The Grub-And-Stakers House a Haunt (24 page)

Field with Osbert pushing the twin-filled pram, Ethel clutching the diaper bag in her teeth, Dittany toting her as yet untried divining rod, and Zilla carrying a grudge against Hiram.

Letting a deceased mule skinner make free with the sherry bottle had been a terrible mistake, Dittany could see that now. Hiram had sniffed up so many emanations that he couldn’t even glide straight. He kept reeling into first one, then another member of the party. Not that any of them felt anything more than a coolish, dampish whiff like the momentary opening of a refrigerator door, but all the same it was disconcerting. Furthermore, those variegated eyeballs, which they’d hoped to depend on for illumination, kept flickering off and on, changing color, and spinning around like pin wheels.

This was not, Dittany couldn’t help feeling, the most auspicious way to be embarking on her potential new career as a dowser. She wished they’d thought to bring a kerosene lantern. Charlie Henbit would almost certainly have brought along a kerosene lantern, assuming he ever went out dowsing after dark. Maybe she’d been silly to feel self-conscious about making her debut in the daytime.

What would it have mattered if she’d gathered an audience of snickering onlookers? At least she wouldn’t now be running the risk of falling into one or another of those gaping tiger pits with which Hunnikers’ Field was now pretty copiously pocked.

But here they were and the moment of truth was at hand. Osbert parked the baby carriage well away from any of the pits and made sure the safety brake was truly and duly applied. Ethel took up her Noble Dog stance beside the carriage with the diaper bag set squarely between her front paws, ready to be snatched up and put to use should an emergency occur, as it almost certainly would if that bedizened wishbone didn’t produce results quite soon. All was prepared; there was no longer any room for procrastination. Dittany took the two ends of her improvised divining rod in her hands and looked around.

“Where shall I start?”

“Let the bone tell you,” said Zilla.

“It doesn’t seem to want to.”

“Then just begin. Start walking. Hiram, for Pete’s sake can’t you tag along and give her some light without falling all over yourself?”

“XT “

Nope.

Hiram proved his point by disappearing into one of the deeper pits and beginning to sing “Buffalo Gals.” Dittany shrugged, looked up at the rather wan and puny moon that appeared to be all the help she was going to get, and stepped forward.

It wasn’t so bad once she got going. The air was cool and fresh, her eyes were accustomed to the darkness by now, the moon kindly refrained from ducking behind any of the wisps of cloud that were skittering overhead. After a few minutes, Dittany began to feel as if the bone was gently pulling her along in some occult way. She also began to sense a presence hereabout that she couldn’t account for, maybe even more than one. It was hard to sort out the emanations with Hiram emitting his raucous outcries from the bottom of the pit, Osbert sprinting back and forth between his wife and his babies at a little less than the speed of light to make sure none of them was in immediate need of succor, Ethel growling at Osbert to quit being so dithery, and Zilla gliding stealthily from one alder bush to another, guarding the periphery with her hatchet at the ready.

Dittany had not realized Zilla was bringing her hatchet. She must have parked it outside the door when she and Hiram dropped over to the Monks’ and picked it up when they left for the field. Well, why not? A hatchet was not an inappropriate weapon out here, it shouldn’t jar the vibrations too badly. The neophyte dowser strode on, trying to emulate the steady rhythm Pollicot James had set for himself, striving to keep the business end of the wishbone level in relation to the terrain, which was not easy as the turkey who’d originally owned the bone had been a curvaceous fowl and the bone had probably warped a little more in the long drying-out process.

Osbert’s mother’s uncle’s cufflinks kept making a gentle tinkling sound. They reminded Dittany of the description Osbert had passed on from Mrs. Orser of the late bank president’s melodious watch chain, and also of the way Tryphosa Melloe’s various accoutrements had clanked together when she’d beckoned imperiously to that poor, overworked waitress at the Cozy Corner Cafe.

Dittany wished she hadn’t thought of the demised bank president. She couldn’t help wondering whether those vague emanations she was feeling might be Mr. Cottie’s revenant spirit, out hunting for the finger that his cruel kidnappers had lopped off. She hoped not, she would much prefer to think he’d managed to find out where his wife had had the amputated digit interred, climbed in with it, and was by now resting in peace under the expensive tombstone that Mrs. Cottle had no doubt caused to be erected.

Her wrists were starting to ache from her efforts to control the bone, she paused in her stride to ease them for a moment. By rights, the cuff links’ jingle ought to have stopped as soon as she did. Nevertheless, Dittany could have sworn that she still heard tinkling, faint as the fairy chimes she’d been wont as a tot to imagine at the bottom of the garden.

No, this was no imagining, that was a different tinkle.

She could feel the fine hairs on the back of her neck beginning to prickle, she’d better not stand here mooning or she’d scare herself into a fit. She strode out with all the bravery she could muster, which wasn’t much. And the bone dipped!

“Osbert, come quick! It’s doing it!”

“It’s what?” Osbert came galloping across the field faster than a startled elk. “What happened?”

“It did it! It’s tugging, it won’t straighten up. Feel.”

“Hobbled horntoads, you’re right! I’ve got the shovel, just let me-could you scooch over just a-there, I’ve got the point into the ground. Now I think the bone will let you stand aside, darling. Hiram, could you levitate yourself out of that hole and shine your eyes this way? I think we may have found your gold.”

By this time, Hiram had sung himself free of his sulks and got his eyeballs under reasonable control, though the light they emitted was an unappealing mustard color with faint streaks of red. He rose from the hole with no more than a reasonable amount of cussing and complaining, and glided in a fairly straight line to the spot where Osbert had begun to dig.

“Ayup. I can feel the spring bubblin’ through where the soles o’ my feet would be if they was. This is the place, all right. Keep diggin’, bub.”

Was it more fairies at the bottom of the garden, or had Dittany really heard an intake of breath somewhere off among the tiger pits? “Osbert,” she whispered, “I think there’s somebody out here.”

“Yes dear. You, me, Zilla, the children, Hiram. And Ethel, of course. Ethel, what’s the matter? What are you growling about?”

For growling Ethel undoubtedly was. She was up on her feet, still straddling the diaper bag, her teeth bared in as ominous a snarl as could be achieved by an animal designed along the general lines of a giant bath mat. Her eyes were shooting green fire, her paws scrabbling at the ground as if revving up for a takeoff. Her head was darting from side to side, her ears flapping across her face with every dart and causing added annoyance, as if she weren’t annoyed enough already. Osbert was about to go over and see what was eating her when his shovel struck something.

Something roughly the size and shape of a crate of canned peaches, covered with ancient waxed canvas.

“I-I think-” Frantically he scraped away the sand.

Opening the top was no chore at all, the lock was gone, the rusted-through hinges crumbled at a touch. The contents were as bright and shiny as on the day Hiram Jellyby had found them and reburied them.

“Here’s your gold, Hiram!”

“Danged if it ain’t! Good shovelin’, bub.”

“Good dowsing, you mean,” Osbert demurred. “It’s Dittany who deserves the credit.”

“It was really the turkey bone,” Dittany was murmuring when all at once they found themselves invaded. The intruder was a bearded man dressed in an old-fashioned frock coat with purple socks pulled up over his pant legs as if to simulate a pair of purple gaiters that he’d meant to wear and couldn’t find at the crucial moment. He was steering a bicycle one-handed and flourishing a sixshooter.

Ten feet from the group, he leaped off the bicycle, flung it from him, and pointed his gun at Hiram. This was a reasonable mistake, Hiram stood beside the trunkful of gold pieces, fully manifested now in his mule skinner clothes, apparently solid and strong as the Pre-Cambrian Shield.

“Stand and deliver,” roared the brigand bicycler.

Hiram just gave him a look. “By gorry, mister, I seen you before! I’d know them squinchy little eyes anywhere.”

“How kind of you to remember,” the bearded one replied urbanely. “Now, sir, I’ll thank you to load all that gold into these nice, new canvas saddlebags I’ve brought with me and strap them to my bicycle carrier.”

“Sorry, mister. ‘Fraid I can’t oblige.”

“I’ve got six bullets in here that say you can. Come on, old-timer, I mean business. Jump!”

The gun went off. A bullet buried itself in the turf about an inch and a half from Hiram’s left boot. He gazed down at the small hole it made with an expression of mild amusement.

“Hell, I seen better shootin’ than that from a ten-yearold kid with a bunged-up ol’ horse pistol. Try again a little harder, mister.”

“Damn you! Do you think I won’t?”

The highwayman was rattled, Dittany sensed. He’d thought this holdup was going to be a piece of cake, with only a weaponless old gaffer, a young couple, and a brace of babies standing between him and the gold. Apparently he was unaware of Zilla Trott, even now sneaking up on him from behind with her hatchet at the ready. Dittany did hope Zilla wouldn’t attempt any drastic cleavage in front of the twins, she didn’t want them collecting subliminal memories of gore and bloodshed at so tender an age.

The highwayman, if that was what he deemed himself to be, was preparing to take a shot at Hiram’s other boot.

At the gun went off, Hiram, with every appearance of enjoyment, bounced about three feet off the ground and came back to roost smack on top of the gold. This further infuriated the shooter, one of whose purple socks had by now slipped down and was bunched untidily around his ankle.

As Hiram was unkindly pointing this out, Osbert took advantage of the diversion to slip over and help Ethel guard the babies, he signaled for Dittany to join them.

Perhaps he had some thought of barricading his family behind the perambulator and shooting it out with the holdup man, though that seemed unlikely unless he was planning to improvise a bow and arrows from alder twigs.

Or perhaps Osbert was thinking in terms of a slingshot.

It occurred to Dittany that she was still holding the wishbone. With that and the elastic top of her panty hose, much might be accomplished if she could only wiggle out of the garment without attracting that madman’s notice.

Now he was aiming straight for Hiram’s midsection, shooting to kill, or so he erroneously assumed. Hiram was egging the ruffian on, flitting about like a veritable Tyl Eulenspiegel, making him waste his ammunition.

Five shots had been fired by now. If that weapon was in fact a sixshooter and the highwayman was no more adept at reloading than he was at trying to pick off a victim who was, had he but known, proof against the fastest bullet, this performance was not going to last much longer.

The highwayman raised his gun again, and aimed deliberately at Hiram’s chest. Hiram took the bullet without batting an eye.

“Oh, a bulletproof vest, eh? Think you’re damned smart, don’t you?” The gunman whirled, grabbed Dittany, who’d been trying to reach Osbert and the babies, and clamped his hands around her throat.

“All right, joker, this is it. Pack up that gold and bring it here or I strangle the girl!”

This was too much for Osbert and Ethel. Together, they launched themselves like rockets against the highwayman.

Emitting a wild war whoop, Zilla slammed the flat side of her hatchet down on his head. Ethel grabbed his wrist in her teeth. Having landed a lusty right to the midriff, Osbert, with great presence of mind, then tied the winded rogue’s shoelaces together in a hard knot so that he couldn’t run away, even assuming he’d be able to wiggle out from under his various assailants.

“You know what?” said Zilla as she checked over her weapon for possible damage, “I’ll bet you a nickel this bozo is the Peeping torn. Two or three people have mentioned hearing a little tinkling noise when he was sneaking around the neighborhood. I heard it myself just now, when I felled him.”

Strictly speaking, the felling had been a joint effort, but Osbert was not about to quibble. His mind was already speeding in a new direction. “A tinkling noise, eh?

Hiram, shine your eyes this way, can you?”

By now, the late muleteer’s eyes were a brilliant, clear canary yellow and working just fine. It was as Osbert had deduced. He unbuttoned the fallen would-be murderer’s frock coat to reveal a splendid gold watch chain replete with sundry equally auriferous accoutrements including a gold pencil, a gold penknife, a twenty-dollar gold piece, a gold nugget carved in the shape of a beetle, a gold toothpick in a gold case, a gold cigar cutter with a steel blade, and a timberwolf’s tooth with a gold filling in it.

they gazed in wonderment

upon the telltale watch chain, a bright red sports car with lots of chrome trimming pulled to a stop at the edge of the field. A man got out carrying a large electric lantern and held the door open for two women. One, easily recognized in the lantern’s light, was Arethusa Monk wearing her Spanish shawl. The other, Dittany deduced, must be Mrs. Pollicot James, less quickly indentifiable because she wasn’t carrying her dulcimer.

“Is everybody all right here?” cried Pollicot James, for of course no other could be driving such a car and escorting such passengers. “Mother and I came back early. We were out for a little spin to celebrate our reunion with darling Arethusa when we heard shots being fired.”

“As well you might,” Dittany shouted back. “This gazookus was trying to shoot Hiram Jellyby.”