The Green Turtle Mystery (14 page)

After awhile Djuna became very drowsy from the warm sun and when Mr. Furlong came around the corner at half-past two he was almost asleep. But when he saw the expression on Mr. Furlong’s face he was very much awake. Mr. Furlong didn’t look at all happy.

“Well, Djuna, me lad,” Mr. Furlong said as he sat down beside Djuna and managed a half-hearted smile. “How much will you take for a half-interest in that shoe-shine box?”

“Gee, Mr. Furlong,” Djuna said, knowing by Mr. Furlong’s expression that he hadn’t been given the job he went after. “I wouldn’t charge you anything. You can use it any time you want to.”

“That’s what I call a true sharing of wealth,” Socker said, and he clapped Djuna on the shoulder. “But tell me, did the people at the bakery know who owned the parrot?”

“Oh
yes!
” said Djuna, excitedly. “It was
their
parrot. They bought it from a man and it got out of its cage and flew out into the street. The little girl followed it and saw it fly into that funny house on Carpenter Street. The little girl, Maria, and her father, Mr. Sanchez, went to the house that night to get the parrot. They were the people who were there when I went to the door that first night.”

“Well!” Socker said. “Now we can breathe easy again. It’s a great relief to know they weren’t ghosts.”

“But Mr. Furlong!” Djuna said. “They couldn’t find the parrot when they went after it. They hunted and hunted, but it wasn’t there.”

“But it was there last night when you were there, eh?” said Socker and he laughed. “Maybe it was hiding under its wing the night they were there?”

“How could it do that?” Djuna said, soberly. “Oh, you mean it put its head under its wing?”

“That’s the idea,” Socker said with a twinkle in his eye.

“But
they
could see it!” Djuna said.

“
That’s so!
” said Socker. “I guess we’ll have to think up a better one than that.”

Djuna thought that over for a minute and looked up at Mr. Furlong out of the corner of his eyes to see if he could tell whether Mr. Furlong was kidding him again. Then he remembered the squinty-eyed man and he told Mr. Furlong how Champ had barked at him and how the man had snapped a feather at Champ, and what he said.

“What did it sound like again?” Socker asked.

“AW SOOS OH HOES,” Djuna said with great difficulty.

Socker said the words over after Djuna several times and shook his head. “It’s Spanish, of course,” he said, “because J takes the sound of H when you pronounee it. My Spanish has never been much better than my French, and my French is terrible. But wait a minute–”

Djuna waited while he looked up at Mr. Furlong hopefully.

“He sounded awful mad when he said it,” Djuna said, trying to be helpful.

“Now, just a minute,” Socker said as he mumbled the words over and over and tried to put them together. Then he snapped his fingers and said, “The AW is AU. The SOOS is SUS. And OH HOES is one word–OJOS. It means: ‘In his eyes.’”

“
In his eyes?
” Djuna repeated after him slowly. “
What
did he mean?”

“You can search me, chum,” Socker said lightly, but when he saw that Djuna was worried he patted him on the shoulder again and added, “I don’t think it’s anything to get troubled about. It’s probably something like our toast–‘Here’s mud in your eye.” Or haven’t you ever heard that one?”

“I don’t believe I have,” Djuna said. He sat silent for a moment and then he told Mr. Furlong about stopping in the store a little earlier to ask what the man had bought, and what the clerk had told him.

“Some special colored ink and some Brunswick black, eh?” Socker said. “He is probably a printer, or has something to do with the printing business.”

“Maybe,” Djuna said. “I guess I didn’t tell you that he is the man Mr. Sanchez bought the parrot from. He had a green feather in his hat. His hat blew off and I chased it for him. When I handed it back to him he didn’t seem to be at all worried about the hat. He was just worried about the feather. That’s when Champ barked at him again and he snapped the feather at him and said, ‘In his eyes.’”

“Well,” Socker said with a grin. “I still don’t see anything to worry about.” Then he stopped grinning and turned and looked down at Djuna and said, “Look, Djuna. What’s on your mind?”

“I–I don’t know myself,
exactly
, Mr. Furlong,” Djuna said, slowly. “But I’ll just bet that man is mixed up with the haunted house on Carpenter Street. Maria said her parrot flew in an open window on the top floor of that house. Well, I’ve never seen an open window on the top floor.
Somebody
must have opened it, and closed it again. The parrot wasn’t there the night Maria and her father went in to get it but it was there last night. Maybe the night they went in to get it, it was still up on the top floor. They didn’t go up there.”

“Did you go up on the top floor last night?” asked Socker with a chuckle.

“No,” Djuna said, “but I flashed my light up the stairs. They looked as though someone had walked up and down them not very long ago. The door at the top of the stairs was shut. But
someone
must have opened that door to let the parrot downstairs.”

“You’ve got something there,” said Socker. “And what next?”

“Oh, nothing,” Djuna said, “except, I told you we couldn’t find Ben’s turtle and there was
no
way it could get out of there. Somebody must have picked
him
up, too.”

“I’m afraid you’re letting your imagination run away with you, Djuna,” Socker said. “There’s probably a very simple explanation for all these things.”

“I suppose so, Mr. Furlong,” Djuna said, “but–but there is something else that puzzles me.”

“You may as well get it off your mind,” said Socker. “Not that I’ll be of any help, but they do say two heads are better than one–if they’re not both empty!”

“Something else happened this noon that seemed awful funny to me,” Djuna said. “When Ben and Champ and I were going across the street to that bakery Mr. Firkins almost ran over us in his car–”

“
He did?
” Socker said, and he was shocked. “Were you hurt at all?”

“Oh no!” said Djuna and he giggled. “I skinned my elbow and Ben skinned his knee, getting out of the way, but we weren’t really hurt. It wasn’t Mr. Firkins’ fault, of course. He just doesn’t seem to be a very good driver. We were more scared than anything else.”

“I should think you would have been scared,” Socker said. “But why does that puzzle you?”

“Oh, it wasn’t that,” Djuna said, hastily. “After it happened Mr. Firkins got out of his car to talk to us and Champ started to bark at him
the same way
he barked at that squinty-eyed man. I don’t know what in the world was the matter with him either time.”

“Well,” said Socker, “I think Champ showed pretty good judgment. If I was a dog I’d bark at a screwball like Firkins, too.”

“But the
funny
thing that happened was this,” Djuna said. “Mr. Firkins pretended he liked Champ and pulled ten dollars out of his pocket and offered it to me for Champ. It was a ten-dollar bill. I thought he meant it at first and told him I wouldn’t sell Champ for a million dollars. Then, Mr. Firkins looked at the ten-dollar bill he had in his hand in the funniest way, and jammed it back in his pocket and brought out his wallet and offered me two five-dollar bills instead. I thought that was awful queer.”

“I don’t see that that means anything,” Socker said. “It was probably the first ten-dollar bill Firkins ever earned and he doesn’t want to part with it. Why did you think it was peculiar?”

“Well,” said Djuna. “I guess I was thinking about those ten-dollar counterfeit bills that are being passed. Ben told me about them the other day. He said the day after you–after you stopped working on the newspaper–some man named MacHatchet called up from the Mint and wanted you to come over to get some information about them.”

“
He did!
” Socker said and he sat up straight and put his straw hat back on his head. “You know, my puzzling little parallelo piped, I knew that if I talked to you long enough you’d give me an idea!” Socker picked up Djuna’s shoe-shine box and said, “I’ll put this in the hallway so you can come with me.”

When Socker came back down the steps Djuna said, “
Where
are we going, Mr. Furlong?”

“We’re going over to the Mint to see my old pal, MacHatchet,” Socker said. “He’s a Secret Service man. It’s very possible that he may be able to give me a lead on this counterfeiting stuff that will have old man Canavan begging me on bended knee to give him first crack at it. Of course,” Socker went on with a grin, “you don’t
have
to go if you don’t want to.”

“
Secret Service!
Jeepers, Mr. Furlong! I don’t think there is any place else in the world I’d rather go,” Djuna said.

“Hoist your jib then, sailor,” Socker said. “We’re under way!” They started the half-mile walk toward the big Federal building that was the Mint at a pretty fast rate, with Socker taking long, quick strides and Djuna dog-trotting beside him. When perspiration began to run down Socker’s face he slackened his stride and said, “What’s
our
hurry? You must have got me pretty excited about that counterfeiting stuff, Djuna, to make me
want
to walk that fast.”

“Jeepers! Mr. Furlong,” said Djuna, “I’ve been getting more and more excited about it all the time.”

“Well, don’t you get any crazy ideas about Firkins and his ten-dollar bills,” Socker said. “He’s not the type for counterfeiting. He might sell a person a piece of land that was entirely under water, but I think that’s about as far as he would go. Counterfeiters are dangerous men, Djuna, and nothing for you to be messing with. It takes a guy like old Sandy MacHatchet to put the skids under them.”

“Gee, Mr. Furlong,” Djuna said. “It’s hard to explain but I get awfully curious about things like that haunted house. I–”

“You play around with the haunted house idea all you want to,” said Socker. “But when it comes to counterfeiting leave it to guys like MacHatchet. There’s a little verse by our old friend Ben Franklin–not the one you know–that hits the nail right on the noggin:

“Gosh, that’s good, Mr. Furlong,” said Djuna. “Say it again, would you, please?”

Socker repeated the couplet and added, “Don’t get the idea that I’m calling you small fry. You’re not. You’re headed for the big league, kid.”

Djuna wasn’t sure, exactly, what Mr. Furlong meant, but Mr. Furlong’s tone gave him an inward strength and made him very happy. And the idea of visiting the Mint and meeting a real Secret Service man had already made him pretty happy.

A few minutes later they were in Mr. MacHatchet’s office and Socker was saying to Mr. MacHatchet, “Sandy, I want you to meet my pal, Djuna. Djuna thinks that perhaps he can give you a few ideas on how to clean up that gang that are passing the phony ten-dollar bills.”

“Why, Mr. Furlong,” Djuna said, and he was really distressed. “I
know
I can’t give Mr. MacHatchet any ideas. Why, I–I–”

“Don’t mind this guy, Djuna,” Mr. MacHatchet said as he wrung Djuna’s hand so hard that Djuna felt sorry for any conterfeiter he ever got his hands on. Mr. MacHatchet was built along the general lines of the Mint itself, and he had eyes that were like two pieces of gray ice when they weren’t smiling at you. He pulled a chair over beside his desk for Djuna and treated him with the same comradeship that he extended to Mr. Furlong, so that Djuna felt entirely at ease again.

After they were seated Mr. MacHatchet said to Socker, “What’s the matter with that newspaper of yours? I called up the other day to ask Canavan to send someone over to get a release about that counterfeit ten-dollar bill. He sent some lug over here who couldn’t understand English, let alone write it. Why didn’t he send you?”

“Well,” said Socker with a grin. “Mr. Canavan and I aren’t on the best of terms at present. He seems to think that he can go his own way and get along without me very nicely. Time will tell.”

“You mean he has fired you again?” MacHatchet asked.

“That’s the general idea,” Socker said. “And
that’s
why I’m here. I want you to give me some inside stuff on this counterfeiting story that I can take to Canavan and make him see the error of his ways. I want to make it good enough so that I can impress on him that if he fires me
again
I might not come back.”

“I wish I could, Socker,” Mr. MacHatchet said slowly, and he was deadly serious. “But I’m sorry to say
we
don’t have any inside stuff. The lads who are making and passing those bills are slick. They made a counterfeit plate to make Federal Reserve Notes about three years ago. Each year, in a different section of the country each time, they unload from five to ten thousand dollars’ worth of notes and then they disappear for a year. During the year another five or ten thousand come trickling in from Central and South America and Mexico. We’ve never been able to get our hands on the passers so that we could trace down the plate.”

“It must be a pretty good plate,” Socker said.

“It’s exceptionally good,” Mr. MacHatchet said. He opened a drawer of his desk and said to Djuna, “Would you like to see one of the counterfeits, Djuna?”

“Yes sir,” Djuna said and his eyes were round and eager. “I would like to, very much.”

“There,” said Mr. MacHatchet, “is the little headache.”

He spread the bill that had COUNTERFEIT stamped on it in large letters out on his desk. Both Socker and Djuna rose to look at it.

“Say,” Socker said as he turned the bill over, “that’s a nice job.”

“It is a nice job,” MacHatchet agreed, “unless you know your money.”

“Gee!” Djuna said. “That’s
my
trouble. I haven’t ever seen enough
real
ten-dollar bills to know what’s wrong with this one!”

Mr. MacHatchet and Socker both laughed and MacHatchet reached in his pocket and took out his wallet and searched it until he had a real ten-dollar bill drawn on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He smoothed it out and laid it down beside the counterfeit bill.