The Golden Eagle Mystery (8 page)

“What was?” exclaimed Billy, beginning to look interested.

“The noise.” Djuna pointed at the ceiling overhead. “I woke up in the middle of the night, and I heard a thump on the floor, right up there. Then Champ barked and woke Aunt Patty up, and we went up to see what it was. And there wasn’t anything. But that’s when Champ found the thing, there on the attic floor.”

“A burglar!” said Billy, excitedly.

Djuna shook his head. “Oh, no, it couldn’t have been,” he said decidedly. “We took the lamp up there and looked around, and there wasn’t anybody. I know what it was—it was squirrels. The window was open, and there’s a tree right by the window, and they could have gone in and out, easy. That claw thing was probably lying on top of a box, and they knocked it off and it fell on the floor. That’s all it was.”

“Well, let’s go up and look again,” Billy urged. “Maybe we could find some footprints!”

Djuna laughed. “Squirrel footprints, that’s all you’ll find,” he said. “Come on, though, if you want to. See for yourself!”

When they reached the attic, Djuna pointed out the corner where Champ had found the carved claw. Billy went over to it and began tugging at the trunks and boxes that stood along the wall.

“Let’s see if there’s a squirrel’s nest behind here,” he said. “Here, help me lift this trunk—it’s awful heavy.”

When they had made room behind the boxes, they got down on their hands and knees and crawled in under the sloping roof. Billy gave a cry of triumph. “Here it is!” he said. A good-sized hole had been gnawed in the lowest board, giving an entrance into the space between that board and the outer rafters. On the floor beside it were twigs and bits of paper.

“There must be mice in there, instead of squirrels,” said Djuna. “Look how this paper has been chewed up, to make their nest out of!”

He picked up one of the scraps of paper, bigger than the others. It was a long, narrow strip, apparently the top of a sheet of paper, from which all the rest had been gnawed away.

“Why, it’s got writing on it!” he exclaimed. “It’s part of a letter!”

Backing out of the dark corner, he took the ribbon of paper over to the window and examined the writing closely. There was only one line, but the handwriting was crabbed and the ink was faded. At last he made it out:

“I have put the nest egg where it be.”

Billy reached for it, as Djuna finished reading it. “Let’s see!” he said eagerly.
“‘I have put the nest egg where it be.’
What does it mean? Can you get any sense out of it? Where it be’—that isn’t right. Where it
is.’
But that doesn’t make sense, either.”

“Don’t you see the corner of the paper is chewed off?” asked Djuna. “That last word is torn in two. It was probably, ‘I have put the nest egg where it belongs,’ don’t you suppose? I don’t see any sense to that, either, do you?”

“No,” said Billy, “and what kind of an egg is a nest egg, anyway? Do you know?”

“Why sure,” said Djuna. “It isn’t a real egg, it’s a china egg. Mr. Johnson had some. Mr. Johnson is the farmer we used to get our eggs from when I lived in Edenboro. He had a lot of hens, and sometimes, when a hen didn’t lay eggs, Mr. Johnson would put one of those china eggs in her nest, ’cause when a hen sees an egg in her nest it makes her want to lay another one. A nest egg is something to fool a hen with, see?”

“Is that what it is?” said Billy. “Well, then, whoever wrote this letter must have kept chickens. That’s all there is to it! But what would he want to write a whole letter about it for?”

“‘I have put the nest egg where it belongs,’” repeated Djuna, staring at the ribbon of paper as if he expected it to say something else. “Where
does
a nest egg belong? Sometimes it belongs in a nest, but sometimes it doesn’t. That’s the silliest thing I ever heard of!”

Billy brightened up. “Oh,
I
know!” he said. “It’s somebody that borrowed an egg from somebody else, and then put it back where it belonged! See?”

“I have put the nest egg where it belongs,” said Djuna for the fifth time, in a sort of a singsong. “Well, maybe that’s it. But it still sounds crazy to
me!”

“It’s the craziest thing I ever heard of,” Billy agreed. “Borrowing an egg!” He giggled.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Djuna, thoughtfully, “we might see if we can find any of the rest of this piece of paper. If we could find the rest of it, it would show what it was about. Gee, I hope the mice didn’t chew it
all
up!”

They picked up the rest of the tiny pieces of paper lying on the floor near the hole in the board, but it was no use. Not a single scrap had anything written on it.

“Oh, shucks!” said Billy, in disgust. “Let’s go! It’s awful hot up here.”

“I thought you were going to look for footprints,” said Djuna, teasingly.

“Oh, I was just fooling,” said Billy. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

When they were downstairs, they found Aunt Patty just getting ready to go out.

“Are you boys going to be around here for a while?” she asked. “I’m going out to do some marketing, but I won’t be gone long.”

After she had gone, the boys went outdoors, where they found Champ waiting for them, and sat down in the shade, on the grass. Billy noticed the long ladder lying on the ground at that end of the house. Then he looked from the ladder to the attic window above it, which was still standing open.

“You could put that ladder up and get into the window that way,” he remarked.

“Sure,” said Djuna, “but
I
wouldn’t want to try it. That ladder is awful heavy.”

“Then how can Aunt Patty lift it?” asked Billy.

“She doesn’t,” said Djuna. “It isn’t hers. It belongs to the man that fixed the roof. It’s been lying there for a week, she said, and he hasn’t come back for it.”

Billy looked up again at the open attic window.

“Maybe that’s the noise you heard in the middle of the night,” he ventured hopefully. “Maybe somebody climbed up on it and went away again before you saw them.”

Djuna laughed. “I thought of that,” he said. “But it couldn’t have been that. Nobody has touched that ladder for a week.”

“How do you know?” demanded Billy. “You haven’t
been
here that long.”

“Well, go look at it,” said Djuna. “Just pick up one end of it. See how the grass has grown up over it? See how white the grass is, where the ladder was? You see?”

“Gee, I guess you’re right!” said Billy admiringly, as he examined the wilted grass on which the ladder had rested. “Of course it hasn’t been moved!”

He came back and sat down again beside Djuna, looking very gloomy.

“Oh, pshaw!” he said. “As soon as you told me about hearing that funny noise in the attic, I thought maybe it was a burglar, and then we could have a lot of fun trying to get him arrested. We could have been detectives, and everything. But now, the way
you’
ve fixed it, there isn’t
anybody
left to hunt for. Gee, I wish something would happen!”

“Well, I don’t,” said Djuna. “At least, I hope nobody ever steals anything from Aunt Patty. She’s pretty poor, I guess, and she would feel awful if she lost any money. No, sir,
I
don’t want any burglars around here, not one bit!”

“Well, for Pete’s sake, you don’t suppose
I
want Aunt Patty to get any of her old money stolen any more than
you
do, do you?” demanded Billy. “All I thought was——say, I’ll tell you what let’s do!”

He sat up, looking excited.

“Do you know what happened last night, Djuna?” he exclaimed. “After I went to bed, I heard Alberto barking out in the yard. I’m sure I did! He’s got a very deep growl. I forgot to tell you, I changed him into a bloodhound yesterday.”

“A bloodhound?” exclaimed Djuna. “Oh, boy!”

“Yes,” said Billy, “so when I heard him growling I knew there were some robbers sneaking around our house in the dark, and then they ran off down the street. So I just said, ‘Go get ’em, Alberto!’ and he was on their trail just like a shot. He hasn’t come back yet, so he must be following them about a hundred miles, I guess. That’s the way a bloodhound does, he never quits. But maybe it would be more fun if we changed him into a police dog. We could, you know, easy. Shall we?”

“Well, that’s all right,” said Djuna, “but let’s wait till we need him. It’s too hot to do anything right now.”

“Let’s go swimming,” suggested Billy.

“All right,” said Djuna. “Wait till I tie Champ up in the woodshed.”

“Why don’t you bring him along?” said Billy. “Can’t he swim?”

“Not very well,” Djuna confessed. “His legs are too short. But he might as well come along, anyway. He can watch us.”

They went back to Billy’s house, and, after they had got into their swimming trunks there, Billy led the way to a beach on the other side of the village, where there was a bathing float anchored out a little way from the rocky shore. They swam and dived for a long time, while Champ amused himself by scrambling around among the rocks for a while, and then took a peaceful snooze in the sun. It was almost supper time when he and Djuna got back to Aunt Patty’s house.

“Have you been gone long, Djuna?” asked Aunt Patty, as she set the table for supper.

“A couple of hours, I guess,” said Djuna. “We went swimming. Gee, it was dandy!”

“I wondered where you were,” said Aunt Patty. “I saw the front door open when I got home and I thought you were probably up in your room. But you weren’t. That door wasn’t open when you left, was it?”

“Oh, I’m sure we shut it when we went out,” said Djuna. “When did
you
get back, Aunt Patty?”

“I didn’t get back till ten minutes ago,” said Aunt Patty. “Oh, well, I suppose it blew open. It always does, seems to me, if I don’t lock it. I didn’t expect to be gone more than a few minutes, when I started off to do my marketing. But then I decided to go and call on old Mrs. Atterbury. She’s not feeling very well, lately, and I stayed and talked with her ’most all afternoon while Captain Atterbury took a walk. He can’t leave her, you know, unless somebody comes to stay with her. Well, there’s no harm done, but I suppose I ought to get that latch fixed. Someday, it will blow open when it’s raining, and then things will get soaked. Oh, dear, when there’s little enough money, it seems as though there was always something else to spend it on!”

“Gee, I’m sorry,” said Djuna remorsefully. “Maybe I didn’t shut it tight enough.”

“Now, don’t you worry,” said Aunt Patty, kindly. “There’s nothing in this house to steal, and nobody in Stony Harbor to steal it if there was. Get your chair, supper’s ready. I should think you’d be terribly hungry, after all that swimming.”

“I am,” said Djuna. And he proceeded to do justice to everything on the table.

When supper was over and the dishes washed, Aunt Patty sat down in her favorite rocking chair in the front room, beside the little table on which stood the lamp, while Djuna went out to have a wrestling match with Champ on the grass. The wrestling match was interrupted by a chattering noise up in the tree beside the house, and Djuna looked up just in time to see a gray squirrel go whisking along a branch. When it reached the next branch it stopped and scolded at them some more, its feathery tail twitching in a rage. Champ rushed over to the foot of the tree and began barking furiously, but the squirrel only made faces at him. And just then Djuna heard Aunt Patty calling him.

He went back into the house to see what she wanted, and found her bending over in her rocking chair and pawing over the contents of her work basket, which she kept on the low shelf under the table beside the chair. Although she had pulled out most of the things in the work basket and they were scattered all over the floor beside her, she was still hunting for something in the basket.

“Djuna, have you seen anything of my darning egg?” she asked, in a perplexed tone of voice.

“Darning egg!” exclaimed Djuna, bewildered. “What kind of an egg is
that?”

“It’s a wooden egg,” said Aunt Patty. “Don’t you know what I mean?”

“I don’t know anything about it, Aunt Patty,” said Djuna. “I haven’t seen it.”

“Well, what on earth has become of it?” exclaimed Aunt Patty. “I had it here this morning, when I started to darn these socks. I had it here in this box, where I always keep it, and now I can’t find it anywhere!”

“What does it look like?” asked Djuna.

“Like an egg, of course,” said Aunt Patty. “Except, of course, it’s wood. It’s hollow, and it’s light as a feather. My goodness, what
did
I do with it?”

And she pawed deeper into the work basket, fishing around among balls of yarn and bits of cloth, in her vain search for the missing egg.

Djuna picked up the little box in which, Aunt Patty said, she had kept the egg. It was about the size of a cigar box, but deeper, and was beautifully made, out of some sort of heavy, dark wood. It was lined with purple velvet. It looked like a jewel box.

“Gee, this is a nice box!” exclaimed Djuna, examining it admiringly. “What came in it, Aunt Patty?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Aunt Patty. “It was something that used to belong to my mother. I just keep odds and ends in it—needles and thread and buttons.”

“What made all these funny-looking dents in the velvet?” asked Djuna. “All these rings, I mean. Was the whole box full of spools of thread?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” answered Aunt Patty. “It might have been, for all I know, when it was new. Mother had it before I was born. But, my goodness, I wish you’d stop asking questions and help me find that darning egg!”

Djuna hunted all over the room and even went upstairs to see if Aunt Patty had taken it up to her room, but it was not to be found anywhere.

“Well, that’s certainly strange!” said Aunt Patty. “I can get another one, of course, down at the store—they only cost a nickel—but I can’t get any darning done tonight. And these stockings certainly need it.”

Sighing, she gathered up the things she had taken out of the work basket and replaced them.

“Now, what have I done with the lid of this box?” she exclaimed, looking around for it helplessly. “I declare, I must be forgetting how to remember anything!”