Jerry Todd, Caveman

SECRET

CHAPTER I. THE INTENDED GHOST HUNT

It was a sunny summer’s day. Just the right kind of a day for a swim. So I lit out for Red Meyers’ house, intending to go from there to our new swimming hole on the edge of town. Oddly though Red’s house was closed. And the same was true of little Rory Ringer’s house in the same block.

Red and Rory are members of my lively gang. I’ve known Red all my life. When we were smaller we used to pitch rotten apples at each other over the back-yard fence. And never will I forget the day that he socked me with a pumpkin. Sweet essence of sauerkraut! But he got the worst of it in the end. For his ma had bought the big pumpkin for a Hallowe’en party. And what she did to the freckled family nest-egg when she found the wreckage of her prized party decoration in the gutter was nobody’s business.

Like me, Red was born in Tutter, Illinois, which, I might add, is the swellest small town in the whole United States. My dad owns a brickyard while his dad, who has a glass eye and a Ford, runs a motion-picture theatre. The brickyard was started years ago by my Grandfather Todd, who, after the Civil War, came back to Tutter with a medal, a peg-leg and a big ambition to organize a business of his own. Some day, I suppose, I’ll be a brick maker like Dad, who learned the business from his father. But I’m too busy right now having a good time to think about future brick making. Still it will be fun when I do get to be a regular brick maker. For I have a swell dad. And I know that I’m going to enjoy working with him.

I might add, too, that I have a swell ma. And can she fry liver and onions! Um-yum-yum! The mere reference to it makes my mouth water. Loving her, I frequently wipe dishes for her. And often I make my own bed.

Red though, whose temper is as fiery as his hair, never made up a bed in his whole life. And if he were to offer his services with a dish towel I dare say his ma would faint. To hear her tell it he’s the laziest boy in town. All he does, she says, in her fat puffing way, is to eat and track in mud.

A warm friend of Mother’s, she often pops into our house to get the latest news. It’s fun to listen to her. For she wheezes and squeaks even worse than her fat widowed sister, Mrs. Pansy Biggle, who runs a beauty parlor on School Street.

If you have read my book about the Stuttering Parrot you’ll remember Aunt Pansy. Having lost her husband, who fell into the Illinois River and forgot to come up for air, she now lives at Red’s house where she divides her time (so he says) between her beautifying business and bossing him around. It was her goofy parrot that caused us so much grief. I thought of the simple-acting parrot as I cut across the lawn to Rory’s house. Little did I dream though, as I tripped over a croquet arch, that I was soon to be messed up with the parrot in another wild adventure involving a blind ghost, a silver skull and, most amazing of all, an animated wooden cow.

As a matter of fact the parrot had already disappeared, and with it Cap’n Tinkertop’s ring-tailed monkey, as I was to learn, with mounting surprise, later on.

Rory Ringer is the funniest kid that I ever listened to. Raised in England, he calls owls howls and hawks ’awks. At school he keeps the reading class in an uproar. For you can readily imagine how such tangled-up pronunciations as howls and ’awks would be received by a bunch of lively American schoolboys. Rory Ringer, the ‘ick from the hupper hend of Hengland where the blasted bloomin’ ‘unters make ‘atchet ‘andles hout of bloody hoak. That’s the kind of stuff we hung on him when he first came to town. But he didn’t mind it, jolly little wart that he was. And now, as I say, he’s one of my bosom pals.

Other members of my gang are Scoop Ellery, the leader, and big Peg Shaw. Also I have a chum by the name of Poppy Ott, around whom I have written a separate set of books. Good old Poppy! He and I have had piles of fun together. We’ve solved a number of odd mysteries, too, involving Prancing Pancakes, Galloping Snails and Tittering Totems. Yes, sir, Poppy is a swell guy. And as smart as a whip. With his help I dare say that we would have solved the new mystery of the silver skull and singing tree a whole lot quicker than we did. But he couldn’t help us, as I learned later on, for he was out of town.

Puzzled by my discoveries at Red’s and Rory’s homes, both of which had the outward appearance of having been temporarily abandoned, I lit out for Scoop’s house on Elm Street.

Where’s the ‘atchet-’andle guy from the hupper hend of Hengland and his big-mouthed confederate? I inquired, as I tumbled into the wood shed.

The leader, I then observed, as I coughed up a bug, was fooling around with a pair of old football shoes to the soles of which he had glued felt pads.

I’m going ghost hunting, he explained, when I dismissed Red and Rory from my mind and started asking other natural questions.

Ghost hunting! Still, I told myself, as I curiously inspected one of the padded shoes, it was like Scoop, fun-loving, happy-go-lucky kid that he was, to think up a scheme like that.

He makes a swell leader. For he has a lot of peachy ideas. Which isn’t saying though that all of his schemes work. Suffering cats! If you must know the truth of the matter he’s gotten us into hot water more than once. But that’s all right. Even Napoleon, capable leader that he was, made a few mistakes, as history admits.

Scoop then brought out another pair of padded shoes.

They’re for you, Jerry Todd, he said, handing them to me.

And what am I supposed to do? I cheerfully fell in with his crazy notion. Hang to the ghost by the seat of its pants while you carve your initials on its windpipe?

This is a blind ghost, he spoke gravely.

I thought, of course, that he was putting on. For he’s full of truck like that. Anyway, as everybody knows, there’s no such thing as a real ghost, blind or otherwise. So a dickey-bird hunt would have been less nonsensical. Still, I told myself, as I studied his sober face, he had something up his sleeve.

I was curious now.

Is there a new ghost in the neighborhood? I began to quizz him.

He nodded.

Where does it hang out? I further inquired, with mounting curiosity.

In the old Grendow place.

Br-r-r-r! I shivered, as I balanced myself on a stick of stove wood. Don’t tell me that it’s the ghost of old Adam Grendow himself.

It takes a lot of queer people to make a world. And if what I have heard about old Adam Grendow is true he undoubtedly was one of the queerest men that ever lived. An Englishman, like Rory, he had built himself a big rambling house on the edge of town. And there he had lived for years. Strange men frequented his place. But it was noticeable that the unknown visitors came at night. The neighbors wondered at this. And they further wondered, with mounting uneasiness, at the roving lights in the big house. Why, they asked among themselves in awed whispers, did the odd master of the secluded place go nightly from the basement to the attic with a lamp in his hands? And what was the meaning of the eerie metallic sounds that occasionally reached the outside world through the open doors and windows?

Small wonder indeed that strange stories grew up about the stoop-shouldered, eagle-eyed master of Grendow Hall, as the place was called in true English custom. Some said he was an inventor of firearms, still in the employ of the English war department. His nightly callers were government agents. Other people in the neighborhood, of more imaginative turn of mind, declared that he was a wizard. His callers, they said, with frightened faces, were spirits from another world.

Not until he was killed in a motor-boat accident, following a wild midnight dash to Ashton, the county seat, was it learned that his only son was a notorious English counterfeiter. Caught in this country he was taken in hand by federal agents shortly after his father’s tragic death. Though still in his early twenties he was conceded to be one of the cleverest engravers in the world. And great indeed was the relief of the agents concerned when the federal prison doors closed behind him.

All this I had heard from Dad. And I had heard, too, that for years the federal agents had tried to round up the prisoner’s European accomplices. But no added arrests were made. Nor were any of the counterfeiting dies or coin presses ever confiscated.

The arrest that followed old Mr. Grendow’s tragic death started whispers that he, too, had been engaged in the manufacture and distribution of counterfeit money. This, the excited neighbors declared, fully explained the old man’s odd nightly activities. His secret visitors, much less than being government agents or spirits, were merely confederates. It was learned though that these men were jug buyers. Instead of being rich, as the neighbors suspected, old Adam Grendow had to make jugs, like his father before him, to earn a living.

People had wondered why the Englishman had built his house over a clay deposit. But now they knew the truth of the matter. A search of the house, following its owner’s accidental death, revealed a secret tunnel, through which the needed clay had been brought into the basement. Here, too, were many odd home-made pottery wheels. And a further search of the attic disclosed an immense stock of completed jugs.

Thus was the mystery of the roving lights cleared up.

The discovery of the machinery and completed jugs furnished material for much added excited talk among the neighbors. And it was known, too, that the federal agents had closed the place with definite disappointment. All efforts of theirs to connect the old jug maker’s activities with those of his misguided son had failed. Nor did the officials succeed in gaining any incriminating admissions from the prisoner himself, either before or after his hastened trial.

Considering the fact that Grendow Hall had been closed for years, it isn’t surprising that I stared at Scoop when I learned, as recorded, that he had been hanging around there on the sly. For it was still believed by the uneasy neighbors that the sinister unfrequented place, now sadly in need of repairs, still held strange brooding secrets. For instance, what had become of the jug buyers? Why had they never come back? And why had the old man worked secretly?

Was it pride? Did he want his neighbors to think that he was a landed gentleman, like others of his kind across the Atlantic? Many of the neighbors thought so. Yet others, confident that the mystery had been only partially cleared up, still awaited exciting developments.

Well, the humorous thought now shoved itself at me, as I further balanced myself on the stick of stove wood, if Scoop had taken the mystery in hand, capable leader that he was for the most part, there undoubtedly would be plenty of developments.

Nor was it improbable that another Juvenile Jupiter Detective by the name of Jerry Todd would find himself in hot water up to his neck.

But that was all right with me. Scoop, I saw now, wouldn’t have fixed up the padded shoes if he hadn’t gotten track of something. And regardless of what the consequences would be if we set forth on another mystery-solving adventure, I was ready, as the saying is, to follow in his padded footsteps to the last ditch.

I kind of hoped though that I wouldn’t land in the ditch on my snout.

CHAPTER II. ADDED PREPARATIONS

Did you ever hear of the Juvenile Jupiter Detective association? We never did until an old shyster by the name of Mr. Anson Arnoldsmith came to town and sold us memberships in his organization at a dollar and a quarter a throw. He seemed like a nice old gentleman. So we believed every word he told us, even that crazy yarn of his about the mummy itch. It was learned later though that he was an old fraud. And so far as I know there is no real Juvenile Jupiter Detective association. But that doesn’t keep us from doing real detecting, as my various books prove.

So now you know why I called myself a Juvenile Jupiter Detective in the preceding chapter.

Our chief competitor in the local detecting business is Bill Hadley, the Tutter marshal. Bill almost laughed his homely head off when he learned about our new detective badges. Boy detectives! Haw! haw! haw! That, he said, in his rough way, was his idea of a big joke. But we soon proved to him that boys were just as capable of solving mysteries as men. In fact, if it hadn’t been for us I dare say that the mystery of the Whispering Mummy, in which Mr. Arnoldsmith was criminally involved, never would have been solved.

Next we got mixed up with a strange Rose-Colored Cat. Here we recovered some very valuable pearls. Then came that memorable trip to Oak Island, where we helped to bury and later recover what at that time we called the Oak Island Treasure.

This mystery solved, we tackled the weird case of the Waltzing Hen. Who was the strange yellow man who died so mysteriously in the Tutter hotel? A believer in transmigration, had he indeed turned into a yellow cat? And why did the odd brown hen waltz? We found out! Next we helped young Tom Ricks save his father’s invention, a Talking Frog, from thieving hands. Here is where we had our first experience with a ghost. Nor did any of us at the time, as we crouched breathlessly behind barred doors, suspect for a moment that the eerie gliding visitor on the outer porch wasn’t a sure-enough ghost. Gosh! From what we saw of it through the keyhole it sure looked ghostly enough to satisfy anybody. And even worse for me, it caught me outside of the house and ran me ragged.

Then came the more nonsensical mystery of the million-dollar Purring Egg, with its bewildering hilarious tangles and final astounding surprises, and after that the strange case of the man with the sleeping toe. We found him living in a Whispering Cave. This case took us back to Oak Island, where the treasure that I have mentioned had been earlier buried and recovered.

Having solved the Sleeping Toe mystery, it was time, Scoop said, for a vacation. So he and I, together with Red and Peg, set out on a camping trip. Stopping overnight at an old abandoned tavern called The King’s Silver we learned things from a strange persecuted boy that literally raised the hair on our heads. It was in this same old tavern, with its queer hidden secrets dating back to colonial days, that we found the pirate clothes used so effectively in our later sea battle with the enemy. To feel more like real pirates we gave ourselves pirate names such as Buzzard Bill the bloody butcher of the bounding billows (that was me), Wall-eyed Willy the wicked weasel of the wharves (that was Red), Hack-’em-up Hank the howling horror of the