THE CAT KILLER
During the next hour Bill Hadley did a lot of noisy stomping around.
For that’s his way of working. He has the idea, I guess, that it makes
him seem important.
But so far as I could see no new clews were added to the ones that
we already had picked up, except that he found out the truth about
the dead cat. And right here comes a strange part of my story. Can
you imagine a one-armed man strangling a cat? If a job like that were
wished onto me I think I’d need _six_ hands. For I know something about
cats! How then had this geezer managed it one-handed? And awful as it
was to think about, an act so inhuman as that, why had he done it?
No doubt it was all imagination on my part, but during the time that we
were in the yard, hedged in as we were by a black thicket of crouching
bushes and quivering overhead leaves, I had the shaky feeling that a
pair of burning eyes were secretly watching us. But we could pick up
nothing with our flashlights. I was glad, though, to go inside. Walls
gave me a safer feeling. A one-armed cat killer! Br-r-r-r! None of that
grab-it-by-the-neck-and-drag-it-around stuff for me.
It was Mr. Weckler’s library safe, Bill said, that had gotten the
burglar’s eyes. But so far as we could see the safe hadn’t been opened,
which led us to the belief that the defeated housebreaker had been
scared away right after the attack.
“The dum cat is what gits me,” says Bill, all tangled up in that angle
of the mystery. “I kin understand the attack on old Weckler--the
chances are he heard noises below an’ come down here to investigate,
to the unfortunate result that we already know--but I kain’t fur the
life of me figure out why the geezer killed the cat. Did he do it first
off on coming into the house, to keep it from yowling? Or did he do it
after beanin’ the old gent? An’ why in time did he _strangle_ it? If he
wanted to kill it, why didn’t he jest whack it in the head?”
“This isn’t the first queer thing that the robber has done,” says
Poppy. “For the other night he broke into our cellar and strewed
pickles all over the floor.”
“It could ’a’ bin the same geezer,” waggled Bill, on getting the whole
story. Then he walked around shaking his head, as though he were more
puzzled than ever.
At four-thirty old Mr. Weckler was no closer to consciousness than
when we had carried him upstairs, so there was no hope of getting any
early help from him on the mystery. The nurse told us that steps were
being taken by the doctors for an early operation. The poor old man! I
kind of choked up when I looked at him, so still and white. I thought
of the time my dog was run over by the garbage wagon. And I wished with
all my heart that this awful accident hadn’t happened. For he had been
good to us. In fact, few men would have done the things for us that he
had done. For most men are too busy with their own work to give much
thought or help to a boy’s schemes.
We solemnly buried the dead cat beside the onion bed in the weedy
garden. It was daylight now. And as there was nothing more for us to
do here, as I could see, I passed the suggestion to Poppy that we beat
it for home and have a beauty nap. But he shook his head, telling me
that he wanted to stay here and have an early talk with Mrs. Clayton,
who was sleeping off the effect of Doc’s medicine. Getting his promise
to meet me at Sunday School, I went off with Bill in the flivver. Dad
got up when he heard me come in. And learning that Mother was sleeping,
I quietly slipped into my own bed. Nor was I more than five or six
minutes getting my snoozer cranked up.
I was up again at nine-thirty. And after a late breakfast of my own
making I dolled up in my best duds and sashayed down the street to the
Methodist church. People in the street were talking with considerable
excitement about the attempted robbery. But I didn’t say anything. For
a good detective doesn’t run around blabbing his stuff.
Presently I met Mr. Stair.
“Well,” says he, thinking that he was pulling something clever, “how’s
Aunt Jemima this morning?”
I felt like telling him, “None of your beeswax.” But I held in. For a
boy doesn’t gain anything by being sassy to older people.
But when Bid Stricker percolated into the summer scenery and tossed
some more of the “Aunt Jemima” stuff at me. I took after him
lickety-cut I couldn’t run him down, though, for I had on my tight
leather shoes. So I gave him a few rocks to remember me by. One of
these flying rocks went kersmack! into the tin stomach of Doc Leland’s
old Lizzie as it gurgled around a corner. Gee! Doc almost swallowed
his false teeth. Then, in the thought that he had a blow-out he socked
on the brakes with such force that his hat and nose glasses shot right
over the top of his head into the back seat.
“Just my confounded luck,” he wheezed, throwing the jack and other
tire tools out of the car. Carrying the jack from wheel to wheel, and
finding all four tires full of air, he stood and stared.
“I’ve had punctures,” he rumbled, “that I never heard. But this is the
first time I ever heard one that I haven’t got.”
Grinning, I asked him how Mr. Weckler was.
“_Him?_” he slam-banged the jack and other stuff into the back of the
car on top of his straw hat. “Oh, he’s jest about the same. Opened his
eyes once an’ started talkin’. But it was stuff we couldn’t make any
sense of fur the most part.”
“And he hasn’t told you yet who hit him?”
“Nope.”
At the church Poppy led me quickly into the basement, as he wanted to
talk with me in secret behind the furnace.
“Jerry,” came excitedly, “I’ve found out something. Did you know that
this river pirate of yours used to raise cucumbers?”
“Who? Old Peg-leg Weir?”
He nodded.
“Mrs. Clayton told me about it. And later on I got the full particulars
from old Mr. Hartenbower.”
Mr. Silas Hartenbower, I might say, is a centenarian, or whatever
you call it. Last June the whole county turned out to celebrate his
one-hundred-and-second birthday. That was the afternoon Red Meyers and
I made the bet to see who could eat the most pink ice cream. The big
pig! He won.
“I didn’t take much stock in that pirate story when you first dished it
out to me,” says Poppy. “For it sounded fishy. But when Mrs. Clayton
told me about the pirate’s _cucumbers_--and when I heard about the
_iron mold_ from Mr. Hartenbower--oh, baby!”
Here a big yellow cat meandered around the furnace and took a curious
squint at us. It strangely reminded me of Mr. Weckler’s cat. But when I
reached down to pet it, it ran and jumped into an open window, the sill
of which was on a level with the outside yard.
“It’s Mr. Hartenbower’s story,” says Poppy, “that old Peg-leg Weir
covered up his unlawful river work for years by making a pretense
of raising cucumbers for a living. Every summer he had a big bed of
cucumbers back of his house--probably in the very same place where
Mrs. O’Mally has her big patch. As he always had plenty of money,
the neighbors got the idea that his cucumber seed brought a fabulous
price. Hence the cucumbers were something extra-special, they thought.
But the patch was left strictly alone when one farmer, who tried to
snitch a peck or two of the cucumbers to get some of the seed for his
own use, went home with a charge of bird shot in his legs. That was
Mr. Hartenbower, himself, then only twenty-two years old. The next
winter the truth came out about the pirate. A posse of angry farmers
surrounded his house, determined to capture him, and it was then, I
was told, that he was shot down. Some battle, I guess. Mr. Hartenbower
searched the house for cucumber seed. Couldn’t find a one. He did find
a queer iron mold, though. Out of curiosity he later filled it with
melted lead. And when he took the lead piece out of the mold, what do
you suppose it was?”
“Bullets?” says I, remembering stories I had heard about early pioneer
days.
“No,” he shook his head, “it wasn’t bullets. It was a little cucumber,
about an inch long.”
I stared at him. And I could feel my eyes growing as big as his.
“As you can imagine,” he ran on, “I almost fell off my chair when old
Mr. Hartenbower told me about the lead cucumber. For the truth fairly
jumped at me. Our gold cucumber was a part of the pirate’s hidden
treasure! Cucumbers having been his hobby, he had made a mold in which
to cast his gold in the shape of little cucumbers, though what his
object was I can’t imagine. But he did it--I’m dead sure of that. Gold
cucumbers! Hundreds of them probably. If only we can find them. Eh,
Jerry, old pal?”
Upstairs, in the opening of Sunday School, they were singing “Love
Lifted Me.” So, with the pipe organ booming away like a bull
with a burr under its tail, and a hundred kids yipping out the
“Love-Lifted-Me” stuff at the top of their voices, I felt safe in doing
some excited yipping myself. Treasure hunters! That’s what we were now.
And to think only a few hours ago we had let ourselves get excited over
a dinky little pickle business! Why, if we could find the pirate’s gold
cucumbers we’d have a thousand times more jack in our pockets than
a pickle store would earn for us in a thousand years. Automobiles!
Airplanes! Motor boats! Candy and ice cream by the ton! We could buy
_anything_, no matter what it cost. For gold cucumbers would be worth
as much, pound for pound, as gold money. We knew that, all right.
The cat that I have mentioned, after washing itself, had gone to sleep
on the sunny window sill. And now, as a long iron thing, like a pair of
tongs, came stealthily through the window, inch by inch, and closed,
with a snap like a fighting dog’s teeth on the furry neck of the
luckless animal, I let out a screech that must have lifted the whole
Sunday School to its feet.
Then, to my further horror, the struggling, gurgling, choking cat was
whisked through the window and out of our sight.