The Blue Herring Mystery (5 page)

A
ND THE
next day it rained.

It rained bucketfuls. Djuna could hear it beating on the roof in torrents. “Oh, oh!” he groaned. “Now we can’t go
anywhere!
”

He could see it spattering into the window they had left open. He jumped out of bed, pattered across the floor in his bare feet, closed the window, and hurried back to bed. Bobby was still asleep in the other cot.

But the sound of the window being closed had wakened him. He mumbled, turned over, stretched his arms sleepily, and then sat up.

“Geewhillikens!” he exclaimed. “Listen to it pour!”

“Hi!” said Djuna. “How about a nice little ride on our bikes?”

Bobby threw his pillow at him.

“Well, maybe it’s just as well,” he said. “I promised my mother I’d write her a letter as soon as I got here, so now I can do it, if you don’t mind. Maybe it will stop raining pretty soon, anyway.”

“Doesn’t sound like it,” said Djuna. “Sounds like a million dollars pounding on the roof. I wonder if Doc Perry has his buckets ready.” Djuna’s brown eyes became thoughtful for a moment and he added, “I wonder what’s the matter with him, anyway.”

“Oh, he’s just kind of crazy, I guess,” said Bobby.

“Hey!” Djuna said suddenly as he cocked his head to listen. “I think I hear Miss Annie in the kitchen! Are you hungry?”

“Am I!” exclaimed Bobby. “Beat you downstairs!”

They jumped out of bed and into their clothes in less time than a fireman could slide down a pole.

“What a shame, this rain,” said Miss Annie, when they reached the kitchen like two racing greyhounds. “Did you have any plans for the day?”

“Well, first I’ve got to write a letter to my mother,” said Bobby.

“And I have to help him,” Djuna said, looking very serious. “He can’t spell very well, you know. He was born that way.”

“Ho!” said Bobby, with a grin. “I can spell rings around you any day in the week.”

“Pancakes ready!” Miss Annie interrupted. There was a rush and they were in their chairs at the kitchen table.

The two big stacks of pancakes which Miss Annie put on their plates, and on which the boys poured plenty of maple sirup, seemed to disappear like magic. A second helping went down more slowly. And when Miss Annie offered to make some more, both boys patted their stomachs and said there just wasn’t any more room.

Bobby went upstairs to write his letter, and Djuna helped Miss Annie wash the breakfast dishes. He was gazing out the window afterward, deep in thought, when suddenly the rain stopped and the sun broke through the overcast to play across Miss Annie’s lawn.

“Hey!” Djuna yelled as he spun around and ran to the stairs. “Hurry up!”

Bobby came bustling down the stairs a couple of minutes later with his letter all sealed and stamped and ready for mailing. “All ready,” he said. “Where do we go?”

“Let’s pedal over to Aunt Candy Barnes’s and I’ll show you those harpoons and lances I was telling Professor Kloop about yesterday,” suggested Djuna.

“Okay,” said Bobby. “What are we waiting for?”

By the time they had wheeled their bicycles out of the woodshed and were ready to go, the sky had cleared and there were great puffs of cumulus clouds floating overhead. When Champ saw that he was not going to be allowed to go with them he ran back and forth under the wire to which his leash was attached and mouthed his protests with shrill indignant barks.

They pedaled up the Landing Road side by side, avoiding when possible the puddles that had been left by the storm. As they swung to the left alongside the north branch of Miller’s Brook, red-winged blackbirds were everywhere, darting in and out of the bulrushes and cattails. And as they pedaled along, Djuna gave Bobby a brief sketch of the things Miss Annie had told him the day before about the old mill and how Captain Jonas Beekman, Aunt Candy’s great-grandfather, had bought the farmland that spread out around them, and had built the fine old farmhouse the year he had died.

“Golly, it’s a nice farm, isn’t it?” said Bobby as they swung in the driveway and dismounted to park their bicycles against a shed alongside the drive. They stood there for a moment to admire the large dairy barn with its metal silo gleaming at one end, the half-filled corncrib, the open shed containing two tractors, manure-spreader, harrows, plows, and other farm implements. There were a half dozen other smaller barns and sheds and they were all painted a warm red.

There was an old sedan parked in the road before the house and Djuna had supposed, as they turned in the driveway, that it belonged to Aunt Candy or one of her sons. Bobby was still admiring the buildings when Djuna became aware of motion on the side porch of Aunt Candy’s house, from the corner of his eye. He turned his head and saw that a side door to the long porch that ran along the front and side of the house had opened. He expected to see Aunt Candy or one of her sons come out the door and was ready to call a greeting.

But he couldn’t have called a greeting if he had tried, because of his astonishment. Neither Aunt Candy nor one of her sons came out of the door.

It was Professor Kloop!

Djuna stood frozen as Kloop slipped out the door — stealthily, it seemed to Djuna — and carefully closed the door behind him. His head was bent and he didn’t see the two boys in the driveway.

Djuna, realizing that Professor Kloop was not aware of their presence, managed to turn his head so that he was looking at the barns and sheds, as Bobby was doing, when Kloop lifted his gaze and saw them.

Raising his hand to point, Djuna said, “That’s their apple orchard on the slope of the hill behind the barns. They’ll be in full bloom in another month.” He spoke as casually as he could but there was a tremor in his voice. Bobby turned to look at him because of it and saw Professor Kloop coming down the side-porch steps.

“Why, there’s Professor Kloop!” he said and shouted, “Hi!” as Djuna turned his head and Professor Kloop waved a languid hand at them. He was bareheaded, as he had been the day before, and wore the same dark sunglasses and rumpled gray trousers. His face was still pale and his red hair was as rumpled as his trousers.

“Hello, boys,” he said. “Have you been able to find any sign of life around here, except out in the pasture?”

“We just got here,” Djuna said. “We came over so that I could show Bobby Aunt Candy’s harpoons and lances.”

“Well, I came for the same reason,” said Professor Kloop, and he grinned.

“Did you see them?” Djuna asked.

“No. I guess I’m doomed to disappointment today,” Professor Kloop said, and Djuna marveled that anyone could lie so casually. He knew Professor Kloop couldn’t have helped seeing them, because they were in the room from which he had just emerged. “I only got here a short time ago myself. I’ve knocked on all the doors a couple of times and there doesn’t seem to be anyone home.” He took off his sunglasses to rub his eyes, and Djuna saw that they were pale blue and as hard as glass marbles. Kloop grinned again, but only with his lips, and said, “I was up half the night working on specimens for the museum.”

Djuna was staring at him steadily as he talked, remembering how Doc Perry had said that Kloop spent most of his time tapping walls and acting as though he was searching for something. He was staring so steadily that Kloop noticed it and gave Djuna a searching glance in return. He started to turn and then swung back and looked at Djuna again.

“Aren’t you the kid,” he asked, “who has been mixed up in a half dozen police cases, some of them with Socker Furlong of the
Morning Bugle
?”

“Why — why, yes, I guess I have been,” Djuna stammered, thrown off balance. Then he hastily asked, “Do you know Socker?”

“I sure do,” said Professor Kloop. “He’s an old pal of mine.” He took off his sunglasses and again searched Djuna’s face with his hard eyes. Then he lifted his right hand and shook his index finger at Djuna. “I didn’t realize who you were at first, but now I remember the things Socker told me about you. He told me that he has warned you time and again to keep your nose out of things, but you never heed his warnings. Well, I’m warning you, too, because one of these days you’re going to get your nose chopped off!”

“Yes, sir,” Djuna stammered.

“Well, I’ll be seeing you,” Professor Kloop said as he slipped his sunglasses over his eyes again. “Tell Mrs. Barnes I was here, if you see her, and tell her I’ll be over again, the first opportunity I have.”

“Yes, sir,” Djuna and Bobby said in chorus.

The two boys stood in silence while Kloop got into the old sedan, backed it into the driveway, and then swung out to disappear down the Landing Road through Edenboro and Brookville.

“Jeepers!” Bobby said when he had disappeared, and Bobby’s eyes were wide. “He sounded as though he was warning you not to make trouble for
him!
”

“I don’t know,” Djuna said slowly. “I don’t know what he was trying to say, but —” He stopped speaking and stared down at the pebbles he was rolling around with his right shoe. For an instant he thought of telling Bobby he had seen Professor Kloop come out of the side door of Aunt Candy’s house — out of the very room that contained the harpoons and whaling lances he had denied seeing. But then he remembered Miss Annie’s warning about not getting into trouble while Bobby was there, and he remembered that Bobby was his guest and that he must protect him and keep him from getting into something that might be dangerous. So he remained silent while he rolled pebbles around with his foot, until Bobby broke in on his thoughts.

“What I mean,” said Bobby excitedly, “was that he sounded as though he wasn’t warning you to keep out of trouble for your own sake, but to keep out of trouble so that you didn’t make it for
him!
”

“I don’t know what he did mean,” Djuna said, “but —” and he stopped speaking again.

“But we’ll find out!” Bobby said eagerly.

“No, we won’t,” Djuna said and he grinned. “Like he said, we’re going to keep our noses out of things. Let’s go out and look at what’s in that big barn, until Aunt Candy comes home.”

They raced down the driveway and up a slight slope to the entrance of the big red barn. Inside the wide doors, on each side of the barn, there were haylofts that reached almost to the roof. Ladders reaching to the tops of the lofts were fastened to the huge handhewn timbers that supported the roof on each side. In the center space, between the lofts, there was more farm machinery; and at the left, at the entrance, was a machine for mixing different kinds of grains with which to feed the herd of forty or fifty cows in the wintertime. Sparrows and starlings swirled overhead and darted in and out of the open doors.

“What kind of fish net is that?” Bobby asked as he pointed at a huge net strung up on the side of a hayloft, as though it had been put there to dry.

It was a long bag net, with a hoop five feet in diameter at the top, and another hoop, a smaller one, set farther down in the net. Out, from each side of the hoops, were stretched straight nets about twenty feet long and five feet wide.

“Jeepers, I don’t know,” said Djuna as he gazed at it curiously. “I don’t know what kind it is. But I know what
that
net is, over there,” he went on, pointing at an eight-foot net stretched out on the side of the hayloft. “It’s part of a scapping net. That long pole and the four shorter ones beside it and that wooden block on the floor, there, are the rest of it.”

“Scapping net?” Bobby said. “What’s that?”

“They use them to scap for herring,” Djuna tried to explain. “I don’t know much about it,” he confessed. “Miss Annie doesn’t —”

“Golly, who
would
know something about it?” Bobby asked. “I’ve gone with my father lots of times to net mullet and shrimp down in Florida. It’s an awful lot of fun. But I never heard of a scapping net.”

“Well, I’ve always wanted to go scapping ever since I’ve been big enough,” Djuna said, “but something always happened. Miss Annie, as I started to say, doesn’t ever go; and even if she did like it she couldn’t handle one of those heavy nets. Last year, Mr. Boots was going to take me but I caught a cold and the doctor wouldn’t let me. But Mr. Boots knows all about it. He has a scapping net. We’ll get him to tell us about it this afternoon.”

“Let’s not forget,” Bobby said eagerly, and as quickly changed his interest to ask, “Where are the cows?”

“Prob’ly out in the pasture,” Djuna told him. “But their stanchions are down below, because over there is a hay chute to send hay down to them.”

“Let’s go down and see,” said Bobby.

They raced through the wide doors and around the barn and down to a white gate that opened into the barnyard and the cement-floored, whitewashed section under the barn where the cows were milked. They carefully fastened the gate behind them and went into the big room where there were forty or fifty stalls and stanchions. Two or three carefully sterilized milking machines hung on hooks driven into the timbers, but there were no cows there. The whole place bristled with cleanliness; and the milkhouse, where the dairymen cooled the milk and sterilized the cans in which it was delivered, was even cleaner.

They had just closed the milkhouse door behind them when a new red sedan swung into the driveway and came to a stop opposite the kitchen door of the farmhouse. The doors opened and the large buxom form of Aunt Candy Barnes emerged from the front seat. Her twin sons, Olin and Dolan, stepped out beside her.

“Hello, boys,” Aunt Candy called, and she waved her hand gaily as she started toward the kitchen. Her two sons were both big men with very light blond hair, blue eyes and powerful bodies.

“They’re Aunt Candy’s twins,” Djuna whispered to Bobby as the two young men approached them.

“Hello, Djuna, how’re things?” Olin asked as they drew near.

“Fine, thank you,” Djuna said. “We were just admiring your barns and milkhouse. This is my friend, Bobby Herrick, from Florida,” Djuna added as the two big men stopped beside them.

Both Olin and Dolan shook hands with Bobby, and after Bobby had told them how glad he was to know them he burst out and asked, “What kind of net is that strung up in the hayloft? I go netting for shrimp and mullet down in Florida but I never saw one like that before.”