Jerry Todd and the Talking Frog

On the way to Mrs. Kelly’s house we stopped at the Gronke farm and talked the housekeeper into buying a box of our beauty soap. At the next farm we sold a box to Mrs. Smith, though it took an awful lot of persuasion. At the third farmhouse we were turned down cold. Our beauty soap, Mrs. Morrisy told us, uninterested, was a fraud.

It was now after eleven o’clock by Scoop’s watch.

“We’ve got to snap into it,” he said, “if we expect to get back to town in time for dinner.”

So we speeded up. And coming to Mrs. Kelly’s house, we passed quickly through the gate and followed the cinder path to the kitchen porch.

But no one came to the door when we rapped.

“Dog-gone!” growled Scoop. “All this walk for nothing.”

“Don’t overlook the fact,” I laughed, “that [72]we have sold seven cakes of beauty soap. Our time in coming here hasn’t been wasted.”

“Just the same,” said Scoop, “it’s a disappointment to me not to find Mrs. Kelly at home. I wanted to see her Bible and ask her some questions. For it’s important, I think, to find out all we can about the queer soap man.”

There was a short silence in which our leader thought of the money that we had taken in and counted it.

“Sixty cents. We’ll stop and settle up with the soap peddler as soon as we get back to town.”

“What’s the rush?” I inquired. “Why not sell the rest of our soap and then call on him?”

“The oftener we stop and talk with him,” said Scoop, in good wisdom, “the more we’ll be likely to find out.”

The old mill that I have mentioned in my story is a part of the Matson property and is situated directly behind the brick house where Tom lives. In his younger days Mr. Matson used to run the mill himself, grinding wheat and corn and buckwheat for the farmers. But he neglected his business after his wife’s death. In consequence his trade dropped off. Then, over a period of years, the mill was still. The machinery rusted and became worthless and the wooden water wheel [73]rotted to pieces. Instead of taking care of his property, as any sensible man should have done, Mr. Matson did nothing but work on puzzles.

Just before the murder the mill was gutted of its worthless machinery. A junk man bought it, I believe. When the machinery had been removed, the stone building’s doors and windows were boarded up. Mr. Matson did the job himself. Signs were then posted at the mill’s approaches warning the public to keep away. But it wasn’t very long before the Tutter kids, including myself and my chums, contrived a way of getting into the forbidden mill. It was a peachy place to play bandit. Then came the murder. We had free run of the mill after that. And to let in more light we took down the most of the boards that had been nailed over the doors and windows.

You will know that Mr. Matson was indeed a queer old man when I tell you that he built an office, a small room with windows on all four sides, in the very top of his mill. To get to it one had to climb two flights of stairs.

Coming into the edge of town, Tom went home to help Peg get dinner while Scoop and I circled to the right to the mill pond. The mill yard was a tangle of weeds and underbrush. Here [74]we found Romeo, the soap man’s skinny horse, nibbling at the wilted leaves of a squatty elm tree. The horse gave us a mournful look as we approached, then turned its head away and proceeded sorrowfully with its dinner of elm leaves.

“Poor old nag,” murmured Scoop, giving the hungry horse a sympathetic eye. “I’m going to bring it some oats.”

Entering the mill, we found the soap man cooking something in a dirty kettle over an old oil stove.

“Howdy, boys,” the cook greeted, stirring the bubbling contents of the kettle to keep the stuff from burning.

Scoop jingled the coins in his pants pocket.

“We’ve come to settle up,” he informed.

“Just wait a minute,” the old man said quickly. He lifted the kettle to one side, away from the smoking flame, and wiped his sticky hands on his pants. “Got it all sold?” he inquired, and there was a look in his thin face, a gluttonous, hungry look, that made me think of a starving wolf.

“Not all of it,” returned Scoop.

The thin face showed disappointment.

“How much did you sell?”

“Two full boxes and a separate cake,” informed Scoop. “Here’s your twenty cents out of the [75]fifty cents that we got for the two boxes. We’ll split the dime fifty-fifty.”

“Poor,” complained the old man, giving us a dark, dissatisfied look. “Awful poor. Evidently you boys hain’t as smart as I took you to be. Fur I figured that you’d sell at least ten boxes.”

“Give us time,” said Scoop. “We’ve got to learn how to do it.”

“You’re goin’ to keep on, hey?”

“Of course.”

“The other boy, too?”

He meant Tom.

“Sure thing,” nodded Scoop, “We’re going to work in town this afternoon. We ought to sell twenty-thirty boxes.”

Again I was reminded of a wolf by the greedy light in the old man’s close-set eyes.

“Good!” he said, licking his lips. “Good!”

Scoop squinted around the big empty room. His eyes took in the heavy overhead beams and the cobwebby stone walls.

“How did you happen to find this place?” he quizzed.

“I’m thinkin’ of buyin’ it,” the old man joked, “an’ havin’ it remodeled into an apartment buildin’. Don’t you think it’d make a swell home fur me?” [76]

“Well,” said Scoop, noticing, I guess, that the other hadn’t answered his question, “if you decide to live here you’ll have some fine neighbors.” He pointed to the near-by brick house, visible through the open door. “I suppose you know who lives there.”

A queer, dark look flashed into the old man’s face. It was there for an instant; then it was gone.

“I hain’t interested in inventors,” he muttered. He got his black satchel. “How many more boxes of soap be you boys wantin’ to take with you?”

“Oh, fifteen or twenty,” said Scoop. “Do you sleep here?”

“I’ve got some blankets upstairs.”

“On the third floor?”

The old man nodded.

“That’s the office,” said Scoop.

“Office?”

“The man who used to own this mill,” explained Scoop, “built the little room on the third floor for an office. A queer place for an office. Don’t you think so?”

“Here’s your soap.”

“Are you going to be in town very long?” [77]

“That all depends on how much stuff I sell.”

“Soap?”

“Of course. Soap sellin’ is my business.”

“Why don’t you sell books? You’d earn more money.”

“Sonny, let me tell you somethin’—keep away from books if you ever start peddlin’ on your own hook. Fur they hain’t no money in lit’ature. I’ve tried it, an’ I know what I’m talkin’ about.… Now git.”

“You didn’t find out very much,” I grinned at Scoop when we were outside.

“I found out all that I expected to find out,” he returned, satisfied. He looked back at the soap man, who was standing in the mill doorway. “A spy, all right. His face gave him away when I mentioned Mr. Ricks. Didn’t you notice, Jerry? And, just as Tom has suspected, he’s doing his spying on the brick house from the office windows.” There was a moment’s pause. “Book peddler—soap peddler—spy,” murmured Scoop. “A queer man and a crooked man. We’ve got to keep our eyes on him.”

That afternoon Tom stood guard in the brick house while the rest of us peddled soap, each on a different street. [78]

“How’s Red?” I inquired of Mrs. Meyers, when she had come to the front door of her house in response to my ring.

“We’re keeping him in bed. But he doesn’t seem to be very sick. So with plenty of pie and ice cream,” she joked, “we hope to pull him through.”

“Has he still got spots on his back?”

She nodded.

“What he needs,” I told her, as a quick-minded salesman, “is a cake of our beauty soap.”

“Beauty soap?” she repeated.

I held up one of my pink boxes.

“Bubbles of Beauty,” I recited, “the wonder soap that makes all women beautiful. It cures warts and blemishes,” I added, “so it ought to be good for blotches. Don’t you think so?”

She laughed.

“Jerry, where in the world did you get this soap?”

I told her about the old soap man in the deserted mill.

“I’ve sold six boxes,” I bragged.

“To women?”

“Sure thing,” I grinned. “You better buy a box, Mrs. Meyers. Of course,” I added quickly, “I realize that you don’t need it yourself, for you [79]are beautiful already. But you can use it on Red.”

“On his back?”

“Well,” I laughed, with a picture in my mind of Red’s homely face, “it won’t do any harm if you use some of it on the roof of his nose. For it’s good for freckles.”

She bought a box. And when I was making change the Stricker gang came into sight in the street.

“See how pretty he is!” Bid hooted, pointing me out to the other fellows.

“Why shouldn’t he be pretty?” Jimmy yipped. “He uses Bubbles of Beauty.”

“Beat it,” I told Bid, scowling, “or the first thing you know I’ll step on you and bend you out of shape.”

I met Scoop on the corner. He was grinning and happy.

“How’s business, Jerry?”

“Fine and dandy,” I told him. “I’ve sold seven boxes.”

“Hot dog!” he cried. “I’ve sold nine.”

“Let’s knock off,” I suggested, “and call it a day.”

We picked up Peg in a candy store on Main Street. [80]

“What do you know, fellows?” he grinned, a jawbreaker in each cheek. “I sold a box of beauty soap to Miss Prindle!”

Maybe you remember Miss Prindle, the Tutter dressmaker. I told about her in my book, JERRY TODD AND THE ROSE-COLORED CAT. She is the woman who owned the crab-apple marmalade that our cats got into. We don’t like her. None of the Tutter kids do. She’s too cranky. You should hear her go for us if we touch her fence or go in her yard! Wough!

“Does she think,” laughed Scoop, “that the soap will make her beautiful?”

“Of course,” grinned Peg. “What do you suppose I sold it to her for?—to trim petticoats with?”

We laughed. For it struck us as being funny that Miss Prindle, one of the homeliest women in Tutter, had spent her money for a box of Peg’s soap in the hope that it would make her beautiful. She had about as much chance of becoming beautiful as Mr. Ricks’ talking frog had of growing whiskers.

Our big chum had sold eight boxes of soap. This gave us a total sale of twenty-four boxes. When we put our money together we had an even [81]six dollars. Two dollars and forty cents of this belonged to the soap man. The balance, three dollars and sixty cents, was ours.

“To-morrow,” planned Peg, “we ought to sell at least fifteen dollars’ worth.”

“We’re going to be rich,” I laughed, contented in our success.

“Let’s look at it the other way,” grinned Scoop.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Think of the good that we are doing. That, my boy,” and he put his hand on my head in a fatherly way, “is vastly more important than the money part.”

“Scoop, the preacher,” laughed Peg.

“Ours,” preached Scoop, getting in some of the soap man’s fancy gestures, “is a very noble work. We are bringing beauty, and with it happiness, into the starved and discouraged lives of countless sad-hearted, homely women.”

“Here,” Peg offered, “take this jawbreaker and shut up.”

“All the same,” I grinned, wanting to help the fun along, “the women who bought our soap are going to be very grateful to us.”

“Especially Miss Prindle,” said Scoop, sucking on the jawbreaker. “I can imagine how grateful she will be to Peg when she looks into her mirror [82]to-morrow morning and finds a Mary Pickford face smiling back at her.”

We were joking of course. We had no idea that the soap would actually make women beautiful. It didn’t seem possible.

But it was good soap. We had tried it out. And in selling it we felt that our customers were getting their money’s worth, even though they didn’t get any beautifying results from its use.

“After supper,” Scoop planned, “we’ll call at the mill and give the soap man his two dollars and forty cents.”

“And get our soap for to-morrow’s business,” said Peg.

“Exactly.”

We stopped at Scoop’s barn and got a small bag of oats for Romeo. Then we hurried in the direction of the brick house, where Tom was guarding the talking frog.

We had a lot to tell him. [83]