Freddy and Simon the Dictator (19 page)

“It's not my fault that the scheme failed,” Mr. Garble was saying. “It was nobody's fault. Nobody could have foreseen that the stupid loyalty of the dogs would smash our plans.”

“All very well, Mr. Garble; all very well,” said Simon. “But you brought us back from Montana to take part in the scheme—
your
scheme. And now it has failed, and what are you going to do for us? You are going to run for it and leave us holding the bag. You know, Mr. Garble, it would be a very neat solution of our troubles if we were to turn state's evidence—to drop in on the sheriff this evening, say, and tell him a few things. Eh?”

“You wouldn't get much out of that,” Mr. Garble replied.

“Satisfaction, Mr. Garble. The satisfaction of knowing that you, our comrade in arms, were safely and comfortably housed for the next twenty years or so. Eh?”

Mr. Garble was silent for a time, then he said: “You don't seem to realize, Simon, that I'm on the run myself. But …” He hesitated a moment. “But I'll tell you what I'll do. I told Camphor that as soon as the ransom was paid, I was going to skip the country. But I'm not skipping. Not for six months, when the hullabaloo will have died down and I'll have had time to grow a beard. I'm going to stay in the cave, up at the west end of Otesaraga Lake. Back of the hall where we held our meetings, there are two rooms. I just found them by chance. They open about five feet from the floor when you squeeze in behind that big stalagmite that looks like a pipe organ. Nobody will ever find you there. I've stocked them and fitted them up in the last month or two. I'm going to hide out there. And you can hide out with me, and after I leave, you can use the place. Live there. No one will ever find you if you take ordinary precautions, and you can raid nearby farms in perfect safety.”

Jinx didn't wait for any more. He gave two tugs on the rope of bed sheets, and Mr. Camphor pulled him up. And then they sat up until after midnight, working out a plan of action.

At eight next morning, Mr. Camphor heard the key in his bedroom door turn, and then Mr. Garble came in. In one hand was the pistol, in the other a small tray with a cup of coffee and two slices of toast. “I'm not a very good cook,” he said. “I'm afraid you'll be on short rations while you're here.” He put the tray on the bed, went out, and locked the door. Mr. Camphor heard him tap on Miss Anguish's door.

When Mr. Garble had gone downstairs again, Mr. Camphor said: “I think Miss Anguish's room is next to this one, and this hot-air duct must serve both rooms. The register in her room ought to be right opposite this one.” He went to the register and called softly: “Miss Anguish! Can you hear me?”

There was a pause, and then Miss Anguish's voice said: “Yes. Hello. Who's calling, please?”

“This is Mr. Camphor. I'm in the next room.”

“Oh, good morning, Mr. Camphor. Nice of you to call. How've you been?”

“Er—quite well, thank you,” he said. “Miss Anguish, I presume you have a bathroom with your room?”

“Oh, yes,” she said; “such a pretty one, all pink and blue. And the soap is pink, too. So thoughtful of Mr. Garble!”

“Well-yes,” said Mr. Camphor. “Now listen, this is what we're going to do.” And he told her. “Open the pane in your skylight, and when you smell smoke, go in the bathroom and shut the door. With luck, we'll be out of here in another hour.” Then, as she apparently thought he was on some kind of telephone, he said goodby; and she said: “Good-by. Oh dear, how do I hang up?”

“Just leave the register open,” he said, “and go in the bathroom and shut the door. Good-by.”

“Good-by,” she said. “Thank you for calling.”

“Gosh,” Jinx said, “is she really all there?”

“Oh, I think so,” said Mr. Camphor. “She just does that because it amuses her.”

“Well, it doesn't amuse me,” said the cat. “It makes my whiskers curl.”

“Let's get going,” said Mr. Camphor.

So they tore up the rest of the bedding and broke up a small bathroom chair and even the frame of a picture on the wall, and they dropped all this, and everything that was inflammable in the room, down the hot-air duct. Then Jinx went down on his bed-sheet rope. “And be sure to pull up fast,” he said. “I don't want to be broiled.”

“Don't worry,” said Mr. Camphor. “And here—take this newspaper. We don't want our fire to go out before it gets started.”

Down in the cold-air box, Jinx built his fire. First newspapers, then the sticks of wood, then on top, leaving room for some draft, the bedding to make a good smoke. Then the match and two tugs on the rope, and Mr. Camphor drew him quickly up.

The smoke came up quickly, too—first thin blue smoke, then thick gray bad-smelling smoke from the smoldering bedding; and it poured in a thick column out of the register and out through the open pane in the skylight.

“Suppose nobody sees it,” said Jinx. “Lift me up to the skylight, Mr. Camphor. I'll have to go out and yell ‘Fire!' if we want to be rescued.”

So Mr. Camphor shoved him through the open pane and Jinx clung to the skylight frame and yelled “Fire!” at the top of his lungs. And the top of his lungs could be heard half a mile. In no time at all, people ran out-of-doors and threw up windows and they all yelled “Fire!” too; and in five minutes the fire department was there. They didn't get any answer when they banged on the door, so they broke five windows so they could all get in at once, and they put up ladders and broke more windows on the upper floors, and they hooked up hoses and wet the house down good. They broke a few more windows for fun and then rescued all the prisoners. But they didn't ever find out where all the smoke had come from and to this day you can always start a long argument in the Centerboro firehouse by saying: “Remember the Underdunk fire? Now where do you suppose …?”

And Mr. Garble was not in the house.

CHAPTER

19

Mr. Garble's car was in his sister's garage, but Mr. Camphor's car was not in the driveway where it had been left last night. “He doesn't know that we know about the cave,” said Freddy. “That's where he'll be.”

“We'd better mobilize one of the dog regiments,” said Mr. Camphor. “We can attack the cave. Get the sheriff to go along and take him right to jail.”

The sheriff, who had come to the fire, objected. “I don't want that fellow in my jail. We've got a nice crowd there now—nice lot of boys—no murderers or kidnappers. Mostly just burglars. They don't want to associate with crooks like Garble.”

“Don't you call burglars crooks?” Mr. Camphor asked.

“Why, in a way, I suppose they are,” said the sheriff. “But to tell you the truth, most of 'em don't make much out of burglary, they just practice it mostly so they can get caught and sentenced to another term in my jail. More like a club, it is.”

“Well,” said Freddy, “maybe we can turn him over to the F.B.I. I expect that kidnapping is a federal offense, and then he'd be sentenced to a state prison—not a county jail.”

This made the sheriff feel better, and he drove them up to Mr. Camphor's house. In the past two or three days, the dogs had rounded up a lot of the revolutionists, and the garage was now crammed to bursting with cows and horses; there were even a dozen or so on the top floor, which had at first been reserved for wolves and coyotes.

When they saw their captors looking in the window, they all began shouting at once, begging to be let out.

“Who speaks for you?” Freddy asked, and a big tough-looking bay horse pushed forward. He was Chester, formerly leader of the northern horses and cattle.

“Look, mister,” Chester said, “this Garble, he said it was going to be a bloodless revolution. What's bloodless about it? Look at my ankles. I tell you what, pig, you let us out and we'll promise to go back north where we came from —all of us. I'll personally give you my word for it. We're fed up. There's nothing for cows and horses to eat in the woods, and if we go out in the fields, the dogs are on us. We want to go home.”

“Your revolution's over anyway,” said Freddy. “Sure, I don't see why you shouldn't go.” And he unlocked the door.

Nearly all the cows thanked him when they left. The wolves simply slunk out and loped off up the lake. But Chester said: “Thanks, pal. Ever get up around Ringtail Pond, just look me up. We'll throw you a party.” And then he too clumped off.

So then the sheriff drove Freddy and Jinx back home. The farm was free of the rebels, and the animals all piled out to shake paws and hoofs and congratulate them on their escape. Everyone knew now that Jinx had not really gone over to Simon's party, and Henrietta in particular apologized handsomely for all the names she had called him when she'd thought him a traitor.

Mr. Pomeroy, who was getting hourly reports from the bumblebees on the mopping-up operation of the two dog regiments south of the lake, sent word for them to push on to the sand beach near the cave and wait there. “They're meeting no resistance,” he said. “They'll be there in an hour. Then we can attack the cave.”

“We can't use 'em to attack the cave,” Freddy said. “Unless we want some of 'em to get shot. Garble has a pistol. And the door to the inner cave, he said, is five feet from the floor of the big hall. See if Jacob and his family are around, will you, J.J.?”

Fortunately the wasps were home, hard at work chewing up wood to build a new house. But like all wasps and most people, they were glad of an excuse to knock off work for a little while. “Specially as I've got a grudge against that Garble. Bent my sting on his collarbone last time we met,” he said.

So they drove up and met the dogs at the sand beach, and the dogs went up and surrounded the cave while Freddy and the wasps went in. Everything went smoothly—though perhaps not for Mr. Garble. “The door's behind that big stalagmite,” Freddy said, and the wasps disappeared behind it. There was a short silence, then a loud yell from Mr. Garble and a terrified squeaking from the rats, and out they all tumbled. The dogs rushed in and pounced, and in no time, they were all prisoners.

So Mr. Garble went off to prison and after a good deal of discussion, Simon and his family were piled into the crate intended for Freddy and shipped off, collect, to Mr. Garble's uncle in Montana. When they got there, Mr. Garble's uncle wouldn't accept them and pay the charges, so they were sent back to Centerboro again, and there Mrs. Underdunk wouldn't accept them and shipped them off again. They shuttled back and forth across the continent half a dozen times, and for all I know they are travelling yet.

Mr. Camphor's suggestion to do away entirely with taxes was taken up by the committee, and soon the newspapers were full of pictures of him with such headlines as: “Camphor to run on no-tax platform,” “Overwhelming popularity assures Camphor victory,” and “Camphor most popular candidate in history.” For the general acclaim, the cheers and congratulations, that greeted his first appearance on the platform, had made him change his mind about running. “If they want me so much,” he said, “then I must be the man for the job.”