The White Elephant Mystery (18 page)

“I’m afraid I have, Socker,” Sonny said as he reached for the Last Will and Testament of his father. “You see, I organized them.”

“Drop it, Sonny!” another voice said from the foot of the cellar stairs. “Drop those guns, too! Don’t turn…. Drop the guns before you turn!”

When Sonny Grant dropped his gun on the cement floor, Tony Ciro whirled and one bullet from his gun ricocheted off the plaster wall as he fired. But another gun had fired twice from the foot of the cellar stairs before Ciro fired, and the bullets didn’t strike plaster. They struck Tony Ciro, and he folded up like a marionette whose string had been cut; he sank to the floor, not dead, but no longer dangerous.

Djuna picked up the Last Will and Testament of Alvah O. Grant and stuck it down inside his basque shirt as he said, “You’re right on the button, Cannonball, and—Jiminy crimps, am I glad!”

The superintendent of the Riverton Hospital—a woman with large brown eyes, white hair and a worried expression—looked around the sun parlor, which was usually used for convalescents, and made sure that everything was just the way it was supposed to be.

There were low vases of flowers standing on the wicker tables and tall vases of flowers standing in the corners. At the end of the room, out of the sun and covered with a very clean white table cloth, was a long table that simply groaned with delicacies, and other things that were more substantial, such as an enormous crisp, brown turkey and an equally large baked ham that was studded with cloves.

At the other end of the sun parlor was another much smaller table on which had been arranged a number of very important-looking papers. Behind the table sat a white-haired old gentleman—Mr. Webster, the lawyer—who beamed at the superintendent of the hospital as she arranged and rearranged flowers and chairs, and occasionally spoke to the young man who sat beside him, evidently his assistant.

“I think Mr. Furlong said there would be a dozen, or more, people here,” the superintendent said to Mr. Webster. “He was very explicit about just how he wanted everything. I think some of the time he was laughing at me when he gave me directions,” she went on, “but I wasn’t certain because his face was sort of hidden behind those two black eyes.”

“Young Furlong is quite a lad,” said old Mr. Webster. “And quite a showman, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if he went off with the circus and gave up his newspaper job.” Mr. Webster beamed and then he added, “When are you going to bring in Mr. Peters?”

“After they’ve all arrived,” the superintendent said. Then she gasped as she heard a bevy of voices down the corridor and said, “My gracious, here they come!”

Mr. Webster and his young assistant rose as more than a dozen people flowed into the cheery sun parlor. In the lead was Djuna with young Tommy Williams. Their faces and hands shone from too much scrubbing and they were wearing their very best Sunday suits, and collars that looked as though they scratched.

Right behind them were Socker Furlong and Joy Maybeck, and from the way they were looking at each other as they talked they didn’t even know that anyone else was there. Then came a very distinguished-looking man and woman who were Joy’s father and mother, and with them was a girl who was the spitting image of Joy. Although she had black hair, anyone would have known that she was Joy’s sister.

Next came Miss Annie Ellery, dressed in a cool cotton dress and observing every minute little thing around her with her bright blue eyes. With Miss Annie was Mr. George Boots, who was all dressed up in his best blue suit and looked very happy and proud, except for the high stiff collar he was wearing.

Behind Miss Annie was Cannonball McGinnty and the two enormous troopers—all three in uniform—who had appeared so opportunely in old man Grant’s cellar a couple of afternoons before. And right in the center of the three big troopers was a tiny man, the clown Merry Andrews, whose head came only a little above their knees. But all three of the troopers were listening to him and laughing as though their sides would split as they listened. Merry had taken off his clown’s costume and wore a suit that was beautifully tailored and would have fitted any good-sized walking doll.

After Socker Furlong had introduced everyone to Mr. Webster and his young assistant, a door to a private room in the corridor just outside the sun parlor opened and the leg rests of a wheel chair came into view. Everyone leaned forward as Spitfire Peters’s feet appeared and then his body, encased in casts and bandages. Pushing the wheel chair was Trixie Cella. No one could believe what they saw, because only two days before Spitfire had still been in a very critical condition. They stared at him with unbelieving eyes until he raised his good arm and said, through the bandages that swathed his face, “Hi-yah, folks!”

Then everyone began to crowd around him until the suprintendent of the hospital came rushing in to say that Mr. Peters could stay at the party only for a short time, and would everyone please sit down, so they wouldn’t tire Mr. Peters.

Everyone sat down except Socker Furlong and he stood in the center of the sun parlor and said, “Just so we can get everything straight for the record, before Mr. Webster has a word to say, I’m going to ask Djuna to tell you just how he goes about rounding up gangs of desperate criminals singlehanded.”

“Oh, pshaw, Mr. Furlong!” Djuna said and his face became very, very red as he began to squirm in his chair. Then, when he tried to speak, his lips moved but no words came out, so Socker gave him an encouraging pat on the back and said, “Start at the beginning, kid. You’re among friends, you know.”

“Jeepers, I know it,” Djuna burst out, and his eyes swept the circles of faces around him. “But I don’t know just where to begin!”

“Why’n’t you begin at the beginnin’, Djuna, and tell ’em about that fellah you saw swingin’ into old Mr. Grant’s house from a tree?” Mr. Boots suggested. “The mornin’ I brought you over to Riverton and didn’t have enough sense to listen to you when you told me you saw someone in the treetops!”

“You’re not the only one who wouldn’t listen to him, Mr. Boots,” Cannonball said. “I—”

“Yeah, me, too!” Trixie Cella interrupted to say.

“Go on, Djuna, tell it your own way,” Socker said.

“Well,” Djuna said, “I did see a man swing into Mr. Grant’s house the morning Mr. Boots brought us over to Riverton to get some lumber and see the iron animals, including the elephant that was painted white, on the lawn of Mr. Grant’s house.

“But I didn’t think much about it until the day we came over to the circus and met Sonny Grant, and, right after that, Spitfire. Spitfire was going to have a rehearsal that morning because he said his catcher had been missing the night before and he wanted to find out what was wrong. Tommy and I watched them and when I saw Ned Barrow swinging back and forth up in the top of the tent I sort of thought he was the same man I saw swing from the tree into Mr. Grant’s house! Then when I thought about it some more
I
thought I was crazy, too, and tried to forget about it. But maybe I’d better tell you that when Spitfire took off his sweater to go up and do some flying, the little black good-luck charm that he wore around his neck popped out and he showed it to us and told us about it. I mean, he just told us it was a good-luck charm.”

“But he didn’t tell you what would happen to you if you got tangled up with it, did he?” Socker said, laughing.

“I’m glad he didn’t,” Djuna said, and then he frowned and went on: “A little bit later, when Spitfire was through with his rehearsal, Mr. Grant came along and I could tell that he and Spitfire didn’t like each other from the way they talked.

“So,” Djuna continued, “we saw the parade and had dinner in the chow tent and then we went to the afternoon perfor—”

“Hey!” Tommy interrupted to say. “You didn’t tell ’em about the
second
white elephant!”

“Oh!” Djuna said and he grinned. “That morning while we were waiting for Socker to come along we wandered into the menagerie and when we peeked in a tent we saw some men
painting
an elephant white. We thought it was an awful fake but Socker told us it really was a white elephant from Siam. And I told Mr. Furlong that I thought the man I saw swing into Mr. Grant’s house from the treetops was Ned Barrow, Spitfire’s catcher.”

“You did?” Spitfire exclaimed. “What did Socker say?”

“He said he’d check it,” Djuna told him. “I don’t know—”

“I’ve checked it, Djuna, too late as usual,” Socker said. “It was the same person. We’ll come to that later.”

“Then,” said Djuna, “Tommy and I went to the afternoon performance. Golly, it was wonderful until—until I just
knew
something was going to happen. I saw Spitfire swing ’way up to the top of the tent and saw him go into his triple, and the next thing we knew he landed right in front of us on the hippodrome track. Golly, it was awful!”

“I wasn’t feeling so hot myself about that time, Djuna!” Spitfire said, from his wheel chair.

“Jeepers, maybe you weren’t,” Djuna said. “But when you landed your good-luck charm shot out from under your tights and I scooped it up and stuck it in my pocket. And when you were almost unconscious you said to me, ‘The white elephant!’ I didn’t know what you meant. I told Tommy about it later and showed him Spitfire’s black luck charm, but he couldn’t figure out what Spitfire was talking about either.

“Later that afternoon Mr. Furlong took us over to the hospital to see Spitfire but he was paralyzed and couldn’t talk to anyone. Then Mr. Furlong made Tommy and me go home to our hotel and made us promise to go to bed at nine o’clock because he thought we’d had enough excitement for one day.”

“Yeah!” Socker said. “You went to bed at nine o’clock and got up at five after! I’ll know how to word the promises I get next time.”

“Well,” said Djuna, “I’d been thinking about what Spitfire said, and I thought about the iron elephant on old Mr. Grant’s lawn that was painted white. So—Tommy and I got dressed and went up to see if there was anything about that white elephant that would solve what Spitfire had said.”

“I should have known, when you borrowed that flashlight,” Socker said.

“Anyway,” Djuna went on, “we looked the white elephant over very carefully when we got to Mr. Grant’s and couldn’t find anything. We were just about to leave when Sonny Grant and a man named Ciro arrived in one car, and Mr. Webster in another. They all went inside the house, and after a few minutes I slipped in and listened to what they said.

“I heard Mr. Webster tell Sonny Grant that his father hadn’t left any will, but that everything would go to him because his father had died intes—intes—”

“Intestate, Djuna,” Mr. Webster said, helping him out.

“Yeah, like that,” Djuna said. “But Sonny insisted he thought his father
had
left a will; and when Mr. Webster had gone, Sonny told Mr. Ciro that he was sure his father had left a will leaving everything to someone else. He said he thought the people who were going to inherit everything knew where the will was, but they didn’t know what was in it. He said he
had
to find it, and tear it up, before they got it, because, you see, if no will was ever found, he would inherit all his father’s property. Gee, he sounded pretty desperate! But I forgot about that when I heard Tony Ciro tell Mr. Grant that he thought ‘a good dunkin’ in the London River with some lead fastened to his feet’ would teach Socker Furlong a lesson! I got scared then, and slipped off the stairs in the hallway where I was listening and made an awful racket, on purpose.

“Mr. Grant and Mr. Ciro came rushing out into the hallway and I pretended to be pounding on the front door when they saw me!”

“Fast thinking, Djuna, fast thinking!” Socker said.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” Djuna explained. “I told them what Spitfire had said to me when he fell that afternoon and I told them I’d seen the elephant that was painted white on the front lawn and that we had come up to look at it, thinking Spitfire might have meant
that
elephant. They thought it was awful funny we were prowling around there until I told them that.”

“Well, just why did you tell them that?” Cannonball asked.

“Because I was scared,” Djuna said. “I remembered that Spitfire had asked Mr. Grant that afternoon when they were talking if he could come up to his house and get some things he had left there the last time the circus played in Riverton. And I remembered that when Mr. Grant told Mr. Ciro about the will he thought was hidden in the house that he sort of hinted that someone in the circus knew where it was. I thought, kind of in the back of my mind, that Mr. Grant would think Spitfire knew where the will was hidden. That’s why I told him about the white elephant, because I knew he’d be glad to get rid of us, so that he could search it to see if the will
was
hidden there.”

“Did
you
think it was hidden there?” Socker asked.

“No,” Djuna said. “I’d just got through searching for a door or some sort of opening into that white elephant on the lawn, and I knew there
wasn’t
any way to get in it! … I wanted him to take us home.”

“He did, too!” Tommy put in.

“Were you beginning to think there was something funny about Mr. Grant by this time?” Socker asked.

“Yes and no,” Djuna said. “But the next morning, I thought there was something
very
funny. But I’ll come to that in a minute. After Cannonball and Tommy and I had breakfast the next morning, Cannonball took us over to Edenboro to get some clean clothes. Socker had been given an assignment at Farmholme by his newspaper, so he couldn’t go.

“But while I was changing my clothes at Miss Annie’s I dropped Spitfire’s luck charm out of my pocket. My Scotty, Champ, began to chew on it under the bed—and before I could stop him he’d chewed off some of the outside black and some of the plaster inside. I took it away from him and looked at it carefully, and then I got a knife and pried the rest of the plaster off. Inside, I found a tiny white elephant carved in ivory; and on each of its forelegs and on its hind legs and on its belly it had a numeral scratched!”