Freddy and the Flying Saucer Plans (18 page)

After a few minutes Penobsky got up. The two men examined the cap pistol, shaking their heads incredulously. Smirnoff handed his gun to Penobsky and took the pistol. He pointed it at Bill, who had wandered off toward the water, and pulled the trigger.

Bill was quite willing to oblige. He felt that he could put on a better show than Jinx had. He reared up on his hind legs, turned two cartwheels, and then tried a back somersault. It was perhaps fortunate that he slipped, for the spies would certainly be suspicious if he had succeeded with such complicated acrobatics. He fell and bumped his head on a rock. But he had the sense to lie still.

The men walked over and inspected him; then they looked at the pistol again, and shook their heads over it. But evidently they were now convinced that it was all that Freddy claimed for it. They went back to Freddy, talked for a time, then Smirnoff pocketed the cap pistol, heaved the pig up on his shoulder, and started up the path with him.

At the house, Penobsky opened the cellar door, and Smirnoff carried Freddy down and dumped him on the concrete floor. Then he went back and got Bill and Jinx. Evidently they did not realize that the other animals could talk, and hoped to conceal from Uncle Ben that their three companions had been shot.

When the men had gone, Freddy said in a whisper: “You all right, Bill? You took a pretty hard fall.”

“My left horn aches,” said the goat. “It was a neat performance though, wasn't it?”

“Neat like falling downstairs,” said Freddy.

“Pity you didn't break your neck,” said Jinx. “That would have made it perfect.”

“
Pity you didn't break your neck,” said Jinx.

“Aw, you're just jealous,” said Bill. “Look, Freddy, what do we do next? Neither door is locked, the one to the outside nor the one to the kitchen. Could we get the plans?”

“I think so,” said Freddy. “You see that electric meter over there on the wall, and the big switch by it? If we wait till night, and pull that switch, I bet it will cut off all the lights, both outside and inside the house. Then if you two get up into the house and make a racket and draw the men off from Penobsky's room, I can grab the plans and run.”

“Where to?” Jinx asked.

“That's a good question. Not to the caravan. Uncle Ben will have to hitch up Hank and drive off. He'd better saddle Cy and leave him down at the end of the path. He can't saddle Bill; you'll have to ride him bareback, Jinx, till we catch up with the caravan. Uncle Ben can pull off the road and wait for us in the Big Woods.”

A small hoarse voice said: “Uncle Ben has come back and he's pulling out. I say he's pulling out. He thinks they've spotted who he is.”

“Hello, Samuel,” said Freddy. “Where are the mice?”

“He's taken them along, and the rabbits and the skunks. He got those ants to get back in the carton, too, and took them. He said you wanted them.”

“That's right,” Freddy said. He told the mole what they planned to do, and then he said: “You'd better go back and tell Uncle Ben to saddle Cy and leave him, and then get aboard the caravan yourself. You don't want to be left behind.”

So Samuel went back through the hole and down the tunnel, and the three victims of the Benjamin Bean Practical Disintegrator settled down to wait for it to get dark.

It was a long wait. They didn't dare talk much, and only Jinx, who moved silently, could do much exploring. But at last they heard a clock upstairs strike eleven. Two of the men, they knew, would be in bed and probably asleep, the other two would be on guard at the kitchen and parlor windows. Freddy got up. “All right, boys,” he said. “Now you know what we have to do.”

They crept up the stairs. The cellar door fortunately didn't open directly into the kitchen, but into a sort of vestibule between kitchen and dining-room. Very cautiously Freddy opened it a crack, and Jinx crept through. There were no lights on inside the house, but there was a good deal of illumination that came through the windows from the floodlights outside. The cat came back in a minute or two to report that Penobsky was on watch at the parlor window and Franz at the kitchen window. Penobsky's bedroom then was empty, and the tube of plans was on the table.

“O.K.,” said Freddy. “Let's go.” He went through the dining-room to the front hall, and tiptoed up the stairs. As he reached the top, all the lights suddenly went off. Bill had pulled the switch. At the same moment there was a series of appalling crashes from the dining-room. Jinx was creating a diversion.

Cats seldom break dishes. They pride themselves on being able to leap from the floor to a mantelpiece crowded with bric-a-brac and thread their way from one end to the other without even brushing against the most fragile and delicately balanced vase. It is a dangerous sport—for Jinx, a broken knickknack meant a licking and no cream for a week. Now, however, he was trying to break everything he could, and he found that it was lots more fun than being careful. He knocked a big bowl off the dining-room table, then jumped to the mantel where he pushed off two pitchers and some glass candlesticks and a big clock, which made a most satisfying smash when it hit the marble hearth. He heard thumps and footsteps upstairs, but before they came down he had time to leap to the sideboard and sweep off a whole row of fancy plates, topping off with a big glass punch bowl. A flashlight flickered in the hall now, and he jumped down and stood close beside the hall door. As two men came pounding into the room, he slipped out without being seen and went back down cellar.

Freddy had ducked into Penobsky's room when Smirnoff and Ilya came out of their rooms and hurried downstairs. The tube was on the table. He grabbed it, but at the head of the stairs he hesitated. Flashlights were busy in the lower hall, and he heard someone going down the cellar stairs to see what had happened to the lights. He turned back into the room and tried first one window and then the other. But he couldn't raise either one. He sneaked across the hall into one of the back rooms. As he struggled with the window the floodlights outside suddenly went on. He saw Bill and Jinx racing down the path from the back door to the gate. The window went up. He climbed up on the sill with the tube in his mouth; it was his only chance; the drop, he was sure, wouldn't hurt him much.

And then a voice behind him said: “Hold it!” and the light in the room went on. Ilya stood there, a huge man in red-and-white-striped pajamas, covering Freddy with a gun.

The gun looked at Freddy with its big black eye, and Freddy looked back at it for a moment in silence. Then he climbed down from the window sill and handed the tube to the spy.

CHAPTER

17

Half an hour later Freddy was back in the cellar, but this time he was tied up tightly with clothesline. They hadn't treated him too badly. They put him on an old mattress, and Penobsky assured him that they wouldn't shoot him. “There'd be no point in it,” he said. “All we want is to get the saucer plans away from here without trouble. After that we will have no further interest in you. We'll let you go. We'll even give you back your pistol.”

“Ah, those disindegrinder?” said Smirnoff. “Was smart idea. How you train those animals they should play dead like that, eh?” He whacked Freddy good-naturedly on the shoulder.

Freddy was not deceived by their apparent friendliness, however. He knew that either of the spies would shoot him without thinking about it twice if it would be the slightest help to them. If they shot him now he would be much more bother to them than if they kept him prisoner and let him go later. There wasn't a thing he could do.

As soon as they had gone upstairs he tried to work the ropes loose. But though he twisted and strained at them, the knots held. In adventure stories that he had read, the hero, when he was tied up, always found something sharp, a broken bottle or a bit of tin, that he could rub the ropes on until they frayed and parted. But though he rolled all over the cellar, Freddy couldn't find a thing. At last, tired out, he rolled back on to the mattress and fell into an uneasy sleep.

When he woke again the floodlights were still on outside, but far away he heard a rooster crow, so he knew that it must be nearly morning. The rooster crowed again, and he thought that back in the Bean farmyard Charles would just be coming sleepily out of the henhouse to fly up on the fence and start the day. He was pretty uncomfortable. You try sleeping all night with your hands tied behind you and you will see why. To pass the time he thought he'd try to make up a poem.

“
O calm indeed is the prisoner pig,

Remarkably calm is he
,

He's as merry and gay as the well-known grig—

(Whatever a grig may be.
)

On the cold stone floor of his dungeon cell
,

He does not sob and he does not yell;

To see him you'd think he was feeling swell,

As he smiles so gallantly.

“
But pigs are brave, and pigs are bold,

With nerves as strong as steel
.

When wounded in battle, so I'm told,

They never squeak or squeal
.

They know no fear and they know no dread;

And where lions and tigers fear to tread

They rush right in. When they growl, it's said,

Even elephants reel.
”

Freddy repeated this aloud to himself, nodding his head with satisfaction. And a small voice said: “You've ‘been told,' eh? And you've ‘heard it said.' That's hearsay, Freddy; that's not evidence.”

Another voice said: “And I'll bet that where you heard it said, was right inside your foolish head.”

“Give us the old growl, Freddy,” said a third voice.

“Hey, mice,” said Freddy, rolling over so that he could look toward the door, “how did you get back here? I thought you went with Uncle Ben in the caravan.”

“Sure,” said Eeny. “We were all waiting just at the edge of the Big Woods. We heard Cy coming, and we thought you'd be riding him. But you weren't, and he told us that they'd caught you. So we came back. Come on, boys, get at those ropes.”

The mice swarmed over him, gnawing at the clothesline. Samuel was with them, but he did little work. He sat on Freddy's chest, lecturing him on the folly of his arrangements for getting the plans. Freddy should have done this and he should have done that. “You ought to have sneaked up and got the plans and taken them down cellar before you pulled that switch,” he said. “You ought not to have turned Jinx loose in the dining-room till you were ready to go out the cellar door. You ought to—”

“Oh, shut up, Samuel,” Cousin Augustus interrupted. “You're so smart, why didn't you go up and get the plans yourself?”

“Well, I'd have done a better job. I say I'd have done a better job. We wouldn't have had to risk all our lives coming back here again.”

“Golly,” said Eek, “these ropes sure are dry. Why don't you go up in the kitchen, Samuel, and see if you can't find some bacon fat to rub on 'em. Make 'em taste better.”

“I wouldn't do this for anybody but you, Freddy,” said Quik. “Sets my teeth on edge.”

Pretty soon the ropes parted and Freddy sat up and shook himself. “Well, I'm certainly grateful to you boys for coming back,” he said. “I don't think these people were going to shoot me—that would be foolish, because once the plans are taken away from here and on their way to some foreign country, I can't do them any harm, and they'll just disappear.”

“Yeah,” said Eeny, “and maybe they wouldn't even bother to turn you loose. You could have stayed here till you dried up and blew away.”

“That's true,” said Freddy. “But besides that, you may have done a big service to your country by coming back. Now maybe we can get the plans back for Uncle Ben.”

“You mean you're going to try the same stunt again tonight?” Eek asked.