The Brown Fox Mystery (21 page)

“But when Captain Ben and the state cops, and Mr. MacHatchet and Mr. Furlong were ready to start they
wouldn’t
let me go! I was so mad I almost cried. They said I might be shot!” Tommy went on indignantly. “So after they left, Champ and I got in our rowboat and I rowed so hard I thought my arms were going to drop off. I heard Lieutenant Martin and the State Police shooting at Jones and Baldwin on the corduroy road when they captured them.

“I rowed just as hard and fast as I could,” Tommy continued, “but when I got there everything was over. Even the icehouse was almost burned down to the ground, and I hadn’t even been there for
that!
”

“You sort of got in on the tail end of everything,” Socker said with a grin.

“When Champ and I got there they were just putting Miss Annie and Djuna in a boat to bring them back here to the cottage,” Tommy said. “Champ and I decided to look around a little, and so did Mr. Furlong, who was taking notes for his newspaper.

“Well, Champ chased a rabbit, or something, under the cookhouse and then got stuck under there,” Tommy went on. “The cookhouse was kind of smoking from the icehouse fire and I was afraid it might begin to burn, so I wiggled underneath to get Champ out. He was sort of stuck in a woodchuck hole, and when I was getting him loose I saw a wooden box that was buried in the ground. It looked like a funny place for that kind of a box so I pushed off the top, it was all rotten, and saw another box, a metal one, inside the wooden one.

“After I got Champ out I dragged the metal box out, too, and shouted at Mr. Furlong and he came over. He had an awful funny kind of a look on his face when he took out his knife and pried off the lid of the metal box,” Tommy said with a snicker.

“That was an awful funny kind of look you had on your face, too,” Socker said, “when you saw what was in the box!”

“What”
Djuna shouted,
“was in it?”

In answer Socker Furlong leaned down behind Djuna’s chair and brought out a long, heavy metal box, the kind mechanics use for their tools.

He lifted the lid and
everyone
strained their eyes and necks to see. It was jammed full of old-fashioned gold notes! A gasp of incredulous wonder filled the room as they all stared at it.

“How
much
is there?” Captain Ben managed to ask when he could get his breath.

“Fifty-seven thousand, three hundred and eighty-two dollars!” Lieutenant Martin said.

“Well, bless my soul!” gasped Miss Winne, and she fainted.

“Oh!”
said Socker Furlong. “If my Aunt Matilda was only here!”

Champ just jumped up and down and barked five times as though he was saying, “What’s all the excitement for?” because
everyone
was so excited. After that, everyone made such a fuss over him that he decided he had been a pretty smart dog, after all, and wagged his stump of a tail fifty-seven thousand three hundred and eighty-two times before the day was half over.

An hour later, after Miss Winne had been revived and had been convinced that she was a wealthy woman, they all stuffed themselves with chicken salad and ice cream, and all kinds of delicacies that Socker Furlong had got at Scatterly’s for the occasion.

“Hoddy-doddy!” said Tommy to Djuna, with a snicker, in the midst of all the confusion, “Miss Annie certainly kept us out of trouble this summer!”

“Golly! We better not mention that,” Djuna said with his mouth half full of ice cream. “I—”

But Tommy never did know what he was going to say, because just then everyone joined in to sing with Clarabelle as she sang:

When the song ended, the little black Scotty, Champ, jumped up and down on his stubby little legs and gave four triumphant barks.

“That’s true, Champ,” said Djuna, bending over to pat him. “
You
—caught—the—fox!”

Turn the page to continue reading from the Ellery Queen Jr. Mystery Stories

The boy named Djuna stopped so suddenly that his little black Scotty, Champ, who was trotting just behind him, and his friend, Tommy Williams, who was running right behind Champ, all got tangled up together as Djuna pointed at a red and yellow poster on a fence and shouted, “
Jiminy crimps!
The circus is coming to Riverton!”

All three of them stood staring at the sign and Tommy Williams said, “I wonder when they put that up. They must have done it at night. It wasn’t there yesterday.”

Champ sat down, cocked his head on one side, and stuck out his long, red tongue. He didn’t say anything, but looked at Djuna after a moment to see what
he
was going to say.

“That’s so. It wasn’t,” Djuna said. He studied the picture of a slim, young girl, dressed in a very short ruffled skirt and spangles, who was standing on the rump of a galloping Percheron while it pranced around a ring.

“I wonder,” Tommy said, and a worried frown creased his forehead, “how much it costs to go to a circus?”

“Golly, I don’t know,” Djuna said. “But prob’ly quite an awful lot. It’s a few days away, so we could start saving for it. How much money have you got now?”

Tommy Williams dug into his pocket and slowly counted out several coins from one hand to the other.

“Six—seven—eight,” he counted. “Eight cents and a nickel. Thirteen cents. How much have
you
got, Djuna?”

Djuna fished out what he had, carefully transferring three marbles, a pocketknife and an old shoetstring to his right-hand pocket, and counted the coins that had been mixed up with these treasures.

“Eleven cents,” he said dejectedly. “We don’t have anywhere near enough.” He was silent for a moment but anyone looking at his alert brown eyes could have told that his mind was active. Suddenly he burst into speech again.

“Jeepers! I know what,” he said. “I’ll write to Mrs. Silvernails, Miss Annie’s sister, and ask her to send me the shoeshine box I made so much money with, the summer I stayed with her. I’d only have to shine about twenty pairs of shoes to—”

“Sure,” Tommy interrupted, “but whose shoes are you going to shine? There’s only Mr. and Mrs. Pindler and Clarabelle, and her father and mother and my father and mother and Mr. Boots and Miss Annie Ellery here in Edenboro. Nobody else around here would want to get their shoes shined, because they all wear boots most of the time.”

“I could go over to Clinton,” Djuna said. “There are lots of people there.”

“How are you going to get there?” Tommy wanted to know.

“W-e-ll,” Djuna said and stopped and didn’t say anything more. He knew it would be too far to carry a shoeshine box.

The two boys looked at each other gloomily and then looked back at the gaudy poster again. They were so engrossed in looking at it that they didn’t hear the old truck that came rumbling down the road and stopped behind them.

They both jumped when a voice said, “You boys thinkin’ o’ joinin’ the circus?”

“Hello, Mr. Boots!” they said together as they whirled around; and Champ began to jump up and down and up and down to show that he was glad to see Mr. Boots too.

Mr. Boots, who had a very kind face and very bright blue eyes, was chuckling to himself as he studied the two boys. The top of Mr. Boots’s head was bald, but there was a fringe of white hair around it, and there was a fringe of white hair under his chin. His face and hands were tanned very brown and he looked a little bit like a Billiken as he sat there grinning down at the boys.

“You know,” he said after a moment, “I think I got somethin’ over to my house that would kinda interest you two young fellahs.”

Djuna didn’t say anything, because he knew that when Mr. Boots talked like that he had something that would be a very nice surprise. But Tommy Williams couldn’t contain himself.

“Chattering chimps!”
he exploded. “What is it, Mr. Boots?”

“Well, suppose you lift Champ into the back and climb in yourselves and come over ’n’ take a look,” Mr. Boots said. “C’mon! I ain’t got all day.”

The two boys hoisted Champ into the back of the truck and then scrambled in after him. Mr. Boots threw the old truck in gear and they went clattering over the dusty road past Miss Annie Ellery’s house, where Djuna lived, and past Mr. Pindler’s store, and came to a halt in front of a combination house and shop that had:

GEORGE BOOTS

Carpenter, Builder & Housepainting

painted on the front door.

But Djuna and Tommy didn’t even glance at the sign Mr. Boots had painted on his front door when they climbed out of the truck. They had eyes only for the enormous circus poster that was plastered on the front of Mr. Boots’s shop. It was three times as large as the one they had seen before and it seemed to have the whole circus performing on it. It said:

ALVAH O. GRANT’S
SUPERCOLOSSAL SHOW
combined with
THE STUPENDOUS PARIS CIRCUS
and
ROYAL BRITISH MENAGERIE AND INTERNATIONAL ALLIED SHOWS
2 circuses in 2 rings—2 menageries in 1 tent 1 Museum of Living Curiosities 6 monster shows in 1

See the only SACRED WHITE ELEPHANT in captivity outside Siam!
See the MASTERPIECES OF ALL CREATION’S WILDEST WHIMS!
Come and see things that don’t exist. Come and see if you can guess what they are! Come one
,
COME ALL!

Underneath were pictures of spangled bareback riders dancing on the backs of prancing Percherons; aerial trapeze artists flying through the air with the greatest of ease; tightwire performers, on bicycles; lions, tigers, elephants, and so many other things that it was almost like the circus itself, because there were so many things that you couldn’t look at all of them at one time.

“Jeepers!” Tommy said after a few minutes. “It says it’s a supercolossal show. Do you suppose that’s true, Mr. Boots?”

“Well, if it ain’t,” Mr. Boots said with a chuckle, “it’s close enough. Old Alvah Grant wa’n’t ever put out if somebody accused him of a little exaggeratin’. I seen the show a half-dozen times. I done some work for old Alvah one time and he used to send me passes when he brung the circus to Riverton. Poor old fellah died here not long ago. A fine man, even if he was a little givin’ to stretchin’ th’ truth.”

“How much does it cost to go to the circus, Mr. Boots?” Djuna asked.

“Well, it costs quite a mite,” Mr. Boots said, “but you boys don’t have to worry about that.”

They both stared at Mr. Boots and Champ sat down again and cocked his head on one side and stared too. None of them was sure what Mr. Boots meant but they decided to wait until he was through chuckling and got ready to tell them.

“You know that poster you boys was lookin’ at down the road?” Mr. Boots asked.

“Yes, sir,” Djuna said.

“Well,” Mr. Boots went on. “I was comin’ home along about dusk last night when I see a fellah nailin’ it up. I stopped and took a look an’ then I remembered somethin’ and I said to him, ‘I got a fine place for one of them big posters, right on the road where no one can get by without seein’ it.’

“‘That’s what I want, pappy,’ he sez. ‘You lead the way an’ I’ll be right on your tail.’

“‘It’s a goin’ to cost you six passes to the circus if I let you use the space,’ I told him.

“‘Now, now, pappy,’ he sez. ‘I could hang one on a cloud for six passes.’

“‘They’re a mite high for you to reach around here,’ I said.

“Anyway,” Mr. Boots went on, “I brought him up here to my shop and after we dickered a trifle he agreed to give me four passes, good for every performance while the show is at Riverton, if I’d let him put a poster on my shop. The show’s goin’ to be there at Riverton for a week, you know, while they get it reorganized after old man Grant’s death.”

“You mean we can each use one of the passes?” Tommy asked excitedly.

“That’s what I got ’em for,” Mr. Boots said. “You’ll be so bog-danged sick of the circus by the time it leaves Riverton that you’ll never want to see it again.”

“Jiminy crimps, Mr. Boots!” Djuna said. “Do you mean we can go to the circus free with your passes?”

“That’s just what I’m tellin’ you, Djuna,” Mr. Boots said. “An’ I got enough so Clarabelle Smith, and Mr. and Mrs. Pindler, and Miss Annie, an’ everyone can go at one time or another. All just for lettin’ him put that poster on the front of my shop. They won’t pay you no money to let ’em put up their posters on your property, but they’ll give you free passes.”

“Oh boy, oh boy!” Djuna said, his brown eyes gleaming with admiration and affection as he looked at Mr. Boots. “That’s about the nicest thing I ever heard of. Is there anything we can do for you to help pay you back, Mr. Boots?”