Poppy Ott and the galloping snail

After he once got the hang of things, old Goliath wasn’t such a fearfully punk driver. I’ve seen worse. Shortly after meeting Dr. Madden we very nicely tried to rainbow over a tree. And turning into the graveled drive at the big stone house we put on another sort of dizzy loop-the-loop stunt—two wheels up and two wheels down. But what was that? Nothing to crab about.

Poppy looked at his watch when we got out of the car and stretched our legs.

“Ten-thirty,” says he. And from the way he spoke I could tell right off that he was thinking about the death-chamber door. As I have written down, we had planned on being here to-night when the mysterious door did its stuff, to sort of check up on it and thus find out what made it slam. But Fate had worked against us.

Old Goliath let out his big neck at the lighted house.

“And this,” says he curiously, “is the shebang where we’re goin’ to bunk fur the night, hey?”

“This,” nodded Poppy, “is the shack.”

We had told the old man, of course, how we happened to be staying here. But he didn’t know about the mystery. For we had no business telling that. Whatever he found out, we decided, we’d let him get it straight from Ma Doane herself and not from us.

Having heard us drive in, the little old lady came running.

“Why!...” she cried, looking the gang over for a familiar face. “Where’s Miss Ruth?”

Having failed her, we sort of hung our heads as we told the story of our hard luck. Yet it wasn’t our fault, we said. We had done our best. It was a case of having too many black cats to buck against.

“Pshaw!” says she, getting control of herself so quickly that it surprised us. “You needn’t act so sheepish about it. If you want to know the truth, I’m used to disappointments. A body has to be in living with Pa. For he’s the most disappointing person I’ve ever known. He’s a disappointment in himself and a disappointment in almost everything he does—except eat. And even then I have to watch him like a hawk to see that he doesn’t bite chunks out of the dishes.... Did you see Lawyer Chew in Neponset Corners?”

“No,” grinned Poppy, “but we saw his son Eggbert.”

“I don’t know him.”

“Well, you haven’t missed much.”

“All the afternoon,” the woman went on, “I have been in fear and trembling that the sheriff would come and put us out. But I have seen nothing of him, nor the lawyer either, for that matter.”

Poppy laughed. But he didn’t take the time just then to explain why the sheriff hadn’t showed up.

“Any word from the granddaughter?” he inquired.

“Laws-a-me! Wasn’t I expecting you to bring Miss Ruth home with you? So how could I hear from her until you got here?”

“I thought maybe she might have telephoned from Pardyville.”

“She probably will,” came the thought, “now that she’s waiting there.”

“If she does,” says Poppy, “you can tell her that we’ll be over to get her the first thing in the morning.”

All he said that for, of course, was to sort of put the woman at her ease. For he had no idea that the girl would telephone.

“Did Dr. Madden say anything about the granddaughter when he was here this evening, Mrs. Doane?”

The woman stared.

“Dr. Madden? Laws-a-me, child, you do say some silly things. For how could the doctor call here when he’s in Europe?”

The leader told her then that we had met the returned doctor on the road.

“I thought, of course, that he had been here to see you about something or other. But he may have been coming across from C. H. O.”

We then introduced old Goliath Cassibaum Hopple, explaining briefly that he was a friend of ours who wanted to get a bed for the night. We didn’t mention his family squabbles, for he had asked us not to—it pained him to talk about the unhappy matter, he said, with sad eyes, and it pained him even worse to have others talk about it. To that point, it was all right, we thought, to keep his secret. It didn’t hurt Ma any. How her tongue would have waggled, though, could she have known the truth! Old Goliath would have squirmed, all right. And it was just as well that he got out of that.

The doors were open to any friend of ours, came the warm invitation. But when the housekeeper got a better look at the visitor, and saw how big he was, she began to worry for fear that there might not be a bed in the house half long enough for him.

“Don’t you fret none ’bout me, ma’am,” the giant told her quickly. “Fur I know how to make myself comfortable on the floor. In fact, that’s where my wife makes me sleep the most of the time, anyway—me and the dawg.”

The dumb-bell! You should have seen Ma stare at him. And he had been so very particular to caution us about mentioning his home affairs.

“His wife,” Poppy put in quickly, to smooth things over, “has some queer notions.” Then he used his toes on old Goliath’s shins as a gentle little hint for the other to dry up.

Going in the house, we sure made a wreck of the grub that Ma had waiting for us. Boy, did potatoes and gravy ever taste so good! Um-yum! Nor did Poppy and I shovel in any more hash than old blunderbuss. He seemed hollow from cellar to garret. Either his wife had been ladling out too much religion to him and not enough soup, or there hadn’t been enough soup to go around.

Supper over, we went out to the barn with our flashlight, which was working again by spells, to see how the gander was faring, and finding it asleep we circled through the grounds to settle our big supper.

Another queer fancy of the rich man who had built this place was the fine lawn that he had kept inside of the stone wall, though beyond the wall, as I have earlier described, was the contrast of a forsaken desert. Hundreds of loads of black dirt had been hauled here to make a bed for the grass, and in the owner’s lifetime there had been big patches of flowers and a swell layout of bushes. I guess you call it landscape gardening, or something like that. The grass now was long, with a lot of dead stuff in it, but even so it wasn’t a bad lawn. Nor had the bushes gotten ragged in the year that the house had been closed.

“Jerry,” says Poppy, as we mogged around, “did you hear what Ma said about the death-chamber door?”

“No,” says I quickly. “What about it?”

“It didn’t slam to-night at ten o’clock as usual.”

“The ‘ghost’ is scared of us, huh?” I laughed.

“We weren’t here.”

“I know, but we had planned on being here. And probably the ‘ghost’ knew about it.”

“Pa’s in bed sick.”

“Ah-ha! No wonder the door didn’t slam.”

“Ma says his head has been hurting him all day.”

“Maybe he tried to use it.”

“I feel sorry for that old geezer, Jerry. I honestly believe that he’s in trouble.”

“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

“As we know, he’s mixed up in this secret, whatever it is. And I think that his trouble to-day is worry. Before we go to bed to-night, suppose we tell him some of the things we know and offer to help him. That may bring him out of his shell. We’ll have to do it, of course, when Ma isn’t around.”

Ungrateful bums that we were, the idea never had percolated into our noddles to stay in the kitchen after eating and help Ma with the late supper dishes. And finding her deep in the dish pan on our return to the house, we felt kind of cheap. Thoughtlessness like that doesn’t get a fellow anything. So, to sort of square ourselves, we grabbed a couple of wiping towels and got busy.

“Mrs. Doane,” says Poppy, as he cleverly massaged the gravy bowl, “did the thought ever come to you that there might be something sort of questionable about Mr. Danver’s sudden death?”

A plate fell from the woman’s hands into the dish water.

“Oh, dear!” she cried, looking frightened. “Why do you bring up such a dreadful subject at a time like this? Yes, if you must know the truth, I have been worried over Mr. Danver’s death. I have had strange suspicions. And these suspicions have troubled and unnerved me more than you can imagine. Outside of Pa, I’m pretty much alone in the world. And, as I have told you before, he isn’t much company. It’s a waste of time talking with him about anything out of the ordinary. So I never told him about this. In fact, until now, I never have fully opened my mind on the subject to anybody. But somehow I have a great deal of trust in you boys. And it is a big comfort to me to have somebody to lean on.”

“You can lean on us all you want to,” says Poppy feelingly, as he blotted a saucer. “For we like it.”

“Yes,” says I, looking into the gray eyes, “and we like you, too. And if we can help you, we’re going to do it. Eh, Poppy?”

“You tell ’em,” waggled the other.

“I’ve already told you about the night I looked in the casket. I was suspicious then about my relative’s death, for I hadn’t been able to get much out of Dr. Madden except that the sick man had died very suddenly. Why had he died? Heart trouble, I was told briefly. Heart trouble! Every person who dies has heart trouble. The heart stops beating, for some reason or other, and that’s the end. I wanted to know what had made my relative’s heart stop. But could I pin Dr. Madden down? No, indeed! He can be as close-mouthed as Lawyer Chew when he wishes. In fact, they’re a good pair when it comes to secrecy.”

“Do you suppose they’re working together, Mrs. Doane?”

“Who? Dr. Madden and Lawyer Chew? Laws-a-me, child! They don’t even speak to each other.”

That put Poppy on his toes.

“Hot dog!” he yipped, flourishing the dish towel. And then, seeing the woman’s surprise, he went on: “It’s my hunch, Mrs. Doane, that there’s a sort of secret bond, or whatever you call it, between this doctor and the granddaughter. But it didn’t fit into my theory for two cents to include old fatty. So you see how tickled I am over what you just told me.”

“Years ago,” explained the woman, “the two men had trouble. I don’t know what over. But to my knowledge they haven’t spoken to each other since.”

The leader got all screwed up then to spring something big. I had seen it coming and was prepared for a surprise. For I knew old Poppy! When it comes to brain work, I think he’s a wonder.

“Do you know what I think about Dr. Madden’s trip to Europe, Mrs. Doane?”

“No,” came eagerly, “tell me.”

“Like you, I think that there was something queer about the old man’s death. I don’t mean, though,” came hastily, “that either Dr. Madden or Lawyer Chew are guilty of a crime. No, indeed. Dr. Madden, I suppose, did all he could to fix up the sick man. And certainly, if he had suspected that his enemy was putting across anything criminal, he would have had the lawyer arrested long before this. No, that isn’t it. Whatever crooked work Lawyer Chew is up to, it isn’t poisoning, or anything like that. Yet there’s a mystery here just as deep. And it was to clear up this mystery, I think, that Dr. Madden hurried away to Europe. Now he’s back. And I’d be willing to bet my hunks of pie for the next six months against a mosquito’s false teeth that he’s got things all set to spring a surprise. And a regular old gee-whacker of a surprise, too. You say the will is going to be read to-morrow night at ten o’clock. All right. Dr. Madden will be here, whether Lawyer Chew invites him or not, and you and Pa and everybody else in the family are going to get the surprise of your lives. That takes in old fatty, too. I think, to further spread around my ideas, whether they’re bunk or what, that Dr. Madden is the one who sent for the granddaughter. Right now he knows where she is, and at the proper moment she’ll turn up—to undo old Chew, probably.”

“Laws-a-me!” cried the amazed woman, with a bewildered face. “You’ll be telling me next that Dr. Madden is back of the door slamming here, and all the other queer things.”

Poppy got my eyes for a moment.

“We kind of have an idea who the ‘ghost’ is,” he grinned. “But for certain reasons we’d rather not tell you just now.”

He meant old Ivory Dome, of course.

“And is it your idea,” I asked him, when we were alone, “that the old man has been putting on this ‘ghost’ stuff at the doctor’s orders?”

“That’s exactly what I do think, Jerry. The three of them—the two men and the girl—are secretly and peculiarly working together. And the whole scheme, I bet you, is to undermine old Chew.”

“Well,” I grinned, “if they do scoop a hole under old fatty, I hope they make it deep enough so that he’ll have to do some tall digging himself to get back where it’s daylight.”

“Dr. Madden knows his stuff, Jerry.”

“So do you,” I grinned. And I meant it, too.

“What puzzles me more than anything else,” the other then went on, “is the spotted gander. For the life of me I can’t figure out how it fits into the tangle, or why it was sent here.”

“Ask Dr. Madden,” I laughed.

“I’m going to,” was the quick reply.

“Yes, you are—not!”

“We’ll forget about Pardyville, Jerry, for in going there our time would just be wasted. Instead, we’ll go back to Neponset Corners to-morrow morning. And we’ll let Dr. Madden treat us for an acute case of friendlius-curious-snoopius.”

But instead of going to Dr. Madden to be “treated,” as Poppy had planned, it was the doctor who came to the big house, as you will learn in the next few chapters.