CHAPTER

10

It took Penobsky several hours to degrease himself, and he still looked streaky. But he cleaned up the tub and the floor before he came out of the bathroom. He still smelt faintly of the terrible perfume, though now he was quite recognizable as the dapper spy, even without the beard. But Freddy pretended not to recognize him, and asked him questions about various kinds of plumbing fixtures—which of course he knew all about.

Freddy gave him no chance to try to get information out of him by torture. The water pistol was in its holster and he kept his hand on it as they talked. Penobsky eyed it warily; it was plain he didn’t want another squirt from it.

Finally Freddy said: “As soon as it’s dark, what do you say we sneak out of here?”

“Sneak out!” Penobsky exclaimed. “Out of a jail?”

“Sure,” said Freddy. “Look.” And he went to the window and swung out the frame in which the iron bars were set. “We just drop out and beat it.”

“For Pete’s sake!” said the spy, who of course didn’t know much about the Centerboro jail. “You known about this all the time?”

“Just noticed it this morning when I leaned on it. Well, what do you say?”

But the spy shook his head. “No, I guess not,” he said. “They can’t do anything to me. You see, I got a permit for that gun. If I run away I won’t get it back, and the sheriff might catch up with me and then he’d really have something on me. He’ll have to let me out in the morning when I show him the permit.”

“Why didn’t you show it to him when he pinched you?” Freddy asked.

“Do you know,” said Penobsky, looking surprised, “I never thought of it! Now can you beat that for absent-mindedness?”

If he did have a permit, Freddy knew perfectly well why he hadn’t shown it. He wanted to be locked up here, close to the saucer plans. But he didn’t say any more.

At supper the spy was introduced merely as a plumber who had been jailed for carrying concealed weapons. He was quiet and didn’t talk much, and afterwards went up to the room. Freddy stayed down playing games until bedtime. When he went up Penobsky was in bed, blinking and yawning sleepily. But his eyes didn’t look sleepy.

Finally Freddy went to bed. He turned the light out, but he didn’t pull down the shade, and the street light outside lit up the room so that they could see each other clearly. They lay on their sides, each in his own bed facing the other. The water pistol was in plain sight on Freddy’s pillow, and he held it pointing straight at the spy. Penobsky, however, appeared not to see it. He lay with his eyes closed, and pretty soon he began to snore. So Freddy began to snore too.

Freddy lay quite still and snored. At first they were good full-bodied snores that would have done credit to someone five times as big. But gradually they grew softer and softer and finally stopped. But Penobsky’s snores went on.

Then suddenly they stopped too. “Ha,” thought Freddy, “he’s waked up. If he really was asleep. Now’s the time for my sleep-walking stunt.”

Every now and then Mr. Bean would have a spell of walking in his sleep. Once he had come out late at night in his night clothes and had dashed about the barnyard, banging on the doors of the stable and the cow barn and the pig pen and the other buildings, and shouting: “Get up! To arms! The British are coming!” The animals thought he’d gone crazy, of course, and none of them let out a peep; but Mrs. Bean had come out in her old blue bathrobe, and instead of yelling at him, had gone quietly up to him and put her hand on his arm and said: “Better come back to bed, Mr. B.” And he had gone as quietly in.

He didn’t remember anything about it the next morning, but he said at breakfast that he had dreamed something about being Paul Revere.

Freddy had remembered that, and another time when he had heard a noise in the night and had looked out and seen Mr. Bean, in his long white nightshirt and the nightcap with the red tassel, walking across the barnyard with his eyes shut and his arms held straight out in front of him, he had gone out and said quietly: “You’d better go back to bed, Mr. Bean.” And Mr. Bean had turned around and gone, still with eyes shut and arms stretched out.

So now Freddy got up, and without trying to be specially quiet or anything, with his fore-trotters held out in front of him and his eyelids nearly shut so that he could just see, walked around the room a couple of times, muttering to himself, then went to the post at the foot of Penobsky’s bed where the plans were hidden, unscrewed the knob, and took them out.

With his fore-trotters held out in front of him.

So far the spy hadn’t moved or raised an eyelid. So Freddy went on muttering, only louder. Holding the tube out in front of him, he wandered about the room, saying: “Oh, dear, where shall I hide it?—What shall I do with it?—Oh, dear, oh dear, someone will find it. What can I do?—What will Uncle Ben say?—Oh, dear, if these spies get it …” He gabbled faster and faster and louder and louder, but the spy’s eyes remained tight shut and he breathed evenly and deeply.

So then Freddy tried one last thing. He put the tube behind a picture on the wall, so that the ends stuck out in plain sight beyond the frame. “There, I guess it’s safe now,” he said in his gabbling voice. “Nobody’ll find it there—none of those spies will get it now.” He walked around Penobsy’s bed twice, saying this, and then got into bed again. And began to snore.

And nothing happened. Freddy snored for half an hour, until it hurt his nose and he had to stop. But Penobsky never moved. Freddy said to himself: “The darn spy has really been asleep all the time!”

Well, there was no use going through the performance again. If the man was to witness it, he had to be awake. But how could he be waked up? Freddy couldn’t do it, and then start right in sleepwalking.

He was trying to figure out some plan, when with a high, thin whine something flew past his ear, and then landed between his eyes, and walked on tiny feet down toward the end of his nose.

“Hey, mosquito!” Freddy whispered.

“Thought you were asleep,” said the mosquito. His voice was so small that Freddy could hardly hear it. “Not that it matters much. You couldn’t hit me if you tried.”

“I don’t intend to try,” said Freddy, although he couldn’t keep his nose from twitching nervously as he felt the mosquito shift his feet. “But don’t start drilling yet. I need your help. I want to make a deal with you.”

“O.K., state your proposition. But while you’re talking, mind if I take a little sip?”

“You’re darn right I do! Quit it!” As he felt the tip of the stinger press his skin he spoke louder than he had intended, and Penobsky stirred uneasily. “I’ve got something to do,” he said in a lower tone, “and I don’t want to have to scratch my nose in the middle of it.”

“O.K.,” said the mosquito resignedly. “But hurry up. I’m thirsty.”

“Well,” said Freddy, “I suppose you’re a good patriotic American?”

“You bet your chin whiskers I am!” said the mosquito warmly. “A hundred per cent. Why, the blood of governors runs in my veins.”

“The blood of … What are you talking about?” Freddy demanded.

“It’s gospel truth,” the mosquito replied. “My home is in Albany. That’s the state capitol. The governor lives there.”

“I suppose you’re related to him, hey?” Freddy asked derisively.

“You might say I am. I called on him one evening. I bet he paid more attention to me than he does to most of his callers.”

“You bit him?”

“Once on the wrist and once on the neck. If that doesn’t make us blood relations I don’t know what would.”

“Guess you’re right, at that,” Freddy said. “But let’s get back on the subject. Look, I want to wake up this guy in the other bed.”

“Well, go ahead. What’s stopping you?”

“I want you to do it, because …” And Freddy explained.

The mosquito shook his head—at least Freddy thought he did, because he had to look cross-eyed to see the end of his nose, and the light was so dim that he really could hardly see the insect. “Uh-uh. You say this man’s a spy? It takes away my appetite just to look at him. Anyway, do you think it is right to ask me to mix my blood with that of a foreign agent? I’m a good American. How do I know that won’t turn me into a Communist?”

“I realize that I’m asking you to make a sacrifice,” Freddy said soberly. “But is even so great a sacrifice too great to make for your country?”

“Maybe—maybe not,” said the mosquito. “Come right down to it, what has my country ever done for me except try to squash me? Deny me the right to make a living? Try to slap me whenever I sit down to a meal?”

“It has supplied you with a lot of well-nourished, full-blooded subjects,” said Freddy. “Suppose you’d tried to make a living in a Communist country. They don’t get enough to eat—miserable, thin-blooded creatures. You wouldn’t have the plump, graceful figure you have now if you lived there.”

“Really?” said the mosquito in a pleased voice. “You think I look nice? Nobody ever said that to me before. Except Sanford, of course. And he don’t count.”

“Sanford?” Freddy asked.

“My fiancé. Goodness, I wonder if I’ll ever see him again!”

Freddy said: “Your fiancé! Oh, sure.” He had forgotten what of course he knew perfectly well—that it is only the female mosquitoes that bite. He had laid on the flattery just on the general principle that most insects are pretty vain. It worked better than he had hoped.

“He’s still in Albany,” the mosquito said. “I got shut in a truck that was coming up to Centerboro. If Sanford had been with me it would have been all right, because it doesn’t matter much where we live. But he was late for our date that night—as usual—and we weren’t out hunting together, and when they opened the truck doors here I was in Centerboro. So I thought maybe the jail would be a good place to get a bite.”

“Very sound idea. Well now—what’s your name, by the way?”

“Sybil.”

“Well now, Sybil, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If you want to wake this fellow up, I’ll try to get you back to Albany. Is that fair enough?”

Sybil said she thought it was, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to go back. “Albany’s all right,” she said, “but—well, I like the country. You know how it is—you live in a city about so long and then it’s enough.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” said Freddy. “I’ve never lived in a city. But how about Sanford?” He thought it was too bad that these two loving hearts—though small—should be separated by an unsympathetic truckman.

“Oh, Sanford!” said the mosquito. “I don’t think I was ever really in love with him. Oh, well, of course if Sanford was to come up here … But anyway you probably wouldn’t be willing to go up to Albany and get him.”

“I wish you knew your own mind better,” Freddy said. “But anyway, yes—if you’ll wake this fellow up, and if I succeed in what I want to do, I’ll go up to Albany. But how I’m to find one mosquito in a city that size—”

“I can tell you how to find him,” said Sybil.

“All right, then; do your stuff.”

But the mosquito now wasn’t sure she could wake Penobsky up. “Most people that sleep as sound as he does,” she said, “they scratch the bites in their sleep. They don’t wake up at all.”

“Then bite him where he can’t reach it,” said Freddy. “Look, his back isn’t under the covers. Bite him between the shoulder blades. He’ll have to wake up to reach that.”

So Sybil flew over. But in a minute she was back. “He’s got on pajamas that are too thick. I can’t get through the cloth.”

“They’re some the sheriff lent him,” said Freddy. “Let’s see; how about his nose—just inside where it’s good and sensitive? That ought to do it.”

“Oh, fine!” said the mosquito. “And suppose he sneezes?”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Freddy; “a fine patriot you are! If he sneezes he wakes up, doesn’t he? You want to do a fine patriotic act only you don’t want to risk anything. O.K., go on, fly out the window, beat it! A big help you are to your country!”

“Oh, shut up!” said Sybil crossly. “I’m going.” And with a shrill whine she rose from the pig’s nose and flew toward the other bed.

There was silence for perhaps twenty seconds. Then Penobsky gave a terrific sneeze, following which he sat up in bed and began furiously scrubbing the end of his nose.

“There goes Sybil!” Freddy said to himself.

He waited for a few minutes while the spy attended to his itching nose, then when Penobsky lay down again, and before he could get to sleep, Freddy got up. With fore-trotters outstretched and eyes shut he made for the tube. He took it from behind the picture, and muttering: “I must find a safer place for the plans—I must put them where the spies can never find them—oh dear, oh dear, where shall I hide them?” he went again through his sleep-walking routine, wandering about the room, while through slitted eyelids he watched the spy.

And this time Penobsky got up. Evidently he knew how to deal with sleepwalkers. He got quietly out of bed and came close to Freddy, without touching him. “There, there,” he said soothingly, “I’ll take care of them for you. I’ll find a safe hiding place where the spies can’t get them. Just give them to me and go back to bed and to sleep.”

So Freddy handed over the tube, and then he got back into bed and pulled the covers up about his ears. But he watched. Penobsky dressed hurriedly, and with one backward glance at his apparently sleeping roommate, went to the window, swung open the frame with the iron bars set in it, and dropped quietly to the ground. And then Freddy turned over and really went to sleep.