THE FALSE MUSTACHE
“Well?” asked Lanny.
Curtis Wayland shook his head and smiled. “He thought I was fooling at
first. Then he thought I was crazy. After that he just pitied me for
not having any sense.”
“I’ve pitied you all my life for that,” laughed Lanny. “But what did he
say?”
“Said in order for him to let us have the use of town property he’d
have to introduce a bill or something in the Council and have it passed
and signed by the Mayor and sworn to by the Attorney and sealed by the
Sealer and――and――――”
“And stamped by the stamper?” suggested Dick Lovering helpfully.
“Cut out the comedy stuff,” said Lanny. “He just won’t do it, eh?”
“That’s what I gathered,” Way assented dryly. “And if, in my official
capacity of――――”
“Or incapacity,” interpolated Lanny sweetly.
Way scowled fearsomely. “If in my capacity of manager of this team,” he
resumed with dignity, “I’m required to go on any more idiotic errands
like that I’m going to resign. I may be crazy and foolish, but I hate
to have folks mention it.”
“We’re all touchy on our weak points,” said Lanny kindly. “Well, I
suppose you did the best you could, Way, but I’m blessed if I see how
it would hurt them to let us use their old road roller.”
“He also dropped some careless remark about the expense of running it,”
observed Way, “from which I gathered that, even if he did let us take
it, he meant to sock us about fifteen dollars a day!”
“Who is he?” Dick asked.
“He’s Chairman or something of the Street Department.”
“Superintendent of Streets,” corrected Way. “I saw it on the door.”
“I mean,” explained Dick, “what’s his name?”
“Oh, Burns. He’s Ned Burns’ father.”
“Uncle,” corrected Way.
“Could Burns have done anything with him, do you suppose?” Dick asked
thoughtfully.
“I don’t believe so. The man is deficient in public spirit and lacking
in――in charitable impulse, or something.” Lanny frowned intently at Way
until the latter said:
“Out with it! What’s on your mind?”
“Nothing much. Only――well, that field certainly needs a good rolling.”
“It certainly does,” assented Way. “But if you’re hinting for me to go
back and talk to that man again――――”
“I’m not. The time for asking has passed. We gave them a chance to be
nice about it and they wouldn’t. Now it’s up to us.”
“Right-o, old son! What are we going to do about it?”
Lanny smiled mysteriously. “You just hold your horses and see,” he
replied. “I guess the crowd’s here, Dick. Shall we start things up?”
“Yes, let’s get at it. Hello, Fudge!”
“Hello, fellers! Say, Dick, I’m quitting.”
“Quitting? Oh, baseball, you mean. What’s the trouble?”
“Oh, I’m not good enough and there’s no use my hanging around, I guess.
I’m going out for the Track Team to-morrow. I thought I’d let you know.”
“Thanks. Well, I’m sorry, Fudge, but you’re right about it. You aren’t
quite ready for the team yet. Maybe next year――――”
“That’s what I thought. Lanny’ll be gone then and maybe I’ll catch for
you.”
“That’s nice of you,” laughed Lanny. “I was worried about what was
going to happen after I’d left. Meanwhile, though, Fudge, what
particular stunt are you going to do on the Track Team?”
“Weights, I guess. Perry Hull’s going out for the team and he dared me
to. Think I could put the shot, Dick?”
“I really don’t know, Fudge. It wouldn’t take you long to find out,
though. You’re pretty strong, aren’t you?”
“I guess so,” replied Fudge quite modestly. “Anyway, Felker’s yelling
for fellows to join and I thought there wouldn’t be any harm in trying.”
“‘And for many other reasons,’” murmured Way. The others smiled, and
Fudge, with an embarrassed and reproachful glance, hurried away to
where Perry was awaiting him in the stand.
“Fellows who read other fellows’ things that aren’t meant for them to
read are pretty low-down, I think,” he ruminated. “And I’ll tell him
so, too, if he doesn’t let up.”
“Don’t you love spring?” asked Perry as Fudge joined him. “It makes――――”
Fudge turned upon him belligerently. “Here, don’t you start that too!”
he exclaimed warmly.
“Start what?” gasped Perry. “I only said――――”
“I heard what you said! Cut it out!”
“What’s the matter with you?” asked Perry. “Can’t I say that I like
spring if I want to?”
“And what else were you going to say?” demanded Fudge sternly.
“That it makes you feel nice and lazy,” replied the other in hurt tones.
“Oh! Nothing about――about the birds singing or the April breeze?”
Perry viewed his friend in genuine alarm. “Honest, Fudge, I don’t know
what you’re talking about. Aren’t you well?”
“Then you haven’t heard it.” Fudge sighed. “Sorry I bit your head off.”
“Heard what?” asked Perry in pardonable curiosity.
Fudge hesitated and tried to retreat, but Perry insisted on being
informed, and finally Fudge told about the “Ode to Spring” and the fun
the fellows were having with him. “I get it on all sides,” he said
mournfully. “Tappen passed me a note in Latin class this morning;
wanted to know what the other reasons were. Half the fellows in school
are on to it and I don’t hear anything else. I’m sick of it!”
Perry’s eyes twinkled, but he expressed proper sympathy, and Fudge
finally consented to forget his grievance and lend a critical eye
to the doings of the baseball candidates. They didn’t remain until
practice was over, however, for, in his capacity of “Young Sleuth,”
Fudge was determined to unravel the mystery of the cowboy-pianist, as
he called the subject for investigation. The afternoon performance at
the moving picture theater was over about half-past four or quarter to
five, and a few minutes after four the two boys left the field and went
back to town. Fudge explained the method of operation on the way.
“We’ll wait outside the theater,” he said. “I’ll be looking in a window
and you can be on the other side of the street. He mustn’t see us, you
know.”
“Why?” asked Perry.
“Because he might suspect.”
“Suspect what?”
“Why, that we were on his track,” explained Fudge a trifle impatiently.
“You don’t suppose detectives let the folks they are shadowing know it,
do you?”
“I don’t see what harm it would do if he saw us. There isn’t anything
for him to get excited about, is there?”
“You can’t tell. I’ve been thinking a lot about this chap, Perry,
and the more I――the more I study the case the less I like it.” Fudge
frowned intensely. “There’s something mighty suspicious about him, I
think. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d done something.”
“What do you mean, done something?”
“Why, committed some crime. Maybe he’s sort of hiding out here. No one
would think of looking for him in a movie theater, would they?”
“Maybe not, but if they went to the theater they’d be pretty certain to
see him, wouldn’t they?”
“Huh! He’s probably disguised. I’ll bet that mustache of his is a fake
one.”
“It didn’t look so,” Perry objected. “What sort of――of crime do you
suppose he committed, Fudge?”
“Well, he’s pretty slick-looking. I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned
out to be a safe-breaker. Maybe he’s looking for a chance to crack a
safe here in Clearfield; sort of studying the lay of the land, you
know, and seeing where there’s a good chance to get a lot of money.
We might go over to the police station, Perry, and see if there’s
a description of him there. I’ll bet you he’s wanted somewhere for
something all right!”
“Oh, get out, Fudge! The fellow’s a dandy-looking chap. And even if he
had done something and I knew it, I wouldn’t go and tell on him.”
“Well, I didn’t say I would, did I? B-b-but there’s no harm in finding
out, is there?”
Whether Fudge’s watch was slow or whether, absorbed in their
conversation, they consumed more time than they realized on the way,
the City Hall clock proclaimed twenty-two minutes to five when they
reached the Common and, to Fudge’s intense disgust, the theater was
out. The ticket-seller had departed from his glass hutch between the
two doors and the latter were closed. Fudge scowled his displeasure.
“He’s made his getaway,” he said, “but he can’t escape us long. The
Hand of the Law――――” He paused, his attention attracted by one of the
colorful posters adorning the entrance. “Say, Perry, that’s where the
Mexican tries to throw her off the cliff. Remember? I’d like to see
that again. It’s a corker! Gee, why didn’t we think to come here this
afternoon?”
“I’d rather wait until Thursday and see some new ones,” replied Perry.
“Come over to the house for a while, Fudge.”
“Aren’t you going on with this?” asked Fudge surprisedly.
“Well, he’s gone, hasn’t he?”
“That doesn’t keep us from having a look at his hiding place, does it?
We’ll go around there and reconnoiter. Come on.”
But Perry held back.
“I wouldn’t want him to think we were snooping on him, Fudge.”
“He won’t know. We’ll just track him to his lair but we won’t let on
we’re after him. It’s a good idea to know where to find him in case we
want him. And we’d ought to find out whether there’s more than one way
for him to get in and out.”
“I know there is. There’s a front door and a back. The back door lets
out into that little alley next to Cosgrove’s store on Common Street.”
“Cosgrove’s? Ha!” Fudge stopped abruptly and tried to look as much like
his favorite hero, “Young Sleuth,” as possible. “That’s it, then!”
“What’s it?” asked Perry impatiently.
“It’s Cosgrove’s he’s after. Don’t you see?” Cosgrove’s was the
principal jewelry store in Clearfield. “That’s why he rented a room in
that block, Perry. All he’s got to do is to go out the back way to the
alley and there he is!”
“You’re crazy,” laughed Perry. “You don’t know that the man’s a――a
criminal, do you?”
“Well, it looks mighty like it,” asserted Fudge, shaking his head in a
very satisfied way. “Everything points to it. We’ll have a look at the
alley first, I guess.”
The entrance was only a half-block distant and Perry followed his
enthusiastic friend up its narrow length until it stopped at a board
fence beyond which was the back yard of the next house to the Hulls’.
On the way Fudge paid much attention to the three barred windows of
Cosgrove’s store.
“See if you see signs of a file,” he whispered to Perry. “That’s what
he’d probably do; come down here at night and file the bars away. Maybe
we’d better go into the store and see where the safe is located.”
“If you don’t stop tugging at those bars we’ll get pinched,” objected
Perry. He was losing his interest in the affair and had begun to think
Fudge’s sleuthing rather tiresome. Besides, it was getting sort of
dark in the little alley and he had already collided painfully with
an ash-barrel. He was relieved when Fudge finally satisfied himself
that so far, at least, the bars of the jewelry store windows had not
been tampered with. Fudge was evidently disappointed and not a little
surprised. He did a good deal of muttering as he went on to the end of
the alley. There he stared across the fence.
“Whose house is that?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Judge Folwell’s. No one lives in it now, though.”
“Hm,” said Fudge. “Your house is over there, isn’t it?”
“Yes. That’s the roof.”
“Has your father got a safe?”
“No, he hasn’t. For the love of mud, Fudge, come on home.”
“Wait a minute.” Fudge turned to the back of the brick block. “What’s
on the first floor here?”
“Ginter’s Bakery.”
“Then this door opens into that?”
“I don’t know. I suppose so. What difference does it make?”
“It makes a lot of difference,” replied Fudge with much dignity. “If
it does, he’d have to pass through the bakery to get out this way,
wouldn’t he? And someone would be likely to see him. What we’ve got to
find out is whether it does or doesn’t.” Fudge walked up the two stone
steps and tried the latch. The door opened easily. Inside was silence
and darkness. Fudge hesitated. “Maybe,” he murmured, “we’d better try
the front way first.”
They did, Perry, for one, retracing his steps through the darkening
alley with relief. At the main entrance of the building on G Street
they climbed two flights of stairs, Fudge cautioning his companion
against making too much noise, and, with assumed carelessness, loitered
down the hall to the last door on the right. There were some five or
six offices on each side and several of them appeared to be unoccupied
at present. Nor was there anything about the door they sought to
suggest that the room behind it was the refuge of a desperate criminal
or, for that matter, anyone else. The door was closed and bore no sign.
The two boys halted at a discreet distance and studied it.
“Wonder if he’s in there now,” whispered Fudge.
“Probably,” replied Perry uneasily. The hall was silent and shadows
lurked in the corners. From the floor below came the faint ticking of
a typewriter, but that was all the sound that reached them until an
automobile horn screeched outside. Perry jumped nervously.
“Come on,” he whispered. “Let’s beat it. He might come out and――――”
At that moment footsteps sounded on the lower flight. Perry tugged at
Fudge’s arm. “Come on, can’t you?” he urged. But Fudge was listening
intently to the approaching steps. The person, whoever he was, tramped
along the hall below and began the ascent of the next flight. Perry
looked about for concealment. A few yards away a half-open door showed
an empty and dusty interior. Perry slid through and Fudge followed,
closing the door softly all but a few inches. The footsteps reached the
top of the stairs and approached along the corridor, passed and kept on
toward the back of the building. Cautiously the two boys peered out.
It was the cowboy-pianist. He paused at the last portal, produced a
key, inserted it in the lock and opened the door. And as he passed from
sight he raised a hand and removed the luxuriant brown mustache from
his upper lip!