Poppy Ott and the galloping snail

by Leo Edwards

But to-night he had pulled the trick to his satisfaction. His wife sound asleep, he had crept out of the bedroom, very well pleased, no doubt, to find that the kitchen door was already unlocked for him. And that he couldn’t have suspected that anybody else was in the barn ahead of him, least of all a hidden enemy, was shown by his open actions. The first man had sort of crept into the barn. On tiptoes. But old Ivory Dome had stepped in as bold as brass. Then had come the scream ... and to me this was the most dizzy part of all. For it wasn’t the old man who had screamed. No. He had been struck on the head, as we know, but it was the other man who had done the screaming. Yet, if you can figure out any sensible reason why the man with the drug-store smell should scream, womanlike, as though he was scared out of his wits, you’re a heap smarter than me.

And now the gander was gone. The man had it, of course. But if he had come to the barn purposely to get it, why had he hung around so long in the dark? Could it be that he had hid there, as an enemy, to get a secret crack at the other man? It would seem so. But how could he have known that at midnight old Ivory Dome would put on the usual shirt-tail parade stuff? And, to repeat, having done the intended biffing act, why had he screamed, and not the biffed man, himself?

You can see how puzzling it was for us. Whatever theory we dug out of our minds, there was something to contradict it. But of this we were dead sure: Some one, as mysterious in his hidden movements as any real ghost could have been, was secretly working in and around the big house. Yet even there we met with contradiction. For if the hidden man really had wanted the gander, as his trip to the barn suggested, why hadn’t he kept it when he had it earlier in the evening, instead of putting it in our room? And knowing that we were in the barn, why had he risked capture by tagging us there? Again, if he was so dead eager to put a dent in old Ivory Dome’s thick skull, why hadn’t he taken the easier and surer course of biffing the marked man while he was asleep?

It was Poppy’s further theory that the gander had been put in our room to get us away, so that the desk could be secretly cleaned out. And there again was more contradiction. For if the hidden man had wanted to work at the desk, why had he followed us to the barn? Still, was our conclusion, it probably hadn’t taken him many minutes to pry open the desk—only we learned, on getting up, that a key had been used to open the desk and not a jimmy.

And what had been taken out of the desk? Money? We had talked excitedly of thousand-dollar bills. But we really didn’t know that there was any money in the locked desk. And now that I gave the matter more thought, realizing how the house had been closed and thus left at the mercy of tramps, I began to lose faith in the “money” idea. No, instead of money, it was secret papers that the man was after. And so as not to overlook the particular paper that he wanted, he had taken everything. But how queer, was my thought here, that he had waited until the last night before the reading of the will to clean out the desk! To believe Mrs. Doane’s story of slamming doors and mysterious footfalls, the “ghost” of the big house had been secretly at work for more than a week. Why then had he waited until to-night to rob the dead man’s desk? A spy of Lawyer Chew’s, if that theory still held, had he been given orders at the last minute to grab everything in sight?

If only we could have known all this truck ahead of time! Then, on spotting the spy in the storm, we could have made sure about his capture, even to going after him in a desperate way. And to that point, with the house open to him, why had he stayed outside in the wind and rain? That, too, was puzzling.

There now! If that doesn’t completely tangle you up, I guess you had better go into the detective business yourself. But clever as you are, don’t be too blamed sure of yourself! For a whale of a surprise may jump out at you in the tail end.

As I say, Poppy and I had no intention of going to sleep. But when a boy is completely fagged out, he drops off in spite of himself. And that’s the way it was with us, though we did a lot of talking back and forth, as I have just written down in my own way, before sleep got the best of us. Nor did we wake up to find our heads in one corner of the big room and our arms and legs in another, or Goliath’s, either. In her own room further down the hall, Ma was bustling around, talking a blue streak, as usual, so we knew that everything was all right over there—only we were to learn at breakfast time that the injured shirt-tail parader, on top of being light-headed, had itchy spots all over his back.

But Ma wasn’t as much upset over the old man’s new itchiness, and the disturbing truck that had come ahead of it, as you might imagine. This was a big day for the little old lady. Soon now she would know, in the reading of the will, how the dead man’s property was going to be dished out. And, bu-lieve me, she wasn’t bashful about speaking up for herself!

“One time,” she told us, as she twiddled the bacon and eggs in the frying pan, “Mr. Danver promised me the red-plush settee in the hall. For, as I hinted to him at Aunt Samantha’s funeral, it was a perfect match for the parlor suit that the other relative left to me—only this one piece, I dare say, cost twice as much as all five of Aunt Samantha’s pieces put together. So I hope he didn’t forget about the settee when he was making out his will. If only I was sure, I’d have you boys crate it this morning. Still, I better wait. For I may get a lot more things than I figure on.”