But why had the “druggy” hider slammed the door so mysteriously? Where did the gander come in? And why had the granddaughter dropped out of his sight as well as everybody else’s? Finally, and most important of all, where was she?
CHAPTER XX
“MISS” POPPY OTT
Yes, sir, the more we messed the matter around in our minds the more we were made to realize how very little Dr. Madden had told on himself. His secrets were still shut up. And, “man of mystery” that he was, the only reason why he had told us about the hidden diary was to give the granddaughter a square deal. Knocked out himself, he wanted us to help her, if we could, and thus defeat the scheming lawyer.
That old hunk of human fat! How we hated him! We wanted to trim him to a frazzle. But how were we going to do it? It looked kind of hopeless.
But Poppy isn’t the kind of a kid to give up without a struggle. I guess not. And it was his gritty scheme now to waylay the lawyer, when he came that night, and lock him up in the barn. If necessary, we would keep the human lard-pail shut up for several days, which would give us a chance to look around for the granddaughter. Then, if we found her, we would turn him loose, and she could stare at him in surprise and say: “Well, old hunk, where have you been all summer?” Do you catch on? Having been shut up in the barn, he wouldn’t be able to prove that she hadn’t tripped into the house in time to save her fortune. A kind of tricky scheme, it’s true, but look who we were fighting!
Ma, poor old soul, seemed sort of shrunken over the fact that the red-plush settee hadn’t been mentioned in the diary. She just knew that she wasn’t going to get it. Or, worse, she might not get anything at all! Never having heard people talk so open and frank-like about such things, it was kind of funny to us. But, bu-lieve me, we got the grin out of our eyes in a hurry when the wilted little old lady began to cry. We saw then how much the settee meant to her. And realizing that she might get left out, after all, we wondered if we couldn’t buy the piece for her. We still had sixteen dollars.
To our surprise, young fatty breezed in just before supper, having brought another doctor—a tall, willowy geezer with mutton-chop whiskers and a jug-handle nose. And speaking of noses, I wish you could have seen squashy’s bugle. It was all over his face. Like a big toadstool. And when he walked he sort of spraddled.
“Where was the wreck?” grinned Poppy.
That made the kid furious. For he knew, of course, who had sicked the hornets on him.
“I’ll ‘wreck’ you,” he fired at us, “if you don’t crawl into a hole and shut up.”