The Alley (10 page)

"Arrested
her!
" exclaimed Connie. "Oh, they could not do that! Arrest my mother? Just because she has hunches? But, you know, she might be right, that they—the policemen—had the ring. The way Mama tells things, you can't help but think that she is probably right. Even Papa looked as though he was beginning to think Mama was right. My mother is very persuasive."

"Well," said Hugsy. "What were the other two policemen, the second two, doing—the two in the cellar? Not much to rob down there, I guess," he said.

"Wait!" screamed Connie, who was doing her best, and doing very well, to tell the story in its proper order. "You have to wait 'til I get to them. The two first policemen wanted Mama to tell them everything, every single thing that was missing. They planned to take this list, go everywhere, and try to get back her possessions. They said, 'Sometimes thieves turn things in at pawnshops.' That was after Mama had looked in her bedroom and had found that all of her bureau drawers had been pulled out a little bit. But, the drawers were not dumped upside down on the bed or the floor, the way robbers usually do these things—Mama knows all about robberies. She was in one once before, before she was married. Papa—don't laugh—was a possible suspect, the policemen said at the time—he being her newest friend."

"Tell us about that robbery!" said Hugsy Goode, who was edging up more closely all the time.

"One robbery at a time," said Billy in his tense but quiet voice.

"Ts," Connie thought fondly. "Billy is really wonderful, the very way he says things like this—'One robbery at a time.' It makes your spine tingle." Out loud she said, "Yes. So, Mama looked in her bedroom, and she saw the little present that she had wrapped in blue tissue paper, and there it was—this little blue-wrapped present—on the middle of the bed, unwrapped, the ribbon beside it, more carefully than you would think burglars would take the time to do, for they always work in a rush. The present was still there, too; soap ... no one wanted that; they had not taken it..."

"Too bad they didn't," said Hugsy, gulping in excitement. "Because then the burglars could be traced by their smell..."

"Just why they didn't take it, dope..." said Billy Maloon.

Hugsy said, "The burglars spent an awful long time deciding what to take and what not to take."

Connie said, "You're right, Hugsy. There were probably two burglaries that went on in my house today, not just one."

"Not just one measly one..." repeated Hugsy, "like mine."

"Measly!" exclaimed Connie. "Nothing measly about either one of them, our two or your one. Anyway, there was the first robbery, the real one that the real burglars did—they took Papa's three brand-new suits. Papa never had three brand-new suits all at once before in his life; but there was a wonderful sale at Pete Rogers, and he just bought three of them, all at once. Too bad the robbery did not happen before he bought the suits. And in that robbery, the first one, we think that probably my seven silver dollars were taken. When Mama went into my room, there on the floor was my jewelry box, smashed open the way real burglars do, not neatly unwrapped like the soap present was, but smashed to bits, and all my seven silver dollars were gone! Lovey..."

"Lovey! Who's that?" asked Hugsy Goode.

"Shut up," said Billy menacingly. Billy had the opinion that Hugsy interrupted too much.

"Lovey is an adopted cousin of my father's—I think," Connie said. "In the South, they adopt cousins and everything. Lovey is the one who gives me a silver dollar every Christmas. I
had
seven of them.
Now
I have none. Well, after Papa saw that the ring was really gone and his jewels of his ancestors—his gold watch with the gold chain and the key for brilliance on it..."

"My father has one of those keys..." said Hugsy.

"...also the cuff links," Connie went on, "that he had inherited from his great-great-grandfather—a colonel of the old South—studs, too, he was as stunned as Mama; he wondered should he or should he not believe what she had said. Mama was puzzled, you see, because so much had been stolen in such a short time—we were gone less than an hour—plus the voice she heard in her ear telling her that the worst, the diamond ring part of the robbery, had been done by the first two policemen and not the robbers."

"What about those second two policemen?" Hugsy reminded Connie. "Those two cellar fellars."

"Well, they came out of the cellar, and they said there were no burglars there. The coast was clear, they said, and they left. Forget them. They were never upstairs."

"Probably played ping-pong," said Hugsy.

"The Ives don't have ping-pong," said June Arp.

"No," said Connie, "No ping-pong. So then when Mama saw that the two first policemen were muttering together and wanting to leave, the whispering in her ear grew louder. She really wanted to yell at them, 'Let me see what is in your pockets, you!'"

"Joan of Arc..." suggested Billy Maloon.

"Joan of Arc!" shouted Hugsy Goode. "What's
she
got to do with it?"

"Hearing voices, get it?" asked Billy quietly. "
Connie's mother hears voices.
"

"Yes," said Connie. "Whispers. Mama suspected the two first policemen. These two guilty-looking first policemen said there was no use their waiting for the detective—you see a detective always comes at the end. But Papa made them wait, because Mama had said to him, 'It is odd that they should be in such a hurry to get away, when they were the first to enter the house.' So Papa asked the policemen to wait, and they did wait; and when the detective came, Mama told him all about our going to the A. & P. and coming home and seeing the men leaving the house—but of course she didn't know then that it was our house—with those three brand-new suits of Papa's; but she could not bring herself—neither could Papa bring himself—to say, 'Detective! I order you to search these two officers!' So they let the two first policemen go away. Off they went with the jewels, perhaps, we don't know for sure, in their pocket."

As different children arrived in the yard, Connie had to repeat parts of her story. To Judy Fabadessa, a latecomer, she had to repeat the part about the arrival of the two first policemen. "'Stay back, stay back,' they said to Mama and Mrs. Stuart and me. And they went right in the house and up the stairs, one at a time, saying, 'Come out, come out, wherever you are, or we'll shoot!'"

Judy's eyes grew big. "I have an uncle who is a policeman," she said.

"Yes. But no one came out," said Connie. "Why should they?" she said. "The real right burglars had already left, calmly and quietly, as though they were going to the alumni luncheon, in broad daylight, with Papa's three brand-new suits over their arms and his little old portable typewriter that he had had since he was in college and had given me just last week."

"So, let's see," said Billy, counting on his fingers to be emphatic. "Those fellows you saw leaving the house were the ones who were the real burglars. That's one robbery. The second robbery—the jewelry robbery—you're not sure, but you think
it
might have been done by the two first policemen."

"Yes," said Connie. "Two robberies."

"What about those two guys in the cellar?" asked Hugsy again. "The second two policemen?"

"Hugsy," said Connie in disgust. "I told you they said everything was all right in the cellar and they left. What can you hide in your pocket from the cellar?"

"Your bike!" said Hugsy with a hoarse guffaw.

"Ha!" said Connie. "Anyway, there are probably only two dishonest policemen in the whole of Brooklyn, not four."

"World, probably," put in Hugsy.

"And those," finished Connie, "were the first two policemen, the upstairs ones. Now, we have two things left over from the burglary. We have a screwdriver that was used to break down the front door, a screwdriver named 'Stanley'—we have it in our own house right now—a screwdriver of a burglar."

"Let's go in and look at it, Connie. Could we?" asked Billy.

"I guess so," Connie said. She was terribly excited. You would be, too, if you ever had seventeen children listening to you tell a story of a burglary that happened to you. They all trooped in. There, on the table near the front door, next to the Tiffany vase, lay the screwdriver!

"It sure is named 'Stanley,'" agreed Billy, examining the broken tool. "I never heard of giving a screwdriver a name before. It is an important clue. Any more clues?"

"Oh, yes," said Connie. "Look there," she said triumphantly. "The best clue of all, probably." She pointed to the floor of the little vestibule.

There, on the floor, right where it had been since she and Mama had come home, lay the burnt butt. Everybody gasped. What a clue!

"That," said Connie in disgust, "shows what sort of policemen those first two were, whether they stole anything or not. They left the important clue behind, the one named 'Stanley'—'Here, take this,' they said to us. And they left the cigarette butt on the floor. Oh, Mama had showed it to them, but..."

"Did they take any fingerprints?" asked Billy.

"Not a one!" said Connie. "Not one single one."

"Yipes!" said Billy Maloon. "What kind of police work is that? May I hold the two clues?"

"Yes," said Connie. "Yes."

Billy's eyes shone with pleasure. "Let's go upstairs. We may find more clues there. Anyway, I'd like to see the broken-into jewelry box."

"All right," said Connie. "But not the tiny children, just the big ones. Danny and Nicky, you better go out and wait for us outside; there are too many in here now."

"O. K.," said the two and ran out, whooping, "Bugglers, bugglers!"

The rest of the children—there was quite a procession, and all could not crowd into Papa's dressing room; many-had to stand on the stairs—asked themselves and each other, "Any more clues? Anything else besides the butt and 'Stanley'? Good old 'Stanley'?"

A squeal from Connie was their answer. "Billy! Look!" they heard. Everyone wanted to see and crowded up the stairs.

"Yikes!" said Billy.

Connie was the first one to see the next important, perhaps
the
most important, clue of all. "Look!" she gasped. "The curtain!"

"What about the curtain?" asked the others excitedly. They were as hot on her neck as the two first policemen had been on Mama's.

"Look at that!" she said. "Bloodstains on the curtain. Oh!"

Connie drew back and so did everybody else. But then, fascinated, all drew forward again. Gingerly, Connie held the tip end of the curtain up so the others could see it. Sure enough, there were bloodstains on the curtain. A person with a hurt hand had lifted it to look out—for a sign or a signal from below, no doubt.

"You know," said Connie. "The burglar who broke the door down and then broke my jewelry box open to get my silver dollars probably hurt his hand, and then..."

"Then when he got up here in this little room, he had to see if the lookout men were giving him the O. K. signal or the signal to get away quick," put in Billy.

"Mama!" Connie called downstairs. "You know what? There is blood on one of Papa's curtains."

"I know it. Ugh!" said Mama. "I'm going to throw the awful thing away. It gives me the heebies."

Billy, who rarely addressed an adult, called downstairs. "Mrs. Ives, did the police take tests of these stains on the curtain?"

Mama said, "No. They did not."

"Ts," said Billy. "They didn't take tests of the blood on the curtain. They didn't keep the broken screwdriver to trace it, where it had been bought—and think how easy that would have been, since it has its name 'Stanley' printed on it in gold letters. They didn't take any fingerprints off the door or anywhere—they took nothing! They did nothing."

"Nothing!" repeated Connie.

"That's the way they help to find burglars in this town—" said Billy. "Not at all like in the movies or in the Perry Mason show, in books or anywhere else that I ever heard of, even in Oldenport, and that's a small town. They have only three policemen there; but I bet Cop Hopper would take something, one fingerprint at least."

At this moment, there was a great commotion downstairs. It was Papa. He was fuming and shouting about how horrible Precinct Number 9999 was. He had gone over there to ask the captain if he thought—"And 1 asked in a nice way, Jane," he said. "I simply said, 'Do you think that the two first policemen, Sergeant Rattray and Officer Ippolito, might have stolen the ring and the jewels? Do you feel that they might have? Since they were upstairs such a long time?' Why, the captain was insulted! He almost clapped me in a cell.... 'How dare you think such a thing of those two fine officers, two of the best on the force?' he bellowed. 'Cited for bravery, time after time,' he said."

Papa's explosions continued. The children, upstairs, listened enthralled. There was no one who could surpass Papa in indignation, unless, possibly, Nanny; and Nanny was in South Carolina—in Chester—though her paper, the Chester
Reporter
was still coming here. Had Nanny been here, though, the house would be reeling with the double indignations, Papa's and Nanny's. Mama was indignant, too; but she had little chance of getting in a word to add to or stem—as the case might be—the avalanche of Papa's rage. She just said helplessly, "Sh-sh-sh," to Papa, not to upset the children upstairs.