Freddy and the Baseball Team from Mars Read online

  He sat eating his third piece of cake and looking out the window at the circus encampment. An elephant went by carrying a pail of water. He kicked up the snow with his big feet. “I bet that tail of his is cold,” Freddy thought. “I bet he’d like a tail-muff like mine.” Mr. Hercules came out of his trailer and began taking his afternoon exercise, juggling ten-pound cannonballs. Two alligators stopped to watch him, then one said something in the other’s ear, and they both began to giggle and walked on. On the other side of the row of wagons four of the Martians were playing catch. They never seemed to mind the cold, and never wore gloves or overcoats. Leaning on the fence and watching them were a dozen or so boys and men. One of them, a tall, burly man with a red face, looked familiar to Freddy. He stared at him for a minute, but couldn’t place him, and then Mr. Boomschmidt said:

  “You know, when we get Squeak-squeak back, I’d like to find something for the Martians to do in the big tent. I don’t think they’re contented being just a side show and sitting around having people stare at them. They want to get into the act. Maybe you could think of something, Freddy.”

  One of the Martians had just reached up and caught a high fast ball. He caught it with three hands, but used only one to send it whizzing on to the player on his left.

  “Looks like a regular baseball they’re playing with,” Freddy said. “Do they play like this often?”

  “Here got ’em interested in it,” said Mr. Boomschmidt. “He used to play professional ball, you know. Pitched one season for Pittsburgh. But he was too strong. No catcher could hold his fast ball. And my gracious, when he hit one he knocked the cover right off. I guess he got kind of disgusted; he said it was a sissy game, and quit. He said if they’d play it with cannonballs and iron bats it might be worth playing.”

  Freddy had been watching the Martians. “You know,” he said, “they’re pretty good. They’re fast, and they’re accurate. Say, why couldn’t you organize them into a baseball team? Get games with the local ball clubs in the towns where you give shows. Look—watch that one throw—I think it’s Chirp-squeak. He threw with his upper left arm last time, now he’s using his lower right one. Boy, what a pitcher you could make out of him! Yeah, and now he’s using his lower left. Can you see how balled up a batter would get if he didn’t know which of four arms a pitcher was going to use?”

  “Golly!” said Mr. Boomschmidt. “I think you’ve got something, Freddy. Yes sir, I do! Only—hey! Wait a minute! How do we know they can hit?”

  “I don’t care whether they can or not,” Freddy said.

  “Well but, Freddy—we got to get hits to win games.”

  “We’ve got to get runs,” said the pig.

  “Why, sure we have, but—”

  “Look,” said Freddy, “you help me to organize this team and I’ll guarantee you the runs. Now we’ve got five Martians. Four if Squeak-squeak doesn’t get back. Who else have you got to fill out your team?”

  “Well,” said Mr. Boomschmidt modestly, “of course there’s me—”

  Old Mrs. Boomschmidt said: “Orestes used to be a real good player. If there was a whole pane of glass in the neighborhood, even if it was two houses down and around the corner, he could put the ball right through the middle of it.”

  “Now, Mother,” said Mr. Boomschmidt. “Let’s let bygones be bygones, specially when they’re thirty-year-old ones. Well, now, I think we can scrape up enough talent to fill out a team. There’s me, and there’s the ostrich, Oscar. Ever see him throw a stone? He throws underhand, like he was bowling—or maybe it’s underfoot, because he throws with a claw. He can catch, too, though not the high ones. He’d be good at shortstop.

  “Then there’s Leo. He played softball one winter down in Florida. So did the two elephants. Old Hannibal, he never used a bat—used to swing at ’em with his trunk. He could throw with that trunk, too. Oh, my gracious, Freddy, I believe we could get up an Interplanetary League. Teams from Mars and Venus and Neptune and the rest of ’em—and earth of course—and—”

  “Hey, wait a minute!” Freddy interrupted. “You’re so far ahead of me you’re out of sight. Let’s just stick to Mars vs. Centerboro, and Mars vs. Tushville, and so on—”

  “And Squeak-squeak,” said Mlle Rose.

  “I hadn’t forgotten Squeak-squeak,” Freddy said. “I think the first thing—”

  Mr. Boomschmidt interrupted him. “Excuse me, Freddy,” he said, jumping up, “I think I’ll have a talk right now with Leo and Here—see if we can’t organize a team.”

  “But look, Mr. Boom,” Freddy said, and then stopped, for Mr. Boomschmidt had bounced right out of the room.

  “He’s always like that when he gets a new idea,” said Mlle Rose.

  “I know,” Freddy said. “No use trying to talk to him about Squeak-squeak now. Well, I guess—” He stopped suddenly. The tall, red-faced man who had been watching the Martians had turned and looked toward the house, and Freddy recognized him. “That man!” he exclaimed, drawing back from the window. “Now, why’s he up here? He’s a real estate man, E. H. Anderson—Mr. Eha, we used to call him. And I never knew him to be interested in anything he couldn’t make money out of.”

  “You know him?” Mlle Rose asked.

  “Good heavens, I should say I did! He haunted houses.”

  The two women laughed, and Mrs. Boomschmidt said: “He’s a pretty robust ghost. If he tries to seep through a keyhole or under a door he’s going to need a lot of help.”

  “Just the same, he was pretty good at it. He had a lot of masks and luminous paint and stuff, and then he had a gang of rats to help him: Simon’s gang. I guess you’ve heard of them.

  “It was a racket with Mr. Eha. He’d give out that a house was haunted, and then he’d make it so unpleasant for the folks that lived there that they’d leave. When they tried to sell the house, he’d scare away everybody that came to look at it. Then he’d offer them about a quarter of what it was worth, and by that time they’d be glad to take whatever they could, and they’d sell. He tried that on a hotel up on Otesaraga Lake, and he was going to work it on Mr. Bean’s house. But we broke up his gang.”

  “Well, do you think he could have had anything to do with kidnapping Squeak-squeak?” Mlle Rose asked.

  “I wouldn’t think so,” said Freddy. “He’s not a kidnapper. But it’s funny, just the same. I’d better find out what he’s up to. I don’t want anybody to know I’m here. I’ll get into a disguise and follow him.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  Freddy had more than twenty disguises that he used in his detective work. The trouble with most of them was that they didn’t disguise him much. When he got them on he wasn’t Dr. Hopper, or old Mrs. O’Brien; he was just a pig in a derby hat and a false mustache, or a pig in a bonnet and shawl. They were really more bother than they were worth.

  However, a really good disguise is a great help in detective work, and he had at last got together an outfit that he thought a pig could wear successfully. There was a long, black old-fashioned coat of the kind known as a Prince Albert. It was the one Mr. Bean had been married in, but the moths had got into it and Mrs. Bean had thrown it out. She said she couldn’t feel sentimental about a lot of old moth holes.

  The black trousers were too long, but they fell in wrinkles at the bottom and helped to hide his trotters. He had an old shapeless felt hat and a white wig and a long white beard, which made his nose look shorter, and he wore spectacles that had belonged to Mrs. Bean’s father, who was very near-sighted. They really did disguise Freddy, because a pig’s eyes are much smaller than a man’s, and these glasses had very thick lenses, and magnified his eyes so they looked twice as big.

  But one thing Freddy had forgotten. It hadn’t occurred to him that while the thick lenses made his eyes look different to other people, they also made everything look different to him. The ground seemed to be right up under his nose, and everything more than a few feet off was so blurred and distorted that he couldn’t tell what it was.
So when, with a corncob pipe in his mouth and a cane in his hand, he started over to join the group of people watching the Martians, he tripped and stumbled at every other step, and he had to lift the glasses up, finally, to see where he was going.

  But when he had worked his way through the little crowd until he was close to Mr. Anderson, he had to leave the spectacles in place. “Golly,” he said to himself, “I’m glad I’ve got this cane. I’d have fallen on my face and busted the darn glasses by this time if I hadn’t. I bet I look a hundred years old, tottering along. But that’s how I want to look.” Something loomed up ahead of him. “Wonder if that’s Anderson. It’s the right color, but it looks more like a kangaroo. Oops!” he said out loud. “Excuse me, mister.” For he had misjudged the distance and walked right into the man.

  “Hey, look where you’re going, Grampa,” said Mr. Anderson irritably.

  Freddy had decided to be sort of a bad-tempered old man. So now he said in a high, piping, irritable voice that he thought would go well with his get-up: “Well, I said excuse me, didn’t I? What ye want me to do, sonny—write ye out an apology?”

  Anderson gave a laugh which was good-humored in a bullying sort of way. “Well, to begin with,” he said, “you might get off my foot.”

  Freddy stepped back hastily. “Consarn ye,” he snapped. “D’ye have to spread your great feet all over the landscape?”

  Anderson laughed again. “Now, now,” he said. “It was me that got stepped on, after all.”

  Freddy thought they’d better get off the subject of feet. He didn’t want to call attention to the fact that his were trotters. He flourished his stick out toward the ball-playing Martians, knocking off the cap of a boy standing beside him. “What are all them little critters?” he asked, though all he could see of the Martians was a lot of little black specks floating around in the distance. They looked like tadpoles swimming to and fro in his glasses.

  “Take it easy with that stick,” Anderson said, “before you put someone’s eye out.” Then he said: “You a stranger here? Haven’t you heard about the people from Mars that landed here in a flying saucer and joined Boomschmidt’s circus?”

  “Heard some folderol about ’em,” said Freddy. “Fakes, ain’t they?”

  Mr. Anderson said on the contrary, they were the real thing. And he told Freddy about them.

  “Tcha!” said Freddy. “Don’t believe a word of it!”

  Mr. Anderson didn’t say anything. Freddy leaned with both fore-trotters on the handle of his stick and looked out at the blurred landscape. Then he said: “You acquainted around here?”

  “More or less,” said the other. “What do you want to know?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you.” Freddy peered up at the red face. “They got a good bank in this town?”

  “Sure, they got a fine bank. Why? You want to stick it up?”

  “I ain’t sayin’ I wouldn’t like to if I was forty years younger,” Freddy said with a wheezy cackle that he thought went well with his white whiskers. “No, sir, I ain’t ambitious. All I want is a safe place to keep my savings. Like to lost ’em a week ago. House burned down. But I saved the money.” He tapped his breast pocket significantly. “Now I got to have a place to put it till I get me another place to live.”

  Mr. Anderson moved a little closer and Freddy could feel his suddenly aroused interest. “Now I’ve hooked him,” he thought. “But what’ll I do with him? He isn’t likely to have anything more to do with Squeak-squeak’s disappearance than any of the other people out here watching the Martians.” Then he thought: “Oh well, I might as well have a little fun.”

  “Don’t like carryin’ all my cash around in my pocket,” he said.

  “I should think not!” said Anderson. “Want me to walk down to the bank with you? Only—well, why not invest your money instead of letting it lie idle in a bank? Of course, if it’s only a few hundred—” He paused, but Freddy didn’t say anything, “why then,” he went on, “the bank’s all right. But if you’ve got enough to buy, say, a house.… Well,” he said with a laugh, “I’m a real estate man, and naturally I’d boost real estate as an investment. I know houses you can buy with as little as a thousand down, and then you can rent ’em and make good money. How much did you say you had, Mr. Ah—”

  “Arquebus is the name,” said Freddy. “Henry Arquebus. And I didn’t say.”

  “Quite right,” Mr. Anderson agreed heartily. “Shouldn’t have asked you. Only thing, I was thinking of a little piece of property I’ve got right now. Prettiest little house you ever saw. It cost this fellow eighteen thousand, and he’ll sell for cash for—But forgive me, I get so enthusiastic about bargains like this. If I only had the money I’d buy it myself.

  “However, you want to go to the bank. Come along and I’ll show you.”

  So he accompanied Freddy down to the bank. Freddy stumbled a lot, and once he walked into a lamp post and tipped his hat and apologized to it. So Mr. Anderson took his arm. But Freddy shook the guiding hand off, for at the same time that it was steadying his uncertain feet, he could feel cautious fingers exploring to see if he had a well-stuffed wallet in his breast pocket. And of course the pocket was empty.

  Although at the bank Anderson rather insisted on coming in, Freddy refused. “I don’t need ye, mister,” he said. “And folks that keep pokin’ their noses into my business likely’ll get ’em singed. Or chawed off.” He cackled. “I ain’t particular which.”

  “I can see you aren’t,” said Mr. Anderson good-naturedly. “Well, let me give you my card, and if you decide to put any of that money into real estate, just let me show you what I’ve got.” He tucked the card into Freddy’s right-hand pocket, and Freddy could feel that he was making sure that there wasn’t a wallet in that pocket either. “Where are you staying in town?” he asked.

  “No harm in telling you,” Freddy said. “Got a room at Mis’ Peppercorn’s.”

  “Oh, yes, I know Mrs. Peppercorn,” said Anderson. “You won’t mind if I drop in one day when I’m passing by? Just for a little chat. Frankly, I like you, Mr. Arquebus.”

  “Well, some folks do,” said Freddy, and went into the bank.

  From the window he watched Mr. Anderson. The man stood around for a minute as if undecided, then seemed to come to a decision, and walked off hurriedly. As soon as he was out of sight, Freddy started back to the ball park.

  On the way, he stopped in to see old Mrs. Peppercorn. He knew that she sometimes rented her spare room, and although at first he hadn’t intended to really stay there, he decided that it might be a good idea. He could move around on his detective work more safely than if he stayed with the Boomschmidts, for he didn’t want the circus animals or the Centerboro people to know that he was looking for Squeak-squeak. But Mrs. Peppercorn was an old and trusted friend.

  She came to the door. At first Freddy had thought he’d pretend to be Mr. Arquebus, to find out if she could see through his disguise. But she had a fiery temper, and she didn’t like to be fooled. She might laugh about it with him afterward, but at the time she was as likely as not to chase him up the street with a broom. So he just said: “Mrs. P., I’m Freddy. I’m working on a case. Can I come in?”

  Well, she stared at him a full minute, and then she started to laugh. She laughed so loud and so long that Freddy saw a lace curtain tremble in Mrs. Lafayette Bingle’s front window across the street, and he knew Mrs. Bingle had heard and was peeking out. So he took Mrs. Peppercorn by the arm and pulled her inside and shut the door.

  Mrs. Peppercorn screeched a good deal when she laughed. It wasn’t a pretty laugh, but it was infectious—which means that when you heard it you began laughing yourself, even if you didn’t know what she was laughing about. Freddy’s laugh was infectious too, so the harder one laughed the harder the other one did, and pretty soon they were both yelling until the windows shook, and I don’t know what would have happened if Freddy, in trying to get his breath, hadn’t given a sort of gasp and drawn a lot of the white whiske
rs into his mouth and halfway down his throat. Of course he choked, and Mrs. Peppercorn had to help him and pound him on the back, and by the time he got his breath back they had got over laughing.

  Mrs. Peppercorn had to pound him on the back.

  “Good land, Freddy,” Mrs. Peppercorn said, “you know when I opened that door—well, you’re the livin’ image of Great-uncle Ezra Pocus, who’s been dead and gone forty years.”

  “I should think you’d have been scared, instead of laughing,” Freddy said.

  “Why, you would, wouldn’t you?” said Mrs. Peppercorn, looking surprised. “I guess it’s those whiskers. I—Oh, don’t get me started again. Who are you detecting, Freddy?”

  So Freddy explained about the disappearance of Squeak-squeak. “But I sort of got off the track fooling around with Mr. Anderson,” he said. “Though I’m just curious to know what kind of a crooked deal he’s stewing up for poor Mr. Henry Arquebus.”

  “You’d better forget it,” she said. “Ed Anderson is bad medicine.” A look of pleased surprise came across her face. “Bless me, that’s almost a rhyme!”

  “It is—one of your rhymes,” said Freddy sourly. As a poet himself, he highly disapproved of Mrs. Peppercorn’s efforts in that line. For to make one word rhyme with another, she would twist it all out of shape. Freddy had sent her a valentine once which used all of her kind of rhymes. It began:

  Mrs. Peppercorn’s a votary

  Of the muse. That is: a poet.

  She’s written the finest potary