Читать книгу Freddy and the Baseball Team from Mars - Walter Rollin Brooks - Страница 5

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Freddy had more than twenty disguises that he used in his detective work. The trouble with most of them was that they didn’t disguise him much. When he got them on he wasn’t Dr. Hopper, or old Mrs. O’Brien; he was just a pig in a derby hat and a false mustache, or a pig in a bonnet and shawl. They were really more bother than they were worth.

However, a really good disguise is a great help in detective work, and he had at last got together an outfit that he thought a pig could wear successfully. There was a long, black old-fashioned coat of the kind known as a Prince Albert. It was the one Mr. Bean had been married in, but the moths had got into it and Mrs. Bean had thrown it out. She said she couldn’t feel sentimental about a lot of old moth holes.

The black trousers were too long, but they fell in wrinkles at the bottom and helped to hide his trotters. He had an old shapeless felt hat and a white wig and a long white beard, which made his nose look shorter, and he wore spectacles that had belonged to Mrs. Bean’s father, who was very near-sighted. They really did disguise Freddy, because a pig’s eyes are much smaller than a man’s, and these glasses had very thick lenses, and magnified his eyes so they looked twice as big.

But one thing Freddy had forgotten. It hadn’t occurred to him that while the thick lenses made his eyes look different to other people, they also made everything look different to him. The ground seemed to be right up under his nose, and everything more than a few feet off was so blurred and distorted that he couldn’t tell what it was. So when, with a corncob pipe in his mouth and a cane in his hand, he started over to join the group of people watching the Martians, he tripped and stumbled at every other step, and he had to lift the glasses up, finally, to see where he was going.

But when he had worked his way through the little crowd until he was close to Mr. Anderson, he had to leave the spectacles in place. “Golly,” he said to himself, “I’m glad I’ve got this cane. I’d have fallen on my face and busted the darn glasses by this time if I hadn’t. I bet I look a hundred years old, tottering along. But that’s how I want to look.” Something loomed up ahead of him. “Wonder if that’s Anderson. It’s the right color, but it looks more like a kangaroo. Oops!” he said out loud. “Excuse me, mister.” For he had misjudged the distance and walked right into the man.

“Hey, look where you’re going, Grampa,” said Mr. Anderson irritably.

Freddy had decided to be sort of a bad-tempered old man. So now he said in a high, piping, irritable voice that he thought would go well with his get-up: “Well, I said excuse me, didn’t I? What ye want me to do, sonny—write ye out an apology?”

Anderson gave a laugh which was good-humored in a bullying sort of way. “Well, to begin with,” he said, “you might get off my foot.”

Freddy stepped back hastily. “Consarn ye,” he snapped. “D’ye have to spread your great feet all over the landscape?”

Anderson laughed again. “Now, now,” he said. “It was me that got stepped on, after all.”

Freddy thought they’d better get off the subject of feet. He didn’t want to call attention to the fact that his were trotters. He flourished his stick out toward the ball-playing Martians, knocking off the cap of a boy standing beside him. “What are all them little critters?” he asked, though all he could see of the Martians was a lot of little black specks floating around in the distance. They looked like tadpoles swimming to and fro in his glasses.

“Take it easy with that stick,” Anderson said, “before you put someone’s eye out.” Then he said: “You a stranger here? Haven’t you heard about the people from Mars that landed here in a flying saucer and joined Boomschmidt’s circus?”

“Heard some folderol about ’em,” said Freddy. “Fakes, ain’t they?”

Mr. Anderson said on the contrary, they were the real thing. And he told Freddy about them.

“Tcha!” said Freddy. “Don’t believe a word of it!”

Mr. Anderson didn’t say anything. Freddy leaned with both fore-trotters on the handle of his stick and looked out at the blurred landscape. Then he said: “You acquainted around here?”

“More or less,” said the other. “What do you want to know?”

“Well, I’ll tell you.” Freddy peered up at the red face. “They got a good bank in this town?”

“Sure, they got a fine bank. Why? You want to stick it up?”

“I ain’t sayin’ I wouldn’t like to if I was forty years younger,” Freddy said with a wheezy cackle that he thought went well with his white whiskers. “No, sir, I ain’t ambitious. All I want is a safe place to keep my savings. Like to lost ’em a week ago. House burned down. But I saved the money.” He tapped his breast pocket significantly. “Now I got to have a place to put it till I get me another place to live.”

Mr. Anderson moved a little closer and Freddy could feel his suddenly aroused interest. “Now I’ve hooked him,” he thought. “But what’ll I do with him? He isn’t likely to have anything more to do with Squeak-squeak’s disappearance than any of the other people out here watching the Martians.” Then he thought: “Oh well, I might as well have a little fun.”

“Don’t like carryin’ all my cash around in my pocket,” he said.

“I should think not!” said Anderson. “Want me to walk down to the bank with you? Only—well, why not invest your money instead of letting it lie idle in a bank? Of course, if it’s only a few hundred—” He paused, but Freddy didn’t say anything, “why then,” he went on, “the bank’s all right. But if you’ve got enough to buy, say, a house.... Well,” he said with a laugh, “I’m a real estate man, and naturally I’d boost real estate as an investment. I know houses you can buy with as little as a thousand down, and then you can rent ’em and make good money. How much did you say you had, Mr. Ah—”

“Arquebus is the name,” said Freddy. “Henry Arquebus. And I didn’t say.”

“Quite right,” Mr. Anderson agreed heartily. “Shouldn’t have asked you. Only thing, I was thinking of a little piece of property I’ve got right now. Prettiest little house you ever saw. It cost this fellow eighteen thousand, and he’ll sell for cash for—But forgive me, I get so enthusiastic about bargains like this. If I only had the money I’d buy it myself.

“However, you want to go to the bank. Come along and I’ll show you.”

So he accompanied Freddy down to the bank. Freddy stumbled a lot, and once he walked into a lamp post and tipped his hat and apologized to it. So Mr. Anderson took his arm. But Freddy shook the guiding hand off, for at the same time that it was steadying his uncertain feet, he could feel cautious fingers exploring to see if he had a well-stuffed wallet in his breast pocket. And of course the pocket was empty.

Although at the bank Anderson rather insisted on coming in, Freddy refused. “I don’t need ye, mister,” he said. “And folks that keep pokin’ their noses into my business likely’ll get ’em singed. Or chawed off.” He cackled. “I ain’t particular which.”

“I can see you aren’t,” said Mr. Anderson good-naturedly. “Well, let me give you my card, and if you decide to put any of that money into real estate, just let me show you what I’ve got.” He tucked the card into Freddy’s right-hand pocket, and Freddy could feel that he was making sure that there wasn’t a wallet in that pocket either. “Where are you staying in town?” he asked.

“No harm in telling you,” Freddy said. “Got a room at Mis’ Peppercorn’s.”

“Oh, yes, I know Mrs. Peppercorn,” said Anderson. “You won’t mind if I drop in one day when I’m passing by? Just for a little chat. Frankly, I like you, Mr. Arquebus.”

“Well, some folks do,” said Freddy, and went into the bank.

From the window he watched Mr. Anderson. The man stood around for a minute as if undecided, then seemed to come to a decision, and walked off hurriedly. As soon as he was out of sight, Freddy started back to the ball park.

On the way, he stopped in to see old Mrs. Peppercorn. He knew that she sometimes rented her spare room, and although at first he hadn’t intended to really stay there, he decided that it might be a good idea. He could move around on his detective work more safely than if he stayed with the Boomschmidts, for he didn’t want the circus animals or the Centerboro people to know that he was looking for Squeak-squeak. But Mrs. Peppercorn was an old and trusted friend.

She came to the door. At first Freddy had thought he’d pretend to be Mr. Arquebus, to find out if she could see through his disguise. But she had a fiery temper, and she didn’t like to be fooled. She might laugh about it with him afterward, but at the time she was as likely as not to chase him up the street with a broom. So he just said: “Mrs. P., I’m Freddy. I’m working on a case. Can I come in?”

Well, she stared at him a full minute, and then she started to laugh. She laughed so loud and so long that Freddy saw a lace curtain tremble in Mrs. Lafayette Bingle’s front window across the street, and he knew Mrs. Bingle had heard and was peeking out. So he took Mrs. Peppercorn by the arm and pulled her inside and shut the door.

Mrs. Peppercorn screeched a good deal when she laughed. It wasn’t a pretty laugh, but it was infectious—which means that when you heard it you began laughing yourself, even if you didn’t know what she was laughing about. Freddy’s laugh was infectious too, so the harder one laughed the harder the other one did, and pretty soon they were both yelling until the windows shook, and I don’t know what would have happened if Freddy, in trying to get his breath, hadn’t given a sort of gasp and drawn a lot of the white whiskers into his mouth and halfway down his throat. Of course he choked, and Mrs. Peppercorn had to help him and pound him on the back, and by the time he got his breath back they had got over laughing.

“Good land, Freddy,” Mrs. Peppercorn said, “you know when I opened that door—well, you’re the livin’ image of Great-uncle Ezra Pocus, who’s been dead and gone forty years.”

“I should think you’d have been scared, instead of laughing,” Freddy said.

“Why, you would, wouldn’t you?” said Mrs. Peppercorn, looking surprised. “I guess it’s those whiskers. I—Oh, don’t get me started again. Who are you detecting, Freddy?”

So Freddy explained about the disappearance of Squeak-squeak. “But I sort of got off the track fooling around with Mr. Anderson,” he said. “Though I’m just curious to know what kind of a crooked deal he’s stewing up for poor Mr. Henry Arquebus.”

“You’d better forget it,” she said. “Ed Anderson is bad medicine.” A look of pleased surprise came across her face. “Bless me, that’s almost a rhyme!”

“It is—one of your rhymes,” said Freddy sourly. As a poet himself, he highly disapproved of Mrs. Peppercorn’s efforts in that line. For to make one word rhyme with another, she would twist it all out of shape. Freddy had sent her a valentine once which used all of her kind of rhymes. It began:

Mrs. Peppercorn’s a votary

Of the muse. That is: a poet.

She’s written the finest potary

That anyone ever wro-et.

But Mrs. Peppercorn thought this a very good verse, and congratulated Freddy heartily on having changed over to her style of writing.

Right now Freddy didn’t want to get into an argument about poetry. So he said: “I expect you’re right about Anderson. And if he’s up to anything, it’ll be haunting houses, not kidnapping Martians. But how about renting me that front room of yours for a few days? It’ll be better making my headquarters here instead of at the circus.”

So Mrs. Peppercorn said she’d be glad to have him, and Freddy went back to the ball park to get his bag.