Freddy the Magician Page 6

  Fortunately, Freddy had thought up some tricks which Zingo couldn’t duplicate. He had had the bright idea of getting the four mice who lived in the Bean kitchen to help him. So he had Eek in one inside pocket and Eeny in the other, and Quik and Cousin Augustus had what you might call roving commissions—that is, they ran around Freddy under his coat and brought out things and pulled them out of sight and generally helped out. One of the mouse tricks was when Freddy stood perfectly still in the center of the stage while Mr. Beller played the Star Spangled Banner on the piano, and then out of Freddy’s pockets would come four little American flags on sticks which would be waved in time to the music. Another was one that Freddy called the “Shower of Gold.” He had a lot of nickels in his pockets that he had painted with radiator paint so they looked like five-dollar gold pieces. He went down into the audience and stood in the center aisle, and then while two people held his arms, the mice threw out the nickels, which flashed and jingled, and it did indeed look as if Freddy’s pockets were spouting gold pieces. A lot of the audience got right down on the floor and scrambled for them, and even Mr. Weezer, the president of the Centerboro Bank, got his head caught under his seat while he was hunting for one, and had to be pulled out by the heels.

  Signor Zingo didn’t come forward after that trick, and Freddy said: “To anyone who can explain that trick I offer twenty dollars.” He paused. “Well, Signor Zingo,” he said, “how about it? I can’t believe it is your modesty that holds you back. Can it be ignorance?”

  “Pooh,” said the magician from the back of the hall, “any fool can do that trick.”

  “Come on up and prove it then,” said Freddy, “by doing it yourself.”

  The audience giggled, and Zingo lost his temper. “You stupid fat lummox!” he shouted. “Call me a fool, will you! Why, you—” But he didn’t say any more for a huge paw fell on his shoulder and a deep bear’s voice growled menacingly in his ear. He sat down quickly.

  Mr. Bean had caught sight of a mouse’s paw holding one of the little flags in the other trick, and he had a pretty good idea what was going on. He nudged Mrs. Bean. “Here’s your chance to make twenty dollars,” he whispered.

  But Mrs. Bean just smiled. She wouldn’t have exposed the trick for ten times the amount. And of course, neither would Mr. Bean.

  At last Freddy announced that he was about to do the most mysterious feat of the evening. He was going to saw a cat in two and put him together again. He called for two volunteers from the audience to assist him.

  “Go on up, Mr. B., and help him,” Mrs Bean whispered.

  But Mr. Bean said no. “Folks know he’s my pig,” he said. “They’ll think I’m a confederate.”

  So at last Mr. Weezer and Judge Willey went up, and Freddy had them carry a box about eighteen inches long and eight inches high from the back of the stage and put it on two chairs, so that the middle of the box was over the space between the chairs. He opened the box and had Jinx jump in, then he closed the lid and came forward and addressed the audience.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “you have seen a live cat jump into this box. I will now ask him to put his head and forepaws out of one end of the box, and his tail and hind paws out of the other.” And immediately a black head and forepaws came out through holes in one end of the box, and a black tail and hind paws out of holes at the other.

  “You see now,” Freddy went on, “that the cat is actually in the box, and if it is sawed in two the cat will be in two pieces. And now, to show that there is no deception, I will ask Mr. Weezer to steady the box while Judge Willey takes this saw and saws right down through box and cat and …”

  “Stop!” called old Mrs. Peppercorn, jumping up from her seat. “I won’t permit it!” She turned to face the audience. “What kind of people are you, to sit there with grins on your faces while this wretched pig murders a cat? It’s cruelty to animals of the worst kind. Sheriff, I call on you to arrest this animal.”

  “Why, ma’am,” drawled the sheriff, “I can’t see he’s hurt the cat any yet. Critter seems real happy.” And Freddy said: “I assure you, ma’am, if I were not perfectly certain that I could put him together again, I wouldn’t attempt this trick. How about it, Jinx?”

  “Sure,” said Jinx, twisting around and grinning at the audience. “Bring on your saws! The duller they are, the better I like ’em.”

  “Well, maybe you can fool that cat into letting you do it—he don’t seem like a very smart animal,” said Mrs. Peppercorn, “but you can’t make me believe you’ll ever get him together again. Judge Willey, I’m ashamed of you, lending yourself to such a wicked performance. And if you don’t stop at once, I’m going to go out and call up the state troopers.”

  Freddy came forward. “Would you just step down here a moment, ma’am?” he said, and as she came down to the stage he knelt and whispered in her ear.

  The audience watched them intently. As Freddy talked, they saw Mrs. Peppercorn’s narrow shoulders begin to shake. Then fizzing sounds came from her, and her friends knew that she was laughing, although those who didn’t know her might have supposed that she was about to explode. Then suddenly she turned, holding one hand over her mouth, and hurried back up the aisle to her seat.

  A good many people in the audience, even those who were not personal friends of the victim, had been disturbed about the business. Those who had been to the circus and seen a girl sawed in two knew that it was only a trick, but there were some who agreed with Mrs. Peppercorn, and Mrs. Weezer, who sat next to her, said: “Is it really all right? What did he tell you?”

  But all Mrs. Peppercorn would say, between chuckles, was that it was all right: Freddy had a sawing-in-two license, and the law couldn’t touch him.

  Now of course the way the trick was worked was this: when Jinx had jumped into the box, Minx was already in it, unknown to the audience, and while it was Jinx’s head and forepaws that came out through the holes in one end of the box, it was Minx’s tail and hind paws that appeared through the holes in the other end. And the saw went right down between the two cats.

  Jinx put on a good show while the judge sawed him in two. He wriggled and screeched at first, but when he saw that that was too much for the audience, he stopped pretending that he was being hurt, and began to shriek with laughter, shouting that Judge Willey was tickling him. And the box was sawed quite through, and Freddy pulled the chairs an inch or so apart, so that people could see right between the two halves of the box, each of which apparently contained half of Jinx.

  Then Freddy turned the chairs so that the ends of the box faced the audience, and now there were evidently two boxes, with a head and forepaws sticking out of one, and a tail and hind-paws sticking out of the other, and even those who knew it was only a trick gasped, for it did look sort of awful.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen,” Freddy said, “I will put my friend together again.” He moved the chairs around, shoved the box together as it had been at first, opened the lid, the head, tail and paws disappeared from the ends and out jumped Jinx, all in one piece.

  The applause beat upon Freddy’s ears like the roar of a mighty ocean—at least that was how he expressed it himself later; and although he had never seen the ocean, except in a flat calm on that famous trip to Florida, I guess he was about right. He bowed and bowed again, and after the curtain went down, it had to be pulled up again five times so that he could bow some more. And then it went down for good and the show was over.

  Freddy came down from the stage and hurried out through the crowd to the ticket booth, stopping briefly to receive the congratulations of friends.

  “Well,” he said to Mrs. Wiggins, “how did we come out?”

  Mrs. Wiggins didn’t say anything. She pushed a little piece of paper towards him. On it was written:

  Receipts

  50¢ tickets

  $118.

  25¢ tickets

  154.75

  $172.75

  Expenditures

  Rent of thea
tre

  $50.

  Other expenses

  21.42

  Paid Signor Zingo

  130.

  $201.42

  “You still owe Zingo $28.67.”

  “H’m,” said Freddy, “we didn’t do so well.”

  Mrs. Wiggins just looked at him, and two large tears rolled out of her eyes and splashed on the little counter in front of her.

  Freddy was alarmed. It was pretty nice of Mrs. Wiggins to feel so badly on his account, but he knew that if she once really got started crying, she would alarm the whole town. She often said herself that when she was really unhappy she didn’t care who knew it, and it was a good thing she didn’t, for she bawled so that nobody within two miles could fail to hear her. And it was the same when she laughed. Freddy had seen birds shaken right out of trees when somebody told Mrs. Wiggins a joke.

  So now he said sharply: “Stop it! Stop it at once! Good gracious, I’ve got plenty of money that I made last year with the circus. I can pay Zingo and never feel it.”

  “But I feel it, Freddy,” she sniffed. “I feel it terribly. All your hard work, and then—”

  “Nonsense!” said the pig. “We’ll get Zingo yet; don’t you worry about that. And by the way, when did he leave? He wasn’t in the house during the sawing-in-two trick, was he?”

  “He left just as you started it. Came out for his money. I gave him what there was, and he said he’d expect the rest by noon tomorrow.”

  “He’ll get it,” Freddy said. “I didn’t think he’d care to expose that trick, since he does the same one himself. Well, come on. We’ll let Mr. Muszkiski lock up and go home.”

  The Beans, with the smaller animals, had gone on ahead in the phaeton, and as soon as he could get away from the lobby, where a number of people were still waiting to thank him for his fine show, Freddy and the cows set out for home. With them were the two cats, and Peter, who still had the terrified Presto clutched in one big paw.

  Nothing much was said on the way home. They were all rather depressed. When they came to the beginning of the Bean farm, Peter said: “Well, I turn off here to go up to the woods. What do you want done with this rabbit, Freddy?”

  “Oh, please, Mr. Freddy,” Presto wailed, “won’t you please let me go? I didn’t want to make that speech, but Signor Zingo made me—he said he’d—well, he’d do awful things to me if I didn’t.”

  “I don’t believe he said anything of the kind,” Freddy replied. “I think you’ve been in with him all the time. You went to see him at the hotel. I don’t believe he ever fired you in the first place. How about telling us the truth? We might let you go if you tell us the whole thing.”

  “Oh dear!” the rabbit whimpered. “I would if—Oh I feel so sick!” And his head waggled from side to side and then fell limply forward as if all the stiffness had gone out of his neck.

  “Oh, the poor little fellow!” said Mrs. Wogus, and Mrs. Wurzburger said: “Don’t tease him any more, Freddy. I’m sure he didn’t mean to do any harm.”

  “Poor little nothing!” said Freddy. “Hang on to him, Peter.” For he saw that the rabbit was pretending to be sick so that Peter would set him down.

  “You bet I’ll hang on,” said the bear, “and you watch yourself, rabbit.”

  “But my stomach is upset,” Presto moaned.

  “Upset, eh? We can fix that,” said Peter, and took the rabbit in both paws and shook him hard. “See if we can’t get it right side up again,” he said. “That feel better?”

  “Oh, yes! Please! Please, it’s all right; I’m not sick any more.”

  “How curious!” said Minx. “I remember once when I was crossing on the Queen Mary I cured a friend of seasickness by—”

  “Shut up, sis!” said Jinx sharply. “And you too,” he added, turning on Mrs. Wogus and Mrs. Wurzburger, who were making shocked and sympathetic noises in the background. “Go on, Freddy; make him come clean.”

  Presto was now thoroughly scared, and he said: “I’ll talk. I’ll talk if you’ll just let me go.”

  He probably didn’t intend to tell very much of the truth, but Freddy was a shrewd and experienced questioner, and bit by bit the story came out. At the circus, when Mr. Boomschmidt had told Signor Zingo who Freddy was, the magician had started to turn back to ask Freddy to find the hat that had blown away in the storm. But he had just had a quarrel with Freddy, and didn’t believe that the pig would take on any job for him. So he got Presto to do it. He had had the rabbit make up the story about being fired, for he felt that Freddy’s sympathy for a poor unemployed rabbit would induce him to organize a search for the hat. And of course that was the way it worked out.

  Presto confessed that he had visited the magician several times and reported progress. Zingo knew that the hat had been found and was in the bank vault.

  “Well then,” said Freddy, “you can go down to Zingo, and tell him that when he pays my bill for services rendered in finding the hat, he can have it. You can bring me the money, and take the hat back to him.”

  “And how much is your bill?” Presto asked.

  “A hundred and thirty dollars.”

  Presto gasped. “Why he—he hasn’t that much money!”

  “Oh, yes he has. He got it out of me tonight with that fake offer you and he cooked up. Yes,” said Freddy, “I think that’s fair. Everybody will be satisfied. I’ll have my profits from the show, and Zingo will have his hat at no cost to himself.”

  “But he has to have that money to live on,” said the rabbit. “It’s all he has.”

  “Where’s all the money he got from the circus then?”

  “Oh,” said Presto, “he had to give that back.”

  This reply puzzled Freddy. He realized that they must be talking about two different things. The money he had referred to was the salary that Mr. Boomschmidt had paid Zingo for his work as a magician. But you don’t “give back” your salary. Freddy thought quickly for a moment, then he shot a quick series of questions at the rabbit.

  “Did he give back all of the money?”

  “He lost a lot of it. He gave the rest back.”

  “Didn’t he spend any of it at all?”

  “He didn’t have time.”

  “How much was there?”

  “I think about a thousand dollars. But he hadn’t counted it yet. Mr. Boo—” The rabbit stopped abruptly. “How do you know about this?” he demanded.

  But Freddy had been rapidly putting two and two together. Zingo had got nearly a thousand dollars from the circus. It wasn’t his salary. He had lost some of it and had had to give the rest back before spending, or even counting it. And since he had got it from the circus, he must have given it back to the circus—that is, Mr. Boomschmidt. Freddy said: “I know a great deal more than you think I do. I had a little talk with Mr. Boomschmidt before the circus left.” Which was true enough, but of course nothing had been said about money.

  Presto said angrily: “Mr. Boomschmidt had no right to tell you about it. He promised Signor Zingo that he would say nothing about it if he returned the part he had left and promised to pay the rest back when he got a job. He didn’t want any scandal.”

  Freddy had the whole picture now. Zingo had evidently stolen money from the circus cashbox—probably during the confusion following the hurricane. Mr. Boomschmidt had found out, and in return for the five hundred or so that Zingo still had, had promised to say nothing about it. But he had fired Zingo from the show.

  “Well,” said Freddy, “I guess you’d better go back to Signor Zingo. You can tell him he can have his hat if he sends me the money he took out of the show tonight. But hold on a minute!” For Freddy had suddenly remembered the scheme he had thought out for keeping Minx quiet during the week of her stay. In order to carry it out, he had to get Presto to show the cat his disappearing trick.

  “Look here,” he said, “it’s too late to do any more tonight. But I’m going to hold you for further questioning. Jinx, I wonder if you and Minx would be willing
to take this animal to the bank, and stand guard over him till morning? It’s the only place I can think of where he can’t escape.”

  The cats weren’t very enthusiastic about this. They would be comfortable enough, for the Beans had contributed a couple of old cushioned armchairs to the bank—the customers’ chairs, Freddy called them, though he always sat in the most comfortable one himself. But one of them at least would have to stay awake to keep an eye on Presto. Freddy persuaded them however by, telling them about Signor Zingo’s hat, and making the rabbit promise to show them his disappearing trick. Then, satisfied that his plan was well under way, he said goodnight to the others and trotted off home.

  Chapter 10

  Freddy had an alarm clock that always went off an hour earlier than it was set for. He said he liked it better that way. If he had to get up at six, he set it for seven, and then although he really knew that he would be getting up at six, he could think as he dropped off to sleep: “Seven. I don’t have to get up till seven.” It didn’t seem nearly as early doing it that way.

  He set the clock for six the next morning, and at five ten he was up and out—for it doesn’t take a pig long to get dressed—and started to make a number of early morning calls. He called on Hank, and the cows, and Mr. Pomeroy, and Charles, and they all giggled and agreed to do what he wanted them to; and then he sent word to all the other animals on the farm. And after that was all settled he went down to the bank.

  He opened the door and looked in. Jinx was curled up in one chair and Minx in the other, and Signor Zingo’s hat was in the middle of the floor. The two rabbits who were the regular night guards were at their posts on the trapdoor to the vaults. But there was no sign of Presto.