The White Elephant Mystery (12 page)

Mr. Grant’s eyes narrowed a trifle and he said, “Yes, I remember. An old goat with a white fringe of whiskers on his chin.”

“Yes,” Djuna said a little defiantly. “But he’s an awful nice man.”

“Okay, he’s an awful nice man!” Ciro snapped. “Stop stalling!”

“All right, Tony,” Mr. Grant said in an even voice to Ciro. “Let the boy take his time.”

“Well, this afternoon,” Djuna went on, and his face was very serious now, “we went to see the afternoon performance of the circus. We sat in the front row, just in front of the first ring. So, when Spitfire Peters missed his catcher and had that terrible fall he landed right in front of us. I jumped over the rail and I was the first one to reach him. His eyes were closed and I thought he was unconscious, but suddenly he opened them and sort of gasped, ‘The white elephant!’ Then blood bubbled up on his lips and that was all he could say before he really became unconscious.” Djuna stopped speaking and closed his eyes for an instant as though to shut out the awful vision.

“Yes, Djuna,” Mr. Grant said softly, and when Djuna looked at him again he saw a gleam in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.

“Well,” Djuna sighed, “I didn’t have any idea what Mr. Peters was talking about, but tonight after Tommy and I were in bed at the Brewster House, down in Riverton, I got to thinking about it, and I remembered the iron elephant, here on the lawn, that had been painted white. The more I thought about it the more it puzzled me, so I woke up Tommy and we came up here to look at the painted elephant to see if it was the elephant Mr. Peters had been talking about.”

“What did you find?” Mr. Grant asked. “I mean, do you think he was tallking about that elephant on the lawn?”

“We didn’t have a chance to look, really,” Djuna said. “When we got up here we saw lights in the house and we thought we’d better come in and ask permission to look at the elephant. That’s when I came and knocked on the door.”

“I—” Tommy said. But that was all he had a chance to say, because Djuna looked at him quickly and for one awful moment Djuna thought Tommy was going to correct him and say that they
had
looked at the elephant, so he laughed and pointed a finger at Tommy and said, “He’s mad because I woke him up and made him walk all the way up here!”

“Just a minute!” Ciro snapped. “What were you going to say, Tommy?”

Tommy gulped and Djuna held his breath while Tommy said, “I—I was going to say just what Djuna did. That I was mad because he woke me up, and I was scared, too. I thought he was crazy and I still do!”

“Well, Tommy, I don’t know that I blame you,” Mr. Grant said, and he laughed loudly and slapped his knee with his hand as he rose. “Being waked out of a sound sleep to go look at an iron elephant that’s painted white would make me a little mad, too. I’ll run you boys back to your hotel so you can get a little sleep, anyway. I suppose you’re going to be around the circus again tomorrow. If—”

“Wait a minute!” Tony Ciro said, his face twisted so that it looked even more like the face of Angel, the chimpanzee, when he was pretending to be mad.

“You’ll do the waiting, Tony!” Mr. Grant snapped. “You’ll wait here while I run these boys back to town.” Mr. Grant and Ciro glared at each other for a moment and then Mr. Grant said, “Come on, boys. If there’s anything you want around the circus lot tomorrow look me up and I’ll be only to glad to see that you get it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Grant,” Djuna said and he started for the door with Tommy following him.

But out in the hallway Djuna stopped and put his fingers to his lips so that both of them heard Mr. Grant hiss at Ciro in a low voice, “You fool, don’t you understand? That will I was talking to old Webster about must be in that iron elephant!”

Djuna grinned and went on out through the doorway, and fifteen minutes later they were safely back in their twin beds in their room at the Brewster House.

“Hey, Djuna!” Tommy said sleepily after he had turned out his light. “Why did you tell ’em we hadn’t looked at the iron elephant?”

“Jeepers, I don’t know!” Djuna said, yawning. “Good night!”

¹
See
The Brown Fox Mystery
.

Djuna was lying on his back in bed at nine o’clock the next morning, with his hands cupped behind his head, staring at the ceiling of his room in the Brewster House. He turned his head and grinned as he heard Tommy Williams grunt in his sleep, and then Djuna laughed aloud as Tommy tried to brush away with his hand the shaft of sunlight that was streaming through the window, and into his eyes.

After several futile stabs at the sunbeam Tommy opened his eyes. At first he looked around with perplexity, and then when he saw Djuna grinning at him from the next bed he said, “Jeepers! I didn’t know where I was. I could sleep all day. What time is it?”

“About nine o’clock,” Djuna said. “Socker ought to be calling up pretty quick. I’m getting hungry.”

“So’m I,” said Tommy and then he sat straight up in bed and cried, “Hey! Why did you tell Mr. Grant and that other man that pack of lies last night? I almost choked when you said you hadn’t had a chance to look at that iron elephant. I was too sleepy to ask you any more than I did when we got back here.”

“I was afraid you were going to choke, too,” Djuna said and he grinned. “I told them we didn’t have a chance to look at it,
really
.“

“You said that when we got there we saw lights so we thought we ought to ask for permission to look at the elephant,” Tommy said. “It wasn’t that way at all.”

“Well,” Djuna said slowly, “maybe it wasn’t. You see after that first man left—the one who drove up in the first car, the old one with the Panama hat—I tried to tiptoe across the hallway and get out of the house. But my foot slipped when I stepped off the stairs and I almost fell down. I made a lot of noise and I was afraid they might come out and start shooting at us or something, because I think they’re pretty dangerous men.”

“I think that Mr. Grant is an awful nice man,” Tommy said in protest. “He’s been nice to us and he said if there was anything we wanted today to just ask for it.”

“I don’t know,” Djuna said uncertainly and he looked worried. “I didn’t know what to do, so I pretended we’d just arrived and knocked on the door. When they came out they had guns in their hands but I pretended I didn’t see them.”

“Guns!” Tommy said, his eyes wide. “What kind of guns?”

“Automatics,” Djuna said. “They slipped them back in their pockets when they saw me. You see Mr. Grant said he thought his father had left a will, but his lawyer, old Mr. Webster, said he was pretty sure he
hadn’t
left a will. Then, after Mr. Webster left, Mr. Grant told Ciro, the other man, that he was certain there was a will hidden someplace right in that old house. He said his father had written to him and told him that he wasn’t going to leave Sonny
anything
. His father told him he was going to leave everything he had to someone else. If old Mr. Grant
didn’t
leave a will everything would go to Sonny. But if he
did
leave a will it would go to whoever old Mr. Grant left it to. And I guess that’s why Sonny thought there must be a will hidden someplace right in that house.

“That’s why I told him about the white elephant and what Spitfire Peters said. I thought he’d think the will was in the iron elephant and would want to get us out of there so that he could search the elephant,” Djuna finished.

“But you told me there wasn’t any way to get into the elephant,” Tommy said and he looked frankly puzzled.

“I don’t think there is,” Djuna said. “I couldn’t find any way.”

“Do you think the will might be in the elephant?” Tommy asked.

“No, I don’t,” Djuna said. “But
I
don’t know.”

“I think you know a lot more than you’ve told me,” Tommy said suspiciously. “That’s what you always do! You say you don’t know
anything
and then suddenly you know
everything!
“

“Honest, Tommy,” Djuna said. “I’m just guessing. I know there’s something very wrong, with those grifters and Spitfire Peters getting hurt, and what he said, and all. But I don’t know what it is. I just don’t think old Mr. Grant would be foolish enough to leave a will inside that elephant without telling someone about it.”

“Maybe he did tell someone about it,” Tommy said thoughtfully.

“That’s what Sonny is worried about,” Djuna said.

Then he changed the subject. “I wonder,” he said, “if we asked the telephone operator for Socker if she’d be able to get him for us?”

“We can try,” said Tommy.

But they didn’t need to try, because just then there was a knock on their door and when Djuna ran over to unlock it Cannonball McGinnty stood there with a great big smile on his face.

“Hi-yah, kids!” he said as he bent his head to come through the doorway.

“Hi-yah, Cannonball!” they replied together.

“Is this a day for a circus, eh?” said Cannonball.

“It certainly is!” Djuna said, and then his face clouded. “Say, Cannonball, have you heard anything about Mr. Peters this morning?” he asked.

“Not much,” Cannonball grumbled. “I called the hospital a few minutes ago but they’ll never tell you anything unless you go there and beat it out of them.” He raised his voice to a falsetto and mimicked—“He’s doing as well as could be expected, thank you,” he said, imitating the girl on the hospital switchboard.

“Where’s Mr. Furlong?” Djuna asked.

“Mr. Furlong,” Cannonball said with a grin, “got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.”

“Is he grouchy?” Tommy asked.

“He’s worse than grouchy,” Cannonball said. “The night city editor of the
Morning Bugle
got him out of bed at six o’clock this morning to give him an assignment. He—”

“Mr. Canavan?” Djuna asked and he laughed because he knew just what Mr. Furlong thought of Mr. Canavan.

“No. It wasn’t Canavan,” Cannonball said. “Somebody else. He wanted him to cover some story over at Farmholme, across the river. After he talked to Socker, Socker, the big baboon, telephoned and got me out of bed, too. He asked me to pick you kids up at about nine o’clock and take you over to Edenboro to get some clean clothes so you could hang around and worry the circus for a couple more days.”

“Yippeee!” shouted Tommy.

But Djuna looked worried himself and said, “We wouldn’t want to worry anyone, Cannonball.”

“I know you wouldn’t, Djuna,” Cannonball said. “I was only kidding. Come on, let’s go dip our chins in some griddlecakes and sirup and goat’s milk.”

“Goat’s milk!” Tommy said. “I’ve never had any. Is it good?”

“I dunno,” said Cannonball. “I never had any either. Let’s go!”

Tommy and Djuna, and Cannonball, too, each had some dry cereal with strawberries, griddlecakes and sausage with maple sirup, and two glasses of milk.

“Eat hearty, kids!” Cannonball told them. “Socker says the
Morning Bugle
is paying for it!”

They all laughed at that; then Djuna became serious and said to Cannonball, “Would you mind driving out to the hospital before we start for Edenboro so that we can find out how Spitfire is?”

“Glad to, Djuna,” Cannonball said.

“I’d like to talk to him, if I can,” Djuna added.

“I don’t think you’ll be able to do that,” said Cannonball. “But”—and his face brightened—"we’ll give it a try.”

When they arrived at the hospital they all went in. Cannonball ignored the girl in the reception room and went into the corridor to speak to the day supervisor who was on duty. Cannonball gave her a big smile and said, “We’d like to go in and see Mr. Peters for a couple of minutes.”

The nurse smiled back at him and spoke to a man in a white coat who was sitting at a table writing something on a chart. “Dr. Campbell, these people would like to go in to see Mr. Peters for a minute. Is it all right?”

“I’m sorry, it isn’t,” the doctor said and he lifted his head. “We’re giving him opiates,” the doctor explained to Cannonball, “but you couldn’t talk to him if we weren’t, because he’s still paralyzed. We think it’s shock and that he’ll come out of it all right, but we can’t be sure yet.”

“He’s improving though, Doc?” Cannonball asked.

“As much as could be expected,” the doctor said and turned back to his chart.

Cannonball thanked him and then, as they went down the front steps, he raised his voice again and said, “As much as can be expected.”

Tommy and Djuna both laughed, because it was funny to hear a man as big as Cannonball trying to talk like a woman.

After Cannonball had left the comparatively heavy traffic of Riverton behind them, and was on the open road going toward Clinton, Djuna said suddenly: “Say, Cannonball—could anybody tell if a catcher, like Ned Barrow,
purposely
missed catching Spitfire yesterday?”

“What?”
Cannonball asked, and he was so startled that he involuntarily took his foot off the accelerator and swung over to the side of the road so that the car was barely moving. He lifted his big hands from the bottom of the steering wheel and put them up on the top and rested his arms on the wheel as he turned and looked at Djuna. “Why do you ask that, Djuna?” he said when he had recovered from his surprise.

“I don’t know exactly, Mr. McGinnty,” Djuna said quickly. “I didn’t say he did miss him purposely. I asked if anyone could tell, if they were watching.”

“That, Djuna, my boy,” Cannonball said with a curious expression on his face, “is quite a question. And,” he went on after a moment, “one that I can’t answer. I know they do miss a great many times but it always seems to be a surprise to the flyer. I’ve watched them and every time they do miss they have a surprised look on their face. It’s all a matter of timing. If the flyer goes off the board too late, or the catcher doesn’t time his swing right, they’re apt to miss.”

“But what I mean is, could the flyer tell if the catcher missed him purposely?” Djuna said.

“I don’t know, Djuna,” Cannonball said. He tucked his chin down on his chest and glanced at Djuna out of the corners of his eyes. “Look, kid,” he went on when he saw Djuna’s expression, “don’t worry your head about things like that. If you get into a habit of thinking like that you’ll look for some bad motive in everything that occurs.”