Читать книгу Jerry Todd and the Purring Egg - Edward Edson Lee - Страница 5

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The Strickers didn’t come back that night. They didn’t have the nerve. It was all right for them to sneak up on us when we weren’t watching. They could do that easy enough. But now that we were wise to their tricks, and on our guard, they decided it was safest for them to keep out of our reach.

It was ten-thirty now. The Ashton accommodation had been in for twenty minutes or more. Yet the Cap’n hadn’t showed up. So we were led to the conclusion that he intended to be away all night.

He had left word for us to take the eggs out of the incubator at ten-thirty and give them a bath in lukewarm water. And while we had the feeling, in what had happened to the incubator, that the eggs were now a broken mess, still we felt we had better carry out the old man’s instructions as best we could. We would have to explain things to him later on; and it would help us considerably to be able to tell him that we had tried to carry out his instructions.

But the inside of the incubator wasn’t a mess of broken eggs, as we had imagined it would be. In fact there were only six eggs in the tray. These eggs looked kind of queer to me—sort of shiny like a white doorknob. I held the lantern close to them. And when I got the truth of the situation I felt like two cents.

“We’re a fine pair of wooden-headed boobs,” I told the leader. “Lookit! Here’s your six china eggs.”

I wish you could have seen the expression on Scoop’s face. He thinks he’s pretty smart. And it galls him like sixty to be caught in a trick.

“Jerry,” he swallowed, “the old man’s sharper than I thought. He worked it pretty slick, didn’t he? If he had asked me to come here I would have suspected a trick. So he got you.”

I was angry.

“Yeh,” I growled, “he used me to get even with you.”

“What was it he told your pa?”

“He said I was to get you to come along and keep me company, as it would be kind of lonesome here by myself.”

The other managed to laugh.

“Pretty slick.”

I gritted my teeth at the incubator. For its glass panels reminded me of the Cap’n’s crafty eyes.

“Let’s get out of here,” I growled, ready to quit.

Scoop jerked his head in his thoughts.

“Just the same,” said he, “the old man might have lost his barn in this trick if we hadn’t been here to put out the fire.”

“We’ll tell him about it.”

“Maybe we ought to tell Bill Hadley, too.”

I looked up.

“The town marshal?”

The leader nodded.

“Doesn’t it strike you, Jerry, that there’s something wrong about that pool of blood?”

“You think it’s a mystery?”

“It’s queer and out of the ordinary that an injured man should be hiding here in the haymow. Who was he? Why was he hiding here? Was he a law breaker? Was he shot by a policeman, or some one, in making an escape? That could be the case. He might even be a murderer.”

I shivered.

“But what puzzles me more than anything else,” the leader went on, “is why he tipped over the incubator.”

“Maybe he wanted to burn up the barn so that no one would find out about the blood on the floor.”

Scoop considered.

“Or it may have been the incubator that he wanted to destroy.”

“But why should he want to burn up the incubator?”

“He may be an inventor. See? He may be working on an incubator like the Cap’n’s. And wanting to get his own incubator patented first, he came here to burn up the other one.”

“Aw, that’s just a wild guess.”

“It’s a possibility. And when you’re working on a mystery you’ve got to think of everything.”

Well, we talked some more. To one point, we were sure that the Stricker gang was in no way responsible for the fire. For Bid and his gang had been outside in the weeds when the fire started. Besides we knew a kid wouldn’t deliberately set fire to a building.

Before leaving for home we climbed the ladder into the haymow to take another look at the bloody floor. The blood was dry now. Hoping that we would find a clew of some sort, we made a thorough search of the haymow. But we found no clews. And giving up the search as useless we went below.

My eyes fell on the china eggs.

“If we could only think of some scheme to get back at the Cap’n,” I gritted, my anger coming up again.

“Don’t you worry, Jerry,” the leader laughed. “He’ll get his. I’ll tell the world!”

“We ought to make it an egg trick.”

“Leave it to me, kid. I’ll think up something.”

My eyes suddenly widened.

“Hey!” I cried. “Where’s the other egg?”

“What other egg?”

“There was six china eggs. Now there’s only five.”

“I haven’t got it.”

“Nor me.”

We searched the barn floor. But we couldn’t find the missing egg. And in the end we were forced to the conclusion that the egg had been stolen while we were in the haymow the second time. As to the identity of the thief we could not doubt that it was the mysterious man who had been hiding in the haymow.

We were getting befuddled now.

“I could understand it,” said Scoop, “if the man had stolen the incubator. That has some value. But what can be his idea in stealing a five-cent nest egg? Or, if he wanted one egg, why didn’t he take all six of them?”

“Gosh!” I cried. “Don’t ask me.”

“Jerry, there’s something queer about this.”

“Let’s beat it,” I shivered.

“Maybe we ought to stand guard here to-night.”

“Nothing doing,” I shivered. “Me for home sweet home.”

The other got his thoughts arranged.

“A mysterious hidden man,” he murmured; “a pool of fresh blood; a fire; a vanished nest egg. . . . I wish I could put the puzzle together.”

I yawned and shivered at the same time.

“It’s going to eleven o’clock,” I said. “So let’s go home and get some sleep. If there’s a mystery here we can tackle it tomorrow morning. Maybe, though, the Cap’n will be able to clear up everything when he gets home.”

We left the barn then. It was still moonlight. That was a good thing and a bad thing. Danger couldn’t creep up on us. But on the other hand the bright moonlight made us an easy target for hidden eyes.

Boy, was I ever glad to get into the street!

“Come on,” I chattered, and down the sidewalk I went on the run.