“As you can imagine,” he ran on, “I almost fell off my chair when old Mr. Hartenbower told me about the lead cucumber. For the truth fairly jumped at me. Our gold cucumber was a part of the pirate’s hidden treasure! Cucumbers having been his hobby, he had made a mold in which to cast his gold in the shape of little cucumbers, though what his object was I can’t imagine. But he did it—I’m dead sure of that. Gold cucumbers! Hundreds of them probably. If only we can find them. Eh, Jerry, old pal?”
Upstairs, in the opening of Sunday School, they were singing “Love Lifted Me.” So, with the pipe organ booming away like a bull with a burr under its tail, and a hundred kids yipping out the “Love-Lifted-Me” stuff at the top of their voices, I felt safe in doing some excited yipping myself. Treasure hunters! That’s what we were now. And to think only a few hours ago we had let ourselves get excited over a dinky little pickle business! Why, if we could find the pirate’s gold cucumbers we’d have a thousand times more jack in our pockets than a pickle store would earn for us in a thousand years. Automobiles! Airplanes! Motor boats! Candy and ice cream by the ton! We could buy anything, no matter what it cost. For gold cucumbers would be worth as much, pound for pound, as gold money. We knew that, all right.
The cat that I have mentioned, after washing itself, had gone to sleep on the sunny window sill. And now, as a long iron thing, like a pair of tongs, came stealthily through the window, inch by inch, and closed, with a snap like a fighting dog’s teeth on the furry neck of the luckless animal, I let out a screech that must have lifted the whole Sunday School to its feet.
Then, to my further horror, the struggling, gurgling, choking cat was whisked through the window and out of our sight.
CHAPTER XII
MRS. O’MALLY’S “GHOST”
To this day Poppy tells the crazy story that I screeched so loud that I rocked the furniture. And the wonder is, he further kids me, that the pipe organ didn’t streak it for the front door. Which is all bunk, of course. Still, it is to be admitted that I did break up the Sunday School. Following a babble of excited voices, we heard quick footsteps coming toward the basement door. Then the door opened. But by this time the leader had his head in the window.
“Quick!” says he, going over the sill on his stomach. To hurry me along he got down on his knees and gave me his hands. I have a hunch that whoever led the way down the stairs caught a glimpse of my flying legs as I went out through the window. But that was nothing to worry about.
Getting to my feet, the first thing I did, of course, like Poppy, was to look around for the cat killer. But, to my surprise, there was no one in sight. Determined not to let the fellow get away from us, we scooted, tandem-style, around the church. Still no success. Nor could we see anybody in the street except two gray-haired ladies in an old-fashioned buggy who were arguing in the deaf-and-dumb language over which hitching post they should use: the one in front of the church or the one at the parsonage. Next we ran to the alley, where we saw plenty of ash cans, but nothing on two legs except a junky-acting rooster.
“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” panted Poppy. “Where in Sam Hill did he go to, anyway?—into the earth?”
This new stuff tangled us up worse than ever. If the man had been listening to us, as seemed probable, considering how very careful he had been to keep back out of sight, why had he jerked the cat through the window? Was it to scare us?