CHAPTER XVIII
POPPY’S PEDIGREED PICKLES
Landing on the north shore of the river, the boats were dragged out of the water, to keep them from wandering off into the current, after which we jiggled the cave truck into four equal loads and started single file for the darkened stone house, where we did a snappy little rat-a-tat-tat on the closed front door.
“Who is it?” Mrs. O’Mally’s quavering voice percolated through the keyhole.
Getting our answer, the door was quickly thrown open.
“We’ve brought you company,” laughed Poppy, as the whole gang traipsed in.
The woman stared at the visitors, more particularly at the stooped old man.
“Howdy, ma’am,” says he, taking off his hat and bowing like a hand-organ monkey. Then his bundle got away from him and tin pans galloped all over the room.
“Mither of Moses!” hurdled Mrs. O’Mally. “’Tis a wonder ye wouldn’t scare the wits out of a body.”
We told her then who the old man was, and why the kid was no longer a prisoner.
“As we’re all working together,” Poppy wound up, “we figured that the safest and best plan, with the cat killer in mind, was to live together, too.”
“Sure, ’tis welcome ye are to what I’ve got,” came heartily from the generous woman. “An’ ’tis glad I am, too, for your company. For with secret doors in me cellar an’ a vicious prowler without, ’tis no safe place for a lonely ould widdy. Look at me! ’Tis still tremblin’ I be from the fright that gripped me when I heard ye on the front porch. For, thinks I, ’tis no one but that creepin’ cat killer, himself—bad luck to his murderin’ soul!”
“Has he been here again, Mrs. O’Mally?”
“Niver a sound have I heard from him since ye left. But ’tis the constant feelin’ I’ve had that there’s eyes.”
I knew what she meant. For it was those same hidden eyes that had put the shivers in me on the way to the bridge.
Having been up all night, Poppy and I were dead tired, as you can imagine. But dizzy as I was from lack of sleep, I had no intention of turning in until I had seen the underground chamber. So, leaving Mrs. O’Mally and Uncle Abner to frisk the extra beds into shape, the leader and I, with our new chum, skinned down the cellar stairs. Then, having opened the secret door—and I might explain here that the only reason why the door had escaped us in the first place was because the chimney base was built squarely in the middle of the cellar floor—we next corkscrewed down the winding stairs. As Poppy had said, it was like going down a peculiar well. Coming to the room where Tom had gotten the “bump on the bean,” as he now grinningly expressed it, I zigzagged here and there, hoping to feast my eyes on some of that wonderful “pirate” truck that we had talked of. But the only “weapons” in sight were Tom’s pick and an old mule collar. Nor were there any skeletons.
“What makes you so sure,” says Poppy, when we had made the rounds, “that the treasure is walled up in this room?”
“That’s what Grandpa Weir told us.”
“Did he see it put away?”
“No. But he said we’d find it here.”
Poppy swung the pick.
“Solid rock,” says he.
We were then taken through another secret passage which connected the hidden room with the old cement tunnel. Here we found a second iron door, the complexion of which was so much like the solid rock on either side of it that it had completely escaped us. But, to that point, even if we had been wise to the fact that it was there I doubt if we could have spotted it.
“Who do you suppose built all these passages,” puzzled Poppy. “The old pirate, himself?”
“If he did,” I put in, “he must have been some worker.”
“Grandpa Weir didn’t tell us all the particulars,” says Tom. “But it’s Uncle Abner’s opinion that the early miners, whoever they were, tapped the cellar of the stone house by accident. They couldn’t have been skilled miners, Uncle Abner says, for a shaft is never properly made from the bottom up. Later the fake chimney base, with its secret door, was built over the hole in the cellar floor. And as this all favored my great-uncle’s crooked scheme, it may be that the queer mining was done under his orders.”
At four o’clock we hit the hay, Poppy and I sharing one bed and Tom and his uncle the other. But before turning in we double-locked the cellar door, further rigging up a “tin-pan” burglar alarm. But nothing woke us up.
Mrs. O’Mally, as usual, had to pile out early to start her pickers to work, but she moved quietly in and out of the house, so the rest of us didn’t uncover our eyes until ten o’clock.
“Well,” says I, yawning, “what’s the program for to-day?”
“Cucumbers,” says Poppy, reaching for his pants.
“Gold?” I further exercised my jaws, as I thought of our recent adventures.
“Gold and pickles, both.”
I suddenly sat up.
“Good night! With so much other truck going on I’d completely forgotten about that bin of cucumbers. What are we going to do with them?”
“We’ve either got to pickle them,” says Poppy, “or sell them to old Pennykorn at a loss of a dollar and ten cents a bushel.”
I put my adding machine to work.
“That’s almost eight hundred dollars.”
“If the treasure turns out as well as we hope,” says he, “the loss of eight hundred dollars might not cripple us. But just the same I’d go ten miles out of my way before I’d lose even a penny to that grasping old geezer.”
“But, Poppy,” says I, getting a slant on his thoughts, “how in the world are we going to pickle seven hundred bushels of cucumbers? For even if we had plenty of money to work with, we wouldn’t know how to go about it.”
“We might hire old Butch,” he grinned, flipping his necktie into shape.
“Yes,” says I, matching his nonsense with some of my own, “and we might commit suicide, too. But who wants to do that when fried cakes are only ten cents a yard?”
“Jerry, after eating those swell cucumber pickles at his house—and I know they’re the same kind of pickles that I bought at the food sale—it’ll forever be a puzzle to me how he slopped over on the last batch.”
“I hope,” says I uneasily, “that you aren’t thinking of giving him a second trial.”
“Hardly.” Then he swatted me with a pillow. “Get up, you lazy bum. Here I am all dressed and you haven’t even untangled yourself from the feather tick.”
“Wait a minute,” I motioned him away. “I’ve got an idea.”
“Spill it.”
“How would it be,” I suggested thoughtfully, “if we got Mrs. O’Mally to do the pickle making for us? Mother was raving about her pickles last night. So they must be all right.”
“By George!” came the applause. “I wonder if we can’t? Of course,” he added, with less enthusiasm, “they won’t be the wonder pickles. We can’t expect that. But other dealers sell big wads of ordinary pickles. So, with fairly good luck, we ought to be able to flag an order now and then.”
“Shall we call her in and ask her?” says I eagerly, feeling pretty hefty over the fact that little Y. T. (meaning Yours Truly) had made the important suggestion. Oh, I’m there, all right ... once or twice a year, at least!
“Just a minute,” says Poppy. Then, having slipped out of the room, I heard him stumble over a chair in the empty kitchen. By hurrying, I was well ornamented with clothes by the time he got back. “Before saying anything to her,” he laughed, “I thought we’d better sample her pickles on the sly. For it’s a cinch we don’t want to make another crazy blunder.” Then he shoved a cucumber at me. “Try it,” says he, cheerfully, “and see what you think of it.”
I loved that pickle about as much as you love cod-liver oil.
“Oof!” I screwed up my nose. “Do I have to do it?”
“Here we go,” says Poppy, heroically. “One, two, three.”
At the third count I jabbed the hated pickle into my mouth and began to chew. Then, as I got a taste, I sort of stiffened with surprise, after which I chewed all the faster, my jaws and eyes working together.
“What the dickens?...” cried Poppy, staring at me.
“It tastes to me like those church pickles,” says I, staring back at him.
He was out of the room like a shot. And this time, instead of grabbing a pickle apiece, he heaved up the stairs to our boudoir with a whole dishful.
“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” he cried, when the bottom of the dish was uncovered. “I can’t understand it. But if these aren’t a match for the church pickles and the ones I ate in old Butch’s house, I’ll eat my shirt.”
I remembered then what the mule driver had dished out to us about his choice recipe.
“Don’t you catch on?” I cried, as my beezer slipped into high gear. “It was from Mrs. O’Mally that old Butch got his recipe in the first place.”
Poppy looked dizzy.
“Were we ever dumb,” says he, “not to have suspected it? And him going with her, too! Drill a hole in my thick skull, Jerry: my brains need ventilating.”
In answer to our questions, Mrs. O’Mally admitted to us at the breakfast table that she had sent some of her pickles to the food sale. She also had given several jars, she said, to “a friend.” We knew, of course, who the “friend” was! Feeling that she was too poor to subscribe to the Tutter newspaper, she thus had missed seeing our ad.
Starting in at the beginning, we handed her the whole story, which amused her one minute and amazed her the next. But when we asked her, in the wind-up, to do the pickle-making stunt for us, she almost fainted.
“Me pickle seven hundred bushels of cucumbers? Mither of Moses! Is it the work of ten women that ye think I can do?”
“All right,” Poppy quickly followed up. “We’ll go at it that way, then. You’ll be the boss. See? And the other women will do the work.”
“No, no!”
“But, Mrs. O’Mally,” old do-or-die hung on, “if you don’t help us, we won’t be able to pay you for the cucumbers. Besides, think of what it will mean to you if the pickles turn out to be a big success. We’ll be able to start up a pickle factory. That will make you rich. For, of course, you’ll be one of the owners.”
“Sure,” came dizzily, “’tis nothin’ I hear but talk of riches. First it was the pirate’s treasure; an’ now it’s pickles.”
“Besides,” Poppy galloped along, “think how lovely it will be to beat old Pennykorn at his own game, who probably is waiting for you right now with that ninety-cent contract.”
The pickle woman’s face hardened.
“He’ll get no ninety-cent cucumbers from me.”
“That’s the spirit, Mrs. O’Mally. We’ve got to fight him. It’s our duty, sort of. For if we can work this pickle scheme, independent of him, the sweet-corn farmers can then get together, in pattern of us, and beat him at that game, too. It will mean thousands of dollars to them. And instead of mortgaging their farms to buy shoes and stockings, they’ll be able to ride around in Chevrolets.”
Mrs. O’Mally liked the idea of the Chevrolets.
“But what women have ye in mind?” she let down the bars.
“Jerry’s ma will help, for one.”
“Sure thing,” I swung in. “And she probably can get some of the Methodist ladies, too.”
Poppy almost jumped over the table.
“Hot dog!” he yipped. “Now I know! There isn’t a church in town that isn’t head over heels in debt. All these bazaars that are put on by the different church societies, and the chicken-pie suppers, is just an endless run of schemes to raise money. All right! If the church ladies want to raise money, we’ll put them to work. We furnish everything and they get ten per cent of what the pickles sell for. Why, kid,” he yipped it off, from the peak of his enthusiasm, “they’ll jump at a scheme like that. Sure thing. And if we find out that we have more cucumbers than the Methodist ladies can handle, we’ll give the Presbyterian ladies a chance to lift their church debt. If that isn’t enough, we’ll call in the Catholic ladies. For pickles are pickles, kid, regardless of whether they’re Protestant pickles or Catholic pickles.”
Mrs. O’Mally got the idea from this talk that the church ladies were going to run things to suit themselves.
“Sure,” she heaved a sigh of relief, “’tis glad I am to learn that ye hain’t a-goin’ to need me.”
“Don’t you think for one minute that we aren’t going to need you,” Poppy still held the floor. “In fact,” he grinned, “you’re going to be the biggest frog in the puddle. For everything that the women do will be done under your directions. The point is, Mrs. O’Mally, that we’ve got to turn out better than average pickles if we’re going to put this scheme across with a bang. You know how to do it. And you’ll want to be on the job every minute, to make sure that every part of the work is being done exactly as you would do it if you were working alone.”
Leaving Tom and his uncle at work in the underground room, with the promise that we’d give them a helping hand as soon as we got our pickle business better organized, Poppy and I lit out for town, where we had an important talk with Mr. Thomas Lorring, our former “stilt” partner, in the latter’s private office in the Commercial Bank.
“What?” the president boomed at us in pretended amazement, thinking, no doubt, of how we had similarly called upon him for help in starting up our stilt factory. “Are you young shavers trying to organize another new industry?”
“A pickle factory,” grinned Poppy, who had a hunch that he stacked up pretty high in the kindly banker’s estimation.
“And you want to borrow money, heh?”
“All we can get.”
“Meaning how much?”
“Five hundred dollars to start with.”
“Humph! Think you’re going to get it?”
“We’ve got to,” says Poppy earnestly. “For if we don’t our cucumbers will go to waste.”
“Not necessarily. Mrs. O’Mally can still sell them to the canning company.”
It began to look as though we were going to get turned down. And I could see that Poppy was worried.
“But they’re trying to cheat her, Mr. Lorring,” he burst out. “That’s one reason why we stepped in. All they agree to pay her is ninety cents a bushel.”
The banker held up a big red hand.
“Wait a minute,” says he, sort of quiet-like. “A thing you want to learn, Poppy, if you’re going to be a good business man, is not to go around telling people that your competitor is a cheat. As a matter of fact, Mr. Pennykorn isn’t a cheat. He’s just close-fisted in his business dealings, that’s all. He isn’t forcing any of the farmers to sell their stuff to him. And the mere fact that his prices are low doesn’t stamp his dealings as being crooked. I will say, however, in justice to your viewpoint, that his way of doing business isn’t right according to my notion. And if we could clear up the situation for the local farmers by starting another canning factory, I’d be in favor of it. However, with all due respect to your other manufacturing success, the organization of such a factory isn’t a job for two boys.”
“But, Mr. Lorring—”
“Just a minute,” the big hand came up again. “The point that I am going to make is this: You can’t borrow money here with the specific idea of starting up a pickle factory. However, having confidence in you, because of past associations, I’m willing to advance you five hundred dollars on a thirty-day note at six per cent, to enable you to swing this pickle deal and thus save yourself from loss. If you find in selling your pickles that you have what would seem to be the nucleus of another industry, that will be taken up separately, by the proper people. Just give this slip to the cashier as you go out and your account will be credited accordingly.”
“Five hundred and thirty-two dollars,” says Poppy, looking at our new bank balance when we were in the street. “It isn’t going to be a cent too much. Do you know what seven hundred bushels of pickled cucumbers ought to bring?”
“How much?” says I.
“Anywhere from seven thousand to eight thousand dollars.”
This high finance, or whatever you call it, was almost too much for me.
“Poppy,” says I, sort of anxious-like, “aren’t we getting in gosh-awful deep?”
“The deeper the better,” says he. “For then we can high-dive in perfect safety.”
“We may ‘high-dive,’” says I, “and never come up.”
But he was too bubbly inside to be troubled by me.
“Now,” says he, starting off down the street, “let’s see what the Ladies’ Aid has got to say.”
“By the way,” says I, keeping pace with him, “are we still going to use that ‘Aunt Jemima’ name?”
“No,” he shook his head. “‘Aunt Jemima’ took too hard a flop ever to get her wind back. So far as we are concerned the old lady is dead and buried.”
“‘Poppy’s Pickles,’” I showed my stuff. “That’s a good name.”
“Jerry, did you ever hear of pedigreed cows?”
“Sure thing.”
“Isn’t it a fact that pedigreed is the mark of quality in cows, horses, dogs and almost everything else?”
“Even nanny goats,” I nodded.
“All right,” says he, “we’re going to manufacture pedigreed pickles. Or, if you think it’ll help to stretch the name out, we’ll call them ‘Poppy’s Pedigreed Pickles.’ That’s what they are—pickles with a pedigree. For you heard what Mrs. O’Mally said about her recipe having been handed down in the family for a hundred years or more. There’s where the pedigreed part comes in. It’s a proven recipe, in other words. The quality of the pickles is guaranteed. Do you like the name, Jerry?”
I beamed at him.
“Do I like it? Kid, I’m crazy over it.” Then, running off into my usual line of bunk, I got in some big gestures. “What a difference one day makes in the history of the world,” I orationed. “Yesterday pickles were pickles. But to-day pickles aren’t pickles unless they’re Pedigreed Pickles.... Let’s send a telegram to Mr. Heinz, telling him that we’re in the pickle business, too,” I wound up. “Maybe he’ll be so scared that he’ll beg us to buy him out at two cents on the dollar.”
Putting all nonsense aside, though, I saw that old Poppy had a real idea. The job now was to make it work.