The Black Dog Mystery (18 page)

By the time he could bear it no longer, it was quite dark. Desperately, he ran over to Tommy’s house. Tommy was just getting ready to go to bed and, hopping downstairs in his bare feet, came to the door in his pajamas.

“Say, have you seen Champ?” cried Djuna anxiously. “He’s been gone ever since this morning, and I can’t find him anywhere!”

“Gee whizz!” exclaimed Tommy. “That’s awful! Sure, I saw him, but that was an awful long time ago. It was when we were coming back from Clinton, and I yelled at him when we went by, but he didn’t pay any attention. He was going over towards Les’ Sedd’s house—he was cutting cross-lots, across the pasture—you know where I mean?”

“Oh, thanks, Tommy!” exclaimed Djuna. He rushed down the steps.

“Hey, where you going?” Tommy called after him.

“I’m going to get him, of course,” Djuna shouted back over his shoulder as he ran.

“But you
can’t
go now!” cried Tommy. “It’s too dark!”

But Djuna kept on running, without bothering to answer. No matter how much he disliked to, he would have to ask Mr. Boots to help him, now! Mr. Boots
couldn’t
refuse to help him find Champ! He would go straight to Mr. Boots and ask him, and surely he would help!

There were no lights in Mr. Pindler’s store as he passed it, and no light downstairs in Mr. Boots’s shop. But he ran on up to it and hammered on the door. There was no answer. He fumbled at the latch, found the door was not locked, and opened it softly. The shop was dark, but as he went in he heard someone come creaking across the attic floor. He groped his way to the foot of the attic stairs.

“Mr. Boots!” he whispered up the stairway. “Are you in bed?”

The cautious footstep creaked overhead again, and an anxious voice answered from the top of the stairs.

“Who’s there?” the voice whispered hoarsely. “Is that you, Uncle George?” And Djuna no longer wondered who it was that had been hiding in the house for so long. It wasn’t any of the robbers, that was plain. It was Mr. Boots’s nephew, the young man who had been put in prison for something that others had done!

“It’s Djuna,” he answered. “Is your uncle home? I’ve got to see him!”

“He ain’t home,” the voice answered, in the same guarded whisper. “What do yuh want?”

Djuna’s heart sank. How would he ever dare to go to Champ’s rescue unless Mr. Boots were there to help him?

“He isn’t home?” he said wildly. “Where is he? My dog’s lost! I want Mr. Boots to help me find him!”

“I don’t know
where
he is,” said Eddie Stricker, miserably. “He went away somewheres this afternoon. I’m skeered. Mebbe somethin’s happened to him. I don’t know
where
he is! I’m skeered!”

“But I’ve
got
to go and find my dog!” cried Djuna. “Please, will you come with me?”

“I’m skeered!” Eddie repeated. “I don’t dast to go! My uncle says I ain’t t’ go out o’ this house, nohow, when he ain’t here!”

Djuna was nearly crying, but he fought back the tears. “Well, then, I’ve got to go alone!” he said desperately. “Will you please tell him I went over to Mr. Sedd’s, to get my dog? I’ve got to go right away!”

Djuna darted out of the shop and ran home through the darkness. He did not dare tell Miss Annie what he planned to do, for he was sure she would never let him go, if he told her. Hurrying up to his room, he lit his lamp and sat down at the desk where he kept his schoolbooks and pencils and paper. He wrote a letter to Miss Annie and then began an account of everything he had thought out about the way the bank robbery had been planned. It took him a long time. He wrote on and on, as fast as he could, but before he had finished, he heard Miss Annie coming upstairs on her way to bed. She stopped outside his closed door.

“Goodnight, Djuna!” she called. “Don’t stay up too late!”

“Goodnight, Miss Annie!” Djuna answered. He tried his best to make his voice sound cheerful.

She went on to her own room. When Djuna had finished writing, he put out his lamp and lay down on his bed.

Everything in the house was still.

D
JUNA LAY
in bed in the dark and waited. Everything was dark outside. There wasn’t a sound in the house. He waited a long while, and at last he heard Miss Annie snoring. He got quietly out of bed, and didn’t light the lamp, but tiptoed to the door of his room and listened. The coast was clear.

Djuna dressed in the dark, as fast as he could. Carrying his shoes in one hand, he crept downstairs without making a single sound. He tiptoed across the room downstairs until he came to the front door. Then he sat down on the floor and put on his shoes and tied the shoe-laces tight. He stood up and felt around the door until he found the key in the lock, and then he turned the key so carefully that it didn’t make a sound. He pushed the door open very slowly, inch by inch, and went out very quietly, and closed the door behind him, shutting it so gently that the door itself might have thought it had only been dreaming.

It was almost pitch dark, outside. Everybody in Edenboro had gone to bed, and there wasn’t a light in any house. Fireflies twinkled in the dark, and Djuna could hear the crickets chirping in the grass. Everything else was silent. Djuna thought to himself, “If Champ were there in his little house, he would wake up and bark at me and wake up Miss Annie.” But that was just the trouble: Champ was
not
there, and perhaps he would never be there again! But at that thought, Djuna shook his head angrily and drove away his own fears and said fiercely, “Oh, but I
will
find him!” What, turn back now? Oh, never!

As he came out upon the road, feeling his way, his eyes were beginning to get used to the blackness of the night, and now he looked upward and saw that the sky was clear overhead and that the stars were burning like great silver lamps. The houses along the road, which were white houses in the daytime, were now only gray shapes that could hardly be seen.

He passed one house after another, all of them dark and silent. As he passed Tommy’s house, he knew that there, too, Tommy was asleep. He alone was daring the night!

After a while he left the trees and the village behind and came to the farm lands that stretched away from each side of the road; and now, because there were no trees here to shut out the starlight, it seemed much lighter and he could see the road dimly. As he walked along, he heard something rustle in the grass beside the road, and at first he stopped still and felt like turning around and running. But then he said to himself, “Oh, it’s only some little thing like a squirrel or a rabbit, and it isn’t anything to be afraid of.” He walked on, and for a long time the only sound he heard was the scuffle of his own shoes in the gravel of the road.

The whole world was darkness, but in the whole dark world there was nothing that mattered to the boy who was hunting for his dog—his little dog, who was always so sure that Djuna would come and get him, no matter where he might be. “How
can
I be afraid,” said Djuna to himself, “when Champ is waiting for me to come?”

And so he marched on. The distance seemed long, before he reached the woods around Lost Pond.

The woods stood up in front of him like a black wall. They had never seemed mysterious in the daytime. But now, who could guess what they concealed? What might not be hidden among those black trees? He had never before gone into the woods alone at night.

It was necessary first to find the path that led into the woods. It was too dark to see just where it began, although Djuna remembered that there were tall bushes on each side. At last he came to the opening between the bushes, and started up the path. It was easy enough to keep on the path, because as soon as he went too far to one side or another, he would bump into a bush, and the bush would tell him to get back on the path.

A strange mellow hooting sound came suddenly from the dark branches of a tall tree near the path, and Djuna’s heart jumped. Then he laughed, knowing that it was only a tiny screech-owl. He went on along the path, faster now and sure of his way. This was the path that would lead around the corner of the lake and bring him to Les’ Sedd’s shack. He was sure he would find Champ there. He didn’t believe that Les’ Sedd would be cruel enough to hurt Champ any, but he was sure that Les’ Sedd had caught him and intended to take Champ to Riverton and try to sell him there. Les’ Sedd would do anything for money. Djuna only hoped that Les’ hadn’t tied Champ up inside his house. If he had tied him outdoors, Djuna thought, he could creep up and untie the rope, without being discovered. He hoped that Champ wouldn’t bark too loudly. But, most of all, he hoped that Les’ hadn’t already taken him away.

Inch by inch, Djuna crept nearer to the shack on his hands and knees, feeling of the ground ahead of him as he crawled, to make sure that he would not kneel on any twig that would snap. He scarcely breathed.

At last he reached the wall of the shack. Slowly, cautiously, he rose to his feet. Then, crouching at the corner of the window, he peered through the narrow slit between the bottom of the window-shade and the sill.

There were four men in the room.

Djuna could see all of them plainly.

Les’ Sedd was sitting on the edge of the cot which was pushed against the opposite wall. His face was chalky pale. His staring, frightened eyes were fixed on the man who was sitting in the chair nearest the cot.

That was Mr. Morrison. Morrison sat with his chair tipped back against the wall. There was a sneering smile on his face. A heavy, clumsy guitar that seemed strangely familiar to Djuna’s eyes, rested across his knees.

The other two men were sitting at the rickety wooden table in the center of the room. Djuna recognized one of them—the one sitting at the farther side of the table at once. It was the man with the scarred thumb—the man who had called him over to the robbers’ car to ask him the road to Canada.

Djuna had never seen the face of the other man before. But he did not need to, to guess who it was. He could see the man’s legs, from knee to ankle. He was wearing a pair of brown checked trousers. And from the bottom of one trouser-leg a piece was torn! He was the robber who had shot at Champ, when Champ tore at his trousers.

Torn-Pants was leaning forward in his chair and glaring at Morrison.

“If you’d left it to
me
,” he was saying angrily, “I’d have chased that little punk and beat his block off. Him and that dog of his! Killin’s too good for ’em!”

Djuna’s heart came into his throat. It was
he
they were talking about! With a supreme effort, he forced himself to stay where he was. Run? Never! Not till he had found out their plans!

“I quite agree with you,” said Mr. Morrison softly. “He is the most troublesome little wretch I’ve ever had the pleasure of encountering. Nothing would please me more than to know he was safely out of the way. But it would have been worse than folly to have adopted the method you suggest, my dear Joseph. If his body should be found, before we depart from here, with marks of violence upon it, we should be asked some most embarrassing questions. I still think the little stratagem I tried to put into effect would have had much the safer results. We certainly could not have been blamed for an
accidental
drowning! And, in all probability, the body would not have been found for days, for they would have had to dredge the whole pond. Mr. Sedd and I might even have helped them hunt!”

He chuckled at the thought, and then went on. “Unfortunately,” he continued, “I was so taken by surprise by the boy’s analysis of the situation that I acted altogether too precipitately. He was hitting too dangerously near to the truth. I felt that I must act quickly. I tried the first expedient that occurred to me. How was I to guess that the boy can make a champion swimmer look like an amateur? I confess it, to my shame, that if he had only guessed what I was trying to do, I would probably not be here at this moment! The best I could do was to put on a passably fair imitation of a man who couldn’t swim. And, as luck would have it, when I came back to the spot with the intention of making things just a little more secure, that pestiferous chum of his had put in an appearance, and I felt that one or the other of them would be just slippery enough to escape. But enough of this—there’s not the slightest use of crying over spilt milk! Forget the boy. What we’re here for is to make our arrangements for tomorrow. Our last night in the sticks, gentlemen! Tomorrow we go to town!”

“So what?” Torn-Pants snarled. “We give it another ride tomorrow. Maybe we don’t get nothin’. Maybe it’s a flop, like it was before. Me and Al, here, and Willie, we take all the chances. What do you do? You don’t take no chances. You’re here, sittin’ pretty. You think we’re a bunch of suckers?”

Mr. Morrison smiled. “My dear Joe,” he drawled, “how often do I have to tell you that I’m going to be right with you tomorrow morning? Will it be necessary for me to drill a hole in that ivory skull of yours before you can get the idea into it? No, let me tell you once again that I shall not be here, sitting pretty, as you call it. No, on the contrary, I have no intention of letting you three gentlemen get out of my sight tomorrow, not for one moment. I shall not make that mistake a second time, let me assure you. Far be it from me to doubt your good faith for an instant, Joseph! And yet something tells me that if I am to make sure that I get my rightful share of what the bank has to offer, I must be right at your elbows from first to last. I need hardly remind you that I shall be carrying this plaything with me.”

He smiled cheerfully and tapped the big guitar meaningly.

“Aw, can the wisecracks, boss!” said Scar-Thumb hoarsely. “Don’t pay no attention to this dope. All we want to know, is everything all set?” Mr. Morrison nodded. “The cash is there, Al,” he said confidently. “Fifty thousand dollars. Fifty grand, as our friend Joseph would prefer to call it.”

“Who says so?” growled the man called Joe. “Dat’s what you says de udda time. And look what it gets us—chicken-feed!”

“How often do we have to go into that, my friend?” asked Mr. Morrison sharply. “Whose fault was it? I told you to find out at the Army camp, or at least to find out in Riverton, if the workmen had got their checks. All you had to do was to keep your ears open. But, no, you couldn’t even do that much!”