Читать книгу Jerry Todd and the Purring Egg - Edward Edson Lee - Страница 6
ОглавлениеCHAPTER IV
HUMPTY-DUMPTY
I’m like Dad. If I go to bed at night with a worry I sort of sleep it off. So I had no grouch in my mind the following morning when I uncovered my eyes to a recollection of the Cap’n’s incubator trick. Instead, I got out of bed whistling and singing.
And what a wonderful morning it was! The lawn beneath my bedroom window was puddled with sunshine. I counted five robins and a crow. They sang very beautifully, only I don’t know for sure whether the crow sang or not. Anyway, it was there.
As I dressed I went over in my mind our adventure in the Cap’n’s barn. I had been scared in the dark. But I wasn’t scared now. Not a particle. That is what the daylight does for a fellow. It takes away his shivers and makes him brave and daring. More than anything else I now wanted to get to work in that barn. I had the feeling, from what had happened, that there was a secret there. And I was crazy to find out what the secret was.
But maybe, I thought, I would find the barn in ruins. Maybe the mysterious man had returned in the dead of night to finish the job of burning the barn down. One thing sure, if the barn had been destroyed it would be my duty, and Scoop’s, too, to go to Bill Hadley, the Tutter marshal, with an account of our adventure. If there was a fire-bug in town the law ought to know about it.
Having gotten into my clothes, I ran down the stairs to the dining-room where breakfast was ready for me.
“You can be ‘pa’ this morning,” Mother smiled at me, motioning me to Dad’s vacant chair at the sugar-bowl side of the table.
I remembered then that this was the week of the brickmakers’ convention at Indianapolis. As a brickmaker Dad, of course, would attend the convention. When anything like that is going on he’s always there. And that is what Mother meant by saying that I could be “pa.” She meant that Dad was going to be away.
It is an honor to be “pa.” Sometimes it means extra work, such as taking care of the furnace in the winter and shoveling snow. But I don’t mind that. For the more work I do the more Dad appreciates me when he gets home. A fellow can work hard if he knows he’s going to be handed a little praise.
Dad wasn’t in the house, so I took it for granted that he had left for Indianapolis on the early-morning milk train. But Mother told me he was at the factory. Something had happened to the big brick-making machine, she said, and the night foreman had telephoned to the house for Dad to jump into his clothes and come quick.
“But he plans to leave on the eleven-thirty train,” I was told in conclusion. “So you’d better be here, Jerry, as he’ll want to say good-by to you.”
Shortly after breakfast I was called to the telephone.
“Who is it?” I inquired.
“Six china eggs,” came a deep mumbling voice.
“Huh!” I grunted, recognizing Scoop.
There was a giggle over the line.
“You don’t like to hear about it, do you, Jerry?”
“I didn’t lose any sleep over it,” I grunted.
“Dog-gone him! He sure worked it slick. But we’ll fix him for his trick. I’ve got a hum-dinger of a scheme. Boy, it’s a pippin.”
“Tell me first,” I said, “did the man come back and burn the barn down?”
“I didn’t hear the fire truck out last night. So I guess the barn’s safe.”
“We were a couple of scaredy-calves,” I said.
“We? Hey! How do you get that ‘we’ stuff?”
“Don’t kid yourself,” I laughed. “I didn’t run home any faster than you did.”
“I did that to keep you company.”
“Oh, yes!”
“I saw you were scared. And I was afraid if I left you alone you’d get excited and turn into the wrong alley.”
“I don’t feel scared now,” I told him. “And as soon as I get the chance I’m going to do some daylight investigating in that barn. For I’ve got a hunch there’s a secret there.”
“A bloody secret, hey?”
“You tell ’em.”
“Say, Jerry.”
“Yah?”
“Did I tell you I telephoned to Doc Leland?”
“What for?”
“Well, the man in the haymow was bleeding. That was proof that he had some kind of an injury. And I figured that maybe he would go to Doc’s office to have his injury dressed.”
“Did you find out anything?”
“No. Doc said he hadn’t had a stranger in his office in a week.”
“Maybe the man is dead. Maybe he bled to death.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
“He left a lot of blood in the haymow.”
“I hope he left something else.”
“What?”
“Footprints.”
“In the blood?”
“Sure thing.”
“We didn’t see any footprints last night.”
“Our light was poor. We ought to have better success in the daylight.”
“How about the Cap’n?” I then inquired. “Are you going to tell him that a mysterious man was in his haymow last night?”
The other laughed.
“The less we tell the Cap’n just now the better.”
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t I tell you a moment ago that I had a scheme in mind? Oh, boy! We’re going to make the old man sorry for that china-egg trick. Say, Jerry.”
“Yes?”
“Where’s your big egg?”
“The one I found in the cave?”
“Sure thing.”
“It’s in the basement.”
“Fine! Now, listen! Wrap it up so no one will see it and sneak it over to Red’s house. I’ll be along in a jiffy.”
I let out a tickled yip. For I saw right off that it was the leader’s scheme to fool the Cap’n with my goofle egg. I was glad now that I had brought the egg home. I had showed good sense in doing that. The other fellows had made fun of me when I kept the egg. But now they wanted to use it.
It is only a few doors from our house to Red’s. And wrapping a newspaper around the big egg to hide it, I cut across the lawn. Peg was there when I got there. And he and Red pretty nearly giggled their heads off when they heard about Scoop and me chaperoning the china nest eggs.
“Haw! haw!” hooted Peg. “I didn’t think the old man was smart enough to pull a trick like that.”
Red was thinking of the tomato fight.
“I wish I had seen you squash Bid in the face.”
“It was fun,” I laughed.
“Bid’ll probably lay it up against you and try to get even with you.”
“I should worry. He started it.”
“He’s tricky.”
“We can match his tricks with others.”
Peg was still laughing over the china-egg trick.
“You wouldn’t have thought it was so funny,” I told him, “if you had been in our shoes. We were scared stiff, I want to tell you.”
“Scared? What were you scared of?”
I told him about the man in the haymow, and about the pool of blood and the vanished egg.
“Gee!” cried Red, his eyes going big. “You sure had some wild night.”
“I wish I had been there, Jerry,” Peg spoke up. “I wouldn’t have been scared like you. I would have found out who the man was and what he was doing there.”
“We didn’t know he was there,” I further explained, “until he had escaped from the barn.”
“You said you heard him when you were alone.”
“I didn’t say I heard him. As a matter of fact I didn’t hear a sound from him. I just had the sudden feeling that some one was watching me.”
“Well,” said Peg, “if it had been me, as I say, I would have done some speedy investigating.”
“It’s easy to talk,” I grunted, kind of out of sorts with him in his brave talk. Still, I knew I had no reason to feel that way. For there isn’t a braver kid in Tutter than Peg. That boy sure has grit. You can’t scare him. I suspect that he would have gone into the haymow, as he said, if he had been in my place.
Pretty soon Scoop tumbled into the yard with a rolled-up newspaper in his hand. His eyes were dancing.
“Where’s the egg?” he inquired eagerly.
“Over there by the oleander,” I pointed.
He laughed.
“Bring it to the barn, Jerry. We’re going to rejuvenate it.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that. Nor did Peg or Red, I imagine. But it sounded interesting. So I hooked the egg and we hurried to the barn.
“Scoop, the tailor,” laughed Peg, when the leader brought out a measuring tape and began using it on the big egg.
Red gave a crazy yip.
“He’s going to make Humpty-Dumpty a pair of panties.”
“And a little coat and vest,” I put in.
“Make him a pair of suspenders, too,” laughed Peg.
But the measurer paid no attention to our nonsense.
“It’s a bit oversize,” said he presently, “but I guess we can get by with it.”
“If it’s too big,” I laughed, “we can sandpaper it smaller.”
He shook his head.
“No. An inch or two won’t make any difference. For I imagine that some dodo birds laid bigger eggs than others.”
“It’s a goofle egg,” I maintained in fun.
“No,” he waggled, putting his tape away, “it’s a dodo egg. I looked it up in Pa’s encyclopedia.”
“What’s a dodo egg?” I inquired. “I never heard of such a thing.”
“Why,” he laughed, “a dodo egg is a dodo egg. This egg is a dodo egg. Sure thing. And it’s worth a million dollars.”
Peg looked at the leader as though he was something that the cat had dragged in.
“Cuckoo,” he said, cranking up the side of his head.
“Yes, sir,” Scoop went on, grinning, “it’s a million-dollar egg, and nothing else but. I know what I’m talking about.”
“Show me how to grab the million dollars,” I said, “and you can have the egg.”
He laughed and unrolled his newspaper.
“Read it for yourself,” he said.
I did. And here is the article just as it appeared on the front page of the Tutter Daily Globe.
QUICK! PAGE THE SHADE OF P. T. BARNUM
YOU CAN BUY STOCK IN THIS EGG AND BECOME A MILLIONAIRE
From Chicago radio news sources comes the amazing tale of a “rejuvenated” dodo egg, alleged to have been recovered from King Tutankhamen’s tomb, which is to be hatched in a modern incubator, in or near the Windy City.
Recently a Chicago newspaper editor was approached by the egg’s “promoter,” a middle-aged, roving-eyed man of restless personality, who glibly related the wonder tale, offering in conclusion to let the other in on what he contended was the greatest money-making scheme of the century.
So here is your chance to get rich. For the dispatch avers that “Dodo Stock” is available to the credulous. And, of course, the promoter’s statement is not to be questioned that the hatched dodo bird, as an attraction, will easily net its exhibitors a million dollars.
A million-dollar egg! And some people of ordinary imagination thought that the “peak” price of eggs had been reached when Roy Chapman Andrews offered to sell a single dinosaur egg for five thousand dollars.
