The Green Turtle Mystery (11 page)

“Maybe the little girl and her father just live on the second floor,” whispered Ben as they stood at the bottom of the stairs and peered into the blackness above.

“I don’t think
anybody
lives here,” Djuna said and he wondered why in the world the little girl had told him she lived there. And he wondered, too,
why
she had been there.

“What’s that funny smell in here?” Ben asked and all three of them stood sniffing with a puzzled expression on their faces.

Finally Djuna giggled and said, “It’s funny, but Mrs. Silvernails and I were talking about nasturtiums this morning. That’s what it
smells
like. Nasturtium seeds.

“Na–na–
what?
” Ben asked.

“
Nasturtiums!
” Djuna said. “It’s a flower.”

“Gee! I don’t know,” Ben said. “I never heard of them.”

“They smell awful,” Djuna said in a low voice. “Let’s see what’s upstairs.”

“Do you think we
ought
to?” Ben whispered.

“We haven’t found Waterbury yet,” Djuna pointed out and he started up the steps. Champ had a hard time because the steps were high and he hadn’t had a running start. He had to take each step very carefully.

It was just as they reached the top of the stairs and were standing on the landing listening that it happened. No sound had come to them until that unearthly laugh came out of the blackness from some place around them and rattled against the closed confines of the boarded windows.

“
HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HAH!
” it said and dwindled away into what might have been a sigh of exultation or a stifled sob.

“O-o-o-h!” Ben said, and that was
all
he said before he went down the steps as fast as he could go. Djuna, standing on the landing with one hand clutching the balustrade tightly and the other clutching the flashlight just as tightly, heard the front door open and slam after Ben.

Djuna could feel a sort of prickly feeling at the back of his neck and he wondered if his hair was standing on end the way people’s hair was supposed to stand on end when they were scared. Just then he heard a little whimper beside him and he looked down to see that Champ’s hair was standing on end along the ridge of his back, and he was trembling.

“Steady, old fellow,” Djuna said as he knelt down, snapped his light on for an instant and put an arm around Champ. Champ looked up at him through shaggy hair that was covered with cobwebs and thanked him with his shoe-button eyes. “Be quiet,” Djuna whispered as Champ began to get his courage back and got ready to bark. He tightened his hold on Champ and laid his other hand on Champ’s nose to indicate that he was not to bark.

They waited there in the dark for the ghastly laugh to sound again, but nothing happened. Finally, it took all the courage that Djuna could muster to snap on the flashlight again and move toward the open door of a room on his right off the hallway. Now Champ was straining forward on his leash and Djuna spoke to him quietly again so that he wouldn’t bark.

They went through what had been a square bedroom and into another room behind it. Both rooms were entirely empty, except for the heel of a loaf of bread that was lying on the floor of the second room. Djuna turned the piece of bread over with his foot and gazed at it curiously for a moment. It looked as though it had come from the same kind of loaf that Ben Franklin had been carrying in the Square a couple of days before. That seemed queer. He had never seen that kind anywhere else.

As they went through a doorway that led to a back hallway that stretched the whole width of the house behind the bedrooms Djuna heard a strange whirring noise just above his head. He flashed his light on the ceiling above him and could see nothing. The whirring noise became fainter and then died away completely. Only the distant crash of thunder outside the house and the steady drum of rain on the roof broke the awful stillness.

They moved across the hallway and went into the back bedroom on the other side of the house. Just as they entered it that same unearthly voice came out of the blackness behind them again.

“
PLATA! PLATA! HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA-AH!
” it said this time, in a husky voice, and Djuna could
feel
the hair coming up on his head.

But he stepped back through the doorway into the hallway. He heard that same strange whirring noise again, and then something brushed by him so closely that he could feel the air that was stirred in its passing. He flashed his light around the hallway and just caught the movement of some great green object fluttering out of his vision into a bedroom.

“
Quiet
, Champ!” Djuna ordered as Champ started a low growl that indicated he was going to bark. “C’mon,” he added.

Djuna ran across the hallway with Champ at his heels. He flashed his light into the bedroom just as the green object came out the doorway to flutter by his head. He swung around and held it in the rays of his flashlight and saw that it was a green parrot!

“Well, for goodness sake!” Djuna said, and he began to giggle at himself in relief, and at the way Ben had gone down the front steps and out the front door. “Gosh! I don’t blame him, though,” he thought.

He watched the big bird flap lazily back and forth until it came to roost on top of a door. It seemed to be chuckling deep down in its throat as it sat there returning Djuna’s stare.

“But what in the world is it doing in here
alone?
” he asked himself. “
Who
does it belong to?”

Then his eye fell on another stairway, deep back in the shadows, that led from the back hallway to the attic of the old house; and he went over to examine it. He saw that there were dusty footprints on the stairs and little splatters of candle grease beside them. He flashed his light up the stairs to be sure Waterbury wasn’t there, and then he decided he had better go out and tell Ben the ghost was only a parrot.

Djuna and Champ were half way down the front stairway when the parrot’s hoarse voice came to them again. And although Djuna knew now what it was, it sent cold shivers up his back.

“
HASTA LA VISTA! HASTA LA VISTA! HASTA LA VISTA! HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA, HA-AH!
” the parrot screamed after them.

This time Djuna was ever more surprised. The parrot was talking Spanish!

When Djuna reached the first hallway he debated for a moment whether he should go back to the cellar and leave the house the same way he came in, or leave by the front door the way Ben had departed so hurriedly.

He examined the front door and found it had a snap lock that would lock itself after he closed it from the outside. He turned off his flashlight and they slipped out on to the porch, closing the door silently behind them.

The rain had stopped now, and occasionally the moon was peeping between the rain clouds that were scurrying off to the east. Djuna and Champ hastened down the front steps and out the gravel path to the iron gate. Just as they swung it open, a form darted out from behind a tree across the street and Ben came running toward them.

“Oh, gosh, I’m glad to see you!” he said in a voice that still quavered. “I didn’t know
what
to do when I got out here and found that you hadn’t followed me. I thought, of course, that you were right behind me. When–when you didn’t come, I remembered what Mr. Firkins said about one of us being carried away and–and–
WHO
was that laughing?” he finished in a rush of words. The moon came peeping through the clouds at just that moment and Djuna could see that Ben’s eyes were almost as large and round as the moon.

“I bet you couldn’t guess
in a thousand years
who it was that laughed,” Djuna said. He didn’t realize until now how relieved
he
had been when he found out
what
had been laughing!

“Did you
see it?
” Ben asked, breathlessly.

“Yes,” Djuna said. “
It touched me!
” He snickered.

“What
was
it?” asked Ben. “Was–was it a ghost?”

“It was a parrot,” Djuna said. “Just a big, green parrot.”

“A
what?
” Ben shouted.

“It was a parrot that could talk,” Djuna said and he couldn’t help laughing. “What do you suppose it said just before I left?”

“
What?
” Ben whispered.

“It said, ‘
Hasta la vista
,’” said Djuna.

“What does
that
mean?” asked Ben in a dazed voice.

“It means, ‘hurry back,’” Djuna said, importantly. “It’s Spanish. A fisherman told me–when I was visiting Aunt Patty Tubbs up on Long Island Sound.”

“
Hurry back!
” Ben said in a scornful voice. “I wouldn’t ever go back in that place for
a hundred million dollars!
” He looked up at the old house, shivered and said, “Let’s walk down toward my house. I don’t like to even stand here.”

They walked slowly down Carpenter Street, each deep in his own thoughts until they stopped in front of Ben’s gateway.

“A
parrot!
” Ben said, suddenly. “How in the world did a parrot get in that house?”

“Gosh! I don’t know,” said Djuna, and he added very seriously, “You know it’s kind of funny when you stop to think of it. We went in the house to find Waterbury and instead we found a parrot!”

“Oh!” Ben said. “Did Champ find any signs of Waterbury?”

“No,” said Djuna. “We went all over the house and there wasn’t any sign of him at all. I can’t understand that. I thought before that he might climb out a window that was broken, but all the windows are so high above the floor Waterbury couldn’t have climbed up to them. There is
no
way he could have got out and yet he
wasn’t
there.”

“Maybe someone picked him up and
took
him out,” Ben suggested.

“Yes,” said Djuna, “but
who?
I don’t think anyone has been in there except us.”

“But
you talked
to a little girl who was in there,” Ben said. “And Mr. Firkins said he saw her, but when he tried to follow her he couldn’t find her.” Ben stopped and shook his head in perplexity. “That’s the
strangest
place I
ever
heard of. It gets me all mixed up.”

“It gets me all mixed up, too,” Djuna said, ruefully. As he went back to his own chain of thoughts he said aloud, “If that parrot was there when Mr. Firkins heard strange noises, it was several days ago. Why, that parrot must be almost starved to death!”

“Gosh! He must be,” Ben agreed.

“
Say!
” Djuna said, suddenly. “Somebody must be feeding that parrot because I saw the end of a loaf of bread in one of the rooms upstairs.” Then Djuna became excited as he remembered something else. “Do you remember those loaves of bread you were carrying in the Square the day I met you?” he asked Ben.

“Sure,” said Ben and he chuckled. “That was Mr. Furlong’s idea.”

“Where did you get them?” asked Djuna, breathlessly.

“At a little bake shop down around the corner,” Ben said.

“Would it be open now?”

“No,” Ben said. “They close much earlier than this. Why?”

“Because the piece of bread I saw upstairs in that house came from the same kind of loaf you were carrying the other day,” Djuna said quickly. “I remember because I never saw any bread that was long and narrow and had sort of pointed ends like that before. Maybe the people who run that bake shop would know
who owns
that parrot!”

“Gee! That’s so!” said Ben. “I’ll meet you in the Square tomorrow morning and we’ll go there and ask them.”

“That’s fine,” Djuna said. “Do you suppose Mr. Furlong will be in the Square tomorrow morning? I’ll owe him eight shines tomorrow, and besides, I’d like to ask him some questions and tell him about that parrot.”

“Do you suppose if we tell him that it was a parrot that was making the funny noises in that house he will be able to get his job back?” asked Ben.

“Gosh! I don’t think so,” Djuna said, slowly. “But it might
help
toward getting it back.” He looked down at Champ sitting patiently beside him and said, “Jeepers! Let’s put Champ to bed. I’ve got to get home or Mrs. Silvernails will wonder what in the world has happened to me.”

“Okay,” Ben said. “I have his bed all fixed. Come on back and I’ll show you.”

They went through the gateway and back to the little shed in Ben’s backyard where Champ was going to sleep. Ben took the flashlight and played it on a spot where he had put half a dozen burlap bags in a pile. Djuna unfastened Champ’s leash and without a single word Champ walked over to the burlap bags and curled up on them. Then, he got up, turned around three times and lay down again with his head curled up on one paw and with one eye open as though to say, “All right. Will you
please
turn out that light?
You
can stay up
all night
if you want to, but
I’ve
got to get my sleep!”

D
JUNA DIDN’T REACH
the Square the next morning until after ten o’clock because Mrs. Silvernails had a number of errands for him to do after he had his breakfast.

But when he did get there he found five men who wanted their shoes shined, one right after another. One of the men was a fat man who reminded him of Mr. Firkins and Djuna wondered if he hadn’t better go and tell Mr. Firkins that if he’d catch the green parrot that was in the house at 777 Carpenter Street he wouldn’t have any more trouble with ghosts. But he decided he hadn’t better until he had talked the whole thing over with Mr. Furlong.

Right after he had finished with the fifth pair of shoes Ben came along, and they sat down on a bench and reviewed the happenings of the night before.

“What time can you get away so we can go down to that bakery where you got that funny bread?” Djuna asked Ben after a lull in their conversation.

“That’s French bread,” Ben said. “I can’t get away until lunch time–about twelve o’clock. Mr. Canavan is awful cranky today.” Ben giggled. “He’s sore because he fired Mr. Furlong. I heard him tell a couple of reporters that Mr. Furlong could write a better story in ten minutes than they’d ever both be able to write in a lifetime.”