Poppy Ott and the galloping snail

Yes, sir, the more we messed the matter around in our minds the more we were made to realize how very little Dr. Madden had told on himself. His secrets were still shut up. And, “man of mystery” that he was, the only reason why he had told us about the hidden diary was to give the granddaughter a square deal. Knocked out himself, he wanted us to help her, if we could, and thus defeat the scheming lawyer.

That old hunk of human fat! How we hated him! We wanted to trim him to a frazzle. But how were we going to do it? It looked kind of hopeless.

But Poppy isn’t the kind of a kid to give up without a struggle. I guess not. And it was his gritty scheme now to waylay the lawyer, when he came that night, and lock him up in the barn. If necessary, we would keep the human lard-pail shut up for several days, which would give us a chance to look around for the granddaughter. Then, if we found her, we would turn him loose, and she could stare at him in surprise and say: “Well, old hunk, where have you been all summer?” Do you catch on? Having been shut up in the barn, he wouldn’t be able to prove that she hadn’t tripped into the house in time to save her fortune. A kind of tricky scheme, it’s true, but look who we were fighting!

Ma, poor old soul, seemed sort of shrunken over the fact that the red-plush settee hadn’t been mentioned in the diary. She just knew that she wasn’t going to get it. Or, worse, she might not get anything at all! Never having heard people talk so open and frank-like about such things, it was kind of funny to us. But, bu-lieve me, we got the grin out of our eyes in a hurry when the wilted little old lady began to cry. We saw then how much the settee meant to her. And realizing that she might get left out, after all, we wondered if we couldn’t buy the piece for her. We still had sixteen dollars.

To our surprise, young fatty breezed in just before supper, having brought another doctor—a tall, willowy geezer with mutton-chop whiskers and a jug-handle nose. And speaking of noses, I wish you could have seen squashy’s bugle. It was all over his face. Like a big toadstool. And when he walked he sort of spraddled.

“Where was the wreck?” grinned Poppy.

That made the kid furious. For he knew, of course, who had sicked the hornets on him.

“I’ll ‘wreck’ you,” he fired at us, “if you don’t crawl into a hole and shut up.”

Crawl into a hole for him? Oh, yes! We’d even pull the hole in after us, if he said so. Like so much mud!

Knowing his stuff, the new doctor soon found out the truth about old Ivory Dome’s hives, and, in consequence, down came the quarantine sign. It was fatty, of course, who yanked the sign down. But he met with a snag when he tried to call the sheriff back. For the country officer wasn’t at home.

“Just the same,” the fat hunk blustered around, as mean as mud, “you’ve got to git out of here—every last one of you.”

Poppy had stood about enough.

“And suppose we don’t get out,” says he, kind of screwing his eyes down to little black spots, “are you going to put us out?”

Fatty saw that he was heading into trouble.

“My father will,” he blustered.

“With a posse, huh?”

“It won’t take much to put you out,” was slung across the room, as the fat one’s temper got away from him.

“No?” purred Poppy. “Would you like to try it ... yourself?”

“Two against one,” came the sneer.

Never have I known a kid who can hold his temper any better than Poppy. And what the steady leader did now, instead of soaking the fat smart aleck, was to give me a wink.

“Get a tapeline, Jerry.”

“What for?” says I.

“We’re going to do some measuring.”

I caught on then, for once before we had pulled this stunt of making a monkey out of the other guy. And perfectly suited with the program, I borrowed a tape measure from the housekeeper and got busy.

“Five feet six,” says I, giving fatty’s height.

Poppy gravely wrote that down.

“Twenty-eight inches from starboard to poop deck,” says I, meaning across the hips.

That was written down, too.

“Eighteen inches under the cover,” says I.

The writer looked at me.

“Does that allow room on the breast for a wreath of calla lilies?” he inquired solemnly.

“Maybe you better make it twenty inches,” I corrected, not wanting to crush the funeral bouquet.

Fatty got away from me then.

“Don’t git fresh,” says he, scowling, “or you’ll find yourself playing a harp.”

Poppy held his pencil ready.

“How many handles do you want on it?” says he.

“I’ll put a ‘handle’ on your nose, if you don’t shut up.”

“Like your own, huh?” I put in.

“Three handles on a side is the usual plan,” says the writer thoughtfully. “But maybe I better make it four on a side for you.... East and west or north and south?”

Old thick-skull wasn’t traveling fast enough for us now.

“I mean,” the writer explained patiently, “do you want us to dig the grave so it’ll lay east and west or north and south?”

“Grave? Whose grave?”

“Good night!” I yipped. “You sure are dumb. What did you think we were measuring you up for? —a new dress suit?”

“Go lay an egg,” says fatty.

“And here’s a nice little epitaph to go on the tombstone,” says Poppy:

“I’ll ‘lay’ you away!”

Poppy suddenly dropped his game.

“The point is, kid, that we’re harder than nails. Our middle name is dynamite. When we hits ’em, they lay. And while this may be a disappointment to you, I’ll have to tell you outright that we don’t intend to move out of here to-night. So, if you want to stay here, yourself, the less you blow around about putting us out, the better it will be for you. Do you git me?”

The doctor driving away, Ma called us to supper, and what do you know if fatty didn’t have the nerve to park himself at the table along with the rest of us!

“It’s his scheme,” says Poppy, when we were outside, “to wait here for his old man.”

“He’ll have a long wait,” I laughed, thinking of how we were going to coop up the fat lawyer in the bottle room.

“Maybe we ought to lock the kid up, too,” came thoughtfully. “Then he won’t be able to give us away.”

I caught on. With the kid in the house, we couldn’t very well let on afterwards that the granddaughter had been there when it was known to him that she wasn’t. Yet I didn’t like the idea of locking him up. Too much of this “locking-up” stuff would get us into trouble.

“Say, Poppy,” I laughed, as a crazy idea began to stagger around in my head. “Do you want to do the trick up right?”

“It’s a cinch,” came earnestly, “that I don’t want to fumble.”

“Then listen to this,” I laughed again, more eager to further make a monkey of fatty than to jump on him. “We catch old law-book and lock him up. Then, having drawn cuts, the short-straw fellow is the ‘she.’”

“‘She?’ What she?”

“The granddaughter.”

I had him puzzled.

“For example,” I went on, “we’ll suppose that you’re the ‘she.’ And having borrowed one of Ma Doane’s petticoats, we dress you up in it. Then, just before midnight the ‘granddaughter’ trips in. Kisses and hugs at the front door. ‘Ruthie, dearest, I’m so glad to see you—and did you have a pleasant journey, my love?’ Fatty is there, taking it all in. But gloom and disappointment for him. Do you catch on?”

“Jerry, you’re cuckoo.”

“Cuckoo, nothing,” I hung on, seeing the fun that we could have.

“Not me,” he held off.

“What are you scared of?”

“I’d feel cute dressed up like a girl!”

“It’ll be a scream.”

“Yah—for you!”

I was grinning more than ever.

“When you flutter in, kid, looking like Mary Pickford on her wedding day, I’ll meet you at the door and give you an old smacker right on the two-lip bed.”

“It won’t work, Jerry. For I’m too bow-legged to pass for a girl.”

“Say, what do you think we’re going to pull off?—a bathing-beauty contest?”

“It would be a side-show if you had your way about it.”

“Suppose your legs are sort of corkscrewed,” says I, looking him over. “Your petticoat will cover that up.”

His eyes were dancing now. For big monkey that he is, he’s as full of crazy fun as the next fellow.

“I get to fix the straws, huh?”

“Sure thing—if you don’t cheat.”

The straws fixed, I drew first, hopeful that I would be luckier than the other time in the barn.

“Mine’s the shortest,” the other tried to snudge.

“Like so much mud!” I yipped happily.

Running into the house, we quickly told the little old lady about our scheme.

“What nonsense!” she sputtered.

“But if we don’t do it, Mrs. Doane,” I hung on, “how are we going to pretend afterwards that the girl was here before midnight?”

“Oh, dear! I don’t want Miss Ruth to lose her fortune. Even if I get nothing myself—and I noticed several odd dishes in the cupboard just like my company set—I don’t want Lawyer Chew to walk off with everything.”

“Of course not,” says I quickly. “So any scheme to help the granddaughter is worth trying.”

“I hardly know what to say. For after the way things have been stirred up here, I haven’t confidence in my judgment any more.”

“Which means ‘yes,’ huh?”

“But can you really do it?” came doubtfully.

“Leave it to old Poppy,” I bragged, slapping my chum on the back. “He’s clever.”

“I won’t feel clever,” the other suffered in advance, “with petticoats on.”

“You’ll make a swell flapper,” I stepped around.

Oh, boy, I kept thinking to myself, wasn’t I the lucky little thing that it wasn’t me.

He gritted his teeth.

“Jerry, if you ever tell about this at home!... Gr-r-r-r!”

Cornering old Goliath, whose hair, you’ll remember, hung to his shoulders, we got busy on him with a pair of shears. He didn’t mind. When we got through with him he looked like a bald-headed convict.

Working in the closed room, Ma’s fingers flew as she took the hair as we clipped it and made it into a wig. As a sort of rehearsal, I privately helped Poppy into the outfit—and standing there in the middle of the room, did he ever look like a whipped puppy! First came slippers and long silk stockings. Then a fancy petticoat of Ma’s. And over that a hand-worked dress that the elder, fortunately, had brought along as a present for the younger relative. With the wig on, and his eyebrows touched up with a burnt match, “Miss” Poppy Ott was the snappiest little chicken that ever cracked a shiek’s heart.

Ma came back to the room.

“I swan!” she told Poppy. “You look more like a girl than Miss Ruth, herself. For, if the truth is known, she always acted like a tomboy.”

Poppy wiggled.

“It’s too tight,” he suffered at the waist.

“You don’t want to look like a tub,” I stood off and admired him.

“I feel like a fool,” he grunted.

“Nix on the bass-drum talk,” says I. “Squeak.”

“What do you think I am?—a rusty hinge?”

“Make your voice sound like a girl’s.”

He puckered up gamely.

“And do I sound like a girl now?” he squeaked.

“You’ll do, Poppy,” I slapped him on the back. “Gee, kid, you’re clever.”

“Remember,” he glared at me, as he powdered his nose, “one word of this when we get home, and your folks will pick you up with a blotter.”

We were all set now. And as it was getting close to nine o’clock, we took old Goliath with us and went out to the front gate, where we tied a rope from pillar to pillar.

“The trick is,” Poppy explained to the giant, “that we’ve got to stop old Chew from going into the house. And being big and husky, we brought you along to help us.”

“Sure thing,” waggled old baldy. “What do you want me to do?—wring his neck?”

“He deserves it,” grinned the leader, “but I guess we hadn’t better do that. For it might get us into trouble with the law. A safer plan will be to lock him up in the barn.”

Pretty soon the lawyer came along, having learned from his smart son, of course, that the quarantine sign was a trick.

“Gid-dap!” the driver flopped the lines, when the horse stopped at the gate. But the old nag never budged. Grumbling, the big one got out to see what was wrong, which gave us a chance to tackle him, football style, after which Goliath lugged him off to the barn.

With the horse and buggy out of sight, we ran back to the kitchen, where we found young fatty helping himself to one of Ma Doane’s choice apple pies. The big pig! Poppy and I had spotted that particular pie for ourselves.

The door-bell ringing at eleven-thirty, the fat kid beat it into the hall, sure now, after an uneasy hour, that his father had finally arrived to do the will reading.

“Why,” came a familiar squeaky voice from the open door, “if it isn’t little Eggbert!”

Now, I’ll admit right off the bat that this “girl” stuff of ours was a crazy mess. We probably shouldn’t have done it. Certainly, it didn’t get us anything in the end. But, even so, before I go any farther, I think I ought to hand old Poppy a hunk of praise. For he sure was carrying out his part to perfection. Not only did he look like a girl, but he acted like one. His voice was a bit off-key, of course. But that was nothing.

“Miss Ruth!” cried the housekeeper, playing her part. “Miss Ruth has come at last!”