Freddy the Magician Read online

  Leo opened the door of his cage and came out. He picked up the blanket that Freddy had pulled down and wrapped it around his head like a shawl. “I’m coming along with you,” he said. “I guess you’re right, Freddy; it’s the clippers for me. The chief’s got a pair and I’ll get him to run ’em over me.”

  “My goodness gracious me,” said Mr. Boomschmidt when they caught up with him. “How can I remember what I said to him? I never pay any attention to what I say to people.”

  “I should think you could remember that,” said Freddy. “It was only a minute ago.”

  Mr. Boomschmidt pushed his hat back on his head and thought. “No,” he said. “No, it doesn’t come to me. You see, Freddy, it is the things that people say to me that are important—not what I say to them. Those are the things I remember.”

  “All right,” said the pig. “Then what did Zingo say to you, just before he stopped and turned around?”

  Mr. Boomschmidt answered promptly. “He said: ‘So he’s that detective I’ve heard so much about, is he? Well, well; I wish I’d known!’”

  “I see,” said Freddy. “Then you must have told him that I was a detective.”

  “I suppose I did,” Mr. Boomschmidt said, “but as I told you, I don’t ever listen to what I say myself. I don’t suppose I even hear it. That’s perfectly natural, isn’t it? Don’t you think it is, Leo? After all, what I want is to hear what the other fellow says.”

  “Sure, chief, sure,” said the lion. “But now look—do you want to run those clippers over me? I guess it’s the best thing. I can’t go on like this.” He shook his head sadly. “But I don’t know where I’ll ever get the courage to face my looking glass.”

  Chapter 2

  When they left Mr. Boomschmidt, Freddy and Mrs. Wiggins joined one of the gangs that were cleaning up the circus grounds. After they had worked a while, the cooks who prepared the meals for the circus people came out carrying big freezers and a lot of plates and spoons, and everybody knocked off and had ice cream.

  This was an idea of Mr. Boomschmidt’s, and it was one of the reasons why people liked to work for him—he was always giving them little surprises.

  Freddy licked his plate clean and lay back in the grass. “I wonder why that magician started to come back when he found out we were detectives?” he said.

  “Maybe he’s committed some crime,” said the cow. “Maybe he thinks we’re after him.”

  They puzzled over Signor Zingo’s strange behavior for a while, but could find no explanation for it, and were just thinking about going back to work again when a rabbit came hopping up to them. He wasn’t anybody Freddy knew. All the rabbits on the Bean farm were sort of light tan color, but this one was pure white. He said: “Good morning, sir. Are you Frederick of Frederick and Wiggins, the famous detectives?”

  “I am,” said the pig, “and this is my associate, Mrs. Wiggins.” He looked sharply at the rabbit. “I’ve seen you before somewhere. Wait a minute,” he said. “I know who you are. You’re the rabbit that Signor Zingo took out of a silk hat during his performance Tuesday.”

  “I see, sir,” said the rabbit, “that you are indeed as clever as people say you are. A brilliant piece of deduction, if I may say so, sir.”

  Freddy liked praise as well as most people but he thought the rabbit was laying it on pretty thick. “Nonsense,” he said gruffly; “there’s nothing very brilliant about recognizing someone you’ve seen before. I looked carefully at that hat trick. And by the way, how does he do it? Do you really disappear?”

  “Oh yes, sir. Absolutely invisible. I’d gladly show you how it’s done if we only had the hat. But it blew away. It’s lost. And that is why I came over here—to see if you wouldn’t help me find it.”

  “I wouldn’t help that boss of yours find his hat if he offered me a thousand dollars. I wouldn’t help him find it if he crawled up to me on his knees and knocked his forehead on the ground three times and rubbed ashes in his hair. I wouldn’t …”

  “You mean you won’t help me?” said the rabbit. “Oh, dear!” And his ears, which had stuck up straight in the regular rabbit position, began to droop. They began at the tips and went slowly down, like little window shades, until they hung straight down beside his head, making him look terribly forlorn.

  “My land,” said Mrs. Wiggins, “that’s quite a trick!”

  “It’s not a trick!” said the rabbit sharply. “My ears always do that when I’m unhappy.”

  “It is not a trick!” said the rabbit sharply.

  “That’s interesting,” Freddy said. “Now when I’m unhappy, the curl always comes out of my tail. But of course,” he said kindly, “you haven’t much in the way of a tail.”

  “I have too,” the rabbit retorted, “and it isn’t all twisted up like a pretzel, either! But forgive me,” he said, “I didn’t want to start an argument. I—well, I was sure you’d take my case; first, because it’s an extremely difficult one, and second, because it’s extremely unusual. And everyone tells me that as a solver of really difficult cases, there is no one to equal you. I am sure that with your brilliant deductive powers and your wide knowledge of animal nature …”

  “Skip the flattery,” said Freddy. “We do like difficult cases, but we don’t like Signor Zingo, or his hat, or his rabbit, or anything that belongs to him. And so—”

  “But I don’t like Zingo either,” the rabbit interrupted. “He fired me. He said I was no good to him without the hat. And when I asked him how I was going to live, he just laughed and said: ‘Go fend for yourself. Rabbits can always live off the country.’”

  “Well, can’t they?” Mrs. Wiggins asked.

  “I suppose so, if they’re brought up to it. But I’m a magician’s rabbit. I don’t know how.”

  “That was pretty mean—kicking you out after you’d worked for him a long time,” said the cow.

  “Can’t he get another hat?” Freddy asked.

  “He said such hats were too expensive—he couldn’t afford it. And that’s the reason I came to you: he said if I could find the hat he’d take me on again.”

  Freddy shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but we don’t take out-of-town cases any more—just do local detective work for our friends, and that keeps us busy. Besides, I intend to take up magic and conjuring this summer, and I won’t have any extra time.”

  “Magic!” said the rabbit. “Well, if you want magic, there’s nobody who can teach you more about it than I can. Can’t we make a deal: you take my case and I’ll teach you magic?”

  “Could you show us how Signor Zingo saws that girl in two?” Mrs. Wiggins asked eagerly.

  “Sure. Nothing to it. I can teach you all those tricks.”

  Freddy said: “H’m,” and the rabbit’s ears went halfway up. “But on the other hand …” said Freddy, and the ears went down again.

  “Let’s hear his case anyway, Freddy,” said the cow.

  Freddy said: “I’m not specially interested in sawing anybody in two. I wouldn’t care to try it on anybody I liked, and on anybody I didn’t like it would be sort of a waste of time, since apparently they don’t stay sawed. But we can hear your story.”

  The rabbit’s name was Presto. He was called that because when Signor Zingo made him appear out of a hat, he always said: “Presto, change-o!” He came of a long line of disappearing rabbits: his grandfather had worked for Houdini, and both he and his father had worked for Zingo.

  This hat trick was one of the most difficult in all magic, Presto said, because it was real magic, not like making a girl disappear from a cabinet, which was done by having her climb down through a concealed trap door in the floor. “When I get into the hat and then disappear,” Presto said, “I really disappear, you understand.”

  “Good land,” said Mrs. Wiggins, but Freddy said: “Yeah. Sure. Well, go on.”

  Well, it seemed that when the hurricane struck the circus, Signor Zingo was just packing up his magic apparatus. The trick silk hat was on the table
beside him. And the wind came in under the tent and scooped up the hat, along with some papers that were on the table too, and took it out of the door, and the last that was seen of it, it was flying through the air above the treetops in a northwesterly direction, and the papers were flying around it like a lot of white pigeons following a big black crow.

  “Well, the hat ought to be easy to find,” Freddy said. “Now, wait a minute,” he said as Presto’s ears went quickly all the way up; “I’m not saying we’ll take your case: I’m only suggesting how to go about finding the hat yourself.”

  “I could never find it,” said Presto. “Oh dear, if you’d only … I’ll teach you everything—all the tricks there are. Please, sir!”

  And so after some more argument, Freddy agreed.

  Mrs. Wiggins was pretty impatient with Freddy for hesitating so long, and when they had sent the rabbit away, with a promise to pick him up when they left and take him back to the farm with them, she said: “I don’t see why you told him we had so much to do; we haven’t had any detective work in two months. Didn’t you really want his case?”

  “I intended to take it all the time,” Freddy said. “Only, if I’d let him see that we wanted it, he wouldn’t have thought we were very good detectives.”

  “My goodness,” said the cow, “we’re in the detective business, aren’t we? We advertise for cases in the Bean Home News, don’t we? It seems sort of silly when someone comes to offer us a job to pretend. we don’t want it.”

  “Well, that’s the way you have to do business,” said Freddy. “If somebody comes to buy something you have to sell, you don’t just give it to him right away. You pretend you don’t know whether you want to sell it to him or not. And the more you pat him off, the more determined he is to buy. It’s like being in love.”

  Mrs. Wiggins said: “I’ve never been in love.”

  “Well, neither have I,” said Freddy. “But the principle’s the same.”

  “What principle?” said Mrs. Wiggins, looking puzzled. Then she said: “Oh, never mind. I just think it’s a very funny way of doing business. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It may not make sense, but it makes sales,” said the pig.

  Chapter 3

  When the detective firm of Frederick and Wiggins got back to the Bean farm they were met just outside the gate by the black cat, Jinx.

  “Hi, sleuths!” he called. “Got any good clues today? Say, you’re a hot pair of detectives all right. How about getting your homework done before you go gallivanting off to the circus grounds?”

  “What do you mean, homework?” Freddy asked, and Jinx said: “I mean there’s detective work for you right here on the farm, and you two walked off and paid no attention to it. Come along.” He led them through the gate and then stopped. “Now stand right still here a minute; take a gander at the old layout. See anything wrong?”

  The animals were still busy around the barnyard, but most of the litter had been cleared away. Mr. Bean had come down from the roof and was tightening the screws in the hinges of the stable door.

  “I don’t see anything,” said Mrs. Wiggins, and Freddy agreed. “Looks a little neater than usual, that’s all,” he said.

  Jinx grinned. “Boy, oh boy! What a pair of dopes! Look around. Don’t you miss anything?”

  They shook their heads, and Mrs. Wiggins said: “Good land, don’t be so mysterious, cat. If you’ve lost something and want us to find it, why not say so?”

  Suddenly—“The henhouse!” Freddy exclaimed. “Where on earth is the henhouse?” They all looked across the barnyard at a bare strip of earth where yesterday the small but handsome building with its little revolving doors had stood. “And Charles! And Henrietta!” Freddy went on in a shocked voice. “And all those darned little chickens! That’s right; I didn’t notice them around this morning; but you mean to say—?”

  “Yeah,” said the cat; “I mean to say that we were all so blamed busy this morning cleaning up after the storm that not one of us noticed that the henhouse was gone. And it wasn’t until Mrs. Bean came out to look for eggs that we discovered it. Blown away in the hurricane, and probably floating around in the middle of Lake Ontario by this time, with Charles standing on the roof and making one of his speeches to the wild waves. And the perch and the pickerel playing merry-go-round with the revolving doors.”

  “Good grief!” Mrs. Wiggins exclaimed. “This is no time to be funny about it! We must find out where they are.”

  “They probably wouldn’t come to much harm,” said Jinx. “They’ve got wings; if they get blown into the air they can always get down easy.”

  “Well, come on,” said Freddy. “What are we waiting for? We only have to follow the wind. It came from the southeast, so we’ll send a search party out to the northwest. Hey, Mr. Pomeroy!” he called to a robin who was listening for worms at the corner of the garden.

  The robin hopped over. He wore spectacles which made him look like a small owl.

  “Look, J. J.,” said Freddy. “Will you get in touch with all the other birds and ask ’em to scout up northwest and see if they can locate our henhouse? It blew away in the hurricane, and we’re worried about Charles and his family. It can’t have gone very far, and I don’t think it will be hard to find. And—oh, yes; ask them to keep an eye out for a hat, a black stovepipe hat like the one Mr. Boomschmidt wears. That’s missing, too. It may be a lot farther away than the henhouse, but Mrs. Wiggins and I are offering a generous reward to the one that finds it. Just broadcast that, J. J., and report to me in the cow barn if there’s any news.”

  When the robin had flown off, Freddy went in to see Presto, who had been entertaining Mrs. Wiggins’ sisters, Mrs. Wurzburger and Mrs. Wogus, with a few simple tricks. The cows were delighted with the charming manners of their guest, and had told them that they hoped he would make his home with them for as long as he liked. Freddy was not surprised at this. He had seen that Presto was a great flatterer, and neither Mrs. Wurzburger nor Mrs. Wogus ever got much flattery. Very few people ever bother to flatter a cow. “I’m afraid it won’t be very exciting for him,” Mrs. Wogus said to Freddy, “for we live very quietly, but if he cares to stay we will be only too happy to have him.”

  “Their kindness quite overwhelms me,” Presto said. “There is so little that a poor lonely rabbit has to offer such highly cultivated ladies. I hardly know what to say.”

  “I guess you’ll find something to say all right,” said Freddy drily. “Well, if they want to put you up here, it’s all right with me. But in the meantime, suppose we start in on those magic lessons. Come on over to the pig pen.”

  So they went over into Freddy’s study, and Presto began by explaining some of the easier tricks that he had watched Signor Zingo do. Freddy saw very quickly that there wasn’t any use trying to do tricks with cards or any other sleight-of-hand feats. These depended on nimble fingers, and for a pig, who has no fingers, they were impossible. But there were a lot of other tricks that were worked by means of secret pockets, and by clips and other pieces of apparatus fastened inside the magician’s clothing, and Presto assured him that he could learn to do these very easily. So Freddy selected, from the row of hooks on which were hung the various disguises he used in his detective work, an old suit of Mr. Bean’s which Mrs. Bean had cut down for him; and with some pieces of cloth and with needle and thread he went to work under Presto’s direction to make himself a magician’s coat.

  They had sewn in several secret pockets, and had made a number of clips out of wire and fastened them in under the lapels and inside the sleeves, when there was a light tap on the window and they looked up to see Mr. Pomeroy standing on the sill. Freddy let him in.

  “Well,” said the robin, “we’ve located your henhouse. It got blown all the way up to Otesaraga Lake, and it landed in a big pine tree on your friend Mr. Camphor’s estate. My Cousin Isabel lives up there, you know, and she saw it and talked with Charles and Henrietta, and flew down to tell us about it.”

 
“Good gracious,” said Freddy, “how terrible!”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I guess it was quite an experience, for the house turned over several times while it was in the air, but it landed right side up and nobody was hurt. Henrietta sent word not to worry—that they were all well and really enjoying a nice vacation.”

  From his window Freddy could see that Mr. Bean had hitched Hank, the old white horse, to the buggy and was evidently just about to start off on a search for the henhouse. Although he knew that his animals could talk, Mr. Bean never liked to hear them. He said it was unnatural and made him nervous. There are a lot of people like that. Anything a little out of the ordinary disturbs and frightens them. But this was an important matter, so Freddy ran out and told the farmer what he had learned. “And I think, sir,” he said, “that it might be a good idea if Mrs. Wiggins and I went up there and brought you back a report on just how things are. Then you can arrange for getting the henhouse out of the tree and back here.”

  Mr. Bean stared hard at the pig, puffing on his pipe; then he gave a grunt—which was his way of agreeing with anybody—and began unhitching Hank from the buggy. And Freddy ran to get Mrs. Wiggins.

  It was a long trip up through the Big Woods and across country to the lake, and it was suppertime before they reached Mr. Camphor’s house. Mr. Camphor was in Washington, but he had left word with his butler, Bannister, that whenever Freddy and any of the Bean animals came they were to be treated as honored guests. So Bannister said they must certainly have dinner and stay the night, and what would they like to eat?

  “Good land,” said Mrs. Wiggins, “don’t fuss for me. All I ever have is a little grass and a bucket of water.”

  So Mrs. Wiggins had her dinner outside, but Freddy went in and ate a hearty meal.

  Afterwards they walked down to the lake shore and Bannister showed them the henhouse. There it was, perched in the upper branches of a huge pine overhanging the water, and looking as if it had always been there. They could hear chicks chirping, and the scolding voice of a hen, but when Mrs. Wiggins rapped on the tree trunk with her left horn, there was sudden quiet, and then Charles, the rooster, came to the henhouse door and looked down.