The Grub-And-Stakers House a Haunt (11 page)

“What for? I’ve only had time to scrape out about three spadefuls. It’s not hard going here. I’m digging into the side, sort of. I figure Hiram’s box is going to be down a ways. I’m making a mess of the water hole, but it’ll settle again. Oops, I’ve-nope, just an old piece of rotten wood.

It seems to be in the shape of a-well, I’ll be hornswoggled.

Hiram, would this by any chance be your grave marker? Careful, it’s all punky and ready to fall apart.”

“What of it?” grunted the late muleteer. “So’m I. Yep, this is my personal tribute to me. Not much left of it, but I’m all in ‘cept the eyeballs, myself. Keep diggin’, Zilla.”

“I thought you didn’t think digging was ladylike.”

“Oh, hell, woman, I was just settin’ a good example to this young sprout here. Tryin’ to teach ‘im a little decent respect for fair an’ fragile femalehood, that’s all.”

“Hiram, I wish to heck you were substantial enough for me to give you a backhander with this shovel. Wait! I think I’ve really hit something this time.”

Zilla was right. Half a minute’s frantic digging revealed another small trunk, much the size of the first one but in somewhat worse condition. Between them, she and Osbert freed it from the friable soil and boosted it up on the ground. This lock didn’t have to be jimmied. With hands that shook a little, Zilla threw back the lid.

“Gadzooks!” came a voice out of the darkness. “What are you doing with my greatgrandmother’s wedding china?”

mercy, you scared me out of a year’s growth.”

“Really, Zilla?” Arethusa was taking the matter lightly. “I should have thought any woman who consorts with my idiot nephew and a pair of floating eyeballs ought to be beyond scaring. To repeat my question, by what method have you come into possession of Greatgranny’s Chelseaware dinner set, which was clandestinely abstracted from her then not yet ancestral china cabinet during the honeymoon and never seen again?”

“If the china was never seen again,” Zilla asked sensibly enough, “then how do you know this is it?”

“Intuition. Plus the fact that my esteemed greatgrandfather beguiled those anxious last days prior to the nuptials taking still-life photographs of the wedding presents.

After the china was stolen, he consoled his bride with a handsome platinum print of it as a memento to hang in the dining room, where in fact the print still hangs. I’ve been looking at that photograph all my life, and crying out in silent agony-crying inwardly would perhaps be a more succinct choice of words-because, as I thought, Greatgranny’s china would never be mine.”

“But Arethusa, you already have lovely old china.”

“Oh, yes, naturally Greatgrandfather had to buy Greatgrandmother another set, but nothing so magnificent.

This one came over from England in a sailing ship ordered especially for the wedding.”

“The ship?”

“Perhaps. I was, however, alluding primarily to the china. The set I inherited was just one that an itinerant peddler happened to have kicking around in his cart when he came through shortly after the honeymoon was so lamentably terminated. Well-nigh priceless by now, needless to say, but that’s beside the point. How absurd, though, for someone to have gone to the bother of stealing these lovely dishes and then just bringing them out here and burying them. One thinks immediately of a jealous rival performing a final act of spite against the bride. Or against the groom, as the case might have been. Does one not?”

“One’s more apt to think of some opportunist hoping to turn a dishonest buck once the heat was off,” Zilla replied cynically. “This china must have been worth a pretty penny even in those days.”

“In sooth,” Arethusa agreed. “Perchance not a king’s ransom, but belike a viscount’s or a baronet’s. I must say it was terribly decent of you to come and dig it up for me.

Not to cavil, however, but one does wonder why you couldn’t have waited for daylight, the chipping potential of fine porcelain being what it is even under optimum conditions and Osbert being such a ham-handed lout under any circumstances. Might one inquire what drove you to clandestine measures?”

“We weren’t intending to dig up your stupid china at all,” snarled the lout. “We didn’t even know it was here.

And as to being out roaming around in the dark, what brings you here?”

“Good question, i’ faith. I know there was something.

What could it have been? Ah yes, I remember now, I was endeavoring to apprehend an ill-doer.”

“An ill-doer?”

“In my personal opinion, yes. I consider it a resoundingly ill deed to trample all over a person’s chrysanthemums for the purpose of peeking in at their windows.

Old-maidish of me, perchance, but I took umbrage. So I slipped out the side door under cover of night’s ebon mantle and gave chase.”

“Arethusa Monk!” cried Zilla. “Are you saying you went after that Peeping torn bare-handed?”

“Why? Is it a breach of etiquette to chase the creature without one’s gloves on?”

“It’s a breach of common sense for a woman your age to go after him at all. What if he’d turned and grabbed you by the throat?”

“I’d have pinked him with my rapier, naturally. Gadzooks, what sort of addlepated ninnyhammer dost think I am, eh? A dagger might have been the more appropriate weapon considering the hour and the nature of the errand, but I must confess that I felt no eagerness to grapple with the rogue hand to hand. Not that big a rogue, at any rate.”

“How big a rogue was he?”

“Big enough, by my halidom! Had the rogue been smaller, I might have contented myself with a lesser weapon. Perhaps a golf club. Heroines in those mystery novels about boarding schools one used to read as a girl were always snatching up golf clubs in time of peril.”

It was difficult to tell in the dark whether Osbert was sneering, but the tone of his voice indicated that he probably was. “Where the heck would you get a golf club, Aunt Arethusa? You don’t play golf. All you play is the field.”

“Precisely,” his aunt agreed quite amicably, for her.

“I should have had to request the loan of a mashie, a spoon, a cleek, or possibly a niblick from some golfer of my acquaintance.

Archie, perchance.”

“Archie’s in Toronto, for Pete’s sake.”

“That did occur to me. In any event, I decided against the golf club, so the point is moot. The point of my rapier, on the other hand, is quite unmoot enough for practical purposes, such as stapping that runnagate through the vitals if I catch him clomping through my perennial borders again.”

“You didn’t really chase him all the way here with your rapier drawn, did you?”

“No. I chased him through Grandsire Coskoff’s back yard and thence to some place or other where he had a bicycle hidden. Wherever that was, it was extremely dark.

Not having thought to bring a linkboy or even a lanthorn with me, I was by then somewhat disoriented. The thing to do seemed to be just to keep walking, on the theory that I was bound to come out somewhere sooner or later. And, as you see, I did. Osbert, I am extremely fatigued. Will you kindly cease asking me silly questions and direct me to your car so that I can go and collapse in it while you and Zilla follow at a discreet pace, carrying the trunk very carefully between you and taking utmost pains not to joggle Greatgranny’s china?”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Arethusa, but we walked. We’re over beyond the Enchanted Mountain, in that field we’re planning to use for the community garden. I can run home and get the car if you want, but we do have a little unfinished business here.”

“Such as what?”

“Well, as Zilla mentioned, Greatgreat-granny’s wedding china wasn’t what we came looking for. I don’t know what sort of dumping ground this is,” Osbert added somewhat pettishly. “First we dig up a boxful of money, then here’s this priceless set of antique china, but when the heck are we going to get down to Hiram’s gold pieces?”

“Never, if you just stand around yammerin’.”

“Who spoke?” cried Arethusa. “Meseems I heard an alien voice.”

“The hell you did,” came the acerbic reply. “I’m just as Canadian as you are. At least I was once.”

“Was where? Why? What? Whence? With whom am I having this conversation, if such it can be called? Zilla, whose eyeballs are those you brought with you?”

“Hiram Jellyby’s. I guess you might call him my boarder. He used to be a mule skinner back in your greatgrandparents’

day.”

“Oh. Then how do you do, Mr. Jellyby. Do I gather that you are an apparition, specter, wraith, shade, revenant, or earthbound spirit?”

“Catch on quick, don’t you, sis? That’s just what I am an’ just what it looks like I’m goin’ to go on bein’ till you folks quit horsin’ around with Miz Eliphalet’s Sunday china an’ find me them bones I left layin’ around here someplace.”

“Methought it was your gold you were after.”

“Great Godfrey, no! What good would gold do me now? I was just usin’ the gold as bait, so’s to speak, eh. I figured if I showed somebody where to dig for it, they’d owe me a favor in return, see, an’ I could haunt ‘em till they stood an’ delivered, as the stagecoach robbers used to say.”

“Fie upon you, Mr. Jellyby. Have you no faith in the essential goodness of human nature?”

“Not much, if you want the truth. ‘Tain’t as if I hadn’t been human once myself, you know. Knowin’ me as I did then, I wouldn’t o’ trusted myself as far as I could throw a mule by the tail.”

“Indeed?” said Arethusa. “One might have expected an entity in your situation to take a more spiritual point of view.”

“Seems to me you’re expectin’ one hell of a lot from a thinned-out mule skinner,” Hiram replied somewhat iras-cibly. “A person don’t get no more spiritual just by cashin’

in his chips. Don’t think that for one minute, sis, ‘cause that ain’t how it works. What an entity’s got to do is work up to goodness gradual, same as he had to back when he still had meat on his bones, providin’ he ever got around to goin’ in for self-improvement, which a surprisin’ number o’ people never do. Now take Zilla here, for instance. She ain’t even dead yet an’ I’ll bet you any money that on the spiritual level, she’s already up to somewheres around a sergeant-major’s rank. An’ here’s me, deader’n a salt herrin’

the past hundred years an’ still no further along than a buck private. It’s humblin’, that’s what it is.”

“That so?” snapped Zilla. “I can’t say I’ve noticed any sign of you slapping sackcloth and ashes on your head.”

“There, see? Pickin’ on me again. That’s the trouble with you goody-goodies, you ain’t got no fellow feelin’ for us baddies. How you doin’ there, bub? Hit my box yet?”

“No, but I’m still digging,” grunted Osbert. “And finding it pretty warm work, now that I think of it. Here, Aunt Arethusa, want my jacket to rest your spavined bones on?”

“A veritable Sir Walter Raleigh, egad! Remind me to leave you my second-best bed. The one with the mouse in the mattress.”

“Thanks, Auntie, but I’ve got my own bed. Which I’ll be dad-blanged happy to lie in by the time we’re finished out here. How far down did you find that gold, Hiram?”

“Not far, or I never would o’ found it. I was just tryin’

for enough water to fill my mules’ gizzards an’ boil me up a pot o’ coffee. Too bad we didn’t think to bring the coffeepot with us tonight, Zilla. We could o’ lit us a little campfire an’ sung around it, the way me an’ the mules used to do back when I was me.”

Hiram threw back his eyeballs and brayed.“Oh, Buffalo gals, ain’t you comin’ out tonight? Gripes, I’m in better voice now than I was when I had an Adam’s apple to sing with. Don’t I sound great, Zilla?”

“Not bad for somebody who took voice lessons from a team of mules,” his temporary landlady conceded. “Yes, it’s a shame we didn’t think of the coffeepot. I could have used a hot drink myself about now. And we could have toasted marshmallows on the point of Arethusa’s rapier.

Want me to spell you awhile, Osbert?”

“No, I’m all right, if Hiram wouldn’t mind juicing up his eyeballs a little and giving me more light down here. I think I’ve hit something but it doesn’t feel like a box. Unless the box has fallen apart from the damp.”

“Could of, I s’pose.” Obligingly, Hiram raised his ocular candlepower. “This help any, bub?”

“Oh yes, thank you, that’s much better. I have to go easy here. If that trunk’s broken open, the gold pieces could be scattered all through the dirt. Take the shovel, will you, Zilla? I think what I’d better do is get down and feel around with my hands for whatever it was I-suffering shorthorns!”

“What is it, Osbert?” Zilla asked.

“Offhand, I’d say it’s a piece of hip.”

Hiram’s eyeballs came whizzing past Osbert’s shoulder.

“Whose?” he yelped.

“I have no idea. It could be a sheep’s, it’s too big for a gopher and too small for a bison. I’m not much on anatomy.

Here, Aunt Arethusa, hold this bone, will you?”

“Moi? You forget to whom you speak, jackanapes.

Wait a minute, I seem to be wearing a petticoat. Literary tradition requires any heroine worthy of the name to sacrifice her petticoat in time of need. Turn your back, Hiram.”

“/”ť *j-T • >j_ j_ “

Can t, I am t got one.

“Oh, well.” Arethusa shrugged, performed a series of dips and wiggles, and produced a dainty confection of silk and lace which she spread on the grass at the edge of her nephew’s excavation. “There you are, you can lay the bones on this as you find them, so that they won’t get mixed in with the thistles and ragweed.”

“Good thinking, auntie. Here’s another for the collection.

A thigh bone, I think. The thigh bone’s connected to the knee bone. That would be this little roundish thing, I expect. And the kneebone’s connected to the leg bone, of which there seem to be two. Tibia and fibula, if my memory serves me. That means the shinbone and the other bone that comes with it, Aunt Arethusa. There ought to be some ankle bones around. Could these be they? I suppose they could, I can’t think what else they’d be good for. You might try sorting them out, since you have nothing else to do.”

“I have already donated my petticoat, I see no necessity to sacrifice my manicure. Dig on, varlet.”