“I’ll tell the world. And you,” he pointed at the gander, “are the biggest tangle of all.”
“Urk! Urk!” came throatily.
“Wa-al, I swan!” old Goliath came out of a nap. “Where did that beast come from?”
“It belongs in the barn,” says Poppy. “And if you can manage to keep awake for a few minutes longer, to help us take it back, we’ll reward you with a beautiful celluloid stove poker.”
I had a lot of new stuff in my head as I followed the others to the barn. As the leader had said, no part of the tangle was any queerer than the gander itself. It had been brought to the big house for a secret purpose, and furthermore it had been carried to our room for a purpose. But was this really an act of the enemy, as we had suspected? To take the view that the unusual gander was a sort of mouthpiece of the crazy mystery, wasn’t it possible that some one, more completely hidden to our eyes than the spy, and more helpless than we suspected, was trying, in a sort of blind, stumbling way, to lead us into a solution of the mystery through the almost human-acting bird itself? And if we kept a close eye on the gander, in the barn, wouldn’t we be likely to soon find out who the hidden one was?
This thought was new to both of us. And Poppy jumped at it when I sprung it on him. Here was our scheme now: We’d lay low in the barn, close to the gander, and then, at the least suspicious sound from the spotted fowl, we’d flash our light. In that way neither friend nor enemy could come into the barn to get the gander for further secret stuff without us seeing him and thus learning who he was. More than that, we had a clever little trapping scheme, as you will learn.
There was a barrel here, and a clothesline. And how easy it would be, we planned, for one of us to hide in the barrel and do a trick with the rope through the bunghole. We worked out all of the details. Then the leader and I drew cuts to see who would have the bunghole job, for the barrel was seven sizes too small for old Goliath. Anyway, we couldn’t have trusted him alone. He was too much of a sleepy-head.
I got the short straw. That made me “it.” But I didn’t get into the barrel. To sort of make it safer for me, I scrooched and let Poppy put the barrel over me, which gave me a neat roof. Then he tied the rope across the doorway and threaded the loose end into the bunghole.
“Now, don’t forget, Jerry. You’re to let the rope lay flat. I’ll be in the haymow with the flashlight. And if I hear any queer sounds down here, on goes the light. See? I’ll yell if I see anybody beating it for the door. Then you yank on the rope for dear life.”
“And mister geezer gets tripped up, huh?”