Freddy the Pilot Page 6

  He was looking into the eyepiece when he walked across the foor.

  “Hey, Freddy, what’s the matter with you?” Sniffy demanded. “You taken up ballet dancing or something?”

  “That’s funny,” Freddy said. “Look here, Uncle Ben. See that nickel on the floor? Somebody dropped it, I suppose. Well, every time I carry the bombsight over that nickel, there’s a little flicker of light in the eyepiece.”

  Uncle Ben didn’t say anything, but he dropped his pencil and took the bombsight from Freddy. He walked back and forth over the nickel, looking in the eyepiece; then he put some other coins on the floor, and some small pieces of iron and brass, and walked back and forth over them. Then he set the bombsight on the bench and grinned triumphantly.

  “Well, for Pete’s sake,” said Sniffy. “What’s it all about?”

  Uncle Ben still didn’t say anything. He dipped a brush in a can of black paint and painted out the words “Benjamin Bean Bombsight. Pat. Applied For,” and then he dipped another brush in a can of white paint and painted in the words “Benjamin Bean Money Finder. Pat. Pending.” He looked at that for a minute, and then he took a chisel and cut a slit in the top of the bombsight large enough to take a quarter. After which he painted out the words again, and lettered in: “Benjamin Bean Improved Self-filling Piggy Bank. All Rights Reserved.” He smiled happily. “Sell millions,” he said.

  “Well, in the first place, it doesn’t look like a piggy bank,” Freddy said crossly. Being a pig himself, he had never much liked the idea of piggy banks. “And in the second place,” he went on, “instead of making a lot of them and selling them, and having everyone picking up lost dimes and quarters, why not just keep this one for yourself? Then all the lost dimes and quarters would be yours.”

  Uncle Ben shook his head. “Henry Ford,” he said. “Not just one car.”

  “You mean Mr. Ford would have been selfish if he’d just made one car and driven around in it himself?”

  “I guess it would have been better if he had,” Sniffy said. “All these millions of cars, running all over the country every which way, and bumping into each other. Know how many of our people are killed every year by cars?”

  Skunks are rather conservative animals. That is to say, they don’t care much about new inventions. They have never really approved of the automobile, and that probably is why so many of them get run over. They just don’t like cars, and they won’t get out of the way.

  Uncle Ben picked up the bombsight—which had now become the improved piggy bank—and held it out to Freddy. “Try it,” he said. “Garden.”

  “I haven’t got much time,” Freddy said. “The circus is giving a performance this afternoon, and I have to be there, to see if I can find out where that plane that keeps buzzing the big tent comes from. But come on, Sniffy; we’ll take a whirl around the garden.”

  Nearly every plot of ground that has been a garden for many years is full of things that people that have been working in it have dropped—coins and pencils and jackknives and all sorts of odds and ends. After a rain is the best time to look for them, because then the dirt will be washed off them and they are easier to see. And you’d be surprised how many valuable things are sometimes found—gold rings and diamond stickpins and brooches with pictures of Niagara Falls enameled on them and such things. Mr. Bean had once found a glass eye in his garden, although there was no record of any one-eyed man ever having lived in the neighborhood since Revolutionary times.

  Freddy and Sniffy spent about an hour in the Bean garden, and in that time they found thirty-seven cents, four empty brass cartridge cases, an old-fashioned gold watch (the works were rusted out but the case was still bright), two brass buttons off a Civil War uniform; and Mrs. Bean’s silver spectacles that she had lost one day ten years ago when she was picking potato bugs.

  It was fun going over the garden with the Benjamin Bean Self-filling Piggy Bank, but Freddy had to get down to Centerboro. He left Sniffy hunting for more coins and got Mrs. Wiggins to go up in the pasture with him and swing the propeller so he could start the engine of his plane. Then he flew down to the Centerboro Fair Grounds, and about half-past two, when the audience had all gone into the big tent, he took off again. He climbed to 5000 feet and then cruised slowly in a circle, watching the northern sky.

  Even when he was learning to fly, Freddy had never been scared. He had always been afraid of heights, too. You couldn’t have coaxed him up on the barn roof for a hundred dollars. But now, looking down through a mile of empty air on the little white oval that was the big tent, he wasn’t the least bit nervous. The empty blue sky, and the two or three little cream puff clouds so dazzling white in the sunshine, made him want to sing. There was nobody there to stop him, so he did.

  “Oh, the young pigs fly

  About the sky

  And they zoom and dive and roll;

  They yell and whoop

  As they spin and loop

  Under the sky’s blue bowl.

  They sing and shout

  As they whiz about,

  For there’s elbow room in the sky;

  And it’s lots more fun

  Up there in the sun

  Than down in their stuffy sty.

  Oh, the pig is bold

  And when he’s told

  That a hurricane’s on the way,

  Does he turn and run?

  He does like fun!

  He hollers and shouts Hurray!

  Oh, not a fig

  Cares the fearless pig

  When the thunder bangs and crashes;

  Right into the heart

  Of the storm he darts,

  And plays tag with the lightning flashes.”

  Freddy stopped singing for a minute. That was kind of a dark cloud rolling up over the western horizon. Maybe a thunderstorm, he thought; maybe he’d better beat it for home. But in a minute the cloud thinned and vanished, and he went on singing.

  “Oh, wild and free

  Is a pig like me!

  When the moon is riding high

  I dive and swoop at her,

  Whiz around Jupiter—

  Oh this is the life for I!”

  All at once he stopped singing. The northern sky wasn’t empty any more. Right in the middle of it there was a tiny black dot, which grew larger and larger. It was another plane, coming in at a low altitude.

  Freddy kept between the newcomer and the sun, so as not to be spotted. The plane came on fast, circled once, and then slid down in a shallow dive towards the big tent. It pulled out of the dive so close to the tent that it almost seemed to have touched it, then climbed and banked, and as the panic-stricken people came pouring out of the exits, it dove again and dropped what looked to Freddy like bombs. There were three of them, and when they hit the ground among the running people, they seemed to explode in a big puff of white smoke.

  “Sacks of flour,” Freddy thought. “That’s what Mr. Boom said he dropped. I suppose they come down slow so they’re easy to dodge and don’t hurt anybody, but they scare ’em and spoil their clothes. My, that’s a mean trick!”

  When the flour sacks had been dropped, the plane headed north. Freddy kept well above it and followed. He felt pretty sure he hadn’t been seen. Below him fields gave way to the blue water of Otesaraga Lake, and then the dark green of foliage as he flew over the lower fringe of the Adirondack forest. But he was dropping behind. He watched the plane as long as he could see it. He checked the direction with his compass, then when it finally disappeared, turned back.

  Mr. Boomschmidt was pretty unhappy. “We had three hundred and eighty-six paid admissions, Freddy,” he said. “But we gave four hundred and sixteen people their money back. That’s what happens every time, and my gracious, I don’t see why. How can more people come out of the tent than go into it? Leo has some explanation—you tell him, Leo; perhaps he can understand it; I can’t.”

  “Oh gosh, chief, have I got to go over that again?” protested the lion.

  “You don’
t need to for me,” Freddy said. “I suppose some of the people come to the gate and ask for their money back twice. It isn’t very honest, but I guess there are some people around town that would do it.”

  Mr. Boomschmidt looked unhappier than ever. “Oh, I can’t believe that,” he said.

  Leo looked at Freddy. “There you are,” he said. “You can’t ever make the chief believe that anybody would cheat him. He wants to think everybody is as honest as he is.”

  It embarrassed Mr. Boomschmidt to be praised, and he blushed deeply. “I’m not honest at all,” he said. “I mean, I’m not any honester than you are, Leo, and I’ll thank you not to accuse me of it.”

  “Well, dye my hair!” said Leo. “Are you calling me dishonest?” He spoke angrily, but he winked at Freddy.

  “Good gracious, no!” said Mr. Boomschmidt. “Why, I’d trust you with my last cent, and you know it, Leo. Why, I’ll do it right now.” He fumbled in his pocket. “Dear me, I only have three cents. Now which would be the last one? I could give each one of us one—because I trust you too, Freddy. Would that—”

  “Look, Mr. Boom,” Freddy interrupted. “Pretty soon you won’t have one last cent if we don’t do something about Mr. Condiment. I’m checking on the plane; I lost him today fifty or sixty miles north of here, but he was traveling north-northeast; tomorrow I’ll wait for him on that line beyond where I lost him. I’ll find him in a few days. But in the meantime I’ve worked out another scheme and I need your help.”

  CHAPTER

  8

  Mademoiselle Rose and her mother, Madame Delphine (whose real name was Annie Carraway), lived in a trailer which, when they traveled, was hooked on behind Mr. Boomschmidt’s big car. Madame Delphine didn’t like the new trailer as well as the wagon in which she had crossed the country a dozen times; she said it wasn’t homey. But the wagon had finally fallen to pieces; and now in the trailer with her she still had the armchairs with tidies on the back, and the picture of two little girls playing a duet, and all her other treasures. So she really was very happy.

  In the trailer that evening the two women were trying to squeeze Freddy into a Spanish dancer’s costume. There was a hook on one end of the waistband of the long full black skirt, and an eye on the other end, and they were pulling hard to make them meet.

  “Can’t you breathe out a little more, Freddy?” Madame Delphine panted.

  “If I breathe out any more, I’ll just collapse like a busted balloon,” he whispered. He had to whisper, because there wasn’t enough breath left in him to speak.

  Rose said: “It won’t do any good if we do hook it. He’s got to be able to talk. Look, we can bridge the gap with a piece of tape and fasten it with safety pins. It won’t show if we drape his shawl over it.”

  They got him fixed finally. He tried a few experimental dance steps in the high-heeled shoes, stuffed out with paper so they wouldn’t fall off. Then he went up to the mirror. “I ought to have a veil,” he said.

  “A Spanish dancer in a veil?” Rose said. “Tip that flat hat over one eye,” she said. “And here—here’s a rose. You carry that between your teeth, and nobody can tell you’re a pig.” She giggled. “Ah, Señorita, how be-yootiful you are!”

  “Ah, gracias, Señorita,” said Freddy. “You like to give me leetle kees, no?”

  “Come on, Freddy,” said Madame Delphine. “You’ve got to get out of here. You don’t want Mr. Condiment to find you with Rose.”

  Freddy went towards the door. “Suppose he doesn’t come tonight?”

  “If he doesn’t,” Rose said, “I promise I’ll send for him.”

  But Mr. Condiment came, and proposed again to Rose, and again Rose said no. A refusal always made him cross, but tonight when he left he was crosser than usual, perhaps because his stomach ache was worse than usual. And then, of course, being cross made his stomach ache harder, which in turn made him crosser. He really growled at Rose. “Very well,” he said. “Very well! You’ll rue this, you’ll regret it—I mean, you’ll be sorry. Another week or so and your old Boomschmidt won’t have a penny left to pay your salary with. And you and your mother will starve. Ha! Will you like to watch your mother grow thinner and thinner—”

  “Then I can get a job with another circus as a living skeleton,” put in Madame Delphine.

  “Pah!” said Mr. Condiment. “Madame, this is not a matter for jests, jokes, witticisms—that is, funny business. Ponder my words, consider them, contemplate them—I mean, think them over. I will be at the hotel if you change your mind.” And he left the trailer.

  He had just got to the gate of the fair grounds when behind him he heard something galloping on soft heavy paws, and he swung round to see a big lion bearing down on him. “Yow!” said Mr. Condiment, and dove head first into the little ticket booth.

  But the lion stopped and sat down and saluted. “No cause for alarm, sir,” he said. “A young lady sent me. She would like to speak to you again.”

  Naturally Mr. Condiment thought that it was Rose who had sent Leo. “Ah,” he said; “changed her mind, I expect.” He hesitated, but when Leo stood politely aside, he started back.

  But it wasn’t Rose who was waiting for him. As he stepped into the lighted trailer, instead of the two women he had just left there, a short and rather plump young woman in a Spanish costume came dancing towards him, stamping her feet and clicking her castanets above her head. She wore a flat hat tipped over one eye, and from the corner of her mouth drooped a red rose. If her nose was rather too long and her eye—the only one visible—rather too small for beauty, Mr. Condiment was too surprised to take note of these matters.

  “Ah, Señor Condimento!” she cried. “You are come! Now is everything good! Ah, Señor-r-r, when you leave poor Lorna yesterday—ay de mi! I am so desolate! But you have reconsider, no?”

  Mr. Condiment was always pale so that it was impossible for him to turn paler; he therefore turned light green. “Reconsider? Wh-what?” he asked, and felt behind him for the door handle. But someone had quietly turned the key from the outside.

  “Oh, Señor!” she said reproachfully. “You make the fun, eh? You laughing at little Lorna? Is not smart, Señor.”

  “I’m not laughing,” said Mr. Condiment. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Maybe if Lorna dance for you, you remember?” The castanets clicked, and Freddy took a few experimental steps. But the left shoe was slipping, and what was worse, one of the safety pins on the waistband had given way. “No,” he said. “Lorna is angry.” He stamped his foot to show how angry he was, and he felt the skirt slip. “You have tell Lorna one beeg lie! You know what hoppen to mans who lie to Lor-r-rna Del Pardo?” He rolled the r’s ferociously.

  “I haven’t quibbled, prevaricated, perjured—that is, lied to you,” Mr. Condiment protested. “I don’t even know you.”

  “Aha! You write books about Lorna, no?”

  “Why, I—I didn’t write those books about Lorna, the Leopard Woman. A Mr. Gizling writes them for me to publish. I never supposed, thought, conjectured—I mean, imagined, that there was really anyone of that name.” He looked around desperately, but the door was locked, the windows closed. Luckily he did not look very closely at the windows, or he would have seen a sort of large moon, which was Mr. Groper’s face, looking in one of them, with a smaller moon which was Mr. Boomschmidt, beside it.

  Both moons were split by a large grin.

  “Such fonny names—Señor Gizling!” Freddy laughed bitterly. “More lies! Si, si! I tell you, is no Señor Gizling. Is only Señor Condimento, big liar! Si, Señor Condimento—tell me is engage to marry. But Señorita Rosa, she say no, she not promise to marry ’im.” Freddy was having a wonderful time, but the skirt was slipping again; he decided to bring the scene quickly to a close. His voice had a tendency to squeak when he was pretending to be angry, so now he dropped it to a menacing whisper. “Why so many lies, Señor? Is that you wish to forget what you say—Lorna Del Condimento is nice name? Si, si, you
say that—is same as ask me to marry you.”

  “Nonsense,” said Mr. Condiment. “I never said anything about wedlock, nuptials—I mean, marriage.”

  “No?” Freddy managed to make his voice sound very sinister indeed. “Then maybe you don’t forget what is the revenge of Lorna the Leopard Woman, in those books your Mr. Gizling write? Ah, si! R-r-r-revenge!” He rolled out the word and at the same instant the lights in the trailer went out.

  Mr. Condiment had backed against the door. In place of the stubby little Spanish dancer, what he saw when the light immediately came on again, was a full grown leopard, rearing up and apparently just about to fall upon him. Mr. Condiment was too scared even to yell. He made a sort of fizzing noise and fell over on his face.

  “Fainted,” said Freddy, coming out from behind the armchair. “That makes everything easier. Well, thanks, Harrison. You certainly looked terrifying.”

  The leopard grinned. “How do you think you look, pig?” he demanded. “I sure would rather meet myself on any dark night than you, in that rig.”

  Freddy dropped the rose and went towards him. “Ah, Señor ’Arrison, you like one big kees, no?”

  “Ah—Señor ’Arrison, you like one big kees?”

  “Get away from me,” said the leopard. He walked over and looked at Mr. Condiment, then turned him over on his back with one paw. “Silly looking fellow.” He wrinkled up his nose. “I’m glad I didn’t have to bite him.”

  Someone unlocked the door and Rose and her mother came in.

  “Get behind that chair, Harrison,” said Madame Delphine. She got some water and began sprinkling Mr. Condiment’s face.

  After a minute he opened his eyes. “Madame Delphine?” he said inquiringly, and sat up and looked around, frowning. “Where—where did you come from?”

  “Come from?” she said. “I don’t understand. Rose and I have been here all the time.”