CHAPTER

17

Uncle Ben drove the station wagon up near the plane and Mr. Condiment climbed out and went over to speak to Mrs. Wiggins. Freddy, crouched down in the rear seat with a blanket over him, heard Mr. Condiment ask where Jackson was, and Mrs. Wiggins’ reply: “My dear sir, I haven’t the faintest idea! Most extraordinary behaviour! When we arrived at the bus station, he said: ‘Let me out here.’ And then he said: ‘Kiss old Condiment goodbye for me,’ and the last we saw of him he was getting into the Utica bus.”

“Great heavens!” said Mr. Condiment. “You mean that he didn’t telephone?”

“No doubt he will do so when he reaches Utica,” said Mrs. Wiggins. “He seemed a most vulgar fellow; you should be happy to be rid of him.”

Mr. Condiment shook his head. “I can’t understand it. It’s most disturbing, perplexing—I mean to say, odd.”

Mrs. Wiggins’ genteel manner, combined with her deep voice and the emphatic nods with which she punctuated her remarks, had reduced Freddy to a quaking jelly of laughter. Even Uncle Ben shook a good deal and his false beard jigged up and down in a way that must have startled Mr. Condiment if he had noticed it. But he was staring with consternation at Mrs. Wiggins.

“I am at a complete loss to understand it,” he said. “But I am deeply indebted to you, ma’am. My name is Condiment—Watson P.”

Mrs. Wiggins bowed majestically. “Charmed. My own name is perhaps not unknown to you. I am the Countess Chinitzky of New York, Newport and Grisly Gulch, Wyoming.”

Mr. Condiment jumped. “Grisly Gulch!” he gasped. “And the Countess Chinitzky! But th-that was the name of the Demon Woman. And Grisly Gulch!”

“I know,” said Mrs. Wiggins. “Ridiculous, those old stories. I believe there have even been books written about me. So amusing—just fancy, sir; they accuse me of having horns and a tail!” She began to laugh. “And of devouring my enemies—even men like yourself, sir—eating them whole and swallowing them down, body, boots and breeches.” And she laughed harder than ever.

Mrs. Wiggins’ laugh was known to every man, woman, child, animal, bird and insect in the north central part of the state. She was now of course two hundred miles from home, but it is possible that some of the better jokes told to Mrs. Wiggins had provoked laughter loud enough to be heard even at that distance. Of course she didn’t just laugh at good jokes, she laughed at all of them—good, bad and indifferent. Some of her friends complained of this. “We don’t mind hearing you laugh at something really funny,” they said. “What we object to is hearing you roar your head off over some old riddle that Noah brought over in the Ark.” But Mrs. Wiggins only said that a joke was a joke, and old ones, that had stood the test of time, were the best. “I don’t like to have to figure out what the point is,” she said. “When you’ve heard a joke fifteen or twenty times, you know just when to laugh. Although,” she would add thoughtfully, “I like to laugh at ’em whether I get the point or not.”

Mr. Condiment felt terribly alone as that great roaring laughter beat down on him. First Newsome, then Felix, and now Jackson had deserted him. And on top of that—well, the Great Serpent had been bad, Lorna the Leopard Woman had been horrible. But now this, the Ghost of Grisly Gulch in person! It was just too much. He leaned weakly against the side of the station wagon and moaned.

And Mrs. Wiggins stopped laughing. “Well, sir,” she said, “I fear we must be getting on. So I will just carry out your man Jackson’s request and kiss you goodbye.” She took off her hat and then leaned out and put her front hoofs on Mr. Condiment’s shoulders. Jinx had made her up with burnt cork eyebrows and powdered her with lots of flour, and when Mr. Condiment saw that huge white face coming close to his own, with the horns and the big flat teeth in a mouth large enough to snap his head off at one bite, he gave a little yelp and dropped his pistol and sank to the ground. There was no fight left in him and they had no further trouble with him. They helped him into the house and gave him a drink of water, and then Freddy sat him down at the table with pen and paper and said: “Now write as I dictate.

… dropped his pistol and sank to the ground.

“I, Watson P. Condiment, being of sound mind, but pretty well scared by thinking about my crimes, do hereby confess …” And Freddy had him write out a full account of his persecution of Mademoiselle Rose and his attempts to ruin Mr. Boomschmidt. He confessed to having his men steal the Benjamin Bean Improved Self-filling Piggy Bank, and indeed he got so interested in writing these things down that he confessed to several crimes that Freddy didn’t know anything about.

So then they started for home—Mrs. Wiggins and Uncle Ben and the Self-filling Piggy Bank in the station wagon, and Freddy and Mr. Condiment and the Horribles—complete with umbrellas—in the plane. Sniffy and his family decided not to go with them. “You just leave us here, Freddy,” Sniffy said. “Oh, we’ll get back to the Bean farm some day. But we’re going to stay up here in the woods for a while.—I mean, there be adventures to be sought in the greenwood—yea, belike dragons to be slain and foul oppressors to be overcome. We like not the tame life of farm and barnyard. Farewell, lad, we will see thee anon.” He grinned. “Be seeing you, Countess,” he said to Mrs. Wiggins. “Come lads.” And the skunks trooped after him into the shadow of the forest.

Freddy flew straight to the farm. The Horribles had never been up in a plane in daylight, and they thought that the country they passed over ought to look like the maps they had seen, with each county a different color. “How can you tell where you are,” they wanted to know, “without any names on the towns?” It took Freddy nearly a week after they got back to explain it to them, and some of the less bright ones, like No. 13, are still puzzling over it.

Freddy flew straight to the fair grounds and marched Mr. Condiment in through the gate and into the big tent where Mr. Boomschmidt was rehearsing a new act—a turtle who could turn cartwheels and back flips. As soon as he saw them Mr. Boomschmidt rushed up to Mr. Condiment with his hand outstretched. “My goodness, if it isn’t my old friend—” Then he stopped. “No, no, of course you’re not my friend,” he said: “You’re an enemy. Well, you’re welcome just the same, and we’ll try to make you feel at home.” The circus animals, having watched Freddy’s arrival, had come trooping into the tent. “Now here’s an old friend of yours,” Mr. Boomschmidt went on. “Willy, come shake hands with Mr. Condiment.”

The boa constrictor came gliding up. “Haven’t got any hands to shake with,” he said, “but I’ll be glad to give him a little hug.” He threw a loop around Mr. Condiment. “My, my, he’s the one that’s doing the shaking.”

“That’s enough, Willy,” said Mr. Boomschmidt, who saw that Mr. Condiment was not only trembling but had turned a rather muddy green color. “That’s enough!” he repeated firmly, as Willy began to squeeze. “Go sit down. Do you hear me?—sit down!”

That is a pretty hard order for a snake to obey. Willy unwound from Mr. Condiment and looked around helplessly.

“If you don’t mind me—!” said Mr. Boomschmidt threateningly.

“Oh, gosh!” said the snake. “Look, chief, you know I can’t sit down. Any more than you can glide.”

“I can too glide,” Mr. Boomschmidt retorted. He took off his silk hat and put it on the ground. “Look here.”

“Just a second, Mr. Boom,” Freddy said. He would have liked to see Mr. Boom imitate a snake; he was sure it would be pretty instructive; but he wanted to dispose of his prisoner. “Just look at this.” And he held out the paper on which Mr. Condiment had written his confession.

Mademoiselle Rose had come into the tent, and she looked over Mr. Boomschmidt’s shoulder as he read. “Oh dear!” she said. “Oh, dear!” And after a minute she began to cry quietly.

Mr. Boomschmidt went on reading, but he kept glancing at her, and when he came to the bottom of the page he folded the paper up and handed it back to Freddy. “I guess that settles our what-do-you-call-it, dilemma,” he said. “We’ll take him down to the jail and turn him over to the sheriff.” Then he turned to Mademoiselle Rose. “Guess you’re coming down with a cold,” he said, whipping out a huge red and blue checked handkerchief and holding it to her nose. “Here. Blow!”

She slapped his hand away. “I am not!” she said angrily, and then she seized the handkerchief and wiped her eyes. “I’m crying,” she said.

“Crying!” he exclaimed. “Why, goodness gracious mercy me, Rosie, what for? Leo! Where are you, Leo? Do you know what she’s crying for?”

“Don’t know, chief,” said the lion. “Unless maybe she’s sorry for old Condiment here. Going off to jail now, and after all, it’s just because she didn’t want to marry him. My old Uncle Ajax used to say that—”

“Oh, you and your Uncle Ajax go fall off a cliff!” said Rose furiously, and the other animals all sort of backed away and stared at her, for they had never seen her lose her temper before. They had never seen her look so pretty, either. “And as for you,” she said, turning to Mr. Boomschmidt, “can’t you ever figure anything out for yourself? Do you always have to ask that old moth-eaten lion to explain it for you?”

“O boy O boy,” said Leo under his breath. “You got a good high cliff handy, Freddy? If so, I feel sort of tempted to take a dive off it right now. Because she’ll really get going in a minute. Just between you and me—” he lowered his voice still further—“Uncle Ajax always said it was the quiet ones like our Rose who blew up with the loudest bang when they did blow up.”

“Why, Rose,” said Mr. Boomschmidt. “This—well, it isn’t like you. Why, I didn’t know you could cry.”

“Oh, you didn’t!” she snapped. “Well, I guess that’s right; you didn’t know I was a girl at all; I was just another of your performing animals. Why, you’ve never even treated me as if I was human!”

For the first time in the years Freddy had known him, Mr. Boomschmidt seemed at a loss for words. “Huh?” he said. “What?” He reached up to push his silk hat back off his forehead as he always did when he was trying to think, but of course the hat wasn’t there—it was on the ground. Willy saw the gesture, and picked it up and handed it to his employer, but Mr. Boomschmidt didn’t seem to know what to do with it; he just put it down on the ground again.

Mr. Condiment seemed to have recovered somewhat for he wasn’t so green any more. He opened his mouth, and then he hesitated, and then he said: “I always thought you were a fool, Boomschmidt, but now I know it.”

“Did you?” said Mr. Boomschmidt mildly. “Well, my goodness, maybe you’re right. But let me tell you, it isn’t so easy to be a fool nowadays, what with all this education they give you. Not that I ever …” His voice trailed off, and evidently he wasn’t much interested in what he was saying. He looked helplessly at Leo, but the lion, after a glance at Mademoiselle Rose, shook his head, as much as to say: “Leave me out of this, chief.”

“I’d like to propose an agreement, an understanding—that is, a bargain with you, Boomschmidt,” said Mr. Condiment.

“A bargain? Gracious, there are always two sides to a bargain, aren’t there, and you haven’t got any side now.” Mr. Boomschmidt looked puzzled. “Maybe when you get out of jail, in eight or ten years, we might discuss it, but not now.”

Mr. Condiment shivered at mention of jail, but he didn’t give up. “Let me ask you a question,” he said. “Are you happy?”

“Happy?” said Mr. Boomschmidt. “Of course I’m happy. Leo, don’t you think—” He stopped abruptly. “Never mind, Leo,” he said. “Just go over back of Hannibal, will you, so I can’t see you?”

Leo winked at Freddy and went.

“Well then, you’re happy,” Mr. Condiment continued. “But you could be happier, couldn’t you?”

“Why, I suppose so,” said Mr. Boomschmidt. “Goodness, you can always be more of anything. At least I think you can. Tired? Yes, you can be tireder. Sleepy, sunburned, hungry—yes, I can’t think of anything you can’t be more of. No, my goodness, wait a minute. How about asleep? You can’t be asleeper. And—”

“Quite so,” said Mr. Condiment. “Well then, suppose I tell you something that would make you immensely, tremendously—that is to say, a great deal happier. In exchange for that would you be willing to let me go?”

The animals all began to laugh, but Mr. Boomschmidt held up his hand. “Quiet! Why, Mr. Condiment, nothing you have ever said or done up to now has ever made me any happier,” he said, “so I kind of doubt—”

Mr. Condiment interrupted him. “Please! I am not proposing that you give me back the confession that I wrote out. You can keep that, so that if I ever give you any trouble in the future you can have me arrested. All I ask is that you do not have me arrested now. In case you agree that I have made you happier by what I tell you.”

“Oh, I don’t have to listen to all this foolishness!” Mademoiselle Rose exclaimed. She gave Rajah, who was standing behind her, a shove that nearly knocked him over, and ran from the tent.

“Oh dear,” Mr. Boomschmidt said. “Another dilemma!”

“If you ask me, chief,” said Leo, who had come closer now that Rose has left, “it isn’t any dilemma, it’s just a plain darned mess. Hadn’t I better go get the sheriff?”

Mr. Boomschmidt appealed to Freddy. “What do you think about this business? Shall I make a deal with him?”

Freddy wished that Mrs. Wiggins was there. He knew that here was something that needed common sense, and not bright ideas. If he had any common sense, he wondered, what would he do? He thought a minute, and then he said: “Well, I don’t see how it can do any harm. If you decide that it does make you happier, you can let him go. You can always put him in jail if he gives you any more trouble. And in a way I’d be sorry to see him locked up in that jail for a long time. Because the sheriff runs an awful nice jail. The prisoners are all happy and contented—goodness, they have ice cream for dessert every night. And I don’t think they’d like Mr. Condiment much. He just wouldn’t fit in with all those nice burglars, and there’d be trouble right away.”

Mr. Boomschmidt picked up his hat and put it on his head. “All right,” he said. “I agree, Condiment. What can you tell me?”

“Mademoiselle Rose wants to marry you,” Mr. Condiment said.

“What?” Mr. Boomschmidt exclaimed. “You’re crazy, Condiment.”

The other shook his head. “No, I’m not. She always told me she was in love with somebody else. I thought it was just an excuse, until today.” Now I know it wasn’t.”

“Foolishness!” Mr. Boomschmidt exclaimed. “Why, I’m just a little fat circus man in a fancy vest and Rose is—she is—”

“Why don’t you go ask her?” Mr. Condiment said.

Mr. Boomschmidt stared at him for a minute, then he turned and ran out of the tent. His hat fell off, but he didn’t stop for it.

Nobody said anything. The animals all stood around in a circle looking at Mr. Boomschmidt’s hat. Finally Hannibal said: “You think she wants to marry him?”

“What makes you think he wants to marry her?” Leslie asked. “Oh, she’s pretty and she’s nice, but after all, she’s only a girl.”

The animals didn’t pay much attention to Leslie, for alligators are seldom very experienced in affairs of the heart. They are not at all emotional.

“Well, in the meantime, let’s lock this guy up,” said Leo. So they took Mr. Condiment and locked him up in an empty hyena cage. And for a long time they all stood around in front of the cage and made remarks about him. But Freddy remembered the time Mr. Condiment had slapped his face. “I suppose I ought to give him those slaps back, now I’ve got the chance,” he thought. “But I just can’t do it. I know something I can do, though.” So he went down to the monkeys’ cage and borrowed a big stack of comics. Monkeys are great readers of comics. And he pushed them through the bars of the cage. “Here,” he said to Mr. Condiment; “Here’s something for you to read.” And Mr. Condiment took one look at them and groaned and turned away and buried his face in his hands.

But pretty soon somebody on the edge of the crowd said: “Here they come!” And they saw Rose and Mr. Boomschmidt coming towards them, arm in arm, and beside them, Madame Delphine and Mr. Boomschmidt’s mother. Old Mrs. Boomschmidt was sobbing right out loud, so they knew everything was all right, for she always cried when she was happy. The animals started cheering, but Freddy took one look at Mr. Boomschmidt’s face, which was smiling so hard that his eyes had almost disappeared, and then he went and opened the door of the hyena cage. “Beat it!” he said. And Mr. Condiment got out and walked away without a word. He never turned his head, and he walked out of the big tent and out of the fair grounds, and for all anybody knows, he walked right off the map, for nobody ever saw him again.

So the next day was the wedding, and all Centerboro was there, as well as all the animals from the circus and from the Bean farm. Mr. Bean, in a long-tailed coat which he hadn’t had on since his own wedding, gave the bride away, and Mrs. Wiggins, Mrs. Wurzburger and Mrs. Wogus were the matrons of honor, with big bouquets. And after the ceremony there was a grand party. Music was provided by Freddy who sang several songs of his own composition, accompanying himself on his guitar, and by Mr. Beller and Mr. Rohr, who sang some duets, just slightly off key, like most duets. Later there was dancing.

Mr. Boomschmidt wandered through the crowd beside Rose, wearing a smile so wide that nobody could understand anything he said. Rose hugged Freddy, and she hugged Rajah and Harrison and she even hugged Willy, who cried a little because hardly anybody ever wants to hug a snake. She didn’t hug Hannibal, because nobody can hug an elephant successfully, but she patted his shoulder. And she kissed Mrs. Wiggins and Mrs. Wurzburger and Mrs. Wogus on their big broad noses. But when she came to Leo she gave him a special hug. “Oh, Leo,” she said. “I’m so ashamed of the horrid things I said to you. Will you forgive me?”

“Why, dye my hair pea green, Rose,” he said. “I knew you didn’t mean anything. Besides you’ve done me a big favor.” And when she asked him how, he said: “By marrying the chief. Because now when he wants to mix somebody up by asking them questions, instead of asking them to unmanageable animals like me he’ll ask you.”

“Asking unmanageable animals unanswerable questions, eh?” said Mr. Boomschmidt. “That’s what you think I like to do, is it, Leo? Goodness gracious, now I’ll have somebody that can really answer the questions, which is more than you’ve ever done. Eh, Leo, isn’t that so? I mean—isn’t that so, Rose?”

“I’m not going to answer that one,” Rose said.

Mr. Boomschmidt started to say something, and Leo knew by the expression on his face that the chief was going to try to mix him up. But he remembered the Robin Hood talk and decided it would be a good time to try it. “Why, how now, master,” he said quickly, “dost thou truly think so ill of my wisdom that thou seekest to rid thyself of my services? Nay, full well thou knowest that I have ever given thee free and fair answers to all thy questionings, and no lack of ripe wisdom thereto. But an thou wilt cast me off, then a murrain seize thee, say I. And indeed I do pity that fair lass there beside thee. Though I warrant she’ll e’en answer thy questions in better sort than ever I did. Belike with a sound buffet on thy ear. But thou—”

Mr. Boomschmidt stared at Leo, and his eyes got rounder and rounder, and he pushed his hat back on his head, and grabbed Rose by the arm. “Oh, my gracious! Do you hear that, Rose? Oh, my goodness gracious me! What a line of talk! No indeed, Leo, you’re going to be right beside me next time I get in an argument with anybody, but anybody! Oh oh, what a pity old Condiment has gone! What we couldn’t have done to mix him up! Here, wait a minute, here comes Freddy. We’ll try it on him.”

But it didn’t work so well with Freddy for he could talk Robin Hood talk too. The result was that for the first time since Leo had known him, Mr. Boomschmidt himself got mixed up, and it was lucky for him that at that minute old Mrs. Peppercorn came up, and Rose had to thank her for the hand-painted umbrella stand she had given them as a wedding present.

Everybody had a wonderful time, and ate a lot too much, but perhaps old Mrs. Boomschmidt had the best time of anybody, for she was so happy that she cried steadily for twenty-four hours. And Uncle Ben, who had taken a great fancy to her, sat beside her and wiped away her tears with a series of large clean pocket handkerchiefs.

Late that night, after the party was over, Freddy flew back home. He was too excited and too happy to sleep, so he lit his lamp, and sat down at his desk and started to write the book which later gained him so much fame. This is what he wrote:

THE SKY IS THE LIMIT.

A Book on Flying for Animals.

The first paragraph, as you probably know, begins:

“No longer is it only birds and men who have the freedom of the great and glorious open spaces of the sky. You too, animals—you pigs and horses and cows and dogs—you too can leave the earth behind, can climb through the clouds and hop the mountain tops, and coast down the sunbeams. Listen …”