CHAPTER

7

The following morning Freddy and Jinx took the apple pie down to Mr. Bean in the Centerboro jail. It was a fine day and the prisoners were all sitting out on the lawn under striped umbrellas, reading and talking and playing games. Mr. Bean was playing croquet with the sheriff, who promptly invited the two animals to stay to lunch.

When they were away from the barnyard, Mr. Bean didn’t seem to mind so much hearing animals talk, and he discussed things very freely with Jinx and Freddy. “You tell Mrs. B. not to worry about me,” he said. “This is a real nice jail, and to tell you the truth, I’ve been thinking she might like it here herself. Maybe she’d like to commit a small crime of some kind, and come down for a week or two. Make a nice change for her. There’s lots to do, and good food and good company, and you animals can run the farm all right.” He fizzed with laughter behind his whiskers. Evidently he wasn’t much worried about the burglary charge.

But he was very much disturbed about what they had to tell him concerning the revolt among the animals. “As you know, Freddy,” he said, “I ain’t one to interfere in animal affairs. I let you handle things in your own way. But in this, I guess we’ll have to work together. Fight together too, maybe. But we’ll talk about that later. There goes the dinner bell.”

Jinx and Freddy had lunch at the sheriff’s table, along with Mr. Bean and a burglar named Bloody Mike. Mike had won his nickname not because he was a specially ferocious fighter, but because whatever he did, he was always bumping his head or cutting his finger or walking into the edge of an open door. When he went out to burgle a house, he invariably came back covered with scratches and bruises, and he said himself that he couldn’t pare an apple without cutting his finger half off. But he was very good company, and that was why he was invited to sit at the sheriff’s table.

So they had a pleasant lunch, and for dessert they had the apple pie. Mike, whose table manners weren’t very good, even for a burglar, picked up his piece and started to bite the end off. And then he said: “Ouch!” in a loud voice, and dropped the pie on his plate and put his hand up to his jaw.

“It would be me that bit on that rock,” he said.

“A rock?” Mr. Bean exclaimed. “In one of Mrs. Bean’s pies? Well, she must have been upset! Gracious, Mike, I’m awful sorry. Did you bust the tooth?”

“Just kinda sprained it, like,” said the burglar. “Think nothing of it, William. Hey, it ain’t a rock either.” He poked in the pie with his fork, and presently drew out a file. “Oho,” he said, “seems like your wife thinks you don’t like it here!”

“Good grief!” said Mr. Bean. “Sheriff, on behalf of Mrs. Bean, I want to apologize to you. Guess she’s forgotten what a nice jail you run. If I’ve told her once, I’ve told her forty times how the iron bars on your windows work.”

Some years earlier, the prisoners had complained about the bars on their windows—said they made them feel shut in. So the sheriff had them just set in frames that could be swung out like windows. So that while to the citizens of Centerboro, they looked like good strong prison windows, if the prisoner inside wanted to escape, all he had to do was swing the framework out and jump to the ground. As a matter of fact no prisoner ever bothered to do this, because if he wanted to go out he just said to the sheriff: “Think I’ll go down to the movies,” or “Guess I’ll go see my aunt,” and then walked out the front door. But he had to be back by eleven o’clock.

The sheriff poked gingerly at his piece of pie. “Just want to be sure there ain’t a couple of machine guns in here,” he said. “Does your wife always put such strong seasoning in your pies?”

Later in the afternoon they were playing Prisoners’ Base on the lawn with the other prisoners, when the sheriff was called to the door. When he came back, he said: “Well, William, Hank’s here for you with the buggy. Judge Willey has just signed an order for your release. It seems that there was a burglary at Dr. Wintersip’s last night, and one of your handkerchiefs was found on the floor. Of course you were in jail, so you couldn’t have been the burglar, and that makes it look as if you were innocent of the other two burglaries. Congratulations. Not that I ever thought you’d gone in for burglary at your age,” he added.

Mike said he sometimes wished he had never taken up burglary professionally. “There ain’t really any future in it,” he said.

“Yeah?” said a prisoner named Louie the Lump, “that ain’t very complimentary to the sheriff, here. You made out all right, Mike, didn’t you—landing in a nice jail like this? What more future do you want?”

“Well,” Mike said, “what I want is just what I got—a nice place to live and good company. But it ain’t burglary. A good burglar thinks it’s a disgrace to get caught and jailed. Me, I get out, and I just live for the time when I stand up before the judge and he says: ‘Six months in the county jail.’”

“I don’t blame you,” Mr. Bean said. “If I wasn’t married and didn’t have a farm to look after, I’d commit a real bang-up good crime and try to get sent up here for life. As it is, I guess I’d better get back home.” So he said good-by and got in the buggy and drove Freddy and Jinx home.

They had almost reached the farm when Mr. Bean pulled up suddenly. He pointed to a poster on a tree by the roadside. “That isn’t a regular ‘no trespassing’ notice,” he said. “Go get it, Freddy.”

So Freddy hopped down and ripped the poster from the tree and brought it back.

They looked at it in silence. There was a picture of a man with a gun standing beside a bear he had shot. Above in large print, it said: “Will You Be Next?” And underneath: “How long does it take you, animals, to learn that men are your deadly enemies? How long will you submit to be beaten and starved and shot by them? Now is your chance—the first real chance in a thousand years—to get back the right to live as free animals in a world that belongs to you, not to your so-called masters. Join up today.” And the poster was signed with a large S.

“You know who S is?” Mr. Bean demanded.

The animals shook their heads.

“Well, if he ain’t a man, he’s got a man helping him. Because this here poster was printed in a print shop, and no animal could do that. Hey, Hank; turn around. We’ll go see Mr. Dimsey.”

Mr. Dimsey was the publisher of the Centerboro Guardian and he also printed Freddy’s newspaper, the Bean Home News. When he was shown the poster, he frowned. “No, I didn’t print that,” he said, “but it was printed here on my press—I recognize the type. And I know when it was printed. I was home with the flu for ten days a week or so ago, and when I came back to the shop I saw somebody had been here, working with the press. Nothing was taken, and everything was in order, so I didn’t make a fuss about it.”

“You know who it was?” Freddy asked.

“I’ve got a pretty good idea. Herb Garble had the Guardian once; he can set type and run a press. Far as I know, he’s the only other printer in town.”

They thanked him and went on home. They saw more posters on the way, and each time Freddy climbed out and tore them down.

Freddy found that there had been developments while he was away. Mrs. Wiggins said that she was followed wherever she went by spies—rabbits, usually; and several of the other animals said they had the impression that they were being watched, but they couldn’t pin the impression down definitely. Mr. Pomeroy reported that Mr. Garble had been seen up by the Grimby house several times, but since he owned the Big Woods, there was nothing really very peculiar about that. The robin also reported that some bumblebees, who had flown up across Otesaraga Lake and cruised along the edge of the Adirondacks, had brought word of a good deal of activity in the forest. They had seen a lot of cows and horses, who don’t usually live in the woods; as well as a number of big shaggy dogs, such as they had never seen before. The posters showing the man with the bear he had shot, as well as others showing animals in cages, or tied up, or with muzzles on, had been tacked up all around the Centerboro region. What was even more serious, a good many farm animals had already left their homes and apparently joined up with the rebels.

Mrs. Wiggins said she was followed by spies.

That was the last peaceful day that the Bean farm was to enjoy for many weeks. Early in the afternoon Uncle Solomon flew down to see Freddy. With him was Old Whibley. It was unusual for the screech owl to come out in the daytime; it was unheard of for Whibley. They had come to warn the Beans. The woods up north of the lake were fairly boiling with animals—tough old horses and cattle from northern hill farms, bears and bobcats and coyotes and even a few panthers. “Hasn’t been a panther in the state before in seventy-five years,” said Whibley.

“What do you think we ought to do?” Freddy asked.

“Get out!” said Old Whibley explosively. “Get away while you can, and take the Beans with you.”

“But why?” said Freddy. “After all, what can they do? And these little meetings at the Grimby house—”

“These little meetings, as you call them,” said Uncle Solomon, “are one small part of a big scheme. The speaker gets the farm animals discontented with their life, he tells them that they are fools to let humans rule them. He tells them lies about humans, and because he repeats his lies, they believe them. He’s a rabble rouser, and a good one.”

“I suppose you mean by that,” Freddy said, “that he is a clever speaker who can stir up his listeners to any crazy kind of violent action that he tells them to take. Yes, I heard him; it’s true. But he didn’t stir up me or Jinx, or you, Uncle Solomon.”

“We are loyal, and we’ve got some sense—at least I have,” said the screech owl with his tittering laugh. “I’m sometimes not so sure about you. Not when you talk as if whoever it is that makes those speeches up at the Grimby house is just a joke.”

“Do you know who he is?” Freddy asked.

Both owls shook their heads. “We’ve never seen him. But whoever he is, he must come from this neighborhood, to know as much as he does about all these farmers. And he’s not a man; no man could move around among those burned beams in the Grimby cellar—he’d be too big.”

“But his voice,” said Freddy. “It’s—goodness, it’s big. Bigger than any man’s.”

“So was the voice of that clockwork boy Mr. Benjamin Bean built,” said Whibley.

“Golly, that’s right,” said the pig. “He had a microphone built in him, and that rooster, Ronald, used to run him. Why, if he turned the sound up, a mouse could be heard all over the farm. But you don’t think it’s a little animal that’s making those speeches, do you?”

“Don’t you read your history?” said Uncle Solomon. “Hitler was an insignificant-looking little man, but he was one of the greatest rabble rousers that ever lived.”

“Oh dear,” said Freddy, “you really think we’re in danger? What could those animals do? Mr. Bean has a gun, and he could telephone the sheriff, if any animals came around and started to destroy things.”

“We can’t do more than warn you,” said Old Whibley. “It’s our belief that that mob up in the woods is about ready to march. If they do, Mr. Bean’s gun will be about as much protection as a cap pistol. Well, we’ve said our say. Come along, Sol.” And he spread his big wings and flew off.

Uncle Solomon started to follow, then paused. “You have disappointed me, pig,” he said. “I assured Whibley that you would take our advice. But I see that the natural stupidity of the porcine race has finally extinguished the feeble glimmers of intelligence which I have sometimes thought to discern in you. A pity.” His cold little laugh rippled out and then he too went.