Freddy the Magician Page 4

  “And bust a hole in it,” said Presto.

  “Maybe we can get some help,” Freddy said. He looked around. “There’s a squirrel family lives around this section—Nibble, Dibble, Gribble—some such name. I can holler for them. Only the old man, he’s kind of touchy, and if I call him by the wrong name, he might get mad. You know how people are.… Now what is that name?”

  “Just call ‘Ibble!” said Presto. “He won’t notice you haven’t put anything on the front of it.”

  So Freddy shouted: “Hey, Mr. Ibble!” several times, and at last an aged squirrel poked his head out of a hole in a hollow limb of a big beech tree and said crossly: “What do you want?”

  “We’d like your help, if you’d be so kind,” said Freddy politely, “in getting that hat.”

  “I daresay you would,” said the squirrel. “Well, you won’t get it!” And his head disappeared.

  Freddy and Presto looked at each other. “H’m,” said the pig after a moment. “Well, this is kind of a mean trick, but …” He felt in the pocket of his coat. “Hey,” he called, “will you help us if I give you a nice fresh hen’s egg?”

  The squirrel popped out of the hole and started down the tree. “Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” he demanded testily. “Where’s your egg?”

  Freddy took it from his pocket and put it on the ground. “It’s yours when you hand us that hat.”

  So the squirrel ran up the spruce and brought down the hat. But when he put out a paw to get hold of the egg it bounced away from him like a pingpong ball. For it was an egg that Freddy had pierced and blown for use in his magic work, and was of course nothing but an empty shell.

  … it bounced away from him like a ping pong ball.

  The squirrel was good and mad and I guess he had a right to be. He stamped and scolded and refused to listen to Freddy’s promise to bring him two good eggs the following morning. “If that isn’t a low-down pig trick, I never saw one!” he stormed. “Get out! Get out of my woods, you big hunk of fat pork! You—you—!” He sputtered and danced and screamed, and Freddy picked up the hat and, followed by Presto, started for home as fast as he could go.

  “Well,” he said, when they reached the pig pen, “you can get your job back now, Presto. But before you take the hat, I wish you’d show me the disappearing trick.”

  So Presto stood the hat on its crown on the floor. “Don’t touch it,” he said. “But look into it—look it all over. Just a hat, isn’t it?”

  Freddy examined it and peered inside it. It was lined with crinkled black silk, but it was plain there was nothing there but the lining.

  Then Presto jumped into it.

  “Cover the hat over with your handkerchief,” he said. “And then say the magic words—‘Presto-change-o!’ And then take the handkerchief off.”

  So Freddy did. But when he looked in there was nothing there. Presto had vanished.

  “My goodness!” said Freddy. “That’s some trick! Presto! Presto, are you there?”

  “Sure, I’m there,” was the reply. “But I’m invisible.”

  Freddy was puzzled. He walked slowly around the hat, then he dodged quickly back around the other way, in case Presto was hiding behind it. Then he leaned over and peered in, and there was the crinkled black lining, but no rabbit. “Are you—you still there, Presto?” he said hesitatingly.

  “Look, Freddy,” said Presto’s voice, and it certainly sounded as if it was within an inch of the pig’s nose—“Look, it’s like I told you: this is the one trick I can’t teach you, because it’s real magic and not just tricks. I really make myself invisible, and if you stuck your nose out a little farther you could feel me, even though you can’t see me. No, no; don’t do it! If anybody touches me when I’m invisible it makes them invisible too, only they’d have to stay that way the rest of their lives, because they wouldn’t know how to get visible again, and I can’t teach that.”

  “You mean,” said Freddy, “that you’re transparent, like glass?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Golly!” Freddy exclaimed. “Wouldn’t that be a swell thing in the detective business! Honestly, couldn’t you teach me how, Presto?”

  “Not possibly. I couldn’t teach you how to disappear any more than I could teach you how to have white fur. Disappearing is hereditary; it runs in families, like big ears, or warts.”

  “Do warts run in families?” Freddy asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Presto. “But you know what I mean—like six-toed cats. Well, how about putting your handkerchief over the hat again so I can appear?”

  So Freddy did, and said: “Presto-change-o!” and took off the handkerchief and there sat the rabbit in the hat. “Well,” he said, “now I suppose you can take the hat to your boss and get your job back.”

  “Oh, no hurry about that,” Presto said. “I like it here; nice to get a little quiet country life after rushing around with a circus.”

  “That’s all right,” said Freddy. “I’d like to keep on with the magic lessons for a while. But you’ll want a safe place to keep the hat. How about the vaults of our bank? I’m the president of the FIRST ANIMAL BANK, you know. Take it down there now if you like.”

  So they went down to the bank, which was in a shed beside the road, just below the gate.

  Chapter 6

  “I’d really like to spend the rest of the summer here,” said Presto as they walked along. “If the girls over at the cow barn are willing to let me stay on there. Nice comfortable place, but I must say, not very exciting. How do you ever stand them, Freddy? They’re the stupidest creatures, even for cows, I ever met.”

  Freddy turned angrily on him. “Those cows are my friends, rabbit!” he said. “And even if they weren’t—it’s not a very nice thing to accept their hospitality and then talk about them behind their backs.”

  Presto was all apologies. “You misunderstood me, Freddy. I was just going to say: they’re so nice and kind, you don’t mind that they aren’t clever. In fact, if they were clever, you wouldn’t get half as fond of them as you do. I think …”

  “All right, all right,” Freddy interrupted, “let’s just talk about something else.” And as they had reached the bank, he took Presto in and introduced him to the two rabbits who were on guard at the trap door leading down to the vaults.

  “Those rabbits aren’t much protection,” Presto said. “A robber could just walk in and knock them over and clean out the place.”

  “Oh, it’s safe enough,” said Freddy. He didn’t tell Presto about the alarm bell. Just outside the bank hung a big iron bell that had once been the Bean’s dinner bell. A cord fastened to the clapper led through a hole into the bank, and if danger threatened, all the guards had to do was pull the cord once, and the clang would bring every animal on the farm running to the defense of the bank.

  So they went down into the vaults and put the silk hat in one of the underground rooms that the woodchucks had hollowed out when the bank was built. And then they went back to the pig pen and had another magic lesson.

  But Freddy was worried. He was worried about the way Presto had spoken of the cows. “I thought he was pretty insincere,” he said later to Jinx, “because he flatters everybody so outrageously; but I did think he was a gentleman. Now I’m not so sure.”

  “H’m,” said Jinx, “it’s funny about cows. They’re what?—twenty, thirty times as big as I am, and you’d think they ought to be twenty times as smart. But you’ve got to admit it, Freddy, that Wogus and Wurzburger are a pair of pretty dull girls. Not Mrs. Wiggins; she’s got the brains of the family, all right.”

  “Just the same, that Presto had no business making a crack like that. He’ll bear watching.”

  Freddy was worried too about the hat. He was sure that Presto had really vanished. And at the same time he was sure that the rabbit had played some trick and hadn’t really vanished at all.

  It is funny how you can have two opinions in your head like that at the same time. It is as if on
e side of your head thought something was so, while the other side thinks it isn’t so, and the two sides keep arguing with each other until you are almost crazy. The argument went on inside Freddy’s head until he couldn’t keep his mind on the tricks, and he sent Presto away and sat down and tried to write some poetry for the next issue of the Bean Home News. This is what he wrote:

  O give me a home

  Where no buffaloes roam,

  But the pigs and the porcupines play.

  If it rains, we’ve the barn,

  So we don’t give a darn

  When the skies are all cloudy and grey.

  Home, home on the farm.

  Where the corn and the canteloupes grow;

  Where often is seen

  Mr. William F. Bean,

  And the—

  At this point the argument inside his head got so violent that he threw down his pencil and said: “Bosh!” And when the song came out in the paper it was still unfinished. But Freddy put a note underneath it that said: “I was too busy this week to finish this. So if you want to sing it, you’ll have to write the last line yourselves. There are lots of rhymes: blow, glow, slow, flow, toe, buffalo, etc.”

  “If I keep on arguing with myself like this,” Freddy decided, “I will go crazy, and they will have to tie me up and feed me with a spoon. I guess I’ll go up and see old Whibley.”

  Old Whibley lived up in the woods and he was pretty cross, even for an owl. But he never refused his advice when Freddy asked for it, although he always made it plain that he considered the pig a great nuisance.

  “You again!” he said grumpily, when he had come to the door of his nest. “Well, been making a fool of yourself, I suppose. Come, come; what is it? I haven’t got all day.”

  “You again!” he said grumpily.

  So Freddy told him about Presto’s hat trick and the struggle it had aroused in his own mind.

  “Pshaw!” said the owl. “Simple enough. All depends on what you believe. If you believe in magic, then it was magic and that’s all there is to it. If you don’t believe in magic, then it was a trick, and anybody can do it.”

  “Well, I—I don’t believe in magic, really,” said Freddy.

  “More fool you,” said the owl. “But it makes our problem simpler. Now the rabbit—did he ever disappear except when he was in the hat?”

  Freddy said: “No, I think he has to have the hat.”

  “Look!” said Old Whibley impatiently. “Look, pig;” and he bit the words off even shorter than usual as if he was holding back his irritation with a great effort—“you have rabbit and hat. Rabbit gets in hat. Rabbit disappears. Is it magic?”

  “N-no, I don’t think so.”

  “Then it’s the hat. A trick hat. Maybe little door in hat—rabbit crawled out and hid behind it.”

  “But I walked all around it,” said Freddy.

  “Then he was inside.”

  “But I looked. He wasn’t there.”

  Old Whibley gave an exasperated hoot. “You call yourself a detective!” he said. “Got a big reputation—master of disguises. But can’t figure out how a white rabbit can hide in a black hat. Go on back home, you’re wasting my time.”

  “Oh, but please!” said Freddy, as the owl started back into his hole. “Won’t you please tell me what you think?”

  “With pleasure,” said Whibley. “Think you’re a numbskull,” and disappeared.

  Freddy knew there was no more to be got out of him, and he trudged back home. But on the way he did some thinking, and instead of going to the pig pen he went down to the bank, dismissed the guards, and brought the hat up from the vault and set it on the floor. Then he peered inside. “Yes,” he thought, “if Presto had had something black to cover himself with I couldn’t have seen him. But there’s nothing in there—nothing but that crinkled black silk lining.” He reached in and felt around the inside. No, there was nothing loose; the lining was tight all around the inside. But wait a minute! It gave when he pushed up into the crown. Was there a space there?

  He took the hat over to the window. And then he saw how the trick had been done. “My good gracious!” he said. “It’s got a false bottom! Or a false top, I guess you’d call it. That darned Presto!” For there was a space a good two and a half inches deep between the top of the hat and the silk lining. When you looked into it it was so black inside that you didn’t notice that it wasn’t as deep as it should have been. And all Presto had done was push his nose through the circular elastic that held the top lining together in the middle, and then crawl into the space. The elastic pulled the lining together, and there was an apparently empty hat.

  Freddy put the hat back in the vault and went out to look for Presto to tell him about his discovery. But the more he thought about it, the more he thought he’d keep it to himself for a while. Anyway, Presto wasn’t anywhere around. And so as it was still early in the day, he thought he would trot down to Centerboro and see what he could do about renting a hall for his performance.

  Chapter 7

  A pig in a rather loud checked sports coat trudging along the highway is an unusual sight. Of course the local people all knew Freddy, and they just waved as they drove by. But there were a lot of tourists on the road, and they stared and shouted, and one old lady from California who was going back home after visiting her grandson in Schenectady fainted dead away, and her car ran into the ditch. Freddy helped her get it back on the road, and she was so pleased with his kindness and good manners and with several tricks he performed for her, that she decided to sell her house in California and buy a place in Centerboro and live there. She did, too. Her name is Mrs. Hattie Bland, and she lives in that little white house opposite Mrs. Underdunk’s.

  Freddy went to see Mr. Muszkiski, the manager of the movie theatre, and arranged to rent the theatre next Tuesday night for his magic show. Because the theatre was always dark Tuesday evening, and Mr. Muszkiski was glad to get a little money for it. Then Freddy went down to see Mr. Dimsey, who printed the Bean Home News, and had some signs made.

  When his business was done, Freddy strolled down Main Street, but he hadn’t gone far when a hand fell on his shoulder and he turned to see a tall man with a straggly moustache who wore no coat or necktie, and had a silver star pinned to his vest. It was his friend the sheriff.

  “Is this a pinch?” Freddy asked.

  The sheriff grinned. “You can call it that,” he said. “You’re just the party I wanted to contact, as they say in the business world. Come on over to the jail.”

  The prisoners were playing ball on the diamond the sheriff had laid out for them back of the jail, and besides the two teams there was quite a crowd in the bleachers.

  “Crime on the up-swing?” Freddy inquired, as they stopped to look.

  “Had quite a few robberies lately,” said the sheriff. “Of course, we’ve been able to have two full teams all this last year, but it’s nice to have some onlookers.”

  “You lost your best pitcher last spring, didn’t you?” Freddy asked.

  “Red Mike? Yes, his sentence expired, and he had to go out. But Mike’s a good guy, and he didn’t want to let us down. Day he got out, he went up to Judge Willey’s and stole a hen, and the judge gave him three months—just enough to finish out the ball season.”

  After a while they went into the office and the sheriff said seriously: “Freddy, there’s been a robbery in the jail.” He looked at the pig unhappily. “Can’t understand it; such a thing has never happened before in all my years as sheriff. My boys here are better behaved and honester than most of the folks outside, and I know that for a fact.”

  Freddy could never quite understand the sheriff’s attitude toward his prisoners. He said impatiently: “How can you say that? They’re criminals, aren’t they? How about Red Mike, who stole a hen as soon as he got out?”

  “Pshaw!” said the sheriff; “he didn’t want that hen. He just did it so he could get back in jail. He likes it here.”

  “Well, well,” said
Freddy, “I suppose you want me to detect the thief. What was stolen?”

  “A pie.”

  “What kind of pie?”

  “What in tunket difference does it make?” said the sheriff. “Pie’s a pie, ain’t it?”

  “Not to a detective,” said Freddy. “You take a crime like this, sheriff, and it looks insoluble, doesn’t it? Anybody might have taken the pie. But suppose it’s a pieplant pie. Maybe there’s some of the prisoners don’t like pieplant. So your case narrows down, do you see? And the more facts you get, the more it narrows, until at last you point your finger at one man, and say: ‘There’s the thief.’”

  The sheriff said: “Yeah,” and went out to see the cook. “It was a blueberry pie,” he said when he came back, “and all the boys like blueberry. So where does that narrow you down to?”

  “You’d be surprised,” said Freddy. “How long ago was it stolen?”

  “Not more’n an hour.”

  “OK,” said Freddy. “You get all the prisoners lined up out there—the game seems to be over. Tell ’em I want to show ’em a trick.”

  So the sheriff called the prisoners together and had them line up out by the baseball diamond, and Freddy stood out in front of them and did one or two simple tricks. “Now gentlemen,” he said, “I have a special trick here which has never before been performed publicly. If you will be so good as all to stick out your tongues—no, not at the sheriff, just at me. Good! Good! Just a little farther. Ah, thank you, gentlemen.” He walked down the line. All the tongues were pink except that of a prisoner called Louie the Lout. His was blue. Freddy touched him on the shoulder. “Here’s your thief, sheriff.”

  All tongues were pink except …

  “Now, why couldn’t I have thought of that!” said the sheriff admiringly. “Well, Louie, I’m disappointed in you. I guess you’d better go up to your room. I’ll see you later. Freddy, come along back into the office.”