No doubt it was all imagination on my part, but during the time that we were in the yard, hedged in as we were by a black thicket of crouching bushes and quivering overhead leaves, I had the shaky feeling that a pair of burning eyes were secretly watching us. But we could pick up nothing with our flashlights. I was glad, though, to go inside. Walls gave me a safer feeling. A one-armed cat killer! Br-r-r-r! None of that grab-it-by-the-neck-and-drag-it-around stuff for me.
It was Mr. Weckler’s library safe, Bill said, that had gotten the burglar’s eyes. But so far as we could see the safe hadn’t been opened, which led us to the belief that the defeated housebreaker had been scared away right after the attack.
“The dum cat is what gits me,” says Bill, all tangled up in that angle of the mystery. “I kin understand the attack on old Weckler—the chances are he heard noises below an’ come down here to investigate, to the unfortunate result that we already know—but I kain’t fur the life of me figure out why the geezer killed the cat. Did he do it first off on coming into the house, to keep it from yowling? Or did he do it after beanin’ the old gent? An’ why in time did he strangle it? If he wanted to kill it, why didn’t he jest whack it in the head?”
“This isn’t the first queer thing that the robber has done,” says Poppy. “For the other night he broke into our cellar and strewed pickles all over the floor.”
“It could ’a’ bin the same geezer,” waggled Bill, on getting the whole story. Then he walked around shaking his head, as though he were more puzzled than ever.
At four-thirty old Mr. Weckler was no closer to consciousness than when we had carried him upstairs, so there was no hope of getting any early help from him on the mystery. The nurse told us that steps were being taken by the doctors for an early operation. The poor old man! I kind of choked up when I looked at him, so still and white. I thought of the time my dog was run over by the garbage wagon. And I wished with all my heart that this awful accident hadn’t happened. For he had been good to us. In fact, few men would have done the things for us that he had done. For most men are too busy with their own work to give much thought or help to a boy’s schemes.
We solemnly buried the dead cat beside the onion bed in the weedy garden. It was daylight now. And as there was nothing more for us to do here, as I could see, I passed the suggestion to Poppy that we beat it for home and have a beauty nap. But he shook his head, telling me that he wanted to stay here and have an early talk with Mrs. Clayton, who was sleeping off the effect of Doc’s medicine. Getting his promise to meet me at Sunday School, I went off with Bill in the flivver. Dad got up when he heard me come in. And learning that Mother was sleeping, I quietly slipped into my own bed. Nor was I more than five or six minutes getting my snoozer cranked up.
I was up again at nine-thirty. And after a late breakfast of my own making I dolled up in my best duds and sashayed down the street to the Methodist church. People in the street were talking with considerable excitement about the attempted robbery. But I didn’t say anything. For a good detective doesn’t run around blabbing his stuff.
Presently I met Mr. Stair.
“Well,” says he, thinking that he was pulling something clever, “how’s Aunt Jemima this morning?”