Читать книгу The Mystery of the Disappearing Dogs - Arthur Hammond - Страница 8

It was a few minutes before the two gangs could really believe that they had both lost their dogs, at what must have been almost the identical time—just around dusk. But then the talk between them grew fast and excited. The Annex prisoners were allowed to get up and the whole group stood around in the basement asking each other questions and arguing about this strange coincidence.

“What makes you so sure your dog was stolen?” Blackie said. “Was he tied up before he disappeared, the way ours was?”

“Well, no,” the Spadina leader said, “he was loose, sitting out in front of one of our houses. But that doesn’t make any difference. He never wanders away by himself, because we’ve trained him not to. He certainly wouldn’t have wandered so far away that we couldn’t find him when we looked for him, and we’ve looked everywhere. We walked a couple of blocks in every direction. He even left a big beef bone on the sidewalk, that he was chewing on, and that’s pretty strange. So then we figured you must have taken him, because we knew you were entering your dog for the race next week, and you’d already raided our place and spread that garbage all over everything.”

“Well, if he wasn’t tied up or anything, he still might have wandered off by himself,” the Professor said. “He may turn up again. Wouldn’t he have barked or anything if someone had tried to take him away?”

“Your dog didn’t, did he?” the Spadina leader said. “If he was tied up you’d think he would’ve made even more noise if someone had tried to walk off with him.”

“Say, that’s right!” Blackie said. “I hadn’t thought of that. We didn’t even hear a growl out of him inside the house all that time! Sput certainly wouldn’t have gone off quietly with anyone who just came along and unhooked him. Maybe he did get loose by himself.”

A small blond boy who had been one of the Spadina Gang’s raiding party pushed himself through to the front of the group now and spoke up.

“If they were both loose,” he said, “wandering about in the street, or even just sitting out in the street by themselves, the Humane Society could have picked them up. That happened to our dog once. It’s what they call ‘running at large.’ You can get fined fifty dollars for letting your dog do that. The man at the Humane Society told us.”

“What, just for letting it sit outside your own house?” Red said scornfully. “You’re crazy. That’s only if they’re running about loose in the streets. You can’t get fined fifty dollars for letting your dog sit outside its own house!”

“You can so!” the small boy said indignantly. “The man told us. The rule doesn’t mean that your dog actually has to be running about in the street at all! It just means if the dog is out in the street, without anyone in charge of it!”

“What happened about your dog, then?” Red’s Sister said, speaking to the boy gently, as her brother turned away from him. “Did you get fined fifty dollars?”

“No, but the man told us that that was what could happen, so that we wouldn’t let our dog go out in the street by himself again. He said the law was made because a stray dog might bite someone, or kill chickens, or something like that. That’s why they have to be so strict. The Humane Society has a dog-catcher going round the city all the time to pick up stray dogs. That’s what happened to ours.”

“Well, what happened to him after that?” the Professor said, getting interested. “How did you find out where he was and get him back?”

“My father went down to the Humane Society as soon as we found out he was missing,” the blond boy said. “Their truck had just brought him in and we got him back.”

The Professor shook his head. “Gee, I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “I guess this could be what happened. No one saw what happened. If they were wandering about in the street, I suppose the dog-catcher could have picked them both up. We all live in pretty much the same part of town. He could have been driving around in this area tonight.” He looked at Blackie inquiringly.

Blackie shook his head too. “I still don’t see how Sput could have got off his leash in the first place,” he said. “Unless maybe some stupid kid went by first and let him loose for a joke, and then the dog-catcher came round afterwards. . . . It’s possible, I guess.”

The leader of the Spadina Gang nodded thoughtfully. “I guess it is, at that,” he said.

But the little blond boy hadn’t finished yet. Now he spoke up again. “Well, if the dog-catcher has got the dogs,” he said, “you’d better hurry up and get them back again. Otherwise the Humane Society might electrocute them.”

Several of the kids who were standing around laughed at this, and Red said indignantly, “Are you nuts?” He turned to the others. “I tell you, this kid is nuts! Who let him in here anyway? Throw him out!”

The small blond boy got very red in the face at this and clenched his fists, as if he were going to take a swing at Red. This made everyone laugh even louder, because Red was about a foot taller and thirty pounds heavier.

It was Red’s Sister who came to the small boy’s rescue again and spoke to him kindly.

“Let him tell what he knows,” she said, looking around. “You’re not so smart, the rest of you. What do you mean, kid, they might electrocute them?”

“Well,” he said, “when we got our dog back, the man told us all about the Humane Society, and what they do is, if they find a stray dog and nobody comes to claim it, they try to sell it. But if they can’t sell it, they have to get rid of it, because they can’t afford to keep all the dogs that get lost. So they electrocute it.”

“You mean in the electric chair, like a gangster?” Red said, laughing out loud. “You’re nuts, kid. You really are, honest!”

“Say, can’t you see the big headlines?” Fatty said, joining in the mockery. “Big Buster Goes to Chair. Brutal Baby-Biter Burns!”

Everybody started laughing and jeering at the small boy again, and he got so angry and so upset that his eyes filled with tears. He could hardly keep himself from crying.

“You wait and see, that’s all!” he shouted. “If you don’t go down and get your dogs, you wait and see what happens!”

Now the room was in an uproar, with everyone laughing and shouting and talking at once, making jokes about the ridiculous idea that dogs could go to the electric chair, like gangsters.

The Professor’s voice suddenly cut across the noise, shouting for silence.

“Quiet!” he shouted. “Quiet! Have you all gone nuts or something? This isn’t getting us anywhere. You all seem to have forgotten what we’re supposed to be worrying about already! Let’s get organized, for Pete’s sake! If there’s some chance that Sput and Buster are down at the Humane Society, let’s go down there and see. We don’t know what else to do, and it’s certainly no good standing around here, laughing and shouting at each other. Come on. Who’s coming down to the Humane Society with me?”

“I will,” the leader of the Spadina Gang said loudly.

“So will I,” Red’s Sister said, and in a minute everyone else in the room was shouting their agreement and streaming out of the basement of the empty house, heading for the Humane Society.

The only trouble was that when the first group reached the sidewalk, they suddenly realized that they didn’t have the least idea where the Humane Society was, or whether it would still be open at that time of night. Immediately another racket started up, as everyone began asking everyone else if they knew where they were going, and giving contradictory directions about how to get there.

It was only when the leaders of the two gangs reached the sidewalk, with the Professor leading the small blond boy firmly by the arm, that any kind of order was restored.

“It’s at number 11 Wellesley Street West,” the Professor said. “Blondie here says it’s open twenty-four hours a day. Everyone know how to get there?”

Several people said they didn’t, so he gave them clear directions.

“Gee, these kids are a rabble if they’re not properly organized,” he said to the leader of the Spadina Gang, as the crowd went streaming off again in the direction he pointed out. “It’s taken me months to get my gang to follow any kind of discipline. I guess you have the same kind of trouble?” He paused, as the leader of the Spadina Gang nodded, and then went on, watching the other boy carefully. “You know, I’ve been thinking—oh, by the way, my name’s Tony Felucci. Everyone calls me the Professor.”

He held out his hand, and the other boy shook it. “I’m Kingston Elliott,” he said. “Just call me King.”

“Okay, King,” the Professor said as they went on walking. “Well, as I was saying, I’ve been thinking that if the two of us got together and got our two gangs organized into one big group, instead of fighting each other all the time . . .”

They remained deep in conversation, with the other leaders of the two gangs walking behind them and the small blond boy sticking closely to the Professor’s side, until they reached the door of the Humane Society on Wellesley Street some fifteen minutes later.

The rest of the group, who had hurried on ahead, were all standing around in front of the building looking at a new half-ton Ford panel truck, with the words CITY OF TORONTO—ANIMAL CONTROL painted on it.

“That looks like it, King,” one of the boys said to the leader of the Spadina Gang, as he came up. “That’s what the dog-catcher took our dogs in, I bet.”

“Okay, okay,” King said to the excited group. “You kids simmer down a bit, hey? Me and the Professor here and Blackie’ll go in and see if they know anything about our dogs. The rest of you wait here. Don’t anyone go away, because we may have an important announcement to make when we come out, whether the dogs are here or not. And don’t make a lot of noise and start attracting attention to yourselves either.”

In fact, several passers-by on Wellesley Street had already stopped to look at the crowd of girls and boys who were standing around outside the Humane Society, staring at its empty Ford panel truck. The Spadina leader glared round at them all again and then went and stood beside the Professor as he rang the Humane Society’s bell.

After a few minutes, the door was opened by a man in a long white coat and, when they had spoken a few words to him, the Professor and King and Blackie went inside. The man stared at the group on the sidewalk for a moment and then the door was closed.

Five minutes later the three boys were out again, shaking their heads at the eager questions of the gang members who crowded around them.

“No, the dogs aren’t there,” the Professor said. “In fact the truck hasn’t been anywhere near our part of the city today. Anyhow, the man said that as long as the dogs have got their tags on, we’ll be notified if they’re brought in. They’ve got a record of every licensed dog in the city. I guess Sput had his tag on all right, didn’t he Blackie?”

Blackie nodded.

“So did our dog,” King said. “So we don’t have to worry about that.”

“What about all that stuff about electrocution?” Red said, looking at the small blond boy scornfully. “Did you ask about that?”

“Well, Blondie just got his facts mixed up a bit, that’s all,” the Professor said. “He’s right, they do have a machine for electrocuting dogs. It’s a big kind of a box, not an electric chair. It’s the latest kind of humane killer. But they only use it when there’s nothing else they can do for a dog. Even if a dog’s brought in without a tag on, they always keep it seven days to give the owner a chance to claim it. Then, if no one has claimed it, they try to get it adopted by a new owner.”

“What do they suggest we do now?” Red’s Sister said. “Do we just have to wait and see if the dogs are brought into the Humane Society? Isn’t there anything else we can do?”

“They said we could advertise, if we were really worried,” Blackie said gloomily. “The man said we could put a two-line advertisement in the Want Ads of one of the Toronto newspapers for just over a dollar, in the ‘Lost’ section. Then someone who had found the dogs might return them, especially if there was a reward offered. I don’t reckon it’d be much use, though. How many people are going to see one little advertisement, even if we put it in all three papers? And anyway, we can’t afford to offer a big reward.”

There was some murmuring at this, as the gangs began to argue about whether it would be any good trying to track down the dogs through an advertisement in the papers, and once more it was the Professor who settled things.

“I vote we do put an ad in the papers,” he said quickly. “We’ve got to do something to try and help find the dogs, and a dollar for each paper isn’t very much. The Annex Gang’s got over fifteen dollars in its treasury, and we’ll pay for an advertisement for both dogs if the Spadina Gang hasn’t got any money collected. We can offer a small reward, too. It only needs to be a couple of dollars. All in favour, put their hands up.”

He stuck his own hand up and Fatty and Red and Red’s Sister copied him. Then the leader of the Spadina Gang put his hand up too.

“We’ll get up a collection tomorrow, to pay our share,” he said. “We’ll pay the same as the Annex Gang pays.”

At once, all the other members of the Spadina Gang put their hands up too, followed by Blackie, who was still doubtful about it doing any good. The vote was unanimous.

“Right!” the Professor said. “Let’s do it now, then. If we phone an advertisement in right away, we might even be able to get it printed in tomorrow morning’s Globe and Mail We can phone the same ad in to the Star and Telegram tomorrow morning, after we’ve seen whether the first one gets any results.”

He led the group of boys and girls along to the corner of the street, a few yards away, where there was a phone booth just across from the subway entrance. After he had made up a short message, describing the two dogs and offering a small reward, he went inside the phone booth, looked up the number of the newspaper in the phone book, and then closed the door of the booth to shut out the noise of the busy stream of traffic. The other members of the two gangs gathered round outside the booth, peering in through the glass sides.

The Professor put his dime in the slot, dialled, and then waited as the number rang. Then they saw him begin to talk, stop to listen, and then talk again. After another period of listening, he put the phone down slowly and looked at it, frowning. Still frowning, he turned and opened the door of the phone booth and stepped outside.

The others gathered round him anxiously.

“What did they say?” Fatty asked. “Did you get the advertisement in the paper for tomorrow?”

The Professor shook his head. “We were too late for that,” he said. “They won’t be able to print it until the day after tomorrow. But there was something else very strange.”

“What?” Red’s Sister said. “What was strange?”

The Professor shook his head from side to side in bewilderment, then looked at her and frowned again.

“When I told the woman who’s in charge of the advertisements that I wanted to put in one about a lost dog she was very surprised. She asked me if this was some kind of game.”

“Game?” Red’s Sister echoed. “Why did she say that? What’s a game about losing your dog?”

The Professor shook his head again. “When I asked her what was wrong with an ad for a lost dog, she said ‘Oh, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just peculiar, that’s all. Until a couple of days ago, we’d carried hardly any advertisements for lost dogs for months. Now, suddenly, in the last few days, we seem to have had dozens of them!’ ”

He paused for a moment, then went on. “It seems that a lot of other people have suddenly started losing their dogs, too—all over town!”