The White Elephant Mystery (11 page)

“Pss-st!”
Tommy hissed. “Put out your flashlight. There comes a car up over the hill. They might see it and stop and ask us what we’re doing here.”

Djuna pushed the button on the flashlight and the two boys stood silently while the twin beams from an automobile’s headlights crept up the hill and came into view. Directly behind it was another car with its headlights playing on the first car.

When the first car came opposite the lower gate leading to the driveway in front of the old stone house it suddenly swung to the left so that Djuna and Tommy were caught directly in the glare of its lights.

“Don’t move!”
Djuna whispered.

The two boys stood as immovable as statues while they heard voices from the leading car. Then they heard the rattle of chains and heard the creak of the two iron gates as someone pushed them back. The motor of the leading car raced for a moment and then it crept slowly in the driveway, with the second car right behind it.

As soon as Djuna and Tommy were out of the glare of the car’s headlights they dropped to the ground and Djuna whispered, “Let’s crawl up right behind the hedge so we can see who they are.”

“I—I don’t want to know
who
they are!” Tommy whispered back. “Let’s get out of here!”

“C’mon!” Djuna said. “Don’t make any noise!” And he began to crawl toward the tall unkempt hedge enclosing the parking space at the front of the old house.

When the two cars came to halt beside the steps of the stone mansion both Djuna and Tommy had found vantage points back of the hedge, where they could see through at the bottom. Lights flashed on inside the first car as it came to a halt and they saw the face of a white-haired old man they had never seen before. He was wearing an old-fashioned Panama hat and gazed near-sightedly at a bunch of keys he pulled from his pocket after he snapped on the lights in the car.

As the lights flashed on in the second car Djuna gave a little grunt. He saw that Sonny Grant was driving the car, and saw beside him a man with thick heavy eyebrows and a face like the chimpanzee Socker had called Angel in the menagerie that afternoon.

“Just leave your lights on until after I get the door open,” the old man who had been driving the first car called to Sonny Grant as he stepped out, and flicked off his overhead light and the headlights.

“Right, Mr. Webster,” Sonny called back as the old man went slowly up the stone steps and across the porch. He tried two or three keys before he found the one that opened the door and flung it wide. He reached in and snapped on a light inside the hallway and then turned and called, “Come along.”

A few moments later, the front door of the house nearly closed after Sonny Grant and the man with him entered. There was a thin stream of light showing up the length of the door. Djuna had been quick to notice that the front door did not squeak as they pulled it nearly closed. A light went on in a front window, and someone opened the window before they pulled the shade.

“You wait here and keep watch,” Djuna whispered to Tommy.

“Where are you going?”
Tommy wanted to know in an excited voice.

“I’m going to slip over under that window!” Djuna whispered. “I want to hear what they have to say.”

“What do
you
care what they say?” Tommy whispered back.

“Sort of hiss at me if another car comes in and I don’t see it,” Djuna instructed in another whisper before he began to squirm through the hedge and into the darkness beyond.

As Tommy Williams burrowed down deeper into the tall grass he wished, as he had never wished before, that he were home in his own bed. He even wished that he had never seen the circus, while he heard Djuna crawling across the gravel of the parking space in front of the old house.

Djuna’s heart was beating so hard that he was afraid it would shake the old stone house as he crossed the gravel and reached a position under the front window. He strained to hear what was being said inside the house but only a rumble of voices came to him. He climbed up on a water faucet that protruded from the building but the three men were talking on the other side of the room and he could only catch an occasional word.

Dropping swiftly to the ground he moved noiselessly across to the front steps and went as swiftly up them. He crept silently across the porch and eased the heavy door inward a fraction of an inch at a time. Tommy saw him silhouetted in the light from the hallway as he slipped inside the house, and Tommy moaned a hollow groan and wished again only to be home and in his own bed.

Djuna glided across the double oak floor of the hallway, praying that the floor would not creak. The door leading into the huge library, in which the three men were talking, stood open. Djuna reached the safety of stairs that crept upward, starting from the doorway into the library, and plastered himself against the wall.

“I don’t see why you didn’t keep in touch with your father, Sonny, if you think he left a will,” Djuna heard a voice say. “He—”

“It wasn’t convenient for me to keep in touch with him, and besides he didn’t want to hear from me, Mr. Webster,” Sonny replied. “He wrote me one time telling me that he had made a will, and he told me what was in it.” Sonny laughed shortly and bitterly. “You know we never got along, Mr. Webster. The old man knew I wasn’t going to have a chance to bother him and he didn’t want to bother me.”

Djuna took a step down the stairs and fastened one eye to the crack at the back of the door and heard the old man who had been riding in the first car and had the keys to the house say, “Well, since you wrote me that you thought your father had left a will I’ve searched every drawer and nook and cranny in the house and I can’t find one. You don’t need to worry any if we don’t find it. Everything will go to you—the house, the circus, his securities, everything—you’ve got nothing to worry about. I know I never drew a will for him. He told me he didn’t want one. There wasn’t any in his safe-deposit box so I started proceedings to show that he died intestate—which means he died without leaving a will.”

“Suppose,” said Sonny, “a will turns up later on?”

“Then the courts will have to follow it,” Mr. Webster said. “But I wouldn’t worry about that, Sonny. I don’t think there’s much chance of one turning up.”

“Didn’t he have a safe somewhere in the house?” Sonny asked. “A wall safe, or something like that? One that no one knew about?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Mr. Webster said. “He had a safe-deposit box, and I, as his legal representative, had access to that. There was no will there. What did he tell you was in this will he wrote to you about? What’s worryin’ you about it?”

“Well, nothing, frankly,” Sonny said after a moment of hesitation. “The old man was a little peculiar at times. You never knew just what to expect of him. He may have written me about the will just to worry me.”

“Maybe he did, maybe he did,” Mr. Webster said and he rose. “I knew him all my life an’ I been his legal representative since I got out of law school and I know he was a little peculiar at times. But not any more than most of us, I suppose. I got to be runnin’ along now. It’s late. It’s nice to have you back, Sonny. Don’t you worry about things. I’ll take care of ’em.”

“Good night, Mr. Webster,” Sonny said and when Djuna saw him rise, too, he went scooting noiselessly up the stairs into the darkness above.

After Djuna heard the old lawyer’s car go out of the driveway he began a stealthy descent of the stairs again. Sonny Grant and the man who looked like Angel, the chimpanzee, had gone back into the living room.

“Why don’t you keep your trap shut about that will?” the man who was with Sonny asked him. “Why go looking for trouble?”

“Because I’ve got to find that will,” Sonny said and his voice was desperate now. “My old man wasn’t kidding me when he wrote me about it. He told me what was in the will because he wanted me to know while he was still alive that
I wouldn’t get anything
, so he could gloat. He told me in his letter just how he had left everything and who was going to inherit everything.
I think the people who are going to inherit everything he owned know where the will is, but they don’t know what’s in it
. That’s why I’ve got to find it and destroy it before
they
find it. I think it’s here in this house.”

“Why didn’t you come here and go through the house?” the man who looked like the chimpanzee wanted to know.

“I couldn’t,” Sonny said. “I’ve had to walk on tiptoe ever since I joined the circus and took it over. I didn’t know what the people with the circus knew about me, or what they knew about my trouble with the old man. I had to inch in, staying ready to run every minute. I took the thing over blind, and I’m taking over all the old man’s property blind. One little misstep will upset the applecart. I sent a man down here to go through the house. I didn’t have any keys to the place and I didn’t dare send him to old Webster, the old man’s lawyer, because I didn’t know how much he knew about me. The man I sent down got into the house and searched it thoroughly. He tapped the walls, went over the thing from attic to basement—and couldn’t find anything.”

“It looks to me,” the man with Sonny said, “as if your old man wanted you to know what he thought of you, but he didn’t want anyone else to know what he thought, or where you were. He evidently hadn’t even told his lawyer.”

“That’s just the situation,” Sonny said. “But I didn’t know that when I stepped in. The old man kept his troubles to himself because he was too proud to tell anyone the truth. But I didn’t know that when I stepped in to take over the circus, Ciro. I just had to gamble until I got my hooks in it. Now, it looks as though everything is going to work out
very
sweetly if I just handle things right.”

“You’ll do all right,” said the man Sonny had called Ciro. “But there’s something I wanted to tell you. You know this newspaper reporter, Furlong, who hung around for a week and came back this morning?”

“Socker Furlong,” Sonny laughed. “Sure I know him. He’s a harmless fathead who has a crush on Joy Maybeck. That’s why he’s been hanging around.”

“You’re wrong, Sonny,” Ciro said. “He’s not so harmless. You know the state cop that’s always with him—McGinnty?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, they picked up Weasel Macassar today an’ put him through the mill,” Ciro said. “He tried to pull the old short-change malarkey on Furlong, and McGinnty caught him cold. They’ve got him stashed away over in the State Police station and I’m afraid they’ll get to him an’ he’ll talk. This Furlong is supposed to be pickin’ up human interest articles for his newspaper but I think he’s tryin’ to pick
us
up. Maybe a good dunkin’ in the London River with some lead fastened to his feet would teach him a lesson.”

“Go easy on that stuff, Ciro!” Sonny snapped. “He’s a—
what’s that?
“

There was a crash and both Ciro and Sonny leaped to their feet and went cautiously toward the door to the hallway. In some mysterious way guns had appeared in both of their right hands and anyone looking at their eyes could have told that they were ready to use the guns.

They slipped out to the door. When they reached it, they saw Djuna standing there, pounding on the door with his fist.

“Is there anybody here?” he called as he glanced over his shoulder. When Sonny and Ciro saw him they slid the two guns back into their pockets and stepped into Djuna’s sight.

“Hello, Djuna,” Sonny Grant called. “How in the world did you get up here? Come on in.”

“Can I bring Tommy in, too?” Djuna said and he looked over his shoulder out into the darkness again.

“Why, certainly,” Sonny said. “Glad to have him.”

“Hey, Tommy!” Djuna called. “C’mon in! Hurry up!”

“Aw, I’ll wait here,” Tommy shouted back and his voice seemed to be trembling.

“C’mon in!” Djuna said urgently, and then he turned to Mr. Grant and said, “Would you drive us back to Riverton, Mr. Grant? It was a longer walk up here than we thought.”

Sure, I’ll drive you back, after I find out why you came,” Sonny said.

“Mr. Grant’s going to drive us back to Riverton,” Djuna shouted to Tommy. “But he wants us to come in for a minute.”

A moment later Tommy’s face appeared in the doorway. His eyes were large and frightened and he didn’t look at all happy. He glanced at Mr. Grant and the man named Ciro uncertainly and then he questioned Djuna with his eyes.

“Come in! Come in, boys!” Sonny Grant said heartily. He turned around and walked back into the library while the man with him, Ciro, whispered something in his ear.

While Tommy and Djuna followed them Tommy looked at Djuna with a mute appeal in his glance, but Djuna only shook his head and tried to grin at him. Tommy, being well acquainted with Djuna’s usual warm grin, knew that the one he gave him now was a trifle sickly, at best, and it only added to his own agitation.

Sonny Grant and Ciro sat down in large, comfortable chairs with floor lamps behind them, and then Mr. Grant waved at two straight-backed chairs that sat in front of him and were in the direct glare of the lamps when he tilted them. “Sit down, boys,” he said. Djuna and Tommy sat down on the edge of the chairs so that their feet would reach the floor.

“Well, now, tell us about it,” Mr. Grant said—and his voice wasn’t so hearty now.

“Jeepers, you’re prob’ly going to think we’re crazy, Mr. Grant,” Djuna said and he looked straight into Mr. Grant’s eyes. “I guess I better begin right at the beginning.”

“I guess you had, Djuna,” Mr. Grant said grimly.

“Well,” Djuna began, “about ten days ago Mr. Boots—he’s a carpenter over in Edenboro where we live—brought us over to Riverton to help him get some lumber. On the way he took us by this house and showed us the iron animals on the lawn, including the elephant that was painted white. He did it because we were all excited because your circus was coming to Riverton.” Mr. Grant and Ciro said nothing as they studied Djuna.

“Then this morning Mr. Boots brought us over in his truck to see the circus come in,” Djuna went on. Suddenly Djuna’s face brightened and he said, “You remember, Mr. Grant, you met him at the same time we met you. He told you he used to know your father.”