The Purple Bird Mystery (20 page)

“What?” asked Jimmy. “What?”

“I thought, what if I used the word ‘hen’ instead of ‘Fowl’ as the first word of the inscription? Then it would say ‘Hen Relief. Hen Relief. I said that out loud to myself a couple of times, and that’s when I figured ‘Hen Relief meant the King’s Talisman.”

“Hey!” yelled Jimmy. “How did you know
that?”

“When I said ‘Hen Relief out loud, it sounded just like
Henry Leaf
, you see? And I remembered what Grandma told us about the King’s Talisman being shaped like an oak leaf, and belonging to King Henry of England. So maybe, I thought, those two words of the inscription meant King Henry’s Leaf, or the King’s Talisman.”

“Jeepers!” said Jimmy, awed by this display of brilliance. “And you didn’t even say anything about
that
to me!”

“I wasn’t a bit sure of it, Jimmy. But if I was right, the inscription on your chest must have something to do with where the King’s Talisman was. Because then the inscription would be saying:
King’s Talisman in Purple Bird.”

“Now you’re giving me a simple, straightforward story,” Socker Furlong complimented Djuna, writing busily. “I think the
Morning Bugle
will like this one.”

“Let the kid tell the rest of it,” growled the sergeant. “I want to hear the wind-up of this.”

“Well,” said Djuna, “by the time I worked out the Henry Leaf part, I was sure there
was
a connection between the tigerskin diary and Jimmy’s chest, and the inscription, and the King’s Talisman. So I went to the library to try to work out the rest of it.”

“Now,” said Grandma, “now, at long last, maybe we’ll find out about this silly purple bird business!”

“Anyway,” Djuna went on, “at the library I thought about the writing in the tigerskin book. I thought, suppose James Douglas
did
write the diary in Malaya, and
did
burn the inscription on Jimmy’s chest drawers? Why did he do it? Well, probably so those robbers who were searching his bungalow when he wrote that last entry wouldn’t see the inscription. Then whom
was
he writing the message to? The only one I could think of was whoever would inherit the chest when he died. Because I think he
was
dying when he burned the message on the chest drawers.”

Mr. Douglas nodded. “Severe heart pains, wasn’t that what the diary said?”

“Yes. And if James Douglas was writing the inscription for his grandson in America to find—your father, Mr. Douglas—there could be only one reason for doing it. To tell your father where he had hidden the King’s Talisman.”

“I begin to see,” nodded Mr. Douglas.

“Only he couldn’t just write the directions straight out, don’t you see, because the robbers might find the inscription before he got it finished. So he made the inscription so mixed-up-sounding that the robbers could never guess what it meant, even if they did read it. Nobody but your father would be able to figure it out, Mr. Douglas, because nobody else would know the clues. That’s why Mr. Swift couldn’t figure out the
purple bird
part of it.”

“Neither can I,” muttered Mr. Douglas. “Maybe my father could have, but not me!”

“Did
you
figure it out, Djuna?” asked Socker. “You did, didn’t you?”

“I’m not sure. I looked up some things at the library, and I remembered some things you and Grandma told me, and I wrote down some questions to ask you. That’s when Mr. Swift and Joe caught us—when Jimmy and I came to your house to ask you these questions.” Djuna took the paper from his shirt pocket.

“That’s the same list you gave Mr. Swift,” said Jimmy.

Djuna nodded. “The first few questions we don’t need to worry about any more. They were just a test to see if it really was Jimmy’s great-great-grandfather, James Douglas, who wrote the diary.”

“I’d be interested in them anyway,” said Sergeant Scott. “What were they?”

“First, Mr. Douglas, I was going to ask you what was the name of James Douglas’s second wife?” He looked at Jimmy’s father. “The one who sent your father the chest from Malaya?”

“Her name was Emily,” Mr. Douglas replied.

Djuna said, “Grandma told me your grandfather’s name was Robert. But did he have a nickname?”

“They called him Robin when he was young.”

“Did Emily Douglas, James Douglas’s wife, tell you what he had died of when she sent your father the chest and stuff?”

“Yes. He died of a heart attack.”

“And how was the King’s Talisman
worn
back in King Henry’s time?”

“On a chain around the neck. A necklace.” Mr. Douglas winked at Djuna. “So that proves it, doesn’t it?”

“Hey!” Jimmy complained. “I don’t understand that!”

“Because everything in that diary entry fits our family, Jimmy. Names, nicknames, cause of death, and so on.”

“So what about the purple bird? That’s the pay-off!”

With his pencil poised over his copy paper, Socker said, “Give, Djuna!”

Djuna said, “It’s awfully mysterious, Socker. If it’s right, I’ll be as surprised as anyone.”

“Come on, kid,” Socker boomed gaily. “You’ve been right on every count so far. Keep talking.”

“St. Andrews Golf Club in Scotland put me on to it,” said Djuna. “And a round of golf played there by the Prince of Wales. Mr. Douglas told me about them. His grandfather, Robin, caddied for the Prince. And that’s what my fifth question is, Mr. Douglas. What kind of game did the Prince of Wales play the day your grandfather caddied for him at St. Andrews? Did he get—” Djuna paused.

“A birdie!” Jimmy yelled, jumping up in his excitement. “That’s what you said to Mr. Swift. And I thought you were just bluffing!”

Mr. Douglas nodded. “The Prince got a birdie on the eighteenth hole that day. I heard the story of that round, hole by hole, from my grandfather many a time before he died.”

Djuna said, “That’s one of the clues nobody would know but a Douglas. And there are some others, too. I was still trying to substitute other words in the inscription, like
hen
for
fowl,”
Djuna continued. “So I looked up the word
purple
in the dictionary at the library. And one meaning it gave for
purple
was
royal
. So I tried using
royal bird
in the inscription instead of
purple bird
. And that gave me an idea.”

“Everything gives you ideas, Djuna,” Socker roared in delight. “What was this one?”

“What I just said: the golf game played by the Prince of Wales at St. Andrews Golf Club. A Prince is a royal person, naturally. So if the Prince got a birdie that day, I thought, then maybe that royal birdie might have something to do with the
purple bird
. And then I remembered Mr. Douglas told me that St. Andrews Golf Club is called ‘The
Royal
and Ancient’. So there was another
royal
, and they all would have meant something to your grandfather, Mr. Douglas, because he was a great golfer, Jimmy says, and they were all golf clues.”

“That’s right!” Mr. Douglas had apparently caught a faint glimmer of what Djuna was leading up to, because his eyes rounded with amazement.

“So I had a lot of
royals
that possibly could mean something. Next thing I did, I looked up the word
bird
. And one interesting thing I found out is that they call the shuttlecock you play badminton with a bird—you know, that little ball with feathers around it, that you hit back and forth with your racket?”

“Sure,” Jimmy said. “Badminton. It’s a sissy game compared to golf, though.”

“Quiet, Jimmy,” snapped Mr. Douglas. “Go on, Djuna.”

“Well, that got me to thinking about those old golf balls you said they used to use, Mr. Douglas. The kind that were stuffed with feathers. If they were made with feathers like a badminton shuttlecock, maybe some golfers in the olden days called their golf balls
birds
, too, I thought. Did they, Mr. Douglas?”

“Djuna, I don’t know,” said Mr. Douglas. “It’s perfectly possible. Anyway, combined with all the other golf references you’ve read into the inscription, I’d say it’s a very interesting possibility.”

“I thought so, too. Because all of a sudden I thought I could guess what the
purple bird
in the inscription means.”

“Well, don’t keep it to yourself!” Socker begged. “Let us in on the secret.”

“I began to ask myself, when I got as far as that, if I knew of any golf balls that had any connection with royalty or with the Royal and Ancient Golf Club in Scotland, and then I remembered there
was
one golf ball that had a connection with both those things. Jimmy had showed it to me on Tuesday, when I was at his house for lunch.”

Grandma’s startled exclamation and Mr. Douglas’s “That’s it!” were drowned out by a yell from Jimmy Douglas that could have been heard a block away. “The guttie!” he shouted, so excited he didn’t realize he was shouting.
“That old gutta-percha golf ball the Prince of Wales gave my great-grandfather as a souvenirl
Is that the purple bird, Djuna? Is it?”

“That’s the only thing it
could
be!” Mr. Douglas cried. “Come on, everybody! Let’s go and see!”

In the Douglas living room every light was turned on. The furniture was still disarranged. Pieces of cut clothesline still lay scattered about the floor. The five-iron with which Mr. Douglas had broken Swift’s wrist lay upon the sofa cushions. But the breathless group of seven noticed none of these things. Not even the sergeant, whose hunger was forgotten now in this search for hidden treasure, had eyes for anything except the dusty golf trophy that Mr. Douglas held before them.

The carved wooden hand still offered in its fingertips the misshapen gutta-percha golf ball used by a prince on a Scottish golf course seventy years before.

“Not in the
ball,”
Mr. Douglas murmured. “Too small. But there’s plenty of room in the hand.” He took out his penknife and unscrewed the tarnished brass plate that carried the legend Djuna had read once before:

Mr. Douglas handed the brass plate to Jimmy, then plunged two fingers and a thumb into the cavity disclosed in the trophy’s base.

“It’s hollow, all right!” he said incredulously. “And there’s something in it!”

Slowly his fingers pulled out of the hollow base a small bundle of yellowed cotton, tied with rotting cord. No one uttered a word as he slit the string with his penknife and unrolled the cotton.

Even when the overhead chandelier threw back a blinding fountain of blue, white and green sparks from the bejeweled golden leaf in Mr. Douglas’s hand, only Djuna had anything to say. And that was merely an awed whisper.

“The Kings Talisman
!
”

T
HE
next night, Friday, Grandma invited everybody to her house for dinner to celebrate the discovery of the King’s Talisman. Djuna and Jimmy had each caddied eighteen holes that day and were tired, but no one could tell it from their shining faces as they sat side by side on Grandma’s right hand at the big dinner table in the Douglas dining room. Socker Furlong had telephoned his boss at the
Morning Bugle
the night before, and Mr. Canavan had been so pleased with Socker’s news scoop about the Talisman that he promised him a byline on the story. And to make Socker’s day perfect, Mr. Canavan had told him he could stay over the weekend at Edenboro and write the follow-up story for the paper. Socker sat on Grandma’s left.

Also present were Cannonball McGinnty and Sergeant Scott of the state police, Lawyer Conrad Martin, Mr. Douglas, Miss Annie Ellery in her best green velvet dress, and old Mr. Boots.

Everybody was gay and talkative, especially Socker Furlong and Grandma, who shone like a Duchess because she was wearing the King’s Talisman on a gold chain around her neck in honor of the occasion. Even Champ, lying on a newspaper by the door, chewing blissfully on a large bone Grandma had bought for him, looked dressed for the party, because Djuna had combed and brushed him to within an inch of his life.

Grandma raised her hand and said, “Eat up, everybody. It isn’t every night we have leek soup, roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, baked potatoes, fresh lima beans and homemade cole slaw at the Douglas house! I want you all to eat every single mouthful you can hold!”

Everybody vowed that the dinner was delicious.

“Only reason I mention it,” Grandma went on, “is because dessert is coming up, and I want you to be sure and save a little room for it.”

Djuna said, “I bet I know what it is, Grandma. Chocolate cake!”

Grandma smiled. “That’s right, Djuna. Chocolate cake I baked this afternoon.”

Her dinner guests cheered again. Miss Annie Ellery wagged her head. “Djuna has told me about your cake, Mrs. Douglas. And I’m dying to try it.”

Grandma held up her hand again. “But first, we’re going to have some speeches.” Everybody groaned. “My son tells me he wants to make a few remarks. Mr. Martin wants a chance to spout, too. And I insist that Djuna say a few words, because he’s my guest of honor.”

Socker Furlong looked for a moment as if he wanted to make a speech, too, but he controlled himself and joined the others when they all cried, “Speech! Speech!”

Grandma announced with a flourish, “First on the program—Mr. Andrew Douglas, golf professional and owner of the King’s Talisman!”

Mr. Douglas stood up, holding his napkin in his hand. “What I want to say can be said very quickly,” he began. “Mainly, it consists of a great big fat thank you to my son’s friend, Djuna, for all he’s done for the Douglas family in the few days we’ve lived here. Grandma and Jimmy and I are grateful to you, Djuna, for spoiling Swift’s plot against us. We’re grateful to you for recovering our family heirloom for us. But we’re far more grateful to you for something else.”

Socker Furlong cried “Hear! Hear!”

“We’re especially grateful to you, Djuna,” Mr. Douglas went on, “for becoming Jimmy’s friend.”

Jimmy nudged Djuna in the ribs. “I
hated
the idea of moving here,” he confided in a whisper. “Now I love it!”