Beware the Fisj (7 page)

“Elmer, speak English!” Bruno snapped.

“Mr. Flynn is drunk,” translated Elmer.

Bruno and Boots sat down on the ground and laughed, mostly with relief.

“Perhaps we had better attend to him,” suggested Elmer. “This will, of course, wear off in a few hours, but it would never do if someone saw him in this condition. After all, it is your fault.”

“Our fault?” objected Bruno as they began hurrying to Dormitory 2. “It was your concoction that got him bombed!”

“It was administered incorrectly,” accused Elmer primly.

They entered the dormitory and ran down the hall. The door of room 200 was open. Flynn was gone.

“Oh, no!” moaned Boots, leaning against the wall for support.

“Oh, no!” repeated Bruno. “If we don’t find him before The Fish sees him, we’ll have to confess!”

“Oh, no!” echoed Elmer. “Where could he have gone?”

“If you were a drunk gym teacher, where would you go?” demanded Bruno.

“I would stay home where I wouldn’t worry my students!” muttered Boots feelingly.

“We have to get him back to his room!” Bruno said. “Elmer, check the gym. Boots, you look in his office in the Faculty Building. I’ll take the staff dining room. Come on, let’s move!”

The three boys ran out of Dormitory 2 and were about to go off on their separate errands when, across the road, Miss Scrimmage’s outdoor public address system sprang to life.

“Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam,”
sang a male voice loudly and rather off-key.

“Flynn!” chorused Bruno and Boots, horrified.

As Flynn finished his song, a voice they recognized as Cathy Burton’s howled, “One more time!”

Obediently, Flynn began again.

Finally Cathy’s voice returned.
“Attention out there.”

“You tell ’em!”
cheered Flynn.

“
We have a stray here,”
Cathy continued.
“He’s tall, red-haired, and answers to the name of Al. Would someone please come to claim him immediately.”

As Bruno and Boots rushed towards Scrimmage’s, a nervous Elmer Drimsdale stumbling along behind them, they could see a group of girls escorting their coach down the driveway to the side of the road. The boys ran up to them.

“Is Miss Scrimmage around?” Boots asked anxiously. “Did she see him?”

“Yes and no,” offered Cathy. “When he walked into her sitting room and asked her to dance, she fainted.” She turned to Flynn. “Okay, Al, it’s time for you to go home now.”

“Don’t want to go,” said Flynn sulkily. “Like it here.”

“Come again any time, Al,” said Cathy genially.

“ ’Bye.”

Bruno, Boots and Elmer hustled Flynn across the road and across the campus to Dormitory 2. Luckily, they attracted very little attention from the student body and were not seen by any member of the staff.

“Please, Coach,” begged Boots as they placed Flynn on his bed, “please have a nap.”

“I know! Let’s play cards!” Flynn suggested brightly.

“We can’t, sir,” said Elmer. “We have classes this afternoon.

“Then why are you wasting my time?” cried Flynn, starting for the door. “I’m going back to that Scrimmage place! Asked a lady to dance …”

“Cards it is!” said Bruno quickly.

“Good! Didn’t like her anyway.” Flynn rummaged through a drawer for a deck of cards.

Bruno noticed Elmer quietly sneaking out the door. “Drimsdale, get back here! You’re in this too!” Red-faced, Elmer slithered back in.

“And just to make it interesting,” said Flynn, “we’ll play for toothpicks.”

They all sat down on the floor and began to play poker. In half an hour Flynn was fast asleep and Elmer had won all the toothpicks.

“Beginner’s luck,” mumbled Bruno. They tiptoed out, careful not to waken their sleeping coach.

* * *

“Miss Scrimmage,” Mr. Sturgeon snapped into his office telephone, “you have made up stories before, but this one is beyond anything! No member of my staff was over at your school running about in his underwear! They were all in class except my athletic director who spent the afternoon in bed with a bad cold! … Yes, I am sure! As a matter of fact, I am positive! … My staff does not drink during school hours, and none of them ever drinks to excess! … Miss Scrimmage, it simply cannot have happened! … No, I was not watching Mr. Flynn a hundred percent of the time! … Mr. Flynn is an athlete! He does not smoke or drink! He won’t even eat fried foods! … Miss Scrimmage … Miss Scrimmage …?”

The Headmaster buzzed his secretary. “Mrs. Davis, I’ll be out for a few moments.”

He left the Faculty Building and walked to Dormitory 2, going straight to room 200 and tapping at the door. There was no answer. From inside he could hear loud snoring.

He shook his head. “That woman!” he said aloud. He strode back to his office.

* * *

“Investigation Fish — Field Report Number Three — Sergeant Harold P. Featherstone, Special Division, reporting,” dictated Sergeant Featherstone into his voice recorder. He was locked in the motel bathroom and had the shower, sink and fan all running.

“A further development has arisen,” he continued softly. “I am being followed by a tall, thin, dark-haired man with a long nose. He is staying in the room next to mine. Everywhere I go, he goes. I am reporting from my bathroom with the water running to render any bugging devices ineffective. I suspect he is one of the Fish’s operatives, or perhaps the Fish himself. Whichever, it is obvious that the Fish knows of my presence here in Chutney. I will take all necessary precautionary measures.

“Featherstone out.”

Friday night after lights-out, few students were in bed. The woods behind Macdonald Hall were crawling with boys, all setting out on the great pop-can round-up. Most of the boys had had the same idea — to take to the woods until they were out of sight of the school and then cut over to the highway for the long walk to Chutney.

Bruno and Boots trudged along behind Larry and Sidney.

“How come you’re going, Larry?” asked Bruno. “What if The Fish needs a messenger tomorrow and you’re not back yet?”

“I’m just going as far as the drive-in movie outside Chutney,” Larry replied. “Pete and Wilbur are already there. Sidney’ll go on with them, and I’ll go home with the cans from the drive-in.” He squinted in the dark. “Say, where’s Elmer?”

“He’s staying home,” explained Boots. “He said something about a remote-control thingamajig he’s working on.”

“Where are you guys going?” asked Sidney.

“Oh, we’re going to Toronto,” Bruno said airily.

Boots was worried. “Bruno, Toronto is awfully far. I thought we’d just sort of hang around Chutney.”

“If everyone just sort of hangs around Chutney,” pointed out Bruno, “we won’t get enough cans, will we?” Boots fell silent. He had decided quite a while earlier that the entire pop-can project was ridiculous and rather out of reach, but from long experience he knew there was no point in telling this to Bruno Walton, who had his heart and mind set on it. Boots found himself wondering what Mr. Sturgeon would do if he discovered that ninety percent of his students had walked out in the middle of the night.

His thoughts were shared by many of the boys who trudged north on Highway 48 that night. They walked, for the most part, in silence.

* * *

“Hey, look at this!” exclaimed Rob Adams as he and his companion, Marvin Trimble, boarded the 10 PM bus for Richmond Hill. “A pop can right under my seat! This is going to be easier than we thought!” He unfolded a green garbage bag and tossed the can in. “One,” he counted.

“We’re really on our way,” commented Marvin dryly as the bus pulled out.

* * *

Sergeant Harold P. Featherstone, Junior, reclined in the front seat of his old Volkswagen Beetle, sipping the last few drops of a can of ginger ale and watching the late-night movie at the drive-in. His stomach rumbled loudly as he got out of the car and headed for the snack bar.

From out of the darkness Pete Anderson appeared. He reached up for Featherstone’s pop can, shook it, and finding it empty, tossed it into his bag. It clanked against many others.

Five minutes later Featherstone returned, carrying a hot dog and another drink. He noticed two things: his pop can had disappeared and the man in the car directly behind him, though disguised in a trench coat, a hat and dark glasses, was unmistakably the mysterious man from room 14. Featherstone was now sure that the long-nosed man was working for the Fish and that Operation Popcan, whatever it was, had already begun.

* * *

“Nothing in here,” echoed Perry Elbert’s voice from the depths of a garbage can.

“Don’t we have enough?” complained his roommate, Mortimer Day. “Between the two of us, we must have fifty of them.”

“Bruno said he wants us to get at least sixty each,” said Perry. “That’s a hundred and twenty. We’re short, but it’s early yet.”

“Do you mean to tell me that we’re going into every garbage can in Chutney?” asked Mort indignantly.

“And maybe Stouffville if we have time.”

Mort groaned. “I hate it when Bruno runs things!”

Perry grunted in agreement. “Me too, but this time it’s important. We’re doing this to save the school.”

“I don’t see how a pyramid of tin cans, even the largest one in the world, will save the school,” objected Mort.

“Neither do I,” said Perry, “but everybody’s out collecting, so it has to have some point.”

“Jackpot!” whispered Mort in sudden delight. “A whole case of empties!”

* * *

“This alley is paradise to the pop-can hunter!” exclaimed Louis Brown, stuffing cans into his bag with both hands.

“We must have a million by now!” agreed Mark Davies.

“Good. Let’s go back before we get into trouble,” urged the third member of the group, Gary Potts. “We don’t need any more cans.”

“After we clean out this alley,” said Mark, peering behind some old crates, “we’ll talk about it.”

“I want to go home!” insisted Gary.

* * *

Chris Talbot and Rodney Stitt had taken a bus all the way to Gormley because they had discovered that there was a soft drink manufacturer there. To their utter disappointment, the Gormley Soda Works turned out to be a bottler. No cans. Their night was saved, however, when they accidentally stumbled upon the leavings of a very large company picnic at a park across from the bus depot. There they amassed over two hundred empty pop cans between them.

* * *

When the movie ended Featherstone aimed his car toward the one exit, and with a screech of his tires, turned out onto the highway. In his rear-view mirror he could see the usual congested traffic leaving the drive-in lot. He had the satisfaction of knowing that he had left the man from room 14 far behind in the jam.

* * *

“I don’t like this place!” complained Sidney Rampulsky, on his hands and knees in a pile of rubbish. “It stinks!”

“What did you expect the Chutney dump to smell like?” demanded Wilbur. “Roses? Anyway, there’s a lot of cans here.”

“They stink too,” said Sidney. “We’re going to have the smelliest pop-can pyramid in the world.”

“Two world records,” grunted Wilbur.

Pete Anderson appeared, shining a flashlight over a mountain of trash. “This whole thing makes me nervous,” he complained. “What if The Fish comes?”

“The Fish is snug in his bed back at the Hall,” said Sidney, “where I wish I was. Besides, if he did discover we were missing, I figure the dump is the last place he’d look for us.”

“It makes me nervous too,” said Wilbur, stuffing a whole pile of cans into his bag. “Sometimes I think we’re nuts to do what Bruno tells us.”

“Keep picking them up,” sighed Sidney. “The sooner we get out of here, the better.”

* * *

In search of clues to Operation Popcan, Featherstone cruised along side roads on his way back to the Chutney Motel. Not knowing what one was looking for, he reflected, made an investigation rather difficult. At first he had thought Operation Popcan was only a code name. And yet someone, probably the Fish’s agent from room 14, had deliberately gone to his car and stolen his empty pop can. What on earth for? he asked himself. Was there really some sort of strange terrorist activity developing in this peaceful town?

He came to a bend in the road and suddenly caught a glimpse of a dim light up ahead in what appeared to be a field. He drove a little farther, stopped the car and got out. The smell of rotting garbage assailed his nostrils. The town dump. Someone was foraging around the dump. But why? The dump was full of garbage and refuse and — pop cans.

Gingerly, trying to ignore his racing heart, he stepped over the wire fence and began to creep silently toward the spot where he could still see the light bobbing. Now he could hear several voices. Careful. He was outnumbered.

“I did! I did see a car! It stopped right over there and then the lights went out!”

“The Fish!”
screeched Pete Anderson, switching off his flashlight. “Let’s get out of here!”

Sidney Rampulsky grabbed his two giant bags full of pop cans and ran aimlessly. At the top of a mound his foot got snagged on the edge of an old broken bathtub. The tub rolled over and started a landslide of garbage down the mound. Panic-stricken, Sidney looked down and saw, two metres below him, a white face with two hands held up in front of it in a futile attempt to ward off the avalanche.

Sidney wheeled and tore off after Wilbur Hackenschleimer’s burly, fleeing form. Passing Wilbur and then Pete, he howled, “Let’s move! There’s a
guy
back there!”

The three, only slightly impeded by the bags they still clutched, ran off into the night. They did not stop until they were halfway back to Macdonald Hall.

In the Chutney dump, a pile of garbage stirred and a head broke the surface. With great effort and much spitting and muttering, Sergeant Featherstone arose and shook himself, spraying garbage everywhere. He stood there for an instant squinting about him and then, with a groan, dropped to his knees in the mess and began foraging. After a few minutes he came up with his glasses. He stumbled away from the dump, eased himself back over the fence and crossed the road to his car. Miserably, he realized that the aroma of rotten garbage had come with him.