THE TALKING FROG
The following Monday morning the new boy started to school, entering
our grade. And in the days that immediately followed I came to like Tom
Ricks a lot. For he was the right sort. And soon we were visiting back
and forth, playing in my yard one night and in his the next.
Scoop, of course, shared in our games, as did Red Meyers and Peg Shaw,
my other chums. For I never would throw down an old friend for a new
one. And it was during one of our trips to the old Matson place that we
learned about the talking frog.
For Mr. Ricks, an inventor as Scoop had surmised, was working on a very
wonderful radio toy. Tom called it an electro-mechanical frog.
We had promised our new chum that we wouldn’t breathe a word about the
talking frog to any one else. For a Chicago radio company had spies
searching for Mr. Ricks. These people knew that the inventor was
working on a radio toy, and it was their evil intention to steal the
invention, the same as they had stolen a simplified radio transmitter
that Mr. Ricks had designed and built in his little Chicago workshop.
It was to save the new invention from being stolen from him that he was
now hiding in our inland town, where he could work undisturbed.
“A Milwaukee company is interested in Pa’s invention,” Tom told us,
“and if he can make the frog say, ‘Hello!’ or make it repeat any other
single word, they’ll pay him twenty-five thousand dollars for the idea
and develop it in their laboratories.”
Grinning, he added:
“So you can see what I had in my mind that day in the tree. I
frequently get frogs for Pa, to guide him in tuning the tone bars. For
the toy, of course, must sound like a real frog or it won’t be a
complete success.”
“And you say the mechanical frog actually talks?” said Scoop, who had
been eagerly taking in each word.
“Sometimes it does,” said Tom. “But you can’t depend on it. You see it
isn’t perfected.” There was a short pause. “I tell you what: Come out
to-night after supper and I’ll try and coax Pa to let you see it. I’ll
explain to him that he can trust you to keep his secret.”
“Hot dog!” cried Peg Shaw, thinking of the fun we were going to have
listening to the talking frog.
This was on Friday. And directly after supper Scoop and I and Peg
headed for Tom’s house. Red couldn’t go. He had queer spots all over
his back. Not knowing whether it was scarlet fever or mosquito bites,
his mother was keeping him in the house until the doctor had seen him.
“You fellows are lucky,” he told us, when we called for him.
“You will be lucky,” his mother told him sharply, “if you escape an
attack of scarlet fever. For there’s dozens of cases over in Ashton.
And you were there last week.”
“Aw!... I haven’t got a fever. Please let me go, Ma.”
“You’ll go to bed,” his mother threatened, “if you don’t keep still.”
We had met Aunt Polly in the times that we had been at Tom’s house, but
never had we seen Mr. Ricks until to-night. He was considerably taller
than his sister, and older, with stooped shoulders and faded blue eyes
that looked meekly at one over the top of small, steel-rimmed
spectacles.
Tom introduced us. But he had to speak to his father several times and
shake him by the shoulder to make the old gentleman put aside his book.
It was a book on inventions, I noticed.
“Oh, yes; yes, indeed,” said Mr. Ricks, vague-like, giving us a limp
handclasp without actually seeing us. “Very glad to meet you. Very
glad, of course. Um.... Now whar did I leave off?” and plunk! went his
nose into the big book.
Later we came to know how very absent-minded he was, and how queer in a
lot of his actions; but I am going to tell you about it here, before I
go deeper into my story, else you might not fully understand what
follows.
For instance, he never seemed able to quit thinking about his
inventions. Even while eating his meals an idea would come to him, and
there he would sit with his fork halfway to his mouth, his eyes making
invisible drawings of things in the air. And you would be talking with
him about the weather, or about fishing, and right in the middle of a
sentence he would mumble: “Now if I file the end sharp, I bet it’ll
work easier an’ won’t bind,” or, “Um.... I bet I’ve got one tooth too
many in that thar gear.”
I guess he wouldn’t have known enough to stop working at mealtime and
bedtime if Aunt Polly, in her bustling capable way, hadn’t kept tab on
him. And he needed some one like that to give him sharp attention. For
I’ve seen him absent-mindedly hang his handkerchief on the towel rack
and stuff the towel in his pocket. And once, going to church, he got as
far as the front gate before his watchful sister discovered that he had
on one shoe and one slipper. Golly Ned! It would have been fun to see
him come into church dressed like that.
Peg tells the story, which he made up, I guess, that one time when he
was eating breakfast at Tom’s house, Mr. Ricks absent-mindedly poured
the syrup down the back of his neck and scratched his pancake!
To-night Aunt Polly bustled from window to window, drawing the shades.
“Now,” she nodded sharply to the inventor, who was pottering at her
heels, book in hand, “you can bring it in.”
The lowering of the window shades had filled me with uneasiness. For
the precaution suggested the near-by presence of possible prying eyes.
And I didn’t like to think of the shadowy pines as holding such hidden
dangers.
Then my nervousness melted away in the moment that the talking frog was
placed on a small table in the middle of the room. Made of metal and
properly shaped and painted, it squatted five inches high, which was
considerably larger than a live frog, but it had to be oversize, Tom
explained, because of the many gears, magnets and tone bars that his
father had designed to go inside.
We had our noses close. And no movement of the inventor’s escaped us as
he wound a spring here and turned a knob there. It was a pretty fine
invention I thought. And I realized that Mr. Ricks, with all of his
queer forgetful ways, was a very smart man. He was what you would call
a genius. I guess that is the right word.
Presently the worker straightened, sort of satisfied-like, so we knew
that the frog was ready to perform.
“Hello!” he said, talking into the green face, his chin thrust out.
The vibration of his voice tripped the machinery and put the wheels
into motion. The big hinged mouth opened in a natural way. But other
than a dull rumbling of gears, no sound came out.
“Jest you wait,” puttered Mr. Ricks. “I hain’t got it ’justed quite
right.”
We watched him.
“Hello!” he said, after a moment.
“R-r-r-r!” responded the frog.
Aunt Polly laughed good-naturedly.
“Laws-a-me! It sounds as though it had a bad pain in its tin stomach.”
“Indigestion,” grinned Peg, his big mouth stretching from ear to ear.
“We should have brought along some charcoal tablets,” laughed Scoop.
The disappointed inventor did some more puttering. But all that he
could get out of the tin frog was, “R-r-r-r!”
“It did better than that last night,” Tom told his father.
“I know it, Tommy. I know it. Um.... Calc’late the new tone bar that I
made to-day hain’t improved it none.”
He puttered with the frog for maybe an hour. Finally Aunt Polly took up
her knitting and told him to put the frog in the kitchen cupboard. She
had noticed, I guess, that he was getting nervous.
“Mebby,” he countered, fidgety-like, “I better put it in the barn.”
I grinned. For I saw in a moment what he was up to. He wanted to keep
on tinkering, and he would have that chance if he could get the frog
into his workshop.
But Aunt Polly read the other’s thoughts.
“I said to put it in the kitchen cupboard,” she repeated firmly.
The blue eyes offered meek protest.
“It’ll be safer in the barn, Polly.”
“It’ll be safe enough in the kitchen,” said Aunt Polly, jabbing with
her needles.
“Yes, of course; of course. But I’ve got a burglar ’larm on the barn
door. Mebby, Polly——”
“And I’ve got a burglar alarm on the kitchen door,” cut in Aunt Polly,
making her needles fly.
A domino game failed to draw our thoughts from the talking frog; and
Tom told us how the Milwaukee company was planning to get out a
complete line of talking toys—this in the event that Mr. Ricks’
experiments were successful.
“It seems to me,” said Scoop, out of his thoughts, “that twenty-five
thousand dollars isn’t enough money for such a big idea.”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars,” spoke up Peg, whose folks are poor, “is
a fortune, I want to tell you!”
“Of course,” nodded Scoop. “But an invention like this ought to be
worth more than twenty-five thousand dollars to the man who thought it
up. A hundred thousand, I should say. Or half a million.”
“I forgot to tell you,” Tom said, “about Pa’s royalty.”
“Royalty?” I repeated.
“It’s this way,” Tom explained. “Pa’ll get twenty-five thousand dollars
cash money for the idea; then the company will develop and apply the
idea, and Pa’ll get a royalty on each talking toy sold.”
I asked what a royalty was.
“It’s a written agreement,” Tom told me, “under which Pa’ll get a
certain part of every dollar that the company takes in. The money is
his pay, as an inventor, for letting them use his idea. For instance,
if they sell a million dollars’ worth of talking toys, Pa’ll get fifty
thousand dollars. That’s five per cent.”
“Crickets!” I said, regarding my new chum with quickened interest.
“You’re going to be rich.”
He sobered.
“I hope so, Jerry. I’d like to know what it seems like to be rich.
We’ve been poor all my life. And I’ve got a hunch that Aunt Polly won’t
be able to stretch our money over very many more months. Yes, if Pa
doesn’t hurry up and make his frog talk, I suspect that we’re likely to
move over to the county poorhouse.”
It was now after nine o’clock and time for Scoop and Peg and me to go
home. So we got our caps. But in the moment that we started for the
front door a fearful racket came from the kitchen. Bing! Crash! BANG!
It sounded as though a million tin pans had been upset in a heap. I
pretty nearly jumped out of my skin.
“My burglar alarm!” screeched Aunt Polly, throwing her knitting into
the air. And like a flash she disappeared fearlessly into the hall,
heading for the back room.