The Green Turtle Mystery (2 page)

“What time do you get through work?” asked Djuna.

“Oh, about six o’clock. Why?”

“Well, I thought maybe I could come over to your house tonight and see Waterbury some more, if you don’t mind,” said Djuna. “Could I do that?”

“Why, sure,” said Ben. “Do you know where Carpenter Street is? You just go out Sixth Street, till you come to Carpenter, and then you go three blocks west. That’s the nine-hundred block. Ours is the third house from the corner, that’s Number 906. Could you come out about half-past seven?”

“Sure,” said Djuna. “That will be swell.”

“That’ll be a good time, too,” said Ben. “That’s usually when he goes swimming.”

Djuna watched Ben walk off toward the newspaper office, with the two loaves of bread under his arm, and suddenly thought to himself, “Gee, that’s a funny-looking kind of bread! I wish I’d asked him what it tastes like!”

But it didn’t seem very important, and Djuna soon forgot all about it, as he wandered on around the Square, looking for more shoes to shine.

About an hour later, a large fat man, dressed in a wrinkled suit of white linen and wearing an old Panama hat, came puffing along Chestnut Street in the hot afternoon sun and went into the newspaper office.

“I want to see the editor,” he said to the elevator man. “What floor is he on?”

He was taken up to the third floor, where Ben, the copy boy, showed him where Mr. Canavan, the editor, was sitting. Mr. Canavan was working in his shirt-sleeves and looked angry.

“Well, what can I do for you, sir?” he asked, glaring up at the visitor.

The fat man fished a card out of his pocket and handed it to Mr. Canavan. “That’s me,” he said. “Orville P. Firkins, Real Estate and Rentals, 234 Market Street.”

“What of it?” said Mr. Canavan. “You’re in the wrong office. What you want is the business office.”

“No,” said Mr. Firkins, wiping his forehead. “I want the editor. You’re the editor, ain’t you? I’m the agent for a house that nobody will rent. It’s haunted.”

“Oh!” said Mr. Canavan, in a different tone. “Haunted, hey? What makes you think it’s haunted?”

“Noises,” said Mr. Firkins. “Clanking noises, like somebody was dragging chains over the floor.”

“Probably the water pipes,” said Mr. Canavan.

“No,” said Mr. Firkins. “It’s empty, I tell you. The water’s been shut off for years. There’s a ghost in there, that’s all there is to it.”

“Well, in that case I’ll let you talk to Mr. Furlong. Mr. Furlong is in charge of our ghost department–when he isn’t asleep. Ben, take Mr. Firkins over to Mr. Furlong and ask Mr. Furlong to listen to his story. Good-by, Mr. Firkins.”

Ben led the fat man over to Socker Furlong’s desk. Socker was leaning back in his chair with his feet on the desk, his eyes closed, a beautiful smile on his face. He was dreaming.

Ben touched him on the shoulder. The reporter sat up suddenly.

“Mr. Canavan wants you to talk to this man,” said Ben. “He wants to tell you about a ghost.”

“Well, well!” said the plump reporter. “Imagine that! Male or female?”

“How should
I
know?” demanded Mr. Firkins, mopping his forehead again. “I ain’t never seen it. All I know is, there’s noises.”

“Dear, dear!” said Socker Furlong, shaking his head. “Makes noises, does it? Well, sit down and tell me about it. You looked worried. Tell papa.”

“I
am
worried,” said Firkins, sitting down heavily in the chair Ben brought. “I’m losing money. I can’t rent the house. Nobody wants to rent a haunted house.”

“I should say not!” said the reporter, getting out his pencil and reaching for some paper. “Especially not when it makes noises. Gives you no sleep. That’s bad.”

“Put down about the house,” said Mr. Firkins. “Say, first, it’s a good house. Three stories and good basement, fourteen rooms, nice yard, big flower garden–or could be.”

Ben the copy boy would have liked to linger and hear more, but just then Mr. Canavan called him again and he had to hurry away.

“What’s the address?” the reporter asked.

“Seven-seventy-seven Carpenter Street,” replied Mr. Firkins, sighing. “Could you put it in the paper that I would pay somebody good to get rid of the ghosts? Cockroaches, that’s one thing. I know how to get rid of cockroaches. But ghosts, that’s different. If anybody knows how to get rid of ghosts, you can say they can come to see me at my office, that’s two-thirty-four Market Street. Maybe a machinist would know. That’s the noise it makes, like a machine, sort of.”

“I can’t promise,” said the reporter. “If you want to hire somebody, maybe it would be better if you put an advertisement in the paper. But I’ll do what I can. Now, what about this house at seven-seventy-seven Carpenter Street? Is it empty?”

“Empty?” exclaimed Mr. Firkins, “Ain’t I been telling you it’s empty? Certainly it’s empty! Nobody would go in there on a bet!”

“Well, I’ll see what I can do,” the reporter promised, yawning. “Good-by, Mr. Firkins. Thanks for coming in.”

“Will it be in the paper tomorrow morning?” asked the fat man anxiously, as he stood up to go.

“It will, if there’s room for it,” the reporter assured him. “That all depends on what the Night Managing Editor thinks. But I’ll write all about it, don’t you fret.”

Mr. Firkins thanked him profusely and went away.

The editor, Mr. Canavan, looked up and beckoned to Socker Furlong to come to his desk. “Write a good funny story,” he ordered. “But before you do, go out and take a look at this haunted house. Be sure you get the right house. We can’t print stories about houses being haunted, without making sure it’s the right one. What if it should turn out that there were some important people living in it? We’d he in a nice lot of trouble! Be sure you go out there.”

“Yes, sir,” said the reporter. He strolled over to the lockers and got his hat. Looking around cautiously, he saw Ben, and beckoned to him to follow him out into the hall. When they had got out where Mr. Canavan couldn’t see them or hear them, young Mr. Furlong fished a quarter out of his pocket.

“Listen,” he whispered. “The boss has lost his mind. He suggests that I ought to go out to this empty house and gawp at it. I think the heat has been too much for him. There isn’t a bit of use doing that. An empty house is an empty house. I don’t need to look at it. Why, I can write a much better story if I
don’t
look at it. No, I can think of a much better way of spending an afternoon like this than standing around in front of an empty house. The ball park, for instance. That’s where I’m going. I’ll be there just in time for the second game in the double-header. Now, this is what I want
you
to do, Ben. You know where I live. As soon as I get back from the ball game, I’ll write this story at home. You come around there at six o’clock and I’ll have it ready. Bring it back here and give it to the Night Desk. Will you do that?”

“Why, sure, Mr. Furlong,” said Ben. “That’s no trouble.”

The reporter patted him on the head and rang for the elevator, smiling.

“Say, where
is
that haunted house?” asked Ben. “Did the man tell you?”

“It’s on Carpenter Street,” said the young man. “Number seven-seventy-seven. Very easy number to remember, somehow.”

“Seven-seventy-seven!” exclaimed Ben. “Why,
I
know where that is! It’s only a couple of blocks from where
I
live! Gee, I know that house–it certainly
looks
like it was haunted! But
I
don’t believe in ghosts, do you, Mr. Furlong?”

“Only on pay days,” said the reporter, carelessly. “So you know the place, do you? It’s empty, all right, isn’t it? You sure nobody lives there?”

“Sure, it’s empty,” Ben assured him. “It’s been empty for as long as I remember. It’s all going to pieces. Gee, I go right past it a million times a day, don’t I? I guess I ought to know!”

“Well, that’s fine!” said Mr. Furlong. “That just proves what I said–there isn’t a bit of use in my wasting time to go out and look at it. I’ll write a story that will scare the life out of everybody in town! When I get through with that house, nobody in this town will dare to come within a mile of it. Just watch me, boy!”

And he stepped into the elevator, beaming with pleasure.

Four hours later, at the end of his day’s work, Ben hurried to the reporter’s boarding-house, got the story from him, and delivered it to the night editor who had taken Mr. Canavan’s place at the desk.

Then he, too, went home.

Djuna had made several more dimes during the afternoon and was pretty hungry by the time he got home. He ate a very hearty supper and then, at a few minutes past seven, he started for Ben’s house to have another look at Ben’s little green turtle. He turned west on Carpenter Street and after going about a block and a half he passed a big house that looked entirely empty. All the windows were boarded up. The house had once been painted gray, but that must have been a long time ago, for the paint was all peeling off. There was a good-sized yard around the house, surrounded by an iron fence, but the grass had not been cut in years. It was very long and tumbled every which way, and the garden was full of weeds. Over the front gate was a rusty sign, on which Djuna could just make out the numbers, “777.” The whole place looked very lonely, as if no one had lived there for years. Anyone looking at it would have said it was just the sort of house that ought to have ghosts in it.

Djuna wondered about it as he went past it. But in another block or two he came to Ben’s house, a very pretty little white house with blue window shutters. Ben came running out as soon as he heard Djuna whistling outside.

“Say,” said Ben, excitedly, as soon as he jumped down the front steps, “did you happen to notice an old house down the street from here, when you were on your way here?”

“Why, yes,” said Djuna. “You mean that one with the fence around it, that old empty house? What about it?”

“Well, it’s haunted!” exclaimed Ben, trying hard not to laugh.

“Oh, go on!” said Djuna. “What are you talking about? You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?”

Ben laughed. “No,” he said. “I don’t, really. But I was just wondering if you noticed the house, because there’s going to be a story about it in the paper tomorrow morning, that says it’s haunted. It’s a swell story. It will make you laugh. Socker Furlong wrote it, and I read it before I came home. You just wait!”

“Socker Furlong?” repeated Djuna. “Oh, you mean that man I shined his shoes for this noon? What makes
him
think the house is haunted?”

Ben giggled. “He’s never even
seen
the house,” he said. “He just wrote the story to make fun of a man who came into the office this afternoon and said he was sure it was haunted!”

And he went on to tell Djuna all that happened when Mr. Firkins, the real estate agent, came in and asked the editor to print a story about the house, to help him find somebody who would know how to get rid of the ghosts in the house, so that people wouldn’t be afraid to rent it.

“Well, that’s the craziest thing I ever heard of!” said Djuna. But he didn’t laugh, as Ben did. He looked very much puzzled.

“Don’t you think it’s funny?” asked Ben. “What are you looking so serious for?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Djuna. “Say, can I see Waterbury again? What’s he doing? Swimming, or resting?”

The two boys went on into Ben’s house, and Ben proudly exhibited Waterbury, the tiny green turtle, as is paddled around in the glass bowl. They watched Waterbury for a long time. Finally Djuna said it was time for him to go home. It had grown quite dark.

“I’ll walk along with you, part of the way,” said Ben. “I think a little walk in the fresh air would do Waterbury a lot of good.”

He fished the tiny turtle out of the bowl and slipped him into his pants pocket. Waterbury had pulled in his head and his flippers and said not a word.

The two boys went on talking as they walked along together. There were lights in the front windows of all the houses along the street, but when they came to the block where the empty house stood alone, behind its rusty fence, the street seemed darker and lonelier than ever.

In the middle of the dark yard, the old house made a darker shadow, a black blot against the night sky. There was not a light in it.

Suddenly Ben clutched Djuna’s arm. “What’s that?” he whispered in a trembling voice. “D-d-d-do you see that?”

“Quiet!” whispered Djuna. Instinctively, the two boys dropped to their knees and peered between the bars of the tall iron fence.

Between the cracks of the boards fastened over the windows of the deserted house, in a room on the east side of the ground floor, they both saw a faint gleam of light. Someone was in there!

As they watched, breathless, their hearts thumping, the light vanished from that spot. But a moment later it reappeared, gleaming through the cracks in the boards over the windows in the next room. It was plain that someone was carrying a lamp of some sort from one room to another.

Next, the rooms on the east side of the house grew dark again, and a faint light appeared over the big doorway opening upon the front porch of the house, where there was a half-circle window over the door. It was very dim, as though the person holding the lamp was at the farthest end of the central hall.

Then another pinpoint of light suddenly appeared at the edges of a window shutter upstairs. It moved from one upstairs room to another. The faint dimness over the door downstairs still stayed just as it was.

“There must be
two
people in there!” whispered Djuna. “One is downstairs in the hall and the other is upstairs! Or else the lamp downstairs has just been left standing there on a table. Oh, gee, look, there must be
three
of them!”

A light was flickering between the rooms of the
third
floor, the top floor, while the light on the second floor was still moving from room to room!

“They’re all over the house!” gasped Ben. “Let’s get away from here!”

“You wait here a minute,” whispered Djuna. “I’m going up and find out who they are!”

“Oh, don’t!” wailed Ben. “Don’t go,
please!
”