Jerry Todd and the Talking Frog

That night we captured the ghost, only Bill did the most of the capturing. Being the town marshal, we let him take the lead.

Shortly after our signal had brought Tom and Peg from the brick house, the ghost came creeping up the path from the road, wrapped in a sheet. Finding the kitchen door unlocked, he disappeared into the silent house. Then a light shone through the cellar windows. When the ghost came up the cellar stairs, Bill nabbed him.

It was, as Scoop had suspected, old Mr. Matson. He was carrying in his arms a wooden box, similar in size to the box that we had used in burying the talking frog. And when the box was opened, what do you know if it wasn’t crammed full of greenbacks and silver dollars and five-dollar and ten-dollar gold pieces! Thousands of dollars! A bigger pile of money I never expect to see.

The captured man did a lot of screeching and [223]clawing. He called us robbers. And we failed to make him understand that we were not, because he was pretty much out of his head.

But he wasn’t so loony but what he had remembered the hidden money. And it was to dig up the treasure that he had persistently tried to enter the brick house. The one time that he did get in, he carried off the talking frog by mistake, having dug in the wrong spot.

It was learned afterwards that in his wanderings he had been in New York City. Struck by an automobile, an operation had been performed on his head. The doctors declared that upon his entrance into the hospital he was as crazy as a loon. And I rather imagine that he was. For only a truly crazy man would spill hog blood all over his house to make the neighbors think that he had been murdered. But the operation drove much of the craziness out of the injured one’s head. And remembering the buried money, he had returned to get it. Not wanting to be seen and recognized by people who thought him dead, he sought to hide from sight in the old Windmere House.

His capture gave the Tutter people something to talk about. He went to live with Mrs. Kelly, and she has charge of his money. Some day, of [224]course, everything that he owns will be Frances Matson’s.

The ten-ring puzzle was sent to Milwaukee, to the company interested in Mr. Ricks’ talking frog, and they wrote back saying that they would be very glad to manufacture the puzzle in quantities and market it. I understand that Mrs. Kelly is to get a royalty check twice a year.

Mr. Ricks bought the brick house with a part of the money paid to him by the Milwaukee company, who are now building a small factory in Tutter to manufacture talking toys and puzzles. Tom, who will always be one of my warmest friends, says that he is going to be the manager of the factory when he grows up.

So you can see what he intends to do when he gets rich.

On the day that his pa and Aunt Polly returned to Tutter with their patent papers a letter was received from the president of the Gennor Radio Corporation.

Mr. Gennor said that he deeply regretted that his son, in offering to buy the talking frog and promising a factory to the townspeople, had acted without authority. And he denied employing spies to steal the invention. [225]

In this he undoubtedly told the truth. For what we thought was a spy was just a silly old soap peddler, who had gotten the idea somehow that his dead brother had hidden a lot of money in the stone wall of his mill. No doubt Mr. Ricks misplaced the roll of dress patterns on the train. He’s pretty good at misplacing things! Aunt Polly says that he would misplace his head if it wasn’t fastened to him.

Dad says that big companies do business on the square. And Dad knows.

We called on Mrs. Crandon the following day. And when we had told her about our adventure she showed us her pile of soap. Twenty-four cakes!

“Did he try to make you pay for it?”

“No. The first thing I knew he was gone.”

Scoop grinned.

“This ought to be enough soap to keep you beautiful for the next fifty years.”

“Yes,” returned Mrs. Crandon, “I heard how it beautified Miss Prindle,” and she looked at me and smiled.

Dog-gone! I felt pretty cheap. For everybody in town knew the joke. The woman I had seen on Miss Prindle’s porch was her out-of-town [226]sister. And Red’s beauty was all put on with cold cream and face powder. He had his mother fix him up to fool me.

The Strickers, of course, had made up the fake beauty letter.

“Anyway,” laughed Mrs. Crandon, “the soap is good soap, whether it makes people beautiful or not. It has such a good smell that the baby bit into a cake yesterday afternoon, thinking it was candy, I suppose, and I was up half the night with her.”

“If the baby has warts on the inside of her stomach,” grinned Scoop, “she’s cured for life. For Bubbles of Beauty is death on warts. If you think I’m stringing you, ask Jerry. The soap cured the wart that Mrs. Pederson put on the top of his head with a broom.”

“If you don’t dry up,” I waggled, “I’ll put a wart on your head.”

But he knew I said it in fun, for I was grinning.

THE END

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