JERRY TODD
AND THE
TALKING FROG
BY
LEO EDWARDS
Author of
THE JERRY TODD BOOKS, ETC.
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS : : NEW YORK
Made in the United States of America
JERRY TODD SAYS:
When I started writing this book, I thought of calling it: JERRY TODD
AND THE PUZZLE ROOM MYSTERY. But Scoop told me that wasn’t the proper
title. “There is more in the book about the talking frog than there is
about the puzzle room,” he pointed out. “So why don’t you call it JERRY
TODD AND THE TALKING FROG?”
So it was our leader, you see, who gave this book its title.
Like my other books, this is a fun-mystery-adventure story. The “fun”
part is where we peddle the spy’s beauty soap. Bubbles of Beauty, let
me tell you, was very wonderful soap! At first we couldn’t believe that
it would do all of the amazing things that Mr. Posselwait claimed for
it. But that is where we got a surprise!
There is a ghost in this story. B-r-r-r-r! At midnight it comes to the
old haunted house, walking on the porches. Creepy, I’ll tell the world.
We kept the doors locked. For we were all alone in the brick house,
Scoop and I and Peg and our new chum, Tom Ricks. It was to help our new
chum that we braved the perils of the haunted house. You see, a puzzle
maker had met with a strange death in the brick house, and that is what
made it haunted.
“Ten and ten.” That was the Bible’s secret. What was “ten and ten”? Why
did the ghost come nightly to the inventor’s home? We found out, but it
took us many exciting days to solve the mystery.
Yes, if you like a spooky, shivery, mysterious story, you surely will
enjoy this book, my fifth one.
Here are the titles of my five books in their order:
JERRY TODD AND THE WHISPERING MUMMY
JERRY TODD AND THE ROSE-COLORED CAT
JERRY TODD AND THE OAK ISLAND TREASURE
JERRY TODD AND THE WALTZING HEN
JERRY TODD AND THE TALKING FROG
My sixth book will be JERRY TODD AND THE PURRING EGG. This dodo egg,
taken from King Tut’s tomb, was more than three thousand years old. The
Tutter newspaper called it the “million-dollar egg.” Could it be
rejuvenated? One man said so. The story of what happened when the egg
was “rejuvenated” makes mighty good reading for a boy who likes a book
packed full of chuckles and mysterious tangles.
Your friend,
Jerry Todd.
OUR CHATTER-BOX
When I started writing books for boys (this is Leo Edwards speaking) I
was practically unknown in the story-writing world. Never having heard
of me, boys didn’t know whether to buy my books or not. The titles,
featuring Whispering Mummies and Purring Eggs, seemed kind of silly to
a lot of young readers. But to-day hundreds of thousands of boys look
forward to my new titles. If the books are slow in coming, a goodly
portion of these hundreds of thousands of “fans” write and tell me
about it. Also they jack me up if things aren’t so-so. And, happier for
me, they pat me on the back (verbally) if they like my stuff. I never
tire of reading these bully good letters. And I was tickled pink when
my publisher told me that I could incorporate a few of these letters in
a “Chatter-Box.” An experiment, the first “Chatter-Box” appeared in my
sixteenth book. And so popular has this department become (it is made
up almost wholly of letters, poems and miscellaneous contributions from
boys and girls who read my books) that now I have been given the
pleasing job of supplying my earlier books with brief “Chatter-Boxes.”
Writers of accepted poems, built around the characters in my books, or
featuring some boyish interest, win prizes. And, of course, it is
pleasing to other boys to see their letters in print. If you have
written me a letter I may have used it in another “Chatter-Box.” Or if
you are contemplating a letter, why not write it to-day? It may be just
the letter I need for one of the big “Chatter-Boxes” in my new books.
It may even give me an idea, for my books, which will bring millions of
added laughs into the world.
LETTERS
“I have read every book you published, including the Trigger Berg
books,” writes Philip Horsting of Brooklyn, N. Y., “and I like them
all. Trigger Berg can get into mischief faster than any boy I know. I
think that the ‘Chatter-Box’ is a very good idea and while I’m writing
this letter my aunt is reading the latest ‘Chatter-Box’ right now.”
“I just read Andy Blake’s Secret Service,” writes Bill Hopwood of
Primos, Pa., “and there’s something in the book I don’t understand.
When Eddie Garry’s uncle, with whom Eddie was living, told Andy that
the latter’s father was his younger brother, and Eddie’s father’s twin,
how come that Andy’s name is Blake and Eddie’s name is Garry? Did
Andy’s father go under a false name?”
Yes, Bill, when Andy’s father ran away from home, determined never to
have anything more to do with his own people, he dropped the name of
Garry and took the name of Blake. By rights, we should call Andy by his
true name. But he prefers to keep the name he has known all his life.
So we’ll continue to speak of him as Andy Blake instead of Andy Garry.
“Not long ago,” writes Dub Moritin of Dallas, Texas, “I was reading one
of your Jerry Todd books and I saw where you had a Freckled Goldfish
club. Gee, Mr. Edwards, I sure would like to join! The boys call me
Dub. If you want to call me that, it’s OK with me. I have six Todd and
two Ott books. I save my weekly spending money and if I haven’t enough
Mom gives me the rest. For both Mom and Dad are crazy about your books.
I am sending the two two-cent stamps to join your club.”
“I am trying to get another boy besides myself to join the Freckled
Goldfish club,” writes Charles F. Spiro of Yonkers, N. Y. “I told him
what an honor it was to be a Freckled Goldfish. The kids living near me
use the number thirteen for a danger cry just like Jerry and his gang.”
“Some day I’m going to break a rotten egg to see how it smells,” writes
John F. McIntyre of Natchez, Miss. “Then I can prove it to my brother
who is a dummy and said Jerry and Poppy wasn’t any account. Gr-r-r-r-r!
I feel like biting his head off. If I did it wouldn’t be anything gone.
Is it very easy to write a book? If so, would you please tell me how to
do it? I am joining the Freckled Goldfish lodge to get my name in the
big book.”
Well, John, I don’t know what you’re going to prove by breaking a
rotten egg. But if you’ll gain anything by it, in proving to your older
brother that Jerry and Poppy are worth-while pals, go ahead. I assure
you that it would be very hard indeed for a small boy to write a book.
We have to live a good many years, and learn a lot about the world and
its ways, before we can write interesting books. But if you want to get
some pointers on story writing see my first “Chatter-Box” in Poppy Ott
and the Tittering Totem.
“The boys around my neighborhood were always talking about how spooky
and funny your books were,” writes Carl A. Swanson of Minneapolis,
Minn. “I never had read one of your books. But I decided to read one to
see if it was as good as my friends had said. Boy, was it ever hot! It
was Poppy Ott and the Freckled Goldfish. I just got Poppy Ott and the
Tittering Totem Saturday and I laughed so much Sunday reading it that
both my grandmother and my dad started reading it.”
“I would like to join the Secret and Mysterious Order of the Freckled
Goldfish,” writes Mortimer A. Stiller of New York, N. Y. “Jerry, Poppy
and Trigger are my best pals. I agree with whoever said: ‘He that
loveth a book will never want a faithful friend,’ only, of course, I
find more than one friend in your books. Your latest idea of having a
‘Chatter-Box’ in each book is great. As I live in the city the only
thing that I can do that you mention is to start a local Goldfish
chapter, so please send me the necessary booklets.”
“I have just finished reading Andy Blake’s Comet Coaster,” writes Jack
Pattee of Chicago, Ill. “I liked the book very much but I like Jerry
Todd better. Before I read Andy Blake I read Trigger Berg and His 700
Mouse Traps. That was a swell book, only it didn’t have a mystery. I
have a friend, Jerry O’Neil, and he told me that he wrote to you and
you are going to put his letter in the ‘Chatter-Box’ in Jerry Todd,
Editor-in-Grief. I am a Freckled Goldfish and I read most of your
books. I have a small black dog named Gertie who likes gumdrops, candy
and chocolate doughnuts.”
FRECKLED GOLDFISH
Out of my book, Poppy Ott and the Freckled Goldfish, has grown our
great Freckled Goldfish lodge, membership in which is open to all boys
and girls who are interested in my books. Thousands of readers have
joined the club. We have peachy membership cards (designed by Bert
Salg, the popular illustrator of my books) and fancy buttons. Also for
members who want to organize branch clubs (hundreds are in successful
operation, providing boys and girls with added fun) we have rituals.
To join (and to be a loyal Jerry Todd fan I think you ought to join),
please observe these simple rules:
(1) Write (or print) your name plainly.
(2) Supply your complete printed address.
(3) Give your age.
(4) Enclose two two-cent postage stamps (for card and button).
(5) Address your letter to
Leo Edwards,
Cambridge,
Wisconsin.
LOCAL CHAPTERS
To help young organizers we have produced a printed ritual, which any
member who wants to start a Freckled Goldfish club in his own
neighborhood can’t afford to be without. This booklet tells how to
organize the club, how to conduct meetings, how to transact all club
business, and, probably most important of all, how to initiate
candidates.
The complete initiation is given word for word. Naturally, these
booklets are more or less secret. So, if you send for one, please do
not show it to anyone who isn’t a Freckled Goldfish. Three chief
officers will be required to put on the initiation, which can be given
in any member’s home, so, unless each officer is provided with a
booklet, much memorizing will have to be done. The best plan is to have
three booklets to a chapter. These may be secured (at cost) at six
cents each (three two-cent stamps) or three for sixteen cents (eight
two-cent stamps). Address all orders to Leo Edwards, Cambridge,
Wisconsin.
CLUB NEWS
“We have eleven members in our Pool,” writes Gold Fin Samuel Ferguson
of Philadelphia, Pa., “and at almost every meeting we have visitors. I
am enclosing a cipher code that we use in writing secret messages.”
Also it is Sam’s suggestion that we have a booklet printed giving an
official Freckled Goldfish secret code, then members can write to one
another in secret. How many members of our club would like to possess
such a booklet? Let me know as soon as possible. And if there is
sufficient demand, we may produce one. But you fellows have got to show
me that there is a demand for the booklet before we go ahead with it.
Another boy suggested that we have such a booklet and then print part
of “Our Chatter-Box” in code. How does that strike you?
“We now have a Freckled Goldfish song, yells, a jazz band composed of
tin cans and our Pool is decorated swell,” writes Gold Fin Francis
Smith of Chambersburg, Pa. “Also we have two goldfish, named Leo and
Freckles.”
I suppose I ought to send my namesake a present. What do you want,
Francis, a box of goldfish food or an angleworm?
Nancy Hannemann of Chicago, Ill., is, I think, our youngest member.
Giving her age as two, she confesses that the letter of application was
written by her brother, also a Freckled Goldfish.
“I have been a Freckled Goldfish for several months,” writes C. B.
Andrews of Oklahoma City, Okla. “It is a secret and mysterious order,
but nothing secret and mysterious has been done yet. So I suggest that
you write to each member, telling him to join with other local members
and do mysterious good turns. For example, suppose some poor old lady
in your neighborhood has a birthday. Early in the morning before she is
up and around, leave a couple of goldfish at her door with a card
reading: ‘With the compliments of the Secret and Mysterious Order of
the Freckled Goldfish.’ That would be pleasantly mysterious.”
Which, I think, is a corking good suggestion.
The three happiest boys in Yankton, South Dakota, are Dan Schenk (G.
F.), Joe Dowling (S. F,) and Bob Seeley (F. F.). Not only have these
boys organized a successful Pool, but they have swell rotographed
letterheads. The reproduction of the “fish” is almost as good as Salg
could do himself. Dan advises that the Pool has its meetings in an
attic. Boy, I bet they have fun!
“Our Freckled Goldfish club,” writes Ernest Smith of Alhambra, Calif.,
“has an orchestra consisting of a violin, saxophone, a jazzophone and a
harmonica. All of the boys playing in the orchestra are Freckled
Goldfish.”
LEO’S PICTURE
And had you heard, gang, about the marvelous piece of “art” that you
can get by sending ten cents in stamps to Grosset & Dunlap, 1140
Broadway, New York, N. Y. Yah, the “art” referred to is Leo’s
picture—and what a wonderful bargain! Only ten cents for such a
marvelous picture!
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Boy in the Tree 1
II The Talking Frog 8
III An Unknown Prowler 18
IV We Take the Frog to School 27
V Bubbles of Beauty 41
VI The Mysterious Soap Man 52
VII What Scoop Did 62
VIII In the Old Mill 71
IX The Mystery Deepens 83
X A Surprise 95
XI The Bible’s Secret 103
XII So Beautiful! 114
XIII Up a Rope 129
XIV Felix Gennor, Jr. 142
XV The Prisoner 150
XVI Chased by a Ghost 168
XVII The Crazy Puzzle Room 173
XVIII The Ten-Ring Puzzle 182
XIX Scoop Disappears 192
XX Up the River 197
XXI Fishing! 213
XXII We Capture the Ghost 222
JERRY TOD AND THE TALKING FROG
CHAPTER I
THE BOY IN THE TREE
I got into the bushes quick as scat. Biting hard on my breath, sort of.
For right there in front of our eyes was a regular old gee-whacker of a
dinosaur. Bigger than the town water tower and the Methodist Church
steeple put together. I tell you it was risky for us.
My chum got ready with his trusty bow and arrow.
“Do you think you can hit him in the heart?” I said, excited-like,
squinting ahead to where the dinosaur was dragging his slimy body out
of the pond.
Scoop Ellery’s face was rigid.
“Got to,” he said, steady-like. “If I miss, he’ll turn on us and kill
us both.”
“It’s a lucky thing for Red and Peg,” I said, thinking of my other
chums, “that they aren’t in it.”
“They’ll miss us,” said Scoop, “if we get killed.”
My thoughts took a crazy jump.
“Why not aim for a tickly spot in his ribs,” I snickered, pointing to
the dinosaur, “and let him giggle himself to death?”
“Sh-h-h-h!” cautioned Scoop, putting out a hand. “He’s listening. The
wind is blowing that way. He smells us.”
“What of it?” I grinned. “We don’t smell bad.”
“Keep still,” scowled Scoop, “while I aim.”
Bing! went the bow cord. My eyes followed the arrow. It struck. The old
dinosaur angrily tooted his horn. But he didn’t drop dead. For his hide
was sixteen inches thick.
We were lost! Scoop said so. And without arguing the matter I went
lickety-cut for a tree.
“Come on!” I yipped over my shoulder. “He’s after us.”
Up the tree I went monkey-fashion. And when I straddled a limb and
squinted down, there was the old dinosaur chewing my footprints off the
tree trunk.
“How much longer have we got to live?” I panted.
“Two minutes and fifteen seconds,” informed Scoop, who, of course, had
followed me into the tree.
“I can’t die that quick,” I told him. “For I’m all out of wind.”
But he was squinting down at the dinosaur and seemed not to hear me.
“He’s got his trunk coiled around the tree,” he said. “Feel it shake!
He’s pulling it up by the roots.”
“Wait a minute; wait a minute,” I said, motioning the other down.
“You’re getting things muddled. A dinosaur hasn’t got a trunk. This
must be a hairy elephant.”
“Climb higher,” cried Scoop. “He’s reaching for us.”
So up we went.
All of a sudden I heard some one go, “Hem-m-m!” And what do you know if
there wasn’t another boy in the top of the tree! A stranger. About our
age.
“You had me guessing,” he said, grinning good-natured-like. “I thought
at first you were crazy.”
Staring, I finally managed to get my tongue unhooked.
“Where’d you come from?” I bit off, letting my face go dark. For he
didn’t belong in our dinosaur game. And I wanted him to know it.
Instead of answering, he inquired pleasantly:
“Was that a cow that chased you up the tree?”
“Huh!” I grunted, letting myself go stiff. “Do you suppose we’d run
from a cow?”
“It made a noise like a cow,” he grinned, “when you shot it with your
toy bow and arrow.”
“It’s a dinosaur,” I scowled.
His grin spread wider.
“And it was a dodo bird,” he said, “that picked me up by the seat of
the pants and dropped me in the top of this tree.”
Well, that kind of took my breath. And I glared at him for a moment or
two. Then his steady, friendly grin put me to laughing.
“I saw you coming through the woods,” he said after a moment. “I
couldn’t quite figure out what you were doing. So I climbed up here to
watch.”
Something poked a green snout from the stranger’s right-hand coat
pocket.
“Are you after frogs, too?” he inquired, following my eyes.
“Frogs?” I repeated, staring harder at the squirming pocket.
He pointed down to the pond in the ravine.
“It’s full of frogs,” he told me. “Big fellows. See?” and producing an
old lunker of a bullfrog he held it up.
“Hello!” he said.
“K-k-kroak!” responded the frog.
The boy laughed.
“Perfect,” he said, patting the frog on the head. “Now say it in
Chinese. Hello!”
“K-k-kroak!”
The grinning eyes looked into mine.
“Would you like to hear him say it in Yiddish?”
“I’d like to make a meal of his fried legs,” I returned.
“You can have him,” the other offered. Then, without another word, he
let himself down limb by limb, scooting in the direction of town, a
mile away.
Scoop gave a queer throat sound and came out of his thoughts.
“That’s the new kid,” he said.
“You talk like you know him.”
“I know of him. He belongs to the new family in the old Matson house.
Ricks is the name on the mailbox. There’s a man and a woman and this
boy in the family—only the woman is a Miss Polly Ricks, and not the
boy’s mother. The mother is dead, I guess.”
Then my chum told me how his pa was the administrator of the Matson
estate; and, of course, it was through Mr. Ellery, a Tutter
storekeeper, that the new family had rented the long-vacant house where
Mr. Matson, a queer old man, had been murdered for his money. It is a
lonely brick house on the edge of town. The front yard is full of pine
trees, just like a cemetery. And when the wind blows the pines whisper
strange stories about the murder and about the vanished body.
It is no place for people to live. Everybody in Tutter says so. And I
wondered why this new Ricks family had picked out such a lonely, spooky
home.
It was a queer move for them to make.
We talked it over and exchanged opinions on the way into town. And when
we came to the grove of pine trees, Scoop took me through a hole in the
hedge and pointed out a brand new lock on the barn door.
A queer, droning sound weighted the air. I called the other’s attention
to it.
“Machinery,” said Scoop, nodding toward the east wing of the big barn.
“Not farm machinery,” he explained, “but lathes for turning steel, and
drillers. Pa helped unload the truck.”
“Mr. Ricks must be a machinist,” I said.
“I have a hunch,” said Scoop, “that he’s an inventor.”