The Red Chipmunk Mystery (3 page)

“Not a bit,” the man said. “Not a bit.”

Djuna didn’t want to appear ungrateful, because the man had been nice to Champ, but he was so worried about missing his train that he was almost sick. Champ was sitting on the pavement with his head drooping. He looked so dismal that Djuna didn’t have the heart to scold him. He took his leash and said, “You see, sir, we got off our train and were walking up and down while they put on a couple of coaches. I’m afraid if we don’t hurry back we’ll miss it.”

“Say,” the man said. “You’d better hurry. It’ll take you four or five minutes to get back to the station. You run right along.”

“Good-bye, and thank you,” Djuna called as he gave a yank at Champ’s leash and they started at a run for the station. It didn’t take them more than two or three minutes to get back, but even before they reached the end of the alley Djuna saw that there was no train on the line where it had been. His heart climbed up into his mouth until he remembered that the guard had said they might pull the train into a siding to put on additional cars.

But when he went into the station and asked the booking clerk about the train to West London the man replied without even looking up. “Next train to West London is twelve twenty-eight,” he said.

“Has—has the one that was waiting here gone?” Djuna asked.

“Yes. Pulled out five minutes ago,” the clerk said. Djuna swallowed.

“You see, sir, I was on that train,” Djuna said. The man looked at him but he didn’t say anything. “I was in the luggage van with my dog,” Djuna went on. “The guard said the train would be here for ten minutes or so. He said it would be all right if I took my dog for a little walk. My dog saw a cat and ran after it and it took me fifteen minutes to catch him.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” the booking clerk said. “You can get that twelve twenty-eight. You’ll have time to look around and get some lunch.”

“But my ticket,” Djuna said. “The inspector took my ticket.”

“Didn’t he give you a slip?”

“No, sir,” Djuna said. “He didn’t give me anything. You see I was in a compartment, and when he saw my dog he said I’d have to go into the guard’s van, so—–”

“Sorry,” the booking clerk said. “You’ll have to buy another ticket. You can write in to the company and probably they’ll send your money back, but these are the rules.”

“Oh, I see,” Djuna said. “How much is it to Riverton from here?” He reached his hand back to pull his wallet out of his hip pocket.

“Dollar seventy-eight,” the booking clerk said, and took a ticket from the rack.

But Djuna didn’t hear him. He probably wouldn’t have heard anything if a strange train had run right through the station, because when he reached for his wallet
it wasn’t there
!

^*
See
The Green Turtle Mystery
.

DJUNA MEETS A NEW FRIEND

T
HE
booking clerk stamped the date on the back of the ticket to Riverton and put it down on the counter while he talked to a man behind him. He hadn’t noticed the round-eyed alarm that had appeared on Djuna’s face when he found his wallet missing or the haste with which he was searching the rest of his pockets. He turned around now and said impatiently, “A dollar seventy-eight, sonny.”

Djuna was so shocked at the loss of his ten-dollar bill and all the other important odds and ends he had in his wallet that he just stared at the ticket agent and gulped. “I—I guess I won’t take the ticket right now,” he said finally. “I’ll—I’ll come back after a while.”

“Look!” the clerk said. “Do you or don’t you want a ticket?”

“Not—not just now,” Djuna said.

“Okay. Suit yourself,” said the booking clerk, and turned back to his conversation, looking quite annoyed.

Djuna bent down and picked up the end of Champ’s leash with an effort. Champ began to pant even harder than before, to tell Djuna how very much he wanted a drink of water, but Djuna was so busy wondering how in the world he was ever going to get home that he couldn’t think of anything else.

Djuna’s head was bent, partly because he didn’t want any one to see the mist in his eyes, and partly because he was searching the floor for his wallet as they went slowly across the station and through the door to the platform. It just didn’t seem possible to Djuna that anything so terrible could have happened to him.

He led Champ over to a bench and they both sat down. Champ peered up at Djuna through the shaggy black hair around his eyes and then he moved over closer and put his head against Djuna’s leg just as though he knew what Djuna was thinking about and how badly he felt. Djuna reached down and put his hand on Champ’s shoulder and they sat there together, not saying anything for quite a long time. After a while Champ nudged Djuna’s leg with his nose and then licked his hand with his red tongue, as though to say, “Let’s get going. We can’t sit here mooning all day.
I’m
getting hungry.”

This time Djuna noticed how hard Champ was panting, so he put a penny in a machine and got a paper cup and kept filling it with water until Champ let him know he couldn’t drink another drop. Then they went out and searched the station platform from one end to the other and up the lane across the street and around the corners where Djuna had chased Champ, but they didn’t see any sign of the wallet.

When Djuna was pretty certain they weren’t ever going to find it, he said to Champ, “Let’s sit down some place in the shade and talk this thing over.” His voice was light and untroubled, for a boy who had just lost his last dollar. Champ made no objection, and they walked on down the lane and picked out a shady doorstep not far from the station. They sat down side by side and Djuna put his arm around Champ and hugged him. Champ looked up at him as though to say, “All right.
Now
what are we going to do?”

“You remember Ben Franklin, don’t you?” Djuna said. Champ said nothing. “Well, he is writing a book he is going to call
Ben Franklin Junior’s Almanac
. Remember?” Champ fidgeted but Djuna didn’t wait for him to say anything.

“Well,” Djuna went on, “I remember one time
our
Ben Franklin wrote in his
Almanac
: ‘
The best way for any boy to get help, if he needs it, is to help himself
.’

“
That
,” Djuna said, “is what we’re going to do. We’re going to help ourselves. We aren’t going to telephone to Mr. Pindler or to Socker Furlong, or to any one else. It’s only about thirty miles by the back country road to Riverton. We’re going to hitch-hike. If we get a lift we’ll be there almost as soon as we would be if we hadn’t missed our train.”

Champ could see that Djuna was pretty pleased and excited about his own decision and he thought he ought to do something about it; so he stood up and barked three times as hard as he could, which meant, “Rah! Rah! Rah!” in any one’s language. He started to strut down the alley, but Djuna gave a yank on his leash and said, “Wait a minute! I have a couple of things I want to say to you before we start.” Champ cocked his head on one side to show that he was giving Djuna his undivided attention.

“No chasing cats!” Djuna said sternly and Champ dropped his head so that he didn’t look quite so cocky. In fact, he looked so forlorn and dejected that Djuna laughed and rumpled his ears and said, “C’mon. We’ve got to go to the police station and tell them where to send my wallet if any one finds it.”

A man down the street told them the police station was just around the corner and how to get there. When they were inside Djuna waited respectfully while the desk sergeant finished the card game he was playing with another policeman. When he had finished Djuna explained about his wallet and said he would like to leave his address in case it was found. Just then the telephone rang and the sergeant picked the phone out of its cradle, growled and listened.

“Sure,” he said. “We’ve got one here now.” The sergeant looked down at Djuna closely and then said, “Naw, this isn’t the one. This one don’t have red hair. Sure. We’ll keep an eye out for him. Goo’-bye.”

“Now,” the desk sergeant said to Djuna, “what’s your name and where do you want it sent if it’s found?”

“My name is Djuna. D-J-U-N-A—–”

“D-J-U-N-A,” the desk sergeant said. “That’s a funny one. What’s the rest of it?”

“That’s all there is,” Djuna said. “I don’t have any other name.” The sergeant pushed his hat back on his head and puffed out his cheeks as though he were going to argue the matter. He opened his mouth but the heat was too much for him. He closed it again and just said, “Okay.”

“Please send it care of Miss Annie Ellery, Edenboro,” Djuna finished.

“Any street number?” the sergeant asked.

“Jeepers! There’s only one street,” Djuna said.

“Oh. Any reward?” the sergeant asked as though he had learned the whole thing by heart.

“Why, yes,” Djuna said. “Would you please break the ten-dollar bill and give whoever finds the wallet a dollar? That’s enough, isn’t it?”

“Sure. That would be enough,” the sergeant said with a note of finality. “But that ten bucks is a gone goose, bud. You won’t ever see any of it.”

“I—I suppose not,” Djuna said, and he wondered himself why he didn’t feel more badly about what the sergeant had just said. “But thank you for your trouble. I wonder if you would tell me how to get on the road that goes to Farmholme and Riverton.”

“Farmholme? Why, sure. You go up here to the corner and take the road to the left that bears right. You go under the railway bridge and just keep going until you come to Five-Mile Bridge. Any one can tell you how to go from there.” He leaned over the desk and although he was still polite Djuna could tell that he wanted to get back to his card game. Djuna thanked him again and as they started for the door the sergeant noticed Champ and said to the other policeman, “Hey! Look at the mutt!”

Champ turned around and gave him two nasty barks for calling him a mutt, and the sergeant looked at him and laughed and said, “Well! Thanks for telling me! Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” Djuna said.

The morning sun was really getting hot when they stepped out into the street again. People were mopping their red faces and saying to each other, “Whew! Is this a scorcher!” It didn’t seem to do them any good because each time they said it they seemed to get a little hotter.

Somehow Djuna and Champ didn’t mind the heat because there were so many new things for them to see they didn’t even think about it. They went up to the corner and carefully crossed the street on the green light and started down the street to the left that bore right. A long goods train thundered over their heads as they went under the railway bridge, and Djuna stood there looking up at the whirling wheels until Champ pulled at his leash to say, “Come on!”

About a mile beyond the railway bridge the pavement ended, because there weren’t any more houses, and not very far beyond that the concrete street became a narrow, high-crowned macadam road. It was much nicer then, because large trees were growing alongside the stone walls on each side of the road to form an overhead archway that cut off the hot rays of the sun.

Djuna had decided that they wouldn’t try to do any hitch-hiking until they were pretty well out of the heavy traffic in Thompsonville. He had been afraid that they might get into a truck or passenger car that was going in the wrong direction and when they ended up they would be even farther away from Riverton than when they started. Now that they were out on what was almost a country road there didn’t seem to be any traffic.

They were a little lonely at first as they plodded along, but now there were endless processions of birds flitting through the cool shadows of the big trees, startled grey squirrels scrambling to the ends of the branches and saucy little chipmunks racing along the stone walls.

Every once in a while Champ would stop to get a drink from the cool brook that ran beside the road, and a half-dozen times he mustered enough energy to rush ferociously at a stone wall where a chipmunk was dancing a tight-rope along the top with its tail twitching nervously.

And once when both Djuna and Champ were sitting on a rock, resting, two red-brown chipmunks, with five black and two light-coloured stripes on their backs, came out on a stone wall to sing a duet together. One of them seemed to be leading, with quick, alert movements of its front feet. Sometimes their chirping notes of “chip, chip, chip!” were loud and cheery and sometimes they were soft and in a conversational tone, as though they had stopped singing to talk to each other. Champ was so surprised that he didn’t think of chasing them. He just sat there and watched them, cocking his head on one side and then on the other as he listened to them.

Both Djuna and Champ were so intently looking at them that they didn’t even hear the big man, wearing riding breeches and boots, who came along a path out of the woods. He stopped beside them.

“Cute little fellows, aren’t they?” the big man said. Djuna jumped and looked upwards, and Champ was so startled and confused that he barked several times and rushed at the chipmunks. The chipmunks looked over the edge of the stone wall and laughed at him.

“Gosh!” the big man said. “Is he as fierce as he sounds?”

“Gracious, no,” Djuna said. “He just makes all that noise to make himself
think
he’s fierce. He wouldn’t hurt a flea.” The big man went on chuckling at Champ and the chipmunks, and Djuna said politely, “Do you live around here?”

“Back yonder,” the big man said, pointing. “I live in the woods, mostly. I’m the gamekeeper around here.”

“Oh!” Djuna said, and he called Champ quickly. “You needn’t worry. He wouldn’t hurt one of those chipmunks.”

The big man laughed again and squatted down beside Djuna and patted Champ on the head as he came trotting over to drop, exhausted. “I’m not worrying,” he said. “Neither are the chipmunks. They’re cunning little rascals. A weasel is about the only animal they have to be afraid of. Do you know much about chipmunks?”

“No, I don’t,” Djuna said, “but I’d like to. I’ve just seen them along stone walls, and places, and watched Champ try to catch them.”

“Well,” the gamekeeper said as he watched a chipmunk on the stone wall with real admiration, “they’re very smart. They don’t leave big mounds of earth that show where their burrows are. And after they have their burrows all made they take great pains not to make any paths to the mouth of their burrows. They always approach the holes from as many different directions as possible. And do you know what I’ve seen them do when they’re on the way to their burrows?”