The Red Chipmunk Mystery (21 page)

Socker Furlong could restrain himself no longer. Much to the amazement of
every one
else he threw back his head and roared with laughter. Miss Annie looked at him as though she thought the laughter was in very bad taste, and so did every one else. The next instant Djuna got up and darted into the parlour and when he came back he had a small newspaper-wrapped package which he took over and unwrapped on the window-seat.

“Look!” Socker Furlong couldn’t help saying. “You’d better all keep your eyes on the magician over there!” He pointed his finger at Djuna and kept on laughing.

“What in the world!” Joan said as she stared at the moccasins she had left at Mike Tromboni’s shop. “They’re not even repaired!”

“Will you just try them on, anyway?” Djuna said quite solemnly. He put the shoes down in front of the Boston rocker in which Miss Annie liked to take naps, in the kitchen. Joan got up, after looking at Djuna as though she thought he was crazy, sat down in the rocker and took off the slippers she was wearing.

But when she tried to put her toes into one of the moccasins they wouldn’t go in. She struggled with them for a couple of minutes while Djuna and Socker giggled and all the rest of the people looked on in wonder. All except Clarabelle Smith. She was incensed because Joan had the centre of the stage.

Finally Joan reached into the moccasins and pulled out the wad of newspaper that was stuffed into the toes of each of them and she looked at Djuna and said, “For goodness’ sake!” Her face was red and she was a little indignant because she thought Djuna had been making fun of her. She pulled at one of the pieces of newspaper to show her indignation and out of it dropped a small object not much larger than a quarter, that glittered brilliantly.

It was a diamond necklace!

“
Oh!
” Socker Furlong said. “If Aunt Matilda were only here!”

“Open the other one!” Djuna said. No one else could speak.

They all stared in breathless wonder as Joan unwrapped the other package and held up a string of lustrous, beautifully matched pearls!

Djuna, and he really couldn’t be blamed, burst into words.

“You see, Miss Annie,” he said eagerly, “I was almost certain this morning, when I rode Old Blade down to Cliffton Valley to get the bridle, what I would find in the blinders, because all the time those convicts were
searching
for something and I remembered that letter you just read from Buddy’s grandmother!”

Miss Annie looked with awe at the two pieces of jewellery lying on the table in front of her and then she said, “But Mr. Scissors
bought
the bridle at the auction at Hilltop. I should think rightfully the jewellery should belong to him.”

“
No
,
ma’am!
” Mr. Scissors said firmly. “I don’t want
no
part of it. And, ma’am, I’d advise you to sell it right away. There’s a curse on it.” Mr. Scissors pushed his hands towards the jewellery in mock horror and added, “Cannonball! Go out and get me my accordion, so we can get our minds off it.”

“I will,” Cannonball said, “if you’ll promise we can have ‘Jingle Bells’
first
!”

A few minutes later, when every one was just “singing his head off,” Djuna motioned to Socker Furlong with the forefinger of his right hand and Socker tiptoed over beside him at the window and looked out in the dimming light of dusk.

Sitting on Miss Annie’s front fence were two tiny chipmunks standing on their hind legs and keeping time to Mr. Scissors’ music with their front paws. One of them was singing the melody and the other one was singing the tenor. At least, that’s what it looked like.

Champ was sitting just down below them, cocking his head on one side and then the other as he listened.

But as soon as he saw Djuna looking out of the window he rushed over and began jumping up and down under it, barking with joy.

“That’s just what
I
think, Champ,” said Djuna. “We’re
home
!”

Turn the page to continue reading from the Ellery Queen Jr. Mystery Stories

The boy named Djuna leaned forward and lifted the stringer that was tied to an oarlock of the rowboat out of the water. He grinned ruefully as he gazed at the one chubby sunfish and lone white perch that dangled on the end of the line.

“A fine pair of fishermen we are,” he said to his friend, Tommy Williams, who was sitting on the stern thwart watching his bobbin with sleepy eyes.

“Chattering chimps!”
said Tommy in quick protest as he came awake. “There isn’t any way to make fish bite if they don’t
want
to bite. Anyway, Mr. Boots says Lost Pond is almost fished out. He says it hasn’t been stocked in five years.”

Champ, Djuna’s little black Scotty, opened one eye and looked up at his master from where he was sleeping in the bottom of the boat as though to say, “See? I told you this fishing was a lot of foolishness.” He lifted his head and cocked it on one side to look at the two dangling fish for an instant, then plopped his head back on his paws and went back to sleep.

“Golly,” Djuna said with a sigh. “I wish there was some place around here where you could really catch some fish, like that place Mr. Furlong took me up to in Canada.”

“You mean Socker Furlong, the newspaper man?” Tommy asked. “He must be an awful nice man.”

“Oh, sure. He is,” said Djuna. “We caught musk—musk-e-llunge that were three feet long.” Djuna stuck his homemade fishing pole under one knee and spread his hands apart as wide as he could spread them, as all fishermen do, to exaggerate the size of the fish they had caught.

“Hoddy-doddy!” said Tommy. “Maybe if Mr. Furlong takes you fishing again, he’d take me, too.”

“Sure he would,” Djuna said. “But it wouldn’t be before next summer, because he has already used up his vacation for this summer.”

“Then I guess we won’t catch any fish until next summer,” said Tommy as his bobbin jerked beneath the water. “Cripes, a bite!” he added excitedly, and he yanked his pole so hard that his hook flew out of the water and the worm that was on it flew off the hook and landed twenty feet away.

“There,” said Djuna as he watched the worm disappear beneath the surface, “goes our last worm.”

“Let’s go dig some more,” Tommy said. “I just had a bite.”

“It was only a little sunfish,” said Djuna. “They’re too small to catch and they’ve been stealing our bait all afternoon.” He looked up at the sun that was hanging low over the gravel pit to the west and added, “Anyway, we’d better be getting home if we want any supper.”

“Okay,” said Tommy after a wistful look at his empty hook. “Pull up the anchor and I’ll row.”

“Hoist your hook, you mean,” Djuna said with a grin as he began to pull up the flat stone they were using as an anchor.

“What do you mean, I mean, ‘hoist your hook’?” asked Tommy. “What’s a hook?”

“An anchor,” Djuna explained. “Real sailors call an anchor a hook because a real anchor is shaped like two hooks.”

“Oh, sure,” said Tommy. He carefully grasped the gunwales as he moved from the stern up to the midship thwart to man the oars.

Djuna eased the heavy stone into the bottom of the boat and just as carefully moved to the stern thwart as Champ stood up, stretched his short, stubby body and legs and stuck out a red tongue while he yawned. Then the terrier pattered forward to put his forefeet up on the bow of the boat and looked ahead as though he was standing a watch. After a moment he looked around impatiently and barked twice to say, “Let’s go!”

“All right, all right!” Tommy said as he dipped his oars, took his bearings and headed for the upper-left-hand corner of Lost Pond, where Mr. Boots kept the rowboat they were using.

Only the creaking of the oars in the oarlocks and the chattering of some red-winged blackbirds in the marsh grass and cattails that lined the shore broke the stillness of the late afternoon until Tommy suddenly rested on his oars and said impatiently, “Jeepers! I wish we could go some place where we could really catch some fish. All this spring, in school, I used to think how much fun we were going to have fishing this summer, and now we can’t even catch enough for supper.”

“I’ll tell you what let’s do!” said Djuna excitedly as he pointed at the sky. “Let’s pretend we can see the evening star and make a wish.”

“What’s the evening star?” Tommy asked, and he looked bewildered.

“It’s the first star you see at night,” Djuna explained. “When you see it you make a wish.”

“A lot of good that’s going to do,” said Tommy. “What’d we wish?”

“Just what you said a minute ago,” Djuna said. “You said you wished that we could go some place where we could really catch some fish. Let’s both wish that, only don’t say it out loud or it won’t come true.”

“It won’t come true anyway,” said Tommy with conviction. “I remember one time I wished and wished for a pair of skates for Christmas, and what do you think I got?”

“Golly, I couldn’t guess,” Djuna said as he looked up at the sky again.

“A bicycle!” said Tommy with disgust.

“Chattering chimps!” Djuna said. “Weren’t you satisfied?”

“Sure,” said Tommy. “But I
wished
for skates.”

“Let’s try it anyway,” Djuna said, and he looked up into the clear blue sky where he thought the evening star would be if he could see it. “It won’t hurt us to try.”

“Okay,” said Tommy, and then they both snickered as they silently made their wish.

Just as they finished Champ abandoned his position in the prow of the boat where he had been standing watch and put all four paws on the bottom of the boat, and began to bark so fiercely that they both looked at him in astonishment.

“What in the world is the matter with him?” Tommy wanted to know as Champ stopped barking for a moment to growl deep down in his throat.

“He must hear something, or smell something,” Djuna said, as Champ looked at him questioningly and then began to bark so hard that both the boys began to laugh.

“Quiet, Champ!” ordered Djuna. Champ stopped barking for a moment and when he turned his gaze on Djuna again he looked as though he was scowling at the interruption.

Then, while Champ was quiet, the dim, faraway baying of hounds cut through the stillness of the afternoon and Champ looked at both of them as though to say, “You hear?” and started to bark again.

“It’s those hounds of old Mr. Beach’s,” said Djuna. “They must be running something. Prob’ly a rabbit.”

“What kind of dogs are they?” asked Tommy. Before Djuna could answer he added, “Champ must have good ears. He heard them long before we did.”

“He may have gotten a scent of them before we heard them,” Djuna said, and added, “I think Mr. Beach’s dogs are foxhounds. Anyway, they’re hounds of some kind.”

The faraway baying faded until they could no longer hear it as Tommy nosed the boat up on the gravel beach beside the post where Mr. Boots moored his rowboat.

As soon as the bow of the boat was on dry land Champ scrambled over the side and his short, stubby legs moved like black pistons as he dashed toward the gravel pit and skidded around a clump of bushes, to disappear.

“Champ! Champ!” Djuna shouted as loud as he could shout. “Come back here!”

“For Pete’s sake, what’s the matter with him?” asked Tommy as Djuna scrambled over the side of the boat and started after Champ.

“He’s prob’ly got the scent of whatever those hounds are running,” Djuna shouted back over his shoulder. “Tie up the boat and come on and help me. He’ll get lost like he did before.”

Tommy stared after Djuna for an instant and then he grabbed the mooring line and made it fast to the ring in the mooring post and sprinted toward the gravel pit where Djuna had disappeared. He could hear Champ barking in the distance and could hear Djuna calling to him but when he ran into the pit they were both out of sight.

Suddenly Champ’s barking rose in pitch and became so frantic that Djuna spurred his own efforts to get through the brambles and brush on the west side of the pit. His hands and face and legs were scratched and bleeding by the time he came out on the other side and paused on the edge of a deep ravine.

Looking down, directly below him, Djuna could see where Champ had skidded down the side of the steep ravine in his mad haste. Now, Champ was trying desperately to clamber up the other side; but each time he got about three feet up the side it became so steep that he toppled backward and rolled over and over before he landed in the bottom again.

“Stop it, you fathead!” Djuna shouted at Champ, but in spite of his anger and his scratches he couldn’t help laughing at Champ’s frantic efforts.

Champ looked up at him through his tangle of whiskers with his beady black eyes and barked five times to say, “Get me out of here!”

“Okay,” Djuna said. “I’ll get you out, but I ought to leave you there to teach you a lesson.”

“Hey, Djuna!” Tommy shouted. “Where are you?”

“On the edge of the ravine beyond the gravel pit,” Djuna shouted back. “But don’t try to come through that patch of brambles. If you go down to the south end of the pit you can walk right up the ravine. I’m going to slide down the side to get Champ. He fell in.”