The Brown Fox Mystery (19 page)

“That’s ridiculous!” Miss Winne interrupted to say. “My father didn’t have any fortune to bury when he died. He just must have wasted all his money on bad investments during his old age.”

“No, that’s not so, Miss Winne,” said Lieutenant Martin calmly. “He did bury a fortune near the icehouse!”

There was a stunned silence for a moment. Then Miss Winne broke it when she wailed, “Did those men get it?”

“No,” Lieutenant Martin said and he grinned at Socker Furlong. “We’ll come to that in a few minutes.”

“Well, bless my soul, I don’t know as I can wait!” said Miss Winne and she began to fan herself so hard with a magazine that she knocked off her eyeglasses.

“The rest, except what Djuna and Tommy are going to tell you, you already know,” said Lieutenant Martin. “You know those three came up here and paid Miss Winne a hundred dollars to remove the sawdust from the old icehouse and ship it away to stuff dolls, or so they said, and you know a part of what happened the past few days.”

“They don’t know,” interrupted Captain Ben, “that Lame-Brain confessed this afternoon that he set my boat on fire when them two convicts ordered him to!”

“Jeepers!” said Djuna. “I thought he did, but I wasn’t sure.”

“Yep!” Captain Ben said. “They was afeerd I was watchin’ ’em, which I wa’n’t. Talked to th’ insurance people on the tel’phone this afternoon an’ they’re a goin’ to pay my claim in full!”

“Yippee!”
said Tommy and Djuna together, and everyone else cheered and clapped their hands.

“Well,” said Lieutenant Martin when they had stopped, “there it is. Now, Djuna, it’s up to you to carry the ball!”

When all of the people in the room turned their faces to look at Djuna he became very, very red and began to squirm in his chair. When he opened his hps to speak no sound came out until Socker Furlong gave him an affectionate pat on the shoulder and said, “Come on now, kid. Stop racing your motor and tell us about it!”

“Well,” Djuna said hesitantly, “I guess I better begin with the second morning we were here and Captain Ben took us around the lake in his motorboat, the
Little Buttercup
. When we went by the old icehouse Lame-Brain was asleep on the platform and Captain Ben told us about him and the two men who had bought the sawdust from Miss Winne. Then I saw a man with a brown face glaring at us from the bushes as though he didn’t want us to be around there.”

“Do you think it was Seeppia, or Becker?” Lieutenant Martin asked.

“Seeppia?” said Djuna. “Oh yes, that’s Jones’s real name. I guess I better call them Jones and Baldwin because I can remember them better by those names.” He hesitated for a moment and then he added, “I’m not sure whether or not it was one of them because I only got a quick glance at whoever it was, that morning. But they both had brown faces.

“Then, a few nights later Captain Ben took us fishing for catfish and when we started home it was dark and Captain Ben couldn’t get his boat started. We were floating by the dock of the icehouse when Lame-Brain accused Captain Ben of sneaking around without his engine running so no one could hear him. He threatened to shoot Captain Ben. I don’t know what would have happened if Baldwin hadn’t come out and sent Lame-Brain into the icehouse and apologized to Captain Ben.”

“Wouldn’t nothin’ a happened,” said Captain Ben, “except I might a tied Lame-Brain into a bowknot an’ used him for a necktie!”

When Djuna could stop laughing he said, “A few nights later Captain Ben’s boat was burned and I couldn’t help remembering that brown face glaring at us from the bushes and the threats Lame-Brain had made. I sort of suspected that Lame-Brain had something to do with it, but Miss Annie told me it wasn’t any of my business and told me not even to
think
about it. I tried not to, but that afternoon Tommy and I went over to the old icehouse. We left our boat at the Herricks’ dock and walked up the corduroy road and down the old driveway where the ice wagons used to load. Just as we got to the front of the icehouse Jones suddenly appeared from nowhere and asked us what we wanted.

“I told him that we were the boys who had been with Captain Ben a few nights before when his engine stalled in front of the icehouse. And he said, ‘Oh, so you’re friends of Captain Ben’s, eh? I thought from the way you were stealing up on the place you might be going to set it on fire.’

“I thought it was awful funny for him to say something about setting the place on fire as soon as we mentioned Captain Ben’s name,” Djuna went on, “because I don’t think they would have had any way of knowing that it was Captain Ben’s boat that burned in Lakeville the night before
unless
they had set it on fire!”

“Did they mention anything about Captain Ben’s boat?” Lieutenant Martin asked.

“Not a word,” said Djuna. “Baldwin came out then and told us how they used to put ice in the old icehouse, but we could see right away that he wanted to get rid of us, and he did, in just a few minutes. He was nice to us, but I wondered why he was in such a hurry to get rid of us. And I remembered, too, that the first morning Captain Ben told us about the old icehouse and Jones and Baldwin, he said, ‘Could be they’re crazy like a couple o’ foxes.’ So I wondered what they were doing that they didn’t want anybody to see.”

“Yes, and that’s when I really began to worry,” Miss Annie said from the davenport. “I knew Djuna was going to get mixed up in it and I lay awake half the night trying to figure out what I ought to do to keep him from getting in trouble!”

“I knew that the next morning, when you overslept,” Djuna said very seriously. “And when you came out and waved to Tommy and me when we went fishing. I sort of thought you were going to do something, so I wasn’t too surprised when you left a note asking us to get our own lunch that day.

“But about three o’clock I began to worry about you. I walked over to Scatterly’s store to ask Miss Winne if she had seen you and she said you’d left there a long time before and had left a typewritten note for me that said: ‘The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.’”

Here Djuna looked around the room and said shyly, “I guess anybody who ever learned how to use a typewriter knows that sentence, because it’s the one that has all the letters of the alphabet in it, and when you write it over and over on the typewriter you get to know just where each key is. But I wouldn’t have known, if Miss Winne hadn’t explained it to me, and even then I couldn’t see why Miss Annie had left a message for me that didn’t really mean anything at all!

“I couldn’t figure that out at first, but I knew it meant something you didn’t want to tell Miss Winne, and that you were trying to tell me where you had gone, without letting her know. Later that night, after I was in bed, I remembered that Captain Ben had said that it could be Jones and Baldwin were crazy like a couple of foxes. And how he had said that Lame-Brain was the laziest human being that ever drew the breath of life. I knew you had probably remembered what Captain Ben had said, too, and had used that sentence to tell me where you were going, in case anything happened.”

“Why’n’t you tell me them things, Djuna?” Captain Ben asked indignantly.

“Because I didn’t think you’d look at it the same way I did,” said Djuna. “It was all so sort of farfetched and crazy that—”

“You just thought I was too dumb to—” Captain Ben began.

“Oh, no, sir!” said Djuna hastily. “I—I just didn’t know how to tell you without making it sound awful foolish.”

“Well, I kinda suspected them fellahs o’ settin’ my boat on fire myself, but I didn’t wanta accuse no one without proof,” Captain Ben said. “Did you suspec’ Miss Annie had gone to the icehouse? I mean, when we stopped there that afternoon t’ ask them fellahs if they hadn’t seen nothin’ of her?”

“Yes, and no,” said Djuna slowly. “I knew that Miss Annie believed that I suspected them of burning your boat and that she didn’t want me to get mixed up in it. But I didn’t see what she could do about it if she did go there,
until
I figured out what her note meant later that night, in bed. But while we were there at the icehouse I looked the whole place over very carefully. I thought maybe they had hoisted her up into that cupola, but I didn’t see how they could, and I didn’t think their ladder was long enough to reach the platform. I didn’t really think Miss Annie was up in that cupola until the next morning.”

“Okay!” said Socker Furlong as he looked from Lieutenant Martin to Sandy MacHatchet while he shook his head with an expression of simulated disbelief on his face. “Here it comes!”

“Well, the next morning,” Djuna said, and for a moment he looked sick, “when Tommy and I were going over to ask Clarabelle and her mother what they thought we ought to do, we saw some men fishing for Miss Annie with grappling irons, and it almost drove me crazy.

“Then, when we arrived at the Smiths’ dock, Clarabelle was painting on the end of the dock. She—

“What was she painting—the dock?” Socker Furlong asked.

“No!” said Clarabelle indignantly. “I was doing an oil painting of the old icehouse at the north end of the lake!” Then she looked at Djuna with puzzled eyes. “Was there something in my picture that helped you?”

“I’ll say there was!”
said Djuna with a snicker.

“What?”
asked Clarabelle.

“Miss Annie’s long summer underwear!” said Djuna as he grinned at Clarabelle and everyone stared at him in amazement. “In your painting you had smoke coming out of the cupola, but I knew it couldn’t be smoke, and after a few minutes I figured out that Miss Annie
was there
and had tried to signal for help with her underwear.”

Everyone stared at Miss Annie now, until her face was suffused with red and she began a stumbling explanation.

“That—that’s right!” she said. “I wasn’t going to say anything about it, because I didn’t think it did any good. I didn’t have anything else to signal with, so I took off my underwear. There was quite a strong breeze blowing that whipped it right out straight, and slipped it through the ventilator slats. But that awful man Lame-Brain saw me. That’s when they came up and gagged me and tied my hands.
“But,”
Miss Annie added, speaking to Djuna, “how did you ever know it was my underwear?”

“Golly!” said Djuna with a snicker. “Do you remember the afternoon that Tommy and I had been fishing in Lost Pond, and when we came home you told us you were going to take a cottage at Silver Lake?”

“Yes.” Miss Annie said primly.

“Don’t you remember when we came home you had your wash out on the line, and Tommy and I laughed so hard because your long summer underwear looked just as though it was dancing, as the wind whipped it?” Djuna asked.

“Well, I do declare!” said Miss Annie. “Imagine your remembering
that!
”

“It’s a good thing I did,” said Djuna. “And I remembered something else that happened that same day at Edenboro that kept me from walking into a trap yesterday.”

“Go on, Djuna,” said Socker Furlong with a shake of his head. “Tell us anything you want to. We can stand the shock.”

“Well,” Djuna went on, “after I saw the picture I talked to Mrs. Smith and she suggested that I send you a telegram, Mr. Furlong, and ask you and Mr. MacHatchet to come and help us find Miss Annie.”

“Mrs. Smith is a
very
smart woman,” said Socker with a grin. “But I’m afraid we got here a little late.”

“Captain Ben came along while we were talking to Mrs. Smith and he took us over to Lakeville to send the telegram,” Djuna continued. “On the way to Lakeville I saw a long coil of rope in Captain Ben’s boat that I thought we could use to get Miss Annie out of the cupola. I asked him if I could borrow it but didn’t tell him why I wanted it.

“Then after I’d sent the telegram to Mr. Furlong—”

“Socker, to you!” said Socker.

“After I’d sent the telegram to Socker,” Djuna corrected, “we went out on the platform and saw a packing case there that had been sent by Jones and Baldwin to a firm in Raritan. I went back in the station and asked the freight agent if it was a box of sawdust and if they had sent any more. He said it was sawdust and that they’d sent about five more cases earlier. But he said they wouldn’t be sending any more because they had both left Lakeville on the nine-eighteen train that morning and had told him they weren’t coming back. He said Lame-Brain had brought them to the train in his old car and that Lame-Brain was going to leave, too, and meet them in the city that night.

“At first I thought that was wonderful, because then I could go and get Miss Annie out of the cupola without any danger,” Djuna went on excitedly. “Then the man in the station happened to mention that the nine-eighteen from Lakeville waited on a siding at the north end of the lake until the train that is due here at nine-thirty, from the other direction, came by. I remembered the train waiting there the day we came to Lakeville. And I also remembered what I saw one day, back in Edenboro, the day when Miss Annie told us she was going to bring us to Silver Lake for the summer.

“After Tommy and I had stopped fishing that day, and before we went home and saw Miss Annie’s long underwear on the line, we had been watching two foxhounds chasing a fox. The fox was ’way ahead of the hounds and after it jumped over a stone wall it ran right alongside of the wall until it came to an intersection. Then it jumped up on the wall and ran right back past the hounds, who didn’t even see it, because they had their noses down to the ground, and it went back to the place where it had jumped over the wall and doubled back into the woods over its own trail. Of course the dogs had no idea where it had gone, so they lost it.”

“And you figured out,” said Sandy MacHatchet, with a little awe in his voice, “that Jones and Baldwin had done the same thing as the fox?”

“That’s right,” said Djuna. “I figured that they knew the police were going to scour the whole countryside and that they’d come in for quite a lot of attention. So, they pretended to leave town and were careful to tell the station agent they weren’t coming back. But when the train stopped on the siding they just dropped off it and sneaked back through the woods to the icehouse, so they could go on with their search for Old Man Winne’s money without being molested.”