Chapter 15

It was a clear moonless night, and they trudged along in silence—at least the three animals trudged; Willy, having no feet to trudge with, slithered. Willy was rather grumpy. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, in order to keep slim enough so he wouldn’t get stuck in the stovepipe. Down the road they picked up Phil, who after a short conference flew on ahead to reconnoiter. Every house in Yare’s Corners was dark except the doctor’s, where a light burned in the office window; and Willy said: “I’m glad he’s home. I hope he knowth how to treat gunthot woundth.” Like all snakes, Willy had a tendency to lisp when excited.

“There aren’t going to be any gunshot wounds,” said Freddy firmly, and Jinx said: “Don’t you worry, snake. We’ll keep him occupied if he wakes up before you get in.”

At Mr. Bleech’s gate Phil was waiting, and reported everything quiet, and Mr. Bleech asleep and snoring in the upper front bedroom with all the doors locked and the windows nailed shut. The kitchen was a sort of lean-to affair attached to the back of the house, and the roof was low. Leo wasn’t much of a climber, but by standing on his hind legs he got his forepaws over the edge, and then he dug his long claws in, and with Freddy and Willy boosting, got up on the roof without making too much noise. Then Willy followed, and Freddy and Jinx went around and crept up on the porch, to be ready to divert Mr. Bleech’s attention from any suspicious sounds in the kitchen.

On the roof, Leo sat down and taking the stovepipe between his forepaws, lifted it quietly out. Now there was just a hole, which smelt of ashes and soot, but luckily no heat was coming up. Evidently Mr. Bleech had not yet repaired the damage that Jerry had done to his stove.

On the roof, Leo lifted the stovepipe out.

The two amateur burglars whispered together for a minute. Then Leo hooked his claws firmly into the shingles and braced himself, and Willy took two turns with his tail around the lion’s body. “If I get stuck I’ll give you two squeezes,” he said, “and you pull me up.” Leo nodded, and the snake started down the pipe.

Everything would have gone all right if Willy hadn’t sneezed. But I guess you would have sneezed too if you had gone head first down a stovepipe into a firebox full of cold ashes. The first breath Willy took, the ashes went up his nose. It is really to his credit that he only sneezed once. But it was a good strong sneeze, even for a snake, and it blew one of the stove lids right off and sent it clattering to the floor.

Out on the porch Freddy and Jinx heard the racket. Mr. Bleech’s gentle snoring stopped, there was a creak of bedsprings, and at once Freddy began pounding on the door.

As Freddy had hoped, the sound of the falling stove lid went right out of Mr. Bleech’s mind when he heard the furious knocking. Convinced that whatever was wrong was at the front of the house, he grabbed his gun and started down the front stairs into the hall. “Shut up out there!” he shouted through the door. “Stop that racket!”

Freddy kept on pounding for a minute, to give Willy time to get out of the stove. Then he disguised his voice to a sort of whine and said: “Oh, excuse me, kind sir, but I am a little boy, and I am lost, and I want to find Yare’s Corners. Would you please tell me which way to go?”

Now almost anybody would want to help a little boy who was lost in the middle of the night, but Mr. Bleech was a pretty mean man. Anyway, nobody in his senses would expect a kind action from a man who would steal from a rhinoceros. Mr. Bleech didn’t open the door even a crack. “No, I won’t!” he shouted. “And you get away from this house or I’ll let you have a charge of birdshot. Now git!”

So Freddy pretended to burst into tears. He went down the front steps, and down the front walk, and as he went he cried and he howled and he bellowed so that you could have heard him a mile. I don’t suppose any real boy could have made so much noise crying unless he was a giant or a concert singer. For a pig has piercing notes in his voice that very few boys can duplicate. But of course it was all to cover up any sounds that Willy might be making in the kitchen.

Mr. Bleech peered out through the keyhole, for the performance really astonished him, but all he could see in the darkness was a small figure going down the path and out the gate. And when the bellowing had died away, he went back upstairs and got into bed again. And Freddy crept back and joined Jinx on the porch, where a few minutes later they were joined by Leo.

Nothing happened for a little while. And then there were faint grating sounds in the front door lock, and very slowly the front door opened and two or three feet of Willy came out. “Psst, Freddy!” he hissed. And when the pig had crept over to him, he whispered: “The money isn’t under his pillow. I just looked. What do we do now?”

So Freddy gave the snake his instructions, and then Willy made a U turn and went back into the house.

There was some more quiet for a few minutes, and then a sudden yell, and thumpings, from upstairs, and the animals rushed in and up into Mr. Bleech’s bedroom. Mr. Bleech was in bed, and it didn’t look as if he was going to get out of it again in a hurry either, for the upper half of Willy was sitting on Mr. Bleech’s chest, and the lower half of him was wrapped three times around both Mr. Bleech and the bed.

“Hi, Freddy,” said the snake. “And what now?”

Freddy snapped on the electric light, and as he did so Mr. Bleech gave an exclamation of dismay. “You! Might have known it! Darned animals! You just wait! You’ll be sorry for this to the last day of your lives.”

Willy brought his tail forward and gave Mr. Bleech a slap on the side of the head that made his teeth rattle and left a long streak of soot on his cheek. Snakes are pretty muscular, and Willy only hit him gently because he didn’t want to knock him unconscious.

“Take it easy, Willy,” said Leo.

Freddy saw the shotgun standing in the corner by the bed. He got it and sat down in a chair. “Tell us where you’ve hidden the money,” he said.

“I don’t know anything about your old money,” Mr. Bleech snarled.

“Give him a little squeeze, Willy,” said Leo. “Don’t squash him, just scrunch him a little.”

So Willy scrunched him a little.

One scrunch was enough. When Mr. Bleech got his breath back he told them that the money was under a loose floor board in the closet. It was half a minute’s work for Leo to claw up the board and bring the roll of bills out to Freddy.

“Seven dollars short,” said the pig, when he had counted it. “Well, we won’t grudge him that. I guess we’ve had seven dollars’ worth of fun tonight. Come on, Willy.”

Mr. Bleech didn’t get up to see them to the door. He just lay there in his bed saying a lot of things that I wouldn’t care to repeat, as they trooped out and down the stairs.

It was nearly one in the morning when they got back to Mr. Boomschmidt’s, and they all sneaked off quietly to bed. But before Freddy went into his tiger cage he gave Phil the rest of the cookies. “And you stay around here,” he said. “If everything works out right tomorrow morning, I’ll write for that recipe, and as soon as it comes I’ll get Mrs. Boomschmidt to bake you a double rule.”

“Brother,” said the delighted buzzard, “I ain’t going to let you out of my sight.” At least that was what Freddy thought he said, for Phil talked as usual with his mouth full, and it was hard to understand him.

Jinx and Freddy were up early next morning, and before breakfast Jinx saw Jerry and told him what had happened at Mr. Bleech’s. Jerry felt a lot better when he knew that the money had been recovered, but he said reproachfully that they might have taken him along.

“We had to be very quiet, Jerry,” said Jinx. “And—well, we were afraid maybe you’d get mad and bust up the house. If you’d have heard him yelling through the door at us, for instance—”

“I guess you’re right, Freddy,” Jerry said. “I get so awful mad, and then I have to do something. But my, I’m glad you got that money back!”

Then Freddy had a long talk with Madame Delphine, the result of which was that after breakfast, when they were sitting on the porch, Madame Delphine said: “I have a strange feeling that something very wonderful is going to happen today. What can it be?” she said, looking around distractedly. “Dear me, if I could only get a clue!”

“Maybe you could find out from the coffee grounds,” Freddy suggested.

“Of course!” she said. “Let me see your cup.” She looked at it and handed it back. “Nothing special there. Let’s see yours, Bill.”

She looked at several cups without finding anything significant, but when she came to Mr. Boomschmidt’s she gave a loud dramatic cry. “Ah! This is it! This must be. See here—the dollar sign as plain as the nose on your face! And below it … what is this?” She closed her eyes. “Let me think; let me think!” she muttered.

“Hush everybody,” said Mr. Boomschmidt, leaning forward excitedly in his chair. “My gracious, stop rocking, mother! Willy, quit wiggling.”

For several minutes Madame Delphine sat with closed eyes and her head cocked as if listening to distant voices. Then she began speaking, in a low thrilling voice which—Leo whispered to Freddy—used to cost the customers fifty cents extra when she was telling fortunes in her tent at the circus.

“I see,” she said, “a dim room, a big room, with a sloping ceiling. I think it is an attic. I see a tall man. He wears a grey uniform and a grey slouch hat, and he has a sword at his side. In his hand he carries something. It might be a packet of letters. He takes it into a corner of the room; he kneels; he tucks the packet down into the corner where the roof meets the floor. Now I see him rise. He dusts off his hands. He—” She stopped suddenly, opened her eyes, and said in her natural voice: “Dear me, what are you all staring at? Did I tell you anything?”

“Come on!” shouted Mr. Boomschmidt, jumping to his feet. “Up to the attic. Let’s see if we can find anything.”

Animals and people, they all, with the exception of Jerry and Mohammed, rushed for the attic stairs. Even old Mrs. Boomschmidt picked up her skirts and ran; and the ancient house shook and trembled as they galloped up the long steep flights.

There was nothing much in the attic but some big trunks of circus costumes, and they shoved these aside and made for the corners.

“This seems the most likely corner, boss,” said Leo, who had dropped back for a whispered word or two with Madame Delphine.

Mr. Boomschmidt knelt and fumbled around in the corner indicated, and sure enough, in a moment he rose with a shout of triumph, and in his hand a packet of twenty dollar bills. “We’ve found it!” he exclaimed. “Oh, glory me—look, boys and girls, here it is—Col. Yancey’s money! O my gracious!” And he seized his mother about the waist and waltzed her around until the dust that her flying skirts raised from the attic floor set them all to sneezing.