The Red Chipmunk Mystery (23 page)

“Dear me!” Miss Annie said. “I’m so afraid we’ll forget something.”

Champ, who was lying with his long, punishing jaw on his black forefeet, opened one eye and looked up at Miss Annie and Tommy as they nervously paced across the room. But he didn’t say anything because he could see that every one else was saying enough without saying much of anything.

“Let me see, now,” Miss Annie said as she started to go over her list again. “Did I tell Mr. Pindler about forwarding our mail, Djuna?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Djuna said and he grinned at Miss Annie because she had pushed her spectacles up on her forehead. “Don’t forget your glasses,” he added.

“For mercy’s sake!” she said and she blinked her eyes rapidly as she peered frantically around the kitchen table. “What on earth have I done with them? You know I can’t see a thing without my glasses, Djuna. I—”

“They’re on your forehead, Miss Annie,” Djuna said, and Miss Annie joined him as he started to laugh.

“I don’t see how you can be so calm about things, Djuna,” Miss Annie said.

“Jeepers!” said Djuna. “I’m just as excited as you are, but if I let myself show it I get all mixed up and—”

“Like I am,” Miss Annie said, and her blue eyes twinkled behind her spectacles.

“Have you got your checkbook and your extra pair of glasses, and your purse in your handbag?” asked Djuna.

“Why—why, yes, I think so,” Miss Annie said, but she began to rummage in her handbag as a car horn sounded outside the house.

“Here’s Mr. Pindler now!” Tommy shouted.

“Oh, my gracious, Djuna!” said Miss Annie. “I’ve forgotten my purse
and
my checkbook. They’re in my desk, up in my room. Will you please get them for me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Djuna said, and went up the stairs two steps at a time.

“You don’t think we’ll miss the train, do you, Willis?” Miss Annie asked anxiously as Mr. Pindler put his head in the door.

“No, no, Miss Annie,” Mr. Pindler said. “We’ve got time to spare. Just take your time. There’s no rush. Come on, Tommy, we’ll load your luggage in my trunk compartment.”

A few minutes later, after Miss Annie had carefully locked her house and had given the key to Mr. Pindler, and they had all said good-by to Tommy’s mother, and Mrs. Pindler and Mr. Boots, Mr. Pindler drove his car over the bridge across Miller’s Brook and they were speeding down the macadam road that took them past the town of Clinton and toward the small city of Riverton.

It was a lovely morning, just the kind of a morning to start for a place like Silver Lake, and they were all pretty happy about it as they sped by grazing cows, white-painted farmhouses and barking dogs that drove Champ almost crazy.

When they arrived at Riverton they drove right through to the station because Miss Annie was a little worried that Mr. Pindler’s watch might be slow. But when they arrived at the station they had a good fifteen minutes to spare and Djuna didn’t even snicker when Miss Annie said, “Well, it’s better to be early than late.”

While Miss Annie got their tickets Mr. Pindler helped Tommy and Djuna move their luggage to the baggage room. There were a great many interesting things around the station that Djuna and Tommy wanted to look at carefully but they knew Miss Annie would worry unless they got the baggage attended to first. And then, after Miss Annie had bought their tickets and came out on the platform and into the baggage room to be sure that everything was there, they forgot all about the things they wanted to look at in the station because Miss Annie pointed at an oblong tin box that was with their stuff and said, “Why, Willis, that green box isn’t ours.”

“Yes, ’tis,” said Mr. Pindler, and the lines in his thin face deepened as he grinned at Djuna and Tommy.

Both Djuna and Tommy looked at the box very carefully as Mr. Pindler picked it up and put it on top of one of their bags and took a key out of his pocket.

The tin box was painted a very bright green and was about fourteen inches long and six inches wide and four inches deep, and had a lock on the front into which Mr. Pindler thrust the key. When he turned it the snap lock flew up and Mr. Pindler took hold of the handle on the top and lifted the lid. As he lifted it, a tray that was fastened to the top by short metal arms and to the ends of the box by longer arms swiveled up to sit against the inside of the top, leaving a space about three inches wide to give access to the roomy interior of the bottom of the box.

“Chattering chimps!”
gasped Tommy, and his eyes were wide.

“A real tackle box,” said Djuna and his eyes were even wider. “
And
all filled with tackle!”

“Well,” Mr. Pindler said, “when you boys told me about the fine fishin’ at Silver Lake I thought you ought to have some proper fishin’ tackle.”

“Why, Willis, you shouldn’t have done that,” said Miss Annie.

“It only cost me a trifle,” Mr. Pindler assured Miss Annie. “You see I can buy all this stuff wholesale for the store, so when the boys told me they were going to buy real store fishing rods I got this stuff to go with them. Nothin’ like havin’ the right kind of equipment when you’re going fishin’.” Then he turned to the boys and looked at them very sternly.

“Now, look here, you two young fellahs,” he said severely, although he couldn’t keep a twinkle out of his eyes, “you see that you take proper care of this stuff. I’m makin’ you a present of it, but I don’t want you to misuse it. See that you keep them reels clean, and oiled, and—”

“Oh, yes sir! We will, Mr. Pindler,” the boys said together, as though they had been practicing it for years.

“And when you come home,” Mr. Pindler went on, “I want you to bring me a nice mess of yellow perch. Big ones. Sweetest tastin’ fish there is,” he finished and smacked his lips.

“Golly, we’re awful much obliged to you, Mr. Pindler,” Djuna said earnestly, while Tommy just nodded his head in mute appreciation.

“Your train is comin’ in, in a minute,” said Mr. Pindler as he hurriedly looked at his watch. “Why don’t you take the tackle box with you on the train and look it over on the way to—what’s the name of that town beside the lake where you’re goin’?” he said to Miss Annie.

“Lakeville,” said Miss Annie.

“—on your way to Lakeville,” Mr. Pindler finished.

“Train for Seeuca, PennPan, Ramaport, Bunyan Crossing, Wilmerburg, Lakeville, Zenith and points north!” yelled a man in a uniform with a voice like a bugle.

“Oh, my gracious, here comes our train!” Miss Annie said. “Djuna, you see that Champ gets settled in the baggage car all right. Here, Tommy, you take this bag full of cookies. Good-by, Willis. It was awful good of you to bring us over. I’ll give your love to Martha and Clarabelle. My gracious, where’s my handbag? Djuna!
Djuna! Where’s my
—”

“It’s right under your arm, Miss Annie,” Djuna said, very politely, as the train came thundering into the station and people began running every which way.

After Djuna had taken Champ into the baggage car and found that he wouldn’t have to stay there with him he hurried back into the nearly vacant coach where he had left Miss Annie and Tommy.

They had turned over one seat so that Tommy and Djuna could ride side by side, while Miss Annie rode backwards, facing them.

“I’m more apt to get carsick if I ride frontwards,” Miss Annie explained. “And besides when you ride frontwards, you see things and then they’re gone. If you ride backwards you see them, and then you keep on seeing them while they’re going.” Which sounded reasonable to both the boys, even if it was a little confusing.

“I brought those cookies for you to eat in case you get hungry,” Miss Annie further explained, “although it’s only an hour’s ride to Lakeville.”

But Djuna and Tommy, for once in their lives, weren’t interested in cookies. They could hardly wait until they were seated side by side and Djuna had taken the key Mr. Pindler had given him from his pocket and had slid it into the lock of the brightly painted tackle box.

“Lift the lid slowly,” Tommy said, “so that we can see how that tray works.”

Djuna lifted the lid slowly and the compartmented tray slid up in place, very snugly, to display the glistening wonders that were inside the box.

In the bottom there were two level-winding, anti-backlash reels, made of plastic and stainless steel. The bright-headed screws set in the dark green plastic of each end shone like semiprecious jewels in a precision watch. On each reel there was a little guider that traveled back and forth on a worm so that the line would wind evenly. When you pushed a little button on the side of the reel the line ran out as fast as any fish could take it out, and when you pushed the little button back it acted as a brake, so that it helped you tire the fish. And there were two spools that contained a hundred and fifty feet of twenty-pound silk line each, to go on the reels.

In the bottom, with the reels, were a half dozen folders of snelled hooks that were guaranteed not to ravel, and a couple of folders of leaders. The smaller hooks that were used for catching sunfish, perch and crappies had only single snells of selected gut, but the larger ones for bass, pickerel and pike had double snells and genuine imported hooks.

On the back to the snelled hook folder there was an important sign that told them to never use an ordinary knot to tie the leader or line to the loop in a snell. It showed them how to tie a loop in the terminal end of the leader, and how to place the snell loop over the leader and slip the hook through the leader loop so that the two loops would pull together securely so that they couldn’t pull out.

“Golly!” said Djuna with a sigh of happiness. “I didn’t think I’d ever have anything as nice as this.”

“Me, neither,” Tommy said and he lifted a little tin box out of the bottom of the bigger one and added, “I wonder what’s in this?” The little tin box had a picture of a big bass leaping high out of the water as it tried to throw a hook out of its mouth. Tommy lifted the lid of the little box carefully and they both peered inside while each of them held his breath.

On the bottom of the box lay a stainless-steel spinner that had a swivel on one end to make it spin when it was pulled through the water, and on the other end was a bass hook. On top of the spinner was a little bottle that was filled with strips of snow-white pork rind that had been treated with chemicals and had two little slits cut in each strip of rind so that you could slip it over the bass hook and use it for a lure.

“Boy! With that spinner spinning and that flash of white on the hook, I bet you could catch a dozen bass before breakfast!” Tommy burst out.

A notice on the side of the box said that you had to reel fast to make the spinner spin, and when you got a strike to set the hook hard, and
then
pull in the fish.

Also in the bottom of the box was an envelope containing twenty-five imported razor steel fishhooks that ranged in size from tiny ones to catch minnows and shiners, to big ones to catch pike and muskellunge. There was a fishing knife with a five-inch blade that had a series of sharp corrugations on the back of the blade to use for scaling fish. A thirty-six-inch stringer with a metal point on one end to make it easy to slip it through the mouth, and gill of a fish, and a bar of wood on the other end so the fish couldn’t slip off.

In the compartments in the tray of the tackle box were little wooden cylinders, with tops, that were filled with sinkers, some of them smaller than BB shots, and others three times as large. In the other compartments there were spinners and a half a dozen different kinds of lures including one that looked like a tiny green pincushion and had two small yellow beads fastened in the front for eyes and three-inch whiskers of green trailing out from each side and from the tail, and a pickerel hook fastened in the stomach.

Another one was made of wood and was painted just like a minnow. From both sides and from the tail of the minnow triple hooks were extended. And up on what would have been the mouth of a real fish there was a bright metal spinner.

On still another one there were just two flat pieces of mother-of-pearl fastened on swivels. The pieces of mother-of-pearl had bright red spots painted on each side of them, and at the end was a triple pronged hook.

“Jeepers,” said Tommy, “I don’t even know how to use a lot of this stuff.”

“Oh, we’ll learn,” Djuna said. “Everybody has to learn. It was certain’y awful nice of Mr. Pindler to get these things for us. I like him just about as much as I like Socker Furlong, I guess.”

“The newspaper man, you mean?” Tommy asked.

“Yeah.”

“We’ll have to take him a nice mess of perch,” Tommy said, and added, “Say, do you suppose we’ll be able to get fishing rods in Lakeville that are
good
enough to go with this stuff?”

“Oh, sure,” Djuna said. “We’ll be able to get good poles there, because it’s right on the water.”

“Don’t you boys want a cookie, now?” Miss Annie asked as she put down the magazine she had brought along to read.

“Sure,” they both said. And they both remembered to thank her when she held out the bag to let them help themselves.

“How much longer before we get to Lakeville, Miss Annie?” Tommy asked.

“Only just a few minutes now,” said Miss Annie, and she began to gather up her things and check them to see that she still had everything. “You boys haven’t seen much of the scenery, you’ve been so busy with that tackle box.”

“It’s got the sweetest scenery in it I ever saw,” said Tommy so seriously that both Djuna and Miss Annie laughed.

“Golly,” Djuna said as he glued his nose against the window and stared out at the woods through which they were passing, “I wonder why we’re slowing down?”

“Prob’ly because we’re almost in Lakeville,” said Tommy. Then he leaned forward and looked out the window on the other side of the car. “No, it’s because we’re passing another train!” he said excitedly. “See! It’s just standing there, but there are lots of people in it.”

“It’s on a siding,” Djuna said as he turned and looked at the motionless train. “They’re waiting there until we pass because there is only a single track on this line. If,” he added, reflectively, “they
didn’t
wait there for us there would be a wreck.”