CHAPTER

7

While Freddy was careering around the country with the false plans, Samuel was waiting impatiently in the First Animal Bank. “A fine kind of bank president that pig is,” he grumbled. “Promised to help me find my valuables, and then runs off and leaves an ant in charge of the job!”

“Look, mole,” said Jinx, who was keeping an eye on things at the bank in Freddy’s absence, “why don’t you relax? If the ants find your stuff, they’ll report here and we’ll go get it. How about getting some refreshments? Let’s go up to the house and have a drink of milk.”

“You mean that white stuff you cats like? No thanks.”

“Well, I’ll get Mr. Pomeroy to pull you a few angleworms then. You’d like that,” said Jinx with a shudder.

“But suppose the ants have some news for me while we’re away?”

“I’ll get one of the dogs to come down and hold the fort,” Jinx replied.

So they went up to the house and Jinx meowed until Mrs. Bean set out a saucer of milk for him. Then he got Mr. Pomeroy to fly down and pull up a few angleworms for his guest. Jinx followed the robin across the lawn as he searched for worms, and the latter, who as head of the A.B.I. knew everything that was going on, brought the cat up to the minute on Freddy’s activities.

“I put every available operative out in the field as soon as Freddy alerted our office,” he said. “You know my lieutenant, Horace, the bumblebee. He’s in charge of a mixed crew of bumblebees and birds, following Freddy.” And he told of the pig’s arrest and subsequent escape. “He’s still got the false plans, and he’s somewhere north of Centerboro. What he’ll do next, of course I don’t know.

“The spies, who lost Uncle Ben somewhere west of Buffalo, are beginning to come back into Centerboro. But they’ve all heard about the plans being stolen, probably on the radio, and they’re not after Uncle Ben any more; they’re trying to figure out where Freddy is.” The robin shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t know. I don’t know how he expects to get those plans into the hands of any one foreign government. But anyway, Uncle Ben has come out here and he’s up in his shop now, hard at work.”

Mr. Pomeroy had captured eight or ten fat angleworms, and he carried them in his beak over to the back porch, beside the saucer of milk. “How you can eat those things!” Jinx said. “But anyway I don’t have to watch you.” And he turned his back to the mole.

Mr. Bean came out on the porch. “Jinx,” he said, “what’s this business that’s just come over the radio about Freddy stealing Uncle Ben’s saucer plans?”

It shows how upset Mr. Bean was that he would ask the cat anything. Like many old-fashioned people, he became nervous when he heard animals talk.

Jinx of course didn’t know anything about the scheme Freddy had cooked up. So he said: “Don’t believe it. Don’t believe it for a minute. Freddy’s no thief.”

“I dunno,” said Mr. Bean. “It come over the radio—‘Freddy, a pig belonging to Mr. William F. Bean, and well known and respected throughout the state.’ Seems he tried to smother Uncle Ben with a pillow, and then tied him up and stole the plans. Ben says himself it was Freddy.”

Jinx started to say: “But the plans Uncle Ben had—” And then he stopped. A number of the other animals had come up—Charles, the rooster, and his wife Henrietta, Mrs. Wiggins and Mrs. Wurzburger, two of the cows, and the two dogs. He felt that the fact that the stolen plans were false ones was too important a secret to mention except in confidence to one or two of the most reliable of his friends. “If Freddy did it he must have had a good reason,” he said.

“I expect he meant all right,” Mr. Bean said. “But you know yourself, Jinx, that he usually gets in a mess when he means well.”

“He usually gets out of it again,” said the cat.

“Usually. But this time it’s a serious crime. You don’t suppose he really would sell those plans to spies, do you?”

Of course that was exactly what Freddy wanted to do, as Jinx had guessed. He didn’t know what to answer. It was an unwritten rule among the animals that none of them would tell even the whitest of white lies to Mr. Bean. Fortunately at that moment they were interrupted by a cavalcade of cars that swept up the road and in at the gate. The spies had come back.

The first one that reached the porch was the dapper little man with the beard whom Freddy had squirted with perfume. He bowed to Mr. Bean. “Estimable sir,” he said, “I believe you have in your employ one Freddy, a pig, an old acquaintance of mine. I have traveled many miles to see him—”

The big man with black curling eyebrows pushed up beside the speaker. “I am seeing here yesterday leetly boy in cow-punch uniform. Now I find is not leetly boy but big pig. You can telling me where is pig-house? I bring him present.”

But by now the space in front of the porch was crowded with jostling figures, all claiming friendship with Freddy, all wanting to tell him something important. Only one of them seemed to be given elbow room by common consent—the little bearded man, who still smelt dreadfully of perfume. Even Mr. Bean moved away from the part of the railing under which the man stood.

Suddenly Mr. Bean took in a deep breath. “Shut up!” he roared.

The gabble dropped to a murmur. “Yesterday you were all here asking for Mr. Benjamin Bean,” he said. “You wanted his saucer plans, but he wasn’t here. Well, today he is here, but he hasn’t the plans. The radio says my pig, Freddy, stole them. Well, the pig isn’t here today, and where the plans are I don’t know. But one thing I do know: you’re not going pokin’ round in any of these buildings. You’re going to get off the premises quick, immediate and pronto. Mrs. B.,” he called, “bring my shotgun. Uncle Ben! Take your gun and plug the first man that sets foot on those stairs to the loft.”

Jinx watched while the men slowly backed away from the porch. He saw them look up at the loft window, out of which Uncle Ben’s head and the barrel of his gun were poked. But they seemed to have no interest in Uncle Ben. “They want Freddy,” he thought, “because he has the plans. But what are they trying to do? Even if he was here and showed ’em that cylinder, none of ’em could steal or try to buy it. Gosh, they’re stupid!”

But of course they weren’t stupid. Each gang was trying to find Freddy, but each gang had also to watch the other gangs to make sure that they didn’t find him and get the plans. And so they all stuck close together and watched one another.

Mr. Bean drove the men back into the cars and made them get off his property. But of course he couldn’t order them off the public road, and all the rest of the day they drove up and down the road between the farm and Centerboro, and up along the back road, which ran between Mr. Bean’s woods and the Big Woods north of the farm. These roads were much too narrow to handle such a lot of traffic, and the cars kept sideswiping one another. At times there were as many as eight or ten cars in the ditch between the farm and Centerboro, and farmers with tractors made quite a lot of money pulling them out. None of the accidents were serious, but many of them were done on purpose, for if some spy had a chance to push one of his rivals off the road without much damage to himself, he took it. By evening a lot of the cars looked pretty banged up.

Freddy had spent the afternoon on the edge of the Big Woods, watching the cars patrolling the back road. He had the cylinder strapped to the back of his saddle. If he could catch one car alone, he thought he might do business with it. And along toward dusk, when the traffic thinned out, he did catch one car alone. All up and down the road not another car was in sight.

When he had made sure it wasn’t a state police car, he dismounted and walked boldly out into the road in front of it; then suddenly, pretending to be frightened as the car screeched to a stop, dashed back in among the trees and with one foot in the stirrup was still trying to scrabble into the saddle—without really getting into it—when the two occupants of the car caught him.

They were small, slant-eyed men—Freddy thought they might be Orientals but they spoke good English. One caught him by the arm and the other pointed a pistol at him.

“All right, Mr. Pig,” said the latter. “Let’s have those plans.”

“All right, Mr. Pig,” said the latter. “Let’s have those plans.”

Freddy was perfectly willing to give them the plans, but he didn’t think he ought to turn them over too easily. They might be suspicious. “What plans?” he said.

“Come on, come on!” said the first man impatiently. “Quit stalling.” And the second man put the pistol to Freddy’s ear. “I count three, then I pull the trigger,” he said. “One—”

“Hey, now wait a minute!” said Freddy. “What’ll that get you? You don’t suppose I have them on me, do you?”

“I suppose we better find out,” said the man with the pistol. With his free hand he slapped Freddy all over lightly. “Nothing, eh? Well, how about that tube strapped to your saddle?” And he turned toward it.

Freddy shrugged his shoulders and tried to look disappointed as he watched the man undo the strap. But suddenly he was aware that a strong smell of cheap perfume was stealing through the trees, and looking toward the road, Freddy saw that the little spy with the beard was stealing after it. He had a pistol in his fist. He pointed it at Freddy’s captors and said quietly: “Put your hands up.”

The men had been so intent on Freddy that they hadn’t noticed the car that had slid to a stop behind theirs. Now, as their hands shot up, they swung round and saw it, and the man who threatened them. They saw also, and heard, two more cars which squealed up and stopped with a jerk.

“Oh, golly, here we go again!” Freddy said to himself disgustedly. In two minutes there were a couple of dozen spies prowling about, singly or in pairs, each watching all the others—none, apparently, paying much attention to him, although he was the center of the activity. He climbed on Cy and rode off, unmolested, through the trees.