The White Elephant Mystery (13 page)

“I guess you’re right, Cannonball,” Djuna said. “Only —”

“Only
nothing!
” Cannonball said. “Remember that song we sang with old Mr. Scissors the night we cooked brigand steaks over an open fire near Ferry Crossing?”

“
Which
one, Mr. McGinnty?” Djuna asked. “Jeepers, we sang about a million. I remember you sang one all alone about a ‘waggle of his kilt!’”

“Chattering chimps!”
Tommy cried. “Sing that again, will you, Cannonball?”

“Not today,” Cannonball said. “Do you know ‘Jingle Bells,’ Tommy?” he asked.

“Oh, sure,” Tommy said.

“Okay. Take it!” Cannonball said and after he had sung the first line to get the pitch they all sang:

O’er the fields we go—laughing all the way;
Bells on bobtail ring, making spirits bright;
What fun it is to ride and sing a sleighing song tonight!

Cannonball lifted one hand off the steering wheel, jiggled his forefinger back and forth three times and shouted, “OH!”

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way!
Oh! what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh!

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way!
Oh! what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh!

“Say!” Cannonball said as he wiped the perspiration from his forehad. “We still have our touch, although it is a little warm for sleigh rides. Suppose we try a couple of verses of ‘Polly-Wolly-Doodle.’”

“We don’t have time,” said Djuna. “We’re there—or almost. If you turn off to the right just ahead here, Cannonball, we can stop at Tommy’s house and his mother can get his stuff ready while Miss Annie fixes some stuff for me.”

They let Tommy out in front of his house and warned him they would be back within a short time to pick him up. Then they swung back on the Clinton-Edenboro road and came to a stop in front of Miss Annie Ellery’s little white house.

Miss Annie, who was weeding some nasturtiums behind the white picket fence, stuck her head up and her face beamed as she said, “Why, I declare! It’s Djuna and Mr., ah, Mr.—”

“Cannonball!” Djuna shouted as he jumped out and ran inside the gate and squeezed Miss Annie.

“Mr. McGinnty!” Miss Annie said. She pushed her glasses up on her forehead and added, “It’s nice to see you again.” Cannonball bowed over Miss Annie’s hand and then Miss Annie said to Djuna, “From what Mr. Boots told me I didn’t expect to see you for a couple of days.”

“You won’t,” Djuna said. “We just came over to get some clean clothes and something to sleep in. We’re staying at the Brewster House in Riverton and we’ve got a room with twin beds, a radio, and a bath. We had dinner there last night,” he added proudly.

“Well, for land’s sake!” Miss Annie exclaimed. She turned to Cannonball and said, “I hope they aren’t too much trouble.”

“I should say not,” Cannonball told her. “We’re having a grand time. Socker Furlong would have come over, too, but he had to cover an assignment for his paper in Farmholme this morning. He wanted to be remembered to you. He—”

Just then Champ, Djuna’s little black Scotty, came tearing around the house so fast that he couldn’t quite make the turn and turned over twice before he managed to get back on his feet and come dashing at Djuna again. He came to a skidding stop and barked three times to say, “Hi-yah, pal!” before Djuna picked him up to hug him.

Champ licked Djuna’s face with his long, red tongue and then began to squirm to get down. “All right! All right!” Djuna said and put him back on his feet. He immediately began to run around Djuna in circles that were so tight that he turned over twice again while Miss Annie and Cannonball shrieked at his excitement and the joy of his greeting.

“Djuna!” Miss Annie called when she could stop laughing. “Go up in the attic and get your little bag and pack it with the things you’ll need. Take two or three changes of socks because it’s awful dirty on those circus grounds. Call me when you’re packed and I’ll come up and see if you have everything. And change all the clothes you’re wearing!”

“Okay,” Djuna shouted back. Both Djuna and Champ disappeared and the screen door slammed shut behind them.

“They’re just like two whirling typhoons!” Miss Annie told Cannonball.

Djuna went up into the attic and got the small piece of airplane luggage that was his and took it down to his room with Champ treading on his heels most of the time. He slipped out of the clothes he was wearing and let them drop on the floor, intending to pick them up later and put them in the wicker hamper where Miss Annie put soiled clothes.

He was in such a hurry that he forgot to empty the pockets of the khaki shorts he was wearing before he dropped them, so he didn’t hear Spitfire Peters’s little black luck charm when it dropped out of the pocket and rolled under the bed.

He put on clean clothes, selected the things he thought he would need to take with him, packed them in his bag and was about to shout out the window for Miss Annie when he heard Champ chewing on something underneath the bed.

“Hey!” he called. “Champ! Come out of there!”

Champ stuck his long jaw and shaggy black head out from underneath the bed and Djuna laughed when he saw the dust on his long whiskers.

“Come on!” he said and reached for Champ’s collar as he tried to duck back under the bed.

Djuna caught him and pulled him out, and then he saw the little black luck charm between Champ’s strong white teeth. His heart climbed up into his mouth as he saw that Champ had chewed some of the black off the charm.

“You!”
he said angrily. “Can’t anyone ever drop anything without your trying to chew it apart!”

He got his finger around the black charm and yanked it out of Champ’s teeth and then gazed at it sorrowfully as Champ jumped up and down and up and down, trying to retrieve it.

Suddenly Djuna’s eyes grew round and he drew in his breath as he sat down on the bed and stared at the charm. He saw that the little gold eyelet that came out of the top of the black charm was anchored in some cream-colored object inside, which in turn was covered with a coat of some kind of plaster and over that was a heavy coating of something that was much heaver than black enamel.

Champ, with his long punishing jaw and strong white teeth, had cracked the black covering and had gone on through the plaster to the little object inside.

Djuna stared for a moment and then got his pocket-knife from the khaki shorts he had thrown on the floor. He slipped the blade underneath the plaster and gave a little twist, and one whole side of the charm fell away on the floor.

Djuna was so excited that he could hardly breathe as he went on with his work of destruction and chipped all of the outside black and the inside white plaster off the little object in which the gold eyelet was anchored.

He knew what he had found before he had finished taking off the plaster but he couldn’t believe his eyes until he put the little object on its four feet on top of his bureau and half whispered,
“The white elephant!”

There it was!

A tiny white elephant, carved from ivory, complete with four legs, a tail, a trunk, and tusks!

“That,”
Djuna said, whispering again, “was what Spitfire tried to tell me!”

He picked up the tiny white elephant, laid it in the palm of his hand and took it over by a window to inspect it more closely. “Why did Spitfire think of it, even when he was so terribly hurt?” he asked himself. “What does it
mean?
“

He turned it over and over while he studied it and suddenly he saw some infinitely small numbers on the back of the two forelegs and some more on the inside of the hind legs. They were so small that he could barely see them. He strained, trying to make them out with his eyes half closed, and then he thought of the magnifying glass down in Miss Annie’s sewing basket that she used to thread needles and to read very fine print.

He ran downstairs and got the magnifying glass. When he held it a little above the forelegs he could make out the figure 8 on the left leg, and the figure 5 on the right leg. He turned the elephant around very carefully and on the back of the left hind leg the figure 3 was carved, and on the right leg was the figure 9.

“Left 8, right 5, left 3, right 9!” Djuna said over and over to himself. Turning the little elephant over, he saw another numeral—a zero—on its stomach. “Jiminy crimps!” he said. “What do these numbers mean?”

Then Djuna’s hands began to tremble so that he had to put the tiny white elephant and the magnifying glass on the top of the bureau, because he was afraid he would drop them. And for a moment he felt as though he were going to be very, very sick.

“Mr. Grant,” he said slowly to himself, “tried to have Spitfire killed because he thought Spitfire knew something about his father’s will!”

He sat weakly down on the edge of his bed; and Champ, who had been patiently waiting for some attention, came over and nuzzled his long jaw into Djuna’s hand and looked up at him with his black shoe-button eyes.

“Oh, Champ,” Djuna said in a low voice, “I don’t know what to do.
I’m scared!
“

Champ jumped back and barked six times as if to say, “Come on! You can lick it!” And Djuna grabbed him and hugged him and said aloud, “Sure I can!” just as though he understood what Champ had said.

Just then Miss Annie’s voice came up from the front lawn below. “What in the name of time are you doing, Djuna?” she called. “Mr. McGinnty has to get back to Riverton. Do you have your stuff packed?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Djuna said. “Would you please look at my bag?” He grabbed up the little white elephant and started to put it in his pocket, then hesitated because he was afraid he might break the delicate trunk and tusks.

An instant later he had his pocketknife open again and cut off a piece of stout twine from the ball he had in his bureau. Slipping the twine through the gold eyelet he made a tight knot of the two ends and then put the loop around his neck and stuck the white elephant down inside the neck of his blouse.

“Right back where Spitfire was wearing it,” he said to himself stoutly as he heard Miss Annie coming up the stairs with Cannonball clumping along behind her.

“Came up to carry your bag down, in case you can’t manage it,” Cannonball said, smiling.

“Jeepers! I’ve carried it fuller’n this a million times,” Djuna said.

“I came in, really, to get another look at the inside of this swell old house,” Cannonball explained. Then he looked more closely at Djuna as Miss Annie checked the things Djuna had packed. “What’s the matter with you, kid? You look a little pale around the gills.”

Miss Annie looked up hastily from her inspection of Djuna’s bag and said severely, “Have you been stuffing your stomach full of a lot of trash, Djuna? If you have, you can’t go back to that circus! You’ll come home sick and have to stay in bed for two or three days.”

“I haven’t, Miss Annie.
Honest
, I haven’t!” he said. Then he thought
Golly, I’m getting to be an awful liar
, as he said out loud, “I bumped my knee on the corner of my bed, I was hurrying so. I guess I must have hit a nerve, or something.”

“He’ll be all right, Miss Annie,” Cannonball said, and he rumpled Djuna’s hair with his big hand. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t seen them eating anything, except at mealtime.”

“We haven’t, Miss Annie,” Djuna said earnestly. “Golly, there has been so much to see that we haven’t had time!”

“Well,” Miss Annie said, “I guess everything is here.” She shut the bag and snapped the locks and Cannonball picked it up with one finger. They all went back downstairs after Djuna had transferred the rest of his treasures from the pockets of his dirty khaki shorts to the ones he was now wearing.

Before Djuna climbed back in the car beside Cannonball Miss Annie kissed him and said, “Now, you do everything that Mr. Furlong or Mr. McGinnty tell you.
And don’t get mixed up in any trouble!
“

“Oh, jeepers, of course not, Miss Annie!” said Djuna with a great show of innocence, while inside himself he was saying,
Jiminy crimps, I’m already mixed up in it so that I don’t know what to do next!

“Good-by, Miss Annie,” Cannonball called. “I’ll see you when I bring Djuna back.”

“Good-by, good-by,” Miss Annie called and she had to take off her spectacles because she couldn’t see through them, and inside herself she was saying,
Drat it! Why do I have to cry every time he goes away?

Cannonball swung the car around with a few deft motions and a moment later they picked up Tommy, and Cannonball assured his mother, too, that he’d look out for Tommy; and then they were away in a cloud of dust on the road through Clinton to Riverton.

On the way back Djuna didn’t have anything to say because he had so many things to think about, but just before they got into Riverton he said, “Say, Cannonball, would you mind driving around the edge of town and up on the hill where old man Grant used to live? It’ll only take a minute and I can tell you how to go.”

“What do you want to go up there for?” Cannonball asked.

“We turn left here at the next corner,” Djuna said before he answered, and Cannonball went left before Djuna continued. “I want to show you the parade of iron animals old Mr. Grant had on his front lawn,” Djuna said.

“A parade of iron animals?” Cannonball said, and then he laughed, “Oh, sure, I know what you mean. I’ve noticed them. Do you still want to go? You forget this is my regular beat around here.”

“If you don’t mind,” Djuna said quite seriously.

They went around the statue of the Civil War soldier and up the hill and when they reached the top Cannonball slowed down and just crept by the front of the ugly monstrosity old Mr. Grant had built.

They were opposite the steam calliope when Tommy shouted, “Look, Djuna! The white elephant has been pushed over and there is a big hole cut in its side! How could they ever do that?”

“Probably with an acetylene torch,” Cannonball said, and he stopped the car and stared at the iron elephant lying on its side. “What puzzles me is not ‘How could they?’ It’s
why
would they?”

Djuna didn’t say anything. He stared at the overturned iron elephant, too, but when he spoke he said nothing about the elephant. He said, “Jeepers! I certain’y hope Mr. Furlong is back from Farmholme when we get back to the hotel!”