Читать книгу Pee-Wee Harris Turns Detective - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 3

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Almost from the very day the Hulberts had moved to Bridgeboro, Lefferts Leighton, their nephew, had made sensational progress in scouting. He had been discovered and introduced to the troop by a master propagandist, the redoubtable Pee-Wee Harris, who took much credit for his pupil’s achievement, and honored him with his especial care. So it may be said that Lefty, as they soon came to call him, became a scout under the most encouraging auspices.

Scarcely had the big moving van pulled away from the bungalow directly opposite the Harris home when Pee-Wee arose from the porch steps and proceeded at once against the lonely and defenseless boy whose labors he had been watching.

Pee-Wee’s mother had explicitly ordered him not to present himself to their new neighbors during the turmoil and preoccupation incidental to carrying in furniture, and he had, perforce, contemplated these interesting activities from the vantage point of his own veranda.

Once, to be sure, he had been tempted to violate the parental injunction by going across to examine what appeared to be a saddle with a pair of stirrups dangling from it, which the strange boy was about to carry into the house. But he resisted this and other temptations until the van moved away and the strange boy was left quite alone, picking up odds and ends of papers and packing. In lifting a scrap of burlap he appeared to wave it slightly at Pee-Wee. It was just a little gesture of pleasantry bespeaking the completion of his task. But Pee-Wee promptly accepted it as a salute. And that is how Lefty Leighton got into scouting.

“I bet I was in that house before you,” said Pee-Wee. It was his custom to begin an acquaintance with a kind of challenge. Though preeminently social, he was not always graceful. But he was always quite himself, and the keynote of altercation and boastfulness which he lost no time in striking, was characteristic of him. “I was in it even before it was built; I walked on the beams of it,” he said.

“If you were in it before it was a house, then you weren’t in the house before I was,” said the strange boy. “You were in it when it was going to be a house.”

“Do you call that an argument?” roared Pee-Wee.

The strange boy, who was tall and slender and good looking, smiled broadly, and shrugged his shoulders. He seemed amused at Pee-Wee.

“And I bet I know where you moved from, too,” Pee-Wee said. “I bet I know because I saw it on the van; you moved from Melrose? Is that your father that went into the house?”

“My uncle.”

“Have you got any brothers and sisters?”

“That’s asking questions,” said the boy amusedly, yet not without a certain adroit reticence.

“Do you live with your aunt and uncle?”

“Looks that way.”

Unabashed as Pee-Wee usually was, something deterred him from asking this boy if his parents were dead. Instead, he sought light on another important matter.

“What was that, a saddle, that you took in the house?”

“Uh huh,” said the boy, diverted by Pee-Wee’s catechism. “Looks that way.”

“Have you got a horse?”

“Not so you’d notice it.”

“What are you going to do with it?”

“Put it in the attic.”

“I bet somebody in your house rode horseback.”

The Leighton boy seemed highly amused at this masterly instance of deduction. He fell back on his favorite answer, “Looks that way.”

Apparently he was tired after his strenuous labors for he sat down on the lowest step of the unpretentious bungalow and glanced about him at the beautiful, quiet, shaded street in which this new home of his seemed somewhat out of place. With the handle end of a broom he reached out and picked up an empty pasteboard box, the last remaining bit of litter, and twirled it idly on the upright stick. “Guess that’s about all,” he said.

Pee-Wee had a good look at him then, for the boy seemed whimsically preoccupied with this momentary pastime and did not look at his new acquaintance. He had brown wavy hair with a rebellious lock that was always falling down over his forehead. His eyes were so brown that their color had been noted even by Pee-Wee who was ordinarily not observant in such matters. He had very white teeth of astonishing beauty and regularity. He was lithe and slender of build, and his shoulders were so straight that this item of his physique was conspicuously noticeable. But most notable of all was the trick he had of pushing the lock of hair up over his forehead as often as it fell down. He seemed never to weary of doing this. His skin was of almost mulatto hue which of course set off his white teeth when he smiled. And his smile was very humorous and winsome; he seemed to smile on the sly, as one might say.

Pee-Wee was conscious of a certain obvious distinctiveness about this boy, a kind of quiet assurance, which gave pause to his own customary challenging familiarity. As a rule boys were either squelched by Pee-Wee, or else rose in towering rebellion against him. But this boy did neither. He twirled the box on the broom handle and rested. Pee-Wee’s presence seemed altogether of secondary importance to him, even when the diminutive hero of Bridgeboro sat down beside him. The boy was coatless and his sleeves were rolled up, and Pee-Wee, who took little note of teeth and eyes and hair and the effect of their combination, did take note of one physical quality which a boy is not likely to overlook.

“I bet you got a good muscle,” he said.

“If you lost all the bets you make, you’d go to the poor house,” the other observed.

“Let’s see it,” Pee-Wee said.

The Leighton boy dutifully and slowly bent his brown arm, looking sideways at Pee-Wee with a funny smile, as if to inquire whether the requested demonstration were satisfactory.

“Geeeee whiz!” said Pee-Wee. “I bet you can run, too; hey?”

“If anybody’s after me I can.”

“Do you want to be friends with me?”

“Who’ll stop me?”

“Do you want to join the scouts?”

“Sure, why not?”

This seemed a rather casual acceptance of a tremendous invitation. He did not even cease twirling the box.

But Pee-Wee would stagger him with a knockout blow. “You have to raise your right hand and hold down two fingers and give your word of honor to some things.”

The Leighton boy dutifully laid down the broom and raised his right hand, wrestling with the trick of bending down two fingers.

“Not now!” Pee-Wee fairly shouted. “You don’t do it now. You do it when you join—in meeting.”

“Oh,” said the Leighton boy.

“So do you want to join? You have to be serious about it. Do you?”

“Sure, why not?”

“You got to be loyal to them.”

“Will they be loyal to me?”

“Yes, only you’re not interested. That shows you don’t know anything about it, asking if they’ll be loyal to you. Gee whiz, that’s their middle name.”

“It’s a good middle name,” said the Leighton boy.

“Do you want to go with me to meeting to-morrow night?”

“Sure, if I don’t have to help around here. I’ll try anything once.”

He resumed twirling the pasteboard box on the stick. Pee-Wee looked at him, puzzled.

The next evening Lefferts Leighton went to scout meeting with Pee-Wee and did not seem to be the least perturbed about it. Rather, indeed, did the scouts seem a little subdued by reason of his presence. They told each other that Pee-Wee had “picked a winner.” It seemed a joke. Lefferts did not join that night. He was quiet and seemed only mildly interested. But Mr. Ellsworth talked with him and gave him a Handbook. The following Friday night he was on hand to take the oath. He had all the tenderfoot requirements down pat, and more to boot.

But a funny thing happened when he came to take the oath. The use of the right hand is so customary in all forms of ceremonial procedure that it never occurred to Mr. Ellsworth to specify this to the new member. And Lefferts Leighton raised his left hand.

“The right hand,” Mr. Ellsworth laughed. “I guess you’re left-handed, eh?”

“Always was,” said Lefferts, smilingly correcting his mistake. “Guess it runs in my family.”

“Well, you’ve got the thumb and little finger business O. K.,” said Artie Van Arlen, his patrol leader. “And it isn’t everyone who does that.”

“You seem to see pretty well from where you’re standing,” Lefferts said. “Is that all?” he asked turning to Mr. Ellsworth.

“That’s all—short and sweet,” said the genial scoutmaster.

“I’ll say the laws if you want me to.”

“No, you can just obey them,” laughed Mr. Ellsworth. “Actions speak louder than words.”

“Words speak good and loud, too,” shouted Pee-Wee. “You got to be able to squawk like a Raven if you’re in the Raven Patrol. I’ll show you.”

That is how Lefferts Leighton, the new boy in Bridgeboro, became a scout of the Raven Patrol in the First Bridgeboro Troop. And that is how he came by his nickname of Lefty.