Jerry Todd and the Bob-Tailed Elephant E-Book

Edwards Leo

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

This is a fascinating story full of interesting new characters that will fill you with a giggle. Visiting Ashton on the day the elephant arrived, Red’s parents hurried home when Aunt Pansy frantically told her that the „gang” was setting up a wild circus in the barn. The elephant’s predicament and amazing detective adventures combine to make this book one of the most exciting in the Jerry Todd series.

Leseprobe

Contents

CHAPTER I. THE HAUNTED HOUSE

CHAPTER II. HALLOWE’EN

CHAPTER III. UNCLE JONAH

CHAPTER IV. CHRISTMAS EVE

CHAPTER V. UNCLE JONAH’S CORK TREE

CHAPTER VI. THE MYSTERY BEGINS

CHAPTER VII. HENNY’S DISAPPEARANCE

CHAPTER VIII. RED’S BIRTHDAY PRESENT

CHAPTER IX. A BUSY AFTERNOON

CHAPTER X. IN HAPPY HOLLOW

CHAPTER XI. RED FINDS A REFUGE

CHAPTER XII. WHAT THE DETECTIVE TOLD US

CHAPTER XIII. THE VANISHED TAIL

CHAPTER XIV. THE EMPTY SHED

CHAPTER XV. STARTLING DEDUCTIONS

CHAPTER XVI. THE TELLTALE HAIR

CHAPTER XVII. THE GHOST IN THE BERRY PATCH

CHAPTER XVIII. UP THE CREEK

CHAPTER XIX. HOW BINGO LOST HIS TAIL

CHAPTER XX. CONCLUSION

CHAPTER I. THE HAUNTED HOUSE

Boy, did we ever have fun with that peachy little elephant. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. And having seen the comical pictures in this book I dare say that the elephant is the thing you want to hear about first.

But this is going to be a long story. Starting at Hallowe’en it doesn’t end till the following summer. And before I can tell you about the elephant I’ve got to tell you about Henny Bibbler, the boy who disappeared so mysteriously.

Henny lived on a little farm just north of town in Happy Hollow. He’s the kid who used to wear the little red hat to Sunday school. Boy, that was some hat. Every chance we got we tipped it up behind and slid it down on his nose, which may explain why he never was much of a hand to mix with us.

So I was a long time getting acquainted with him. I found out, though, when we did get together, that he was a swell kid. Full of pep, with a lot of original ideas. And just before his amazing disappearance he and I got real chummy. So much so, in fact, that Red Meyers got jealous.

I dare say you remember Red. For he appears in the most of my books. His temper is as fiery as his hair. And eat? Say, he has a stomach like a goat. I never saw that kid when he wasn’t hungry. His mother tells the story that he asks for pie in his sleep. Mrs. Meyers is nice. Still, I’ve never forgotten the mean things that she said about our elephant. As though it was any discredit to Bingo that he mistook her imported porch rug for a hay sandwich. Good-night! The poor little animal had to eat. And it was a grass rug. I think he showed intelligence. For everybody knows that grass and hay are the same thing.

Red has beautiful freckles parked all over his face like pimples on a pumpkin. But if he’s little in size he sure makes up for it in gab. Bla! bla! bla! Dad laughingly calls him the little squirt with the big squawk.

Another recent addition to our gang is Rory Ringer, a little English kid. He calls owls “howls” and eagles “heagles.” Gee! He sure is a card. At school the teacher hardly ever dares to call upon him to read aloud. For you can imagine what a class of lively boys do if one of their number got up and dished out a lingo like this:

“Once upon a time there was a ‘ermit who ‘ad a trained ‘awk. And the trained ‘awk’s name was ‘Enery. One day the ‘ermit took ‘Enery the trained ‘awk into the woods to ‘unt. That day ‘Enery the trained ‘awk brought down two heagles and a howl. But the ‘ermit could not heat heagles and howls. So ‘Enery the trained ‘awk caught for ‘is master the ‘ermit a brace of ‘ares.”

And so on and so forth.

Other members of our gang, as you’ll recall, are Scoop Ellery and Peg Shaw. In fact Scoop has long been our leader. And a bully good leader he is, too. Smart? Well, I hope to snicker he’s smart. But then he should be. For Mr. Ellery is one of the keenest business men in Tutter. And how lovely for us that he has a candy counter in his store. Um-yum-yum! Scoop is a big asset to our gang, all right.

Peg Shaw is a great big guy with cast-iron muscles, like the blacksmith in the chestnut-tree poem. But though we differ in size we’re practically the same age. Peg may be a month or two the oldest. But not much. His folks shoved a lot of husky grub into him, I guess. And it turned into muscle. I never saw him pick a scrap in my life. He isn’t that kind of a kid. But don’t get the foolish notion that you can shove him around. I guess not. He knows how to take care of himself. And he knows how to help his pals, too, good old scout that he is.

Now, as I say, Henny Bibbler had been admitted into our gang. And he and I were together a great deal. In fact we shared the same double seat at school, with Red and Rory just ahead of us. Scoop and Peg sat across the aisle. So you can see how easy it was for the six of us to pass notes and otherwise make outside plans. Sometimes Henny would play games with me after school. And other times I’d go home with him. Then, too, we frequently stayed all night with each other.

He never was much of a hand to talk about family affairs. And I used to wonder why his pa and ma didn’t live together as a pa and ma should. Mr. Bibbler lived in a little cabin on one side of the winding creek, as it threads its way through their small farm, and Mrs. Bibbler lived in the farmhouse on the other side of the creek. Henny sort of divided his time between the two places, having two birthdays and two Christmases. One day when he was playing at my house I overheard Mother and Dad talking about him. They looked at him kind of sober-like and said it was ridiculous for his pa and ma, good Methodists that they were, to let a little thing like dyed hair and jet earrings break up the peace of their home. It was bad for Henny, they said. For he was just at the age where he needed a combined father’s and mother’s care and not a half-and-half substitute.

Dyed hair and jet earrings! That didn’t make sense to me. And I came right out and asked Henny what my folks meant. I kind of wished I hadn’t, though, when I saw the blood rush to his face. Gee! I could tell, too, that something was hurting him inside. And when he answered me his voice was as stiff as a poker.

“Sometimes I get all out of patience with ma and pa. And I’d like nothing better than to take them across my knee and give them a good paddling.”

“You’d look funny,” I grinned, “paddling your big pa. Maybe in the end you’d get the worst of it. But it’s none of my business,” I added hastily. “I didn’t mean to butt in, Henny. Just forget what I said.”

“No,” he waggled, kind of determined-like. “I’m going to tell you all about it. Not that I want to run down my folks. No boy should do that. But now that you come out to my house so often I think you ought to know just how silly they are. Kids quarrel and get over it. They don’t let it make them mean and sour inside. But parents as old as mine ought to set a better example.”

“Have they been quarreling?” I inquired curiously.

“They did before pa built the new cabin and went there to live. But now they don’t even speak to each other.”

“What did they quarrel about?” I further inquired.

“That’s the silly part,” his face flushed again. “It makes me feel foolish to tell you about it. Ma’s earrings started it.”

“Earrings?” I looked at him with added curiosity.

“Sure thing. You’ve seen her wear them. Those big black ones. Pa got mad one day (you know how he flares up over a little of nothing) and wanting to say something mean, like people do when they lose their temper, he told her that it wasn’t civilized for women to wear earrings. And he called her a barbarian.”

“Gee!” I grinned. “I can imagine what she told him.”

For it’s a fact that Mrs. Bibbler, quick-tempered herself, can talk faster and say more in a given time than any two women in Tutter. Boy, she sure can spread the gab around. Some people say she talks too much. But that’s all right. If she wants to talk it’s her own business. Certainly, this is a free country.

“Yes,” Henny nodded, “ma said a mouthful. For she was mad enough at pa to claw his eyes out. Earrings, she fired back at him, wasn’t half as ridiculous as dyeing one’s hair with shoe blacking.”

I remembered then how black Mr. Bibbler’s hair was. And I had wondered at it. For he was a man of sixty or more. And usually men of that advanced age have faded hair.

“Well,” Henny continued his story, “they got to going it hotter and hotter, like a couple of silly kids. Finally pa ran out of the house. He wasn’t going to live with a freak, he said, to be reminded of barbarians every time he looked at her. Either the earrings had to go or he’d go. He should have known, though, that ma wouldn’t give up her earrings–not when he talked that way. So they separated. And she told him never to come back until he had the good sense to let his hair grow red, the way God made it, instead of plastering it over with shoe blacking. Which, of course, made him madder than ever. It wasn’t shoe blacking, he stormed. It was hair dye. But ma said it was just as bad as shoe blacking the way it got on the towels and pillow cases, and she wasn’t particular about a name for the nonsensical stuff.”

“But why does your pa dye his hair?” I inquired.

“That’s exactly what I asked him. Red hair, I said, wasn’t anything to be ashamed of. But he hates it, I guess. Anyway a lot of elderly people dye their hair, as I understand it. So it isn’t anything to hold against him. But I wish you could have seen him, Jerry, the day he fell in the creek. Half of his hair was red, where the water got at the dye, and the other half was black. It was the funniest sight that I ever saw in all my life. That was the time he ran me down and paddled me. Remember? But I should worry. I had a good laugh anyway. This quarrel of theirs, though, is no laughing matter. And when I go to bed at night I lay there for hours wondering if there isn’t something I can do to bring them to their senses. I’ve talked to them. I’ve talked cross, too. But it does no good. They can’t fool me, though. I know that deep in their hearts they’re really hungry for each other. But they’re both too stubborn to give in.”

So now you know the truth about Henny’s parents. And I dare say it’s your opinion that his pa and ma showed mighty poor sense in thus letting their tempers get away from them. For grown-up people who get married so solemn-like shouldn’t act like kids. They should be willing to give and take. To quarrel over earrings and dyed hair was baby stuff.

Henny really had better sense than his two parents put together. And afterwards he talked with me a lot about his family troubles, confiding in me how unhappy it made him to have his pa and ma act so silly.

“Why,” said he, kind of hot-like, “they’re the laughingstock of the town. For everybody knows about their quarrel. Earrings and shoe blacking! Wherever I go people look at me kind of sympathetic-like. And how I hate it. Jerry,” he added fiercely, “I want you to help me. And between the two of us we’re going to bring my ma and pa together.”

Red Meyers, though, thought that Henny was lucky.

“Two birthday cakes,” said he, in that hungry way of his, “and two Christmas dinners. Um-yum-yum! I wish my pa would dye his hair with shoe blacking. Then if he and ma separated I could eat all of my meals at both places.”

Henny, though, isn’t like Red. And it added nothing to his life to have a birthday cake one day with his ma and another birthday cake the next day with his pa, only Mrs. Bibbler’s cake always was the best, with no lumps of flour in it, for cooking is a woman’s job. Still, Henny’s pa was pretty handy around the kitchen, having lived alone for more than two years.

I’ve been there with my chum when the old man was cooking things. One day he was frying doughnuts and the grease in his iron kettle got afire. The house, which never looked neat like Mrs. Bibbler’s on the other side of the creek, got smoked up worse than ever. And I thought then, as I looked around, how silly it was for him to live like this. But it’s a fact that his bushy hair got blacker and blacker each month, which in itself showed that he was so determined not to give in that he was using a lot more shoe blacking than was necessary. And to show how she felt about it, Henny’s ma kept the big jet earrings in her ears all the time, week days and Sundays.

It was getting along toward the last of October, with a cool crispy feeling in the morning air which made a fellow think of coming snowstorms and ice skating. The summer’s bully. But there’s heaps of winter fun in a small town like ours. And we’re particularly fortunate in having so many streams and ponds. On moonlit winter nights hundreds of grown-up people turn out to skate on the big first quarry. Which, of course, pleases the kids, myself included. We have big bonfires. Sometimes we have “hot-dogs,” only Rory calls them “’ot-dogs.” When we have a special treat like that Mrs. Meyers always goes and sits beside the fire. For one time Red ate eleven “weenies” and the doctor bill set Mr. Meyers back fifteen dollars. So it’s cheaper, Red’s mother thinks, to sort of follow him around on an occasion of that kind. Then, too, speaking of our winter fun, we build huge snow forts and have pitched battles. But before the snow and ice comes we have the fun of foraging in the woods for walnuts. And that is what we were doing the Saturday morning that we ended up in the yard of the old Rumson place.

It was here that Mr. Arnold Rumson, a sexton, hung himself in the attic. And for that reason a lot of superstitious people believe that the house is haunted. So no one lives there. The windows and doors are boarded up. And the lilac bushes that Mrs. Rumson planted in the yard a short time before her death are so tall that you can hardly see the house from the lane.

It’s fun to fool around a place like that. And it was added fun to-day for we had Red and Rory along. Do you know that a great many English boys believe in ghosts? Rory says that they do. And he listened with eyes as big as saucers while I told him the story of the three-legged ghost (Dad says it’s a calf with three white legs and one black one) as it is to be found here on Hallowe’en, clattering in and out of the lower rooms. Then up in the attic was the headless ghost of the sexton himself. Br-r-r-r! It was all right to come here in the daytime, I said. But it was no place to hang around at night, especially on Hallowe’en.

“But what became of the sexton’s ‘ead?” Rory wanted to know.

“I heard,” Henny put in, “that his head dropped off when they cut him down.”

“But ‘ow can ‘e see,” the smaller one further inquired, “if ‘e ‘asn’t got a ‘ead?”

“He feels,” said Henny. “He’s got long snaky arms.”

“And you say ‘e talks?”

“Sure thing.”

“And yet ‘e ‘asn’t got a ‘ead?”

“The voice comes out of his neck.”

“What does ‘e say?”

“"Give... me... back... my... head! Give... me... back... my... head!’”

Rory had heard enough.

“Well,” said he, picking up his bag of walnuts, “Hi’m ready to start for ‘ome if you guys are.”

But Henny and I were determined to explore the old house, the more so when we discovered that some one had nailed a human skull over the back door. Was it the sexton’s skull? Probably not. Still, the sight of it gave me a queer feeling.

Leading the way through the cluttered yard, the bushes of which towered many feet above our heads, Henny suddenly stumbled. And there in front of him was an open well, at the bottom of which we could see a pool of wicked-looking water.

“Gee!” said he, when I grabbed him at the brink of the yawning hole. “That was a narrow escape for me, all right.”

Later, having found a loose window board, he and I ran through the house, yelling: “Get out of our way, you crummy old ghost, or we’ll kick the seat of your pants off.” And finding that nothing harmed us, Red and Rory finally joined us. Climbing the stairs we found ourselves in a room with bare rafters. And there, just as it had been left by the coroner, was the rope with which the sexton had ended his life. Jumping up, Henny grabbed the rope, swinging back and forth. But I wouldn’t touch it. And it is well for me that I didn’t. For suddenly the rope broke, spilling Henny on the dirty floor.

Red almost had a fit when he heard the noon whistles, so afraid was he that he’d miss his dinner. And yelling to Rory to follow him, he dashed down the stairs.

“Aren’t you coming, Jerry?” he looked back, as he started off with his bag of nuts.

“No,” Henny spoke for me. “My ma is expecting him to eat dinner at our house.”

CHAPTER II. HALLOWE’EN

Red and Rory having disappeared down the haunted-house lane, as it connects with the Treebury pike a short distance away, Henny and I separately shouldered our bags of walnuts and started off in the opposite direction, soon coming within sight of the Bumblehopper farmhouse at the extreme east end of the long tree-bordered lane, where we stopped to get a drink.

And Mrs. Bumblehopper, of course, had a million questions to ask us about things on the adjoining farm. For she and Mrs. Bibbler are great friends. By road their homes are fully two miles apart. But by cutting across the intervening fields they can shorten the distance to half a mile, which explains why Henny and I had come this way instead of following Red and Rory down the Treebury pike.

“Ma hardly ever has dinner before twelve-thirty,” said Henny, when we came within sight of his father’s squatty cabin on the west bank of the creek. “So let’s stop here for a minute or two.”

Mr. Bibbler is a tall, big-boned man, kind of stooped like most old people and a bit uncertain on his long thin legs. He wears glasses for close work, but always looks over them when he talks to people. His eyes are a faded blue, a peculiar contrast to his coal-black hair. At times these eyes can spit fire. For he has a mean temper. Yet at other times they seem so wistful-like that you feel kind of sad as you look into them. Of the two, I like Henny’s ma the best. But the old man is all right.

A warm smile flashed across his grizzled face when we tumbled into the kitchen where he was baking cookies.

“I was jest thinkin’ of you boys,” he told us. “For I know how you like cookies, Henny. And these are some of the best ones I’ve baked in months.... Lose that heifer that took sick on you last week?”

“No,” said Henny, nibbling gingerly at one of the cookies. “Ma fixed up some medicine for it.”

A cloud passed over the old man’s face.

“Humph!” he grunted, kind of contemptuous-like. “The wonder is then that it didn’t die.”

“Yes,” Henny shot back, “and the wonder is that you don’t die eating junk like this.”

“Heh?” the farmer bristled. “Don’t you like my cookies?”

“They taste like sawdust flavored with wagon grease.”

“Look a-here, young man,” came severely, as the scowl deepened on the elderly face, “I’ll take a stick to you if you git too sassy. The idea of you talkin’ that way to your pa when he gives you good cookies to eat.”

Henny put a hand to his jaw.

“Oh, oh,” he groaned, pretending that he was in great pain. “I broke a tooth.”

After which, of course, I expected the hot-tempered old man to blow up. And I got ready to run. But instead of lighting into Henny he rushed to the cook stove where the smoke from a batch of burned cookies was rolling out of the oven. And did he ever bellow when he burned his fingers on the oven door. In a way, it was funny.

“Serves you right,” said Henny heartlessly. “I don’t feel a bit sorry for you. For you don’t have to do your own cooking.”

“A husband has got his own personal rights,” said Mr. Bibbler stubbornly. “And a marriage certificate doesn’t take those rights away from him, nuther. He can dye his hair if he wants to with shoe blacking or any other kind of blacking.”

“And a wife has her rights, too,” said Henny. “If she wants to wear earrings it’s nobody’s business but her own.”

“It’s tarnation foolishness.”

“That’s what you say. And ma says your hair dye is tarnation foolishness. It’s six of one and a half dozen of the other.”

“Get out of here and don’t sass me,” the old man completely lost his temper. “And if your ma sent you here to say those things you jest tell her that my hair’ll stay dyed as long as she acts like a barbarian and wears earrings. Get out, I tell you. And it’s lucky for you, you young sass-box, that I don’t warm you up good and proper.”

Crossing the creek, Henny looked back at the squatty cabin.

“I didn’t let on to him, Jerry, but every time I see ma doing his work around the farm I razz her the same as I razzed him. For I want to bring them together if I can and give the neighbors something else to talk about for a change. But pa in particular is as stubborn as a mule. Still, I like him, a lot and he likes me. And the same is true of my ma. I’ve got a good pa and ma, with all of their faults. They just got started wrong on this thing. And I’d give a leg if I could get them straightened out. Shoe blacking! Gr-r-r-r!” and he socked a rock at the fence. “Earrings! Gr-r-r-r!” and he grabbed another rock.

A small, waspish, bright-eyed little old lady, Mrs. Bibbler works as hard as she talks. Her house is as neat as wax. She keeps a beautiful yard, too, full of trimmed bushes and fancy-shaped flower beds. Henny cuts the grass twice a week in the summer time. His ma makes him trim around the trees, too. And one Saturday he and I stretched a woven-wire fence clear around the farmhouse, for it was his ma’s complaint that the chickens were scratching up her choice flowers. Later Henny built a swinging gate in front, which now slammed behind us as we hurried up the path to the two-story farmhouse, a collie dog barking at our heels.