The Black Dog Mystery (9 page)

The shade of the woods was very refreshing. He had gone only a little way along the gravel road when he came to a grassy spot beside the road and decided to rest there. Champ scampered off with a bark of delight as soon as he had been put on his own feet. Djuna sat down on the grass and mopped his hot face with his sleeve. It was cool in the shade, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

There wasn’t a sound to be heard anywhere around, except an occasional chirp of a bird, high up in the tree-tops, the pleasant rustle of leaves, and the hum of tiny insects. Djuna knew that the village of Clinton was only a mile away, and yet it seemed as if he were in a place where nobody had ever been. If he hadn’t heard Champ scuffling around in the thick underbrush a little way off, he would have thought himself entirely alone.

Suddenly he sat up and listened intently. A look of bewilderment crept over his face. He heard, or thought he heard, music in the distance!

He jumped to his feet. Yes, there was no mistake—it was very doleful music, but it was certainly a tune of some sort! He peered down the road.

Coming slowly along the road was an old Negro. He was holding an enormous guitar in his hands and was thrumming on its strings as he limped along.

Djuna watched him curiously as he came closer. He was dressed in ragged and dirty old clothes, and his shoes were shapeless and full of holes. His shoulders were bent, and he wore spectacles of dark glass. A tattered black hat was on his head. He was humming softly as he plucked away at the guitar strings.
“ ‘Hang up de fiddle an’ de bow!’ ”
he sang,
“ ‘Dey’s no mo’ wo’k fo’ po’ ole Uncle Ned!’ ”

Djuna picked up his bicycle and walked toward the old man. At the sound of his footsteps on the gravel, the old Negro stopped and shifted his grip on the guitar with a startled gesture.

“Good mawnin’, boss,” he said in a high cracked voice, peering uncertainly in Djuna’s direction.

“Good morning,” said Djuna shyly. “Could you please tell me if this is the road to Riverton?”

“Oh, you is a boy, is you?” exclaimed the old man. “Ah got a bad misery in mah eyes; ah cain’t tell who is who, ’lessen Ah heah ’um talk. Yes, suh, dis de Rivuhton road. Ah jus’ come from theah, tooken me all dis mawnin’.”

“Are you going far?” asked Djuna politely.

“Ah ’m gwine tuh Clinton,” answered the old man, in his high piping voice. “Ah’s hopin’ Ah kin get a few pennies, playin’ an’ singin’ the bes’ I kin. You ain’t got sump’n fo’ a po’ ole cullud man, has you, chile?”

“I’m sorry,” said Djuna. “I haven’t got any money.”

“Thankee jus’ de same, chile,” quavered the old fellow. “De good Lawd will pervide, bress de Lawd!”

He went limping on up the road, his unwieldy guitar tucked under his arm, and Djuna watched him till he got out of sight around the bend.

He whistled for Champ and soon the little black dog came tearing out of the underbrush and raced around Djuna in circles.

“Oh, I know what’s the matter with
you,
” laughed Djuna. “You’d rather stay on the ground than ride! Well, all right, have it your way!”

He started on, pushing the bicycle beside him, and Champ raced on ahead. Just at that minute a rabbit unsuspectingly hopped out into the middle of the road and paused to look around. Champ was after him in a flash. He wasn’t ten feet from the rabbit when it first saw him, and with a terrified bound it darted madly into the bushes beside the road. Champ dived into the underbrush right after it. A second later there was a terrific scuffling and clattering, wild yelps from Champ, more sounds of frantic pursuit through the bushes, and then more barking.

“Champ!” yelled Djuna. “Come back here! We haven’t got time to chase rabbits!”

He was just about to start after him when the bushes parted and Champ came trotting out. Djuna’s mouth fell open, in utter astonishment.

The little black Scotch terrier had changed into a gaudy Scotch plaid.

One ear was bright blue. The other was bright yellow. There was a spot of green on his nose. His back was spotted with red. A big smear of white was across his chest. Streaks of yellow ran down his right shoulder. He looked worse than a clown in a circus.

Djuna couldn’t believe his own eyes.

He stared at this fantastic animal as if he were seeing a ghost. Champ trotted toward him, wagging his tail. His tail was part green and part yellow.

Djuna dropped his bicycle with a crash and grabbed the dog with both hands. Immediately he wished that he hadn’t. He got them all smeared with something wet and sticky. There was no mistaking what it was.

It was wet paint.

Djuna gave a gasp of amazement. He couldn’t have been more surprised if he had seen seventeen rabbits rush out and throw wet paint-brushes at him.

“No!” he groaned. “No! It
can’t
be!”

Headlong, he plunged into the bushes from which Champ had emerged. He fought his way through them. The paint showed the way. There were drops of it on the ground that had dripped from Champ’s shaggy coat. In ten jumps Djuna had burst through the hedge of bushes and had come out into a little grassy open space, no bigger than a room.

A dozen tin cans that had once been filled with paint lay there, scattered on the ground. They lay on their sides, the paint oozing out upon the grass. They were scattered from one end of the little glade to the other.

Each can seemed to have been filled with a different color. There were cans that had held yellow paint, cans that had held red paint, cans that had held green paint, white paint, blue paint—every color of the rainbow, almost, and Champ seemed to have collected on himself all the paint that hadn’t spilled on the ground. That rabbit must have led him a merry chase, dodging in and out between the cans, and Champ had apparently knocked over every one of them in his mad scramblings to catch up with the rabbit.

Djuna stared at them, more puzzled than ever. “I can see what happened, Champ,” he said slowly. “You chased the rabbit here. The rabbit dodged around the paint cans. You dodged after it and knocked the cans over. The paint splashed all over you. But
what
on earth—
who
on earth—
why
on earth was the paint
her
e
!”

Djuna shook his head, and gave it up. It might be something to wonder about later, but right now the first thing to do was to wipe the paint off Champ’s hair. He pulled handfuls of grass and, holding Champ by the collar, scrubbed away at the smears of paint as best he could. It didn’t seem to do much good.

“Oh, what’s the use, Champ?” he said at last, in a discouraged tone. “We’ll have to go home, where I can give you a
good
scrubbing. Oh, gee, just look at you! You look awful! You needn’t think I’m going to take you to see Mr. Boots,
no
w
! No, sir! Why, everybody there would just laugh at you, and Mr. Boots would be ashamed to speak to you, even. No, we’ll eat our lunch right here and go on home. Oh, gosh!”

Champ wagged his green and yellow tail feebly. “Look!” said Djuna. “Let’s go back to the road
this
way—the bushes aren’t so thick.”

Djuna had been so startled by Champ’s strange appearance and so anxious to rub off the paint that until now he hadn’t noticed that the grass in the open space between the bushes had been pressed flat in two narrow streaks. They were plainly the marks left by wheels—the wheels of the wagon or truck by which the cans of paint had been carried to this lonely spot. Djuna bent down and examined them closely, then shook his head disappointedly.

“You can’t tell whether it was a truck or a wagon,” he muttered. “If there had been any muddy ground here, there would have been some tire tracks, but the grass doesn’t show what it was. Gee, what on earth would anybody want to bring those paint cans here for, anyway?”

He looked around the leafy enclosure and pondered. “It must have been a truck, instead of a wagon,” he said slowly. “There wouldn’t have been room for a wagon to turn around in here. And I don’t see any hoof-marks, either. Yes, sir, it must have been a truck, and it backed in here, so it didn’t have to turn around. I’ll bet it did!”

The tracks of the wheels led off into a narrow lane of grass between the bushes and Djuna followed them. They led back to the gravel road. Just at the edge of the road there were three or four small bushes, many of whose leaves hung limply from broken twigs. Djuna looked at the lower part of each bush and saw that the slender stems had been bruised, but not broken. He pushed quickly past them and came out on the graveled road.

“This is awfully queer, Champ!” he said excitedly. “If you hadn’t chased that rabbit in there, we would have gone right past this place and never noticed it! You can’t see those tracks at all, from here!
Nobody
would!”

He examined the edge of the road more closely. “No, sir!” he exclaimed. “Whoever it was that was driving that truck didn’t want anybody to see any tracks! He must have stamped them all smooth, if there were any, and spread the gravel over them, so the road looked just like it did before he came along! There aren’t any tire marks at all!”

He looked up and down the road, uneasily. The woods stood silent and mysterious all around him. No one came that way.

Djuna walked back to where he had left his bicycle, untied the package of sandwiches, and tossed a dog-biscuit to Champ, who snapped at it hungrily. He crunched up one biscuit after another and then barked and begged so earnestly for more to eat that Djuna divided some of the sandwiches with him. But all the while he was eating, Djuna kept puzzling over the strange business of the paint cans.

“Champ, I’ll bet that paint was stolen!” he said suddenly. “If it wasn’t stolen, why would anybody want to hide it for? You know what we ought to do? We ought to go right back to Clinton and tell Captain Crackle about it!”

He finished the piece of apple pie, picked up the bicycle, and lifted Champ back into his box. “We’ll go back the way we came,” he announced. “It’s shorter. We’ll just have to wait and go to Riverton some other day, Champ.”

I
T WAS ONLY
a quarter of a mile to the paved road, but before they got there, Champ heard a rustle in the woods and began to squirm around in his box, wanting to get down and see what it was. But Djuna kept on pedaling.

“You keep quiet, Champ!” he said sternly. “I’m not going to have you chasing any more rabbits! Next time you’ll fall into a whole
tub
of paint, probably!”

Djuna’s legs ached by the time he had pumped the bicycle up the long hill over which the paved road led into Clinton, and he was glad to be able to coast down the other slope, into the town. Parking the wheel in front of the police station, he took Champ inside with him. “I’d be ashamed to let anybody see you,” he said severely.

Captain Crackle was still in his office, and looked up as they came in.

“You here again?” he said. Just then he caught sight of Champ. “Holy mackerel!” he exclaimed. “What’s happened to that dog of yours?”

“Oh, nothing much,” said Djuna. “He just got into some paint. That’s what we came to tell you about.”

“What do you come
here
for?” demanded Captain Crackle irritably. “What’s the police got to do with it?”

“Well, somebody stole the paint,” said Djuna.

The chief of police stared at him. “What do you mean?” he said crossly. “You mean they stole the paint to paint that pup with?”

“Well, no, not exactly,” said Djuna. “I don’t know what they stole it for. We just found it, that’s all.”

“Oh, so you found it, did you?” demanded Captain Crackle. “Let me get this straight. How do you know it was stolen? Where did you find it? Who told you it was stolen? How does the dog get mixed up in it, anyway?”

“He couldn’t help it!” said Djuna indignantly. “It wasn’t his fault. It was the rabbit’s fault.”

“Oh, so it was the rabbit’s fault, was it?” said the chief of police, breathing heavily. “I guess you’d better start right at the beginning, son. I ain’t strong enough to take it this way.”

“Well, that
was
the beginning,” said Djuna. “He was chasing the rabbit and it ran into some bushes, and he got all covered with paint, and I went in there and I found it. If he hadn’t chased the rabbit, I wouldn’t have found it.”

“All right, so far,” said Captain Crackle. “Where did all this happen? Right here in Clinton?”

“No, sir,” said Djuna, “It was out in the woods, on that old gravel road on the other side of the hill, the road that goes to Riverton. At least, I think it goes to Riverton. A man told me it did.”

“Well, it does and it doesn’t,” said the police chief. “That road curves around till it joins up with the road between here and Riverton, but it don’t go all the way to Riverton. Anybody that told you it does must have been a stranger around here.”

“He was an old blind man,” said Djuna. “A colored man.”

“Oh, that old darky?” said Captain Crackle. “He ought to know better than that—he’s been wandering around here for the last week. Half-witted old fellow.”

“Well, that was the road where the paint was,” said Djuna. “Eleven cans of it. I counted.”

“Full cans, huh?” asked the police chief.

“No, sir, there wasn’t much paint left in any of them, but there was enough to splash all over Champ,” said Djuna.

“Oh,
empty
cans, huh?” said the Chief, crossly. “Why didn’t you say so before? What’s the sense of coming in here and bothering me about a heap of old cans? What are you tryin’ to do—kid me?”

“No, sir, they were stolen. I’m sure they were,” said Djuna earnestly. “You could tell by the way they were hidden. Somebody took them there in a truck and put them behind the bushes so that nobody could see them from the road at all. Why would they take them all the way out there and hide them, unless they’d been stolen?”

The chief of police patted him on the shoulder. “Now, look here, my boy,” he said, “if that much paint had been stolen, the owner would have reported it before now. Nobody’s reported anything. What do you expect me to do—go around asking people if they’ve lost any paint? Calm down, son—that’s nothing but a lot of old cans that somebody wanted to get rid of. Run along, now, and don’t worry about it.”