ll wreck the place and then the neighbours’ll probably complain to the cops or the developer who owns this place and we’ll be thrown out of here for good.”

“I already do make everyone give the password,” Fatty said. “He’s the one you want to tell.” He pointed to Blackie. “He’s always trying to get in here without it. He thinks it’s stupid.”

“I was in a hurry, that’s all,” Blackie said sourly without looking round. “I just happened to have some very urgent news to tell. But no, nobody wants to listen. First of all, we have to go through this rubbish of reading the minutes and fooling around with passwords and all that stuff. Okay, so let it wait. See if I care. Go on, finish reading your crummy minutes.”

The Professor stood up angrily. “Look,” he said. “If you don’t like the way I run things, you don’t have to take part, you know. I organized this gang and I was elected to this job so that I could keep it organized and run things properly. But if no one likes it, I can always resign and you can always go back to being just another bunch of unorganized kids, fighting among yourselves and getting pushed around by other people, like the Spadina Gang, because they’ve got the sense to get themselves properly organized.”

“Okay, okay!” Red said, snapping his clasp knife shut and standing up. “Let’s not start fighting among ourselves, hey Prof, like you say.” He gently pushed the Professor back down in his seat. “We all think the way you’re running the gang is swell, but if Blackie really has got some urgent news to tell maybe we should just make an exception to the rules this once and let him tell it, even if we haven’t finished the minutes. Blackie, you listening? Okay, Prof?”

But Blackie had decided to sulk. He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “It can wait now. Come on, Mary. Finish the lousy minutes.”

Red’s Sister looked round at everyone and shrugged. “The next thing’s about you, anyway,” she said to Blackie. “The next thing at the meeting was a report from Blackie, the Official Dog-Keeper . . .”

“Mascot-Keeper,” the Professor grunted, still angry.

“. . . Mascot-Keeper, about how Sput was getting on in his training for the Dog Derby. Blackie said that he and a couple of other kids had been taking Sput for a daily swim in High Park, but the trouble was that he kept taking off after ducks instead of swimming straight across the pond from one side to the other. Next week they were going to take him over to Centre Island to try and get him to swim after a rowboat, the way he’ll have to in the race. Blackie was given some money from the treasury for renting the boat.”

Everyone looked at Blackie curiously.

“How’s he getting on?” Red said. “Think he’s got any chance of beating that big black mutt the Spadina Gang’s entering for the race—what’s it called—Buster?”

Blackie looked at Red sadly, then at the Professor.

“Well, right up until today I’d have said he had a pretty good chance,” he said. “I’ve seen that mutt of Spadina’s swim. It’s fast to begin with, but it can’t keep it up. If Sput had got into the race, he’d have beaten that one anyway.”

“What do you mean, if he’d got into the race?” Fatty said. “Is he hurt or something?”

“No, he’s not hurt,” Blackie said. “At least, I don’t think so. I don’t know whether he’s hurt or not. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you ever since I got in here. He’s been stolen!”