DR. MADDEN COMES HOME
Poppy and I were doing a sort of double-decker stunt now. We had to in
riding with old Goliath, for he took up two-thirds of the seat. But we
didn’t kick, however crampy it was for us. As a matter of fact, we were
only too glad it wasn’t any worse. Think what might have happened to
us if old heavy-weight had been tending to business, as official toll
collector, instead of scheming to his own escape. Br-r-r-r!
I guess, if the truth were known, we acted kind of simple. You know how
it is with a fellow when he gets caught with his fingers in the company
jam jar. We didn’t know what to say. And every minute we expected old
blunderbuss to get his memory to working on our trickery, as he had
overheard it, and start bawling us out.
But to our surprise he was as nice as pie. Either he had completely
forgiven us, we decided, or in some dumb way had failed to catch on. So
it wasn’t hard for us to put away our uneasiness. More than that, in
our happy-go-lucky way, we brought out a pair of perfectly good grins.
And to that point, I don’t know how any kid with fun in him could have
ridden beside that old geezer without grinning. Say, that was _some_
ride. First a tree would jump at us out of the darkness, then the
corner of a house, then a hunk of sidewalk. It was a lucky thing for
all of us that the whole town was asleep. For otherwise we might have
been jailed for intoxicated driving, or whatever you call it--like the
time back home when Paddy Gorbett drove into the Presbyterian church
and started bawling the minister out because the garage was full of
pews.
To a rosy view of things, how handy old Goliath would be, we thought,
if the Galloping Snail got another balky spell. Big as he was, he
could push beautifully. If necessary, with so much muscle, he could
_make_ the old engine zip whether it wanted to or not. So it couldn’t
put anything over on us. We really were lucky in having him along, we
concluded. And most wonderful of all, we had saved our two dollars,
though not in the way we had schemed. To this point, however, as you
will see, our joy soon lost its jiggles. Like the man with the nest of
rotten eggs, we had counted our savings before they were hatched.
Having navigated into one end of Main Street and out the other, without
upsetting anything any bigger than the car itself, the driver suddenly
remembered that he had a duty to perform and stopped outside of town.
“Boys,” says he in that deep drawl of his, “we want to be fair an’
square. Fur in startin’ out in any undertakin’, this ’un unexcepted, a
feller never gits very far who isn’t fair an’ square.”
“Meaning which?” says Poppy suspiciously.
“We owe the town two dollars. An’ it’s our bounden duty to pay it. Then
we kin leave here with a clear conscience.”
“Forget about your conscience,” says Poppy quickly, “and throw in the
clutch.”
“No, I kain’t do that. In runnin’ away from my wife, I’ll have enough
on my mind without wantin’ my conscience to further prick me in the
thought that, through me, these pore suckers, who don’t git six square
meals a year, was cheated out of eight good soup bones.”
The upper deck nudged me.
“I know a good scheme, Mr. Goliath.”
“Um.... Hopple is my name--Samuel Cassibaum Hopple.”
“Well, Mr. Hopple,” came the foxy plan, “knowing the layout as you do,
suppose you go back and ask Noah if we can’t have a special evening
rate--a dollar and ninety-eight cents, or something like that. As
you’re leaving with us, I think the gang in the ark ought to sort of
set up the treats. Don’t you?”
But old Samuel Cassibaum Goliath Hopple was no dumb-bell. Not on
Tuesday evening, anyway.
“Um ...” came sharply, to let us know that he was setting his big foot
down and wanted no further nonsense from us. “You jest come across with
that two dollars an’ quit tryin’ to work me.”
“But, listen--” Poppy hung on.
“They hain’t nothin’ to ‘listen’ to. We owe the money. An’ bein’ an
honest an’ upright man, I hain’t a-goin’ to have it on my conscience
that I skipped out an’ never collected it. It’s my last duty.”
But Poppy was as hard to corner as a lost collar button.
“You say _we_ owe the town two dollars. All right. How much do you
weigh?”
“_Me?_” came in surprise. “About three hundred pounds.”
“Jerry and I together don’t weigh that much,” says Poppy. “So,
according to weight, you pay a dollar and we pay fifty cents apiece.”
But did old hefty fall for that clever little scheme? Not so you could
notice it. Nor did he let us argue the matter further. Put up and shut
up, were the orders we got, so, though we hated him now, we “put up,”
as he expressed it, and thus saved our hides.
Taking the key of the car with him so that we couldn’t skin out, he
was gone at least ten minutes. But if he woke up the gang in the ark
to deliver the two dollars to them, there were no distant lights or
sounds to prove it. Certainly, we didn’t hear any elephants or camels
doing their stuff. The big boy was wiping his eyes when he came back.
Even when a fellow’s wife had the rolling-pin habit, he told us sadly,
blowing his nose, there was a certain amount of regret in leaving her.
Then on we went into the night, the old bus rattling and groaning as
though each minute would be its last. But it held up, which showed that
old Goliath was bringing us good luck, even though we had lost our
two dollars. So it wasn’t right for us to hate him. Anyway, as I told
Poppy, though the collection of the two dollars had seemed unnecessary
to us, the big one had done what he thought was right. And when a
fellow does that you’ve got to give him credit for it.
It was our scheme now to take the old geezer home with us and put him
up for the night. Ma Doane wouldn’t care. And with a “spook” to catch
and various other mysteries to solve, it wasn’t a bad plan, as you can
see, to have a big guy like that on our side. If we went to Pardyville
in the morning, he could go with us. Or if he was ready at breakfast
time to go back to his wife and let her lovingly use the rolling pin on
him, that was all right, too. We weren’t particularly interested in his
plans.
Presently we met a horse and buggy in the sandy trail. I thought of
Lawyer Chew right off. That was natural. But it wasn’t old fatty.
Pulling out to let the rig go by us, and stopping for safety, I had
the queer feeling, as our skinny light struck the buggy, that a pair
of gimlet eyes were boring holes through us. Who was this thin-faced,
foreign-looking man, I wondered, uneasy in the meeting.
Goliath then told us that it was Dr. Madden of Neponset Corners.
“I used to see a lot of him before he went to Europe. Guess he jest got
back. Some one told me he was expected home to-day.”
I had forgotten that Ma Doane had spoken of this doctor. But Poppy
hadn’t. Bu-lieve me, that kid doesn’t forget about anything.
“Isn’t this the doctor,” says he, “who took care of the old man in the
big stone house before he died?”
“Um.... Reckon you mean Mr. Corbin Danver. Yes, Dr. Madden had that
case.”
“Is he a friend of Lawyer Chew’s?”
“Who? Madden? Possibly. I kain’t say.”
“Do you know Lawyer Chew very well?”
“Humph! I know him by hearsay an’ sight. An’ that’s enough fur me.”
“You don’t think much of him?”
“No, nor of snakes, nuther.”
“Do you like Dr. Madden?”
“Him? Wa-al, I might like him better if he wasn’t so kind o’ _queer_.”
“Queer?” says Poppy.
“He’s got queer eyes fur one thing.”
“Eyes that look a hole through a fellow, huh?” I put in.
“Exactly. He gives you the feelin’ when he’s around you that he’s
constantly _lookin’_ fur somethin’.”
“And you never heard,” pressed Poppy, “that he and Lawyer Chew were
particularly chummy, or that they were mixed up in any kind of property
deals together?”
“Nope.”
“Dr. Madden went to Europe right after Mr. Danver’s funeral, didn’t he?”
“Ye-es, I think he did. That same week, as I recall.”
“Did you ever hear _why_ he went to Europe?”
“It was told ’round here that he had gone away fur a rest.”
“Why? Was the case out here in the country a bad one?”
“The doctor an’ old Mr. Danver were great friends. An’ I guess it was
an awful blow to the younger one when the old man died so suddenly.”
“Oh!...” says Poppy, and his hand tightened over mine. “Then Mr. Danver
and the Doctor were great friends, huh?”
“So I heerd. I know the doctor came out this way an awful lot.”
“And did he tell around himself that he was going to Europe to rest?”
“He didn’t tell _me_. I jest heerd it.”
“Lawyer Chew may have told it.”
“Mebbe.”
“Did you ever hear,” Poppy further questioned, “that the doctor had any
pets?”
“Pets? What do you mean?--dogs and cats?”
“Yes, or ... possibly a gander.”
“A _gander_! I never heerd of _anybody_ havin’ a pet like that.”
“Neither Dr. Madden nor Lawyer Chew?”
“No, sir, nor nobody else. Them things people don’t make pets of.”
What was Poppy’s idea, I wondered, in asking all these questions. Did
he imagine that there was something crooked in the millionaire’s death,
and that the lawyer and doctor, living in the same town, were mixed up
in some evil scheme to get the dead man’s property?
Those boring eyes! Somehow the memory of our meeting with the man in
the buggy gave me the creeps. Could it be, I further asked myself,
that the doctor had known that we were heading for the big house, many
of whose secrets undoubtedly were open to him. And didn’t he want us
there? Yet the man’s eyes were naturally queer, old Goliath had told
us. They seemed always to be _looking_ for something. Looking for what?
Did the _something_, whatever it was, connect up with the millionaire’s
sudden death? And had the search for the mysterious _something_ taken
the dead man’s medical friend to Europe?--and this, within a day or two
after the funeral?
Poppy, too, had inquired about pets. Did he have the crazy idea that
there was some secret connection between the returned doctor and the
puzzling spotted gander? And, further, did my chum think that the
gander, granddaughter and doctor were secretly mixed up together to a
sort of common end?
Crickets! Maybe they did connect up, was my jumping thought. For
certainly, as we knew, they all had come into the neighborhood at about
the same time--taking it for granted that the granddaughter wasn’t more
than twenty miles away.
Another thing, as the family doctor, the man with the thin face and
eagle eyes knew _why_ the millionaire had died; or, to put it another
way, he knew what had caused the rich man’s sudden death. The question
was, did Lawyer Chew know, too?