Jerry Todd and the rose-colored cat

Sunday came quietly to a close, and in keeping with our plans Scoop and I headed for the Walkers Lake Sanitarium the following morning.

I can’t say were we very perky in the prospect of facing Mrs. Kepple with the information that her rose-colored cat had “passed beyond,” as they tell about in the Tutter newspaper when some respected citizen dies. On the other hand, it was not improbable that in her knowledge of things she could readily clear up the mystery surrounding the yellow cat. So, as we proceeded on our way, we were by turns depressed and eagerly anticipant.

Walkers Lake is situated three miles south of Tutter on what we call the river road. In the summer months there is a great deal of automobile traffic between the lake and town. Scoop said we would watch our chance and hook a ride. Accordingly when a truck came into view from behind us he signaled to me and we hopped on. It was a Tutter truck and the driver recognized us.

“Where you kids goin’?” he called over his shoulder, lifting his friendly voice above the truck’s rumbling clatter.

“Sanitarium,” Scoop yelled back.

“Pretty soft for you. I’m goin’ there myself.”

When we came to the Illinois River the heavy wheels put a thunderous rattle into the bridge’s plank flooring. A crew of men were giving the ironwork a coat of red paint. We yelled at them as we passed and they flipped paint at us. It was fun, only the truck driver got sore when a daub of paint hit him on the nose. Gosh! It made him look like an old toper.

Just before we came within sight of the lake I asked Scoop if it were his intention to inquire the names of all the women we met in and about the sanitarium in order to get in touch with Mrs. Kepple.

“The best plan,” said he, “will be to ask for her at the desk where the people register. The clerk will know how to find her. That’s a part of his business.”

The driver was still grumbling about his red nose when the truck stopped at the sanitarium garage. We made the grinning suggestion that he give his nose a gasoline bath and continued on foot till we came to the big main building facing the lake. Here we found a lot of people. Their easy laughter and idle conversation deepened our depression. Plainly they had no worries such as we had. Picking our way through several groups on the wide front porch, we entered the office.

Scoop told the desk clerk we had an important message for Mrs. Kepple and the man obligingly put in a call on the house telephone. Presently he thumped a desk bell, summoning a uniformed bell-hop. I pretty nearly fell over backwards when I found myself looking into Jimmy Stricker’s scowling face. Then I recalled that his older brother was a regular bell-hop in the sanitarium. I wondered if Jimmy had a steady job or was just substituting.

“Show these two young gentlemen up to parlor B,” the clerk directed briskly. “Mrs. Kepple is awaiting them.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jimmy, just as nice as pie; but when he turned to us you should have seen the ugly look on his face! It galled him to have to wait on us and show us around.

Scoop grasped the situation and grinned.

“A little service, Hoppy,” said he, as we turned from the office into a long hall. “Step lively now.”

“Go chase yourself!” growled our furious conductor.

That made us laugh. But we went sober again in the presence of a stylishly-dressed elderly lady who glanced at us inquiringly from out of the comfortable depths of a big-armed rocking chair.

“You have a message for me I believe,” Mrs. Kepple prompted in a pleasing refined voice, lifting a silky-haired cat from a fancy floor basket into her lap.

Scoop gulped and shifted his cap from one fidgety hand to the other.

“We are two boys from the Tutter Feline Rest Farm. We come to tell you some bad news about your cat.”

“Yes?” and the white forehead went slightly puckered, as though Scoop’s words were vague in their meaning.

“Lady Victoria,” he announced soberly, “is dead.”

The woman stiffened and stared.

“What in the world are you talking about?” she demanded.

“Your rose-colored cat. As I say——”

“My what?”

I could see that Scoop was rattled.

“I’m trying to make you understand, ma’am,” he floundered, “that your five-hundred-dollar, rose-colored cat is dead.” Then he tumbled on: “We’re awfully sorry, Mrs. Kepple. We’d willingly pay you for the cat if we had any money, but we haven’t.”

The listener gripped the chair arms. She seemed amazed.

“Are you boys trying to be rude and annoy me? Or are you out of your senses?”

Scoop resented this. I observed his shoulders stiffen.

“We aren’t dippy,” he returned shortly, “if that’s what you mean.”

“But why do you come to me with such an impossible story?”

“Why shouldn’t we come to you?” he countered quickly. “It’s your cat. You sent it to us at our rest farm and it died on our hands.” Here he proceeded with an account of the rat-trap accident and the operation. “You see,” he concluded, “we aren’t so terribly much to blame. It just happened, sort of.”

On the moment Mrs. Kepple relaxed into the chair’s depths, burying her face in a handkerchief. The muffled laughter that penetrated our ears filled us with mingled anxiety and amazement. Was she out of her mind over the cat’s death? It would seem so. I wanted to beat it.

“You boys are plainly the victims of a practical joke,” she then explained.

“A joke?” came unsteadily from Scoop.

She nodded.

“It cannot be otherwise, because I know nothing of the cat you operated upon. I sent you no cat; nor did I send you any money. Certainly the cat you refer to is not Lady Victoria. This is Victoria in my lap.”

Well, that ended the interview. Dazed and dumbfounded, we retraced our steps to the office, then stumbled into the open air. Here our lungs got to working again.

“I’ll be jiggered,” said Scoop, when we were well on our way back to town. “Can you figure: it out, Jerry?”

I told him I couldn’t.

Presently he concluded a period of reflection with a scattered laugh.

“Anyway, we aren’t in debt five hundred dollars for the yellow cat. Lucky, I’ll say. But if that is one less worry for us, how do we know that a trouble more serious even than the dead cat isn’t in ambush just ahead of us? It’s something to think about. Mrs. Kepple said the cat was sent to us as a joke. I don’t believe it. As Peg told us the day the ten-dollar bill arrived, practical jokers don’t give away real money. Nope.”

I agreed with him that the cat had been sent to us for a reason. And I further shared his view that our adventure was likely to become even more complicated if the prowler’s determination to get possession of the cat deepened into desperation.

Plodding along the dusty road, I recalled Red’s theory that the prowler was the pearl thief. Peg, too, contended that the thief was intent on stealing the five-hundred-dollar cat. What would they say when they learned from us that the rose-colored cat was of the valueless alley variety?

No, I concluded, it wasn’t the cat’s money value that made it attractive to the mysterious prowler, as Red and Peg declared. There was another value, the nature of which was unknown to us. Therein lay the solution of the mystery. I was sure of it.

Just before we came to the river bridge Scoop gave a low whistle, thereby lifting me out of my thoughts.

“We forgot something, Jerry.”

“Yes?” I returned uncertainly.

“We never told Mrs. Kepple about our prowler.”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“If you’re thinking of going back to the sanitarium,” I said, “you can leave me out of it.”

I meant it, too. A fellow hates to be made fun of. And we had no assurance that the Chicago woman wouldn’t accept a continuation of our story with further indifferent laughter. I was in no mood to risk it, as I quickly explained to Scoop.

The morning was well advanced when we came briskly into town. Realizing that Red and Peg would be intensely interested in the amazing outcome of our trip to the sanitarium, we went directly to the old mill, taking the hill on the bound. Here we found Peg seated in the doorway, reflectively cleaning the spade we had used in digging Lady Victoria’s grave. In the greeting that followed our sudden appearance I conceived a worried look in his eyes.

Scoop and I had agreed between us that he was to tell the story of our experiences, so I yipped to Red to come from the mill and listen.

“Red’s at the depot,” Peg told me.

“I hope, for Pete’s sake, it isn’t more cats!” Scoop spoke up in alarm.

The other gave a dispirited grin and got to his feet.

“No; it’s Indians.”

We stared as Peg set his spade inside the door.

“Some kind of a show troupe,” he informed. “Going to put on a real Indian war dance at the sanitarium, so Tommy Hegan said. He and Red are watching them unload the truck from their special car. I intended to go along, but before I could get away from here Mrs. Kepple came and——”

Scoop sucked in his breath.

“What’s that?” he interrupted, staring at Peg as though he doubted his ears.

“I said I couldn’t go with Red and Tommy to watch the Indians because Mrs. Kepple came here for her cat and I had to dig it up.”

Scoop acted as though he had parked his senses somewhere and couldn’t recall the location.

“Make it plainer,” he begged, touching Peg’s arm with a faltering hand. “My head’s in a whirl. Did you say Mrs. Kepple was here? In the mill?”

Peg nodded.

“She came shortly after you fellows left. Riding in a classy green car with a chauffeur and everything. I suspected who the visitor was even before she handed me a calling card with her name printed on it. Then she asked for her rose-colored cat and I explained about the operation. Her face turned a greenish white. Getting control of herself, she asked me where the cat was buried. I told her. She said her distress would be less keen if she could have one final look at her unfortunate pet, so I got the spade and we climbed the hill, the chauffeur trailing along behind.”

Here Peg paused and moistened his lips.

“Well?” Scoop prompted with tense eagerness.

“Now comes the queer part,” Peg continued slowly, looking first into Scoop’s eyes, then into mine. “I dug up the carcass. Mrs. Kepple asked me to take it out of the box so she could get a better look at it. Ough! I had to hold my nose. ‘But where is my cat collar?’ says she. ‘It isn’t on the cat. How do I know this is my poor Lady Victoria?’ I told her it was the rose-colored cat, all right. ‘You are trying to steal my cat collar,’ she then accused. ‘You never buried it with the cat. Get it for me this instant or I shall have you arrested.’”

During this recital the dazed look had completely vanished from Scoop’s face. Now he gave a jubilant cry.

“Hot dog!” he yipped, going through some crazy antics. “I’ve got the drift of things. Yea, boy! It isn’t the cat the prowler wants; it’s the copper collar.”

Again Peg nodded.

“That’s the way I have it figured out. But will you tell me where the blamed collar disappeared to?”

“I remember seeing it when I performed the operation,” came quickly from Scoop.

“It was on the cat when we buried her,” I followed up.

“There was no copper collar in sight when I unearthed the carcass,” Peg declared. “Mrs. Kepple wouldn’t believe me when I told her I knew nothing of where the collar had disappeared to. She left here in a huff, threatening to have us arrested. ‘I’ll give you just twenty-four hours to recover the missing collar and mail it to me at the sanitarium,’ is what she said when she drove away. Um—— Now where in Sam Hill did that collar go to? We’ve got to find it if we hope to save our hides.”

“Rats!” exclaimed Scoop. “We have nothing to fear from that woman. It wasn’t Mrs. Kepple at all.”

“It was Mrs. Kepple,” Peg bridled in his characteristic stubborn way. “Didn’t I just tell you she gave me her calling card? Here it is. And she knew all about the rose-colored cat and the ten-dollar bill.”

Scoop motioned the other down.

“I tell you it wasn’t Mrs. Kepple,” he reaffirmed. “Jerry and I talked with Mrs. Kepple in the sanitarium. Certainly she couldn’t have been in both places.”

“Of course not,” I put in. “The woman you talked with,” I told Peg, “was some one impersonating Mrs. Kepple.”

But he was unwilling to back down.

“Maybe,” he said with narrowed eyes, “it was the impersonator you fellows talked with. Can you prove that it wasn’t?”

We couldn’t.