The Blue Herring Mystery (20 page)

“Who’s Mr. Boots?”

“A friend of mine, a carpenter.”

The moving van was approaching now. Djuna and Jimmy stepped out into the middle of the road and waved at the driver. He tooted his horn in acknowledgment. “Listen, Djuna,” Jimmy suggested eagerly, “if you’ve never seen this club, why don’t you come and see it now? It’d be okay because Pop’s the pro.”

“I’m supposed to be job-hunting,” Djuna said. “But gee, I’d sure like to. Wouldn’t you, Champ?” Champ barked once in emphatic agreement.

“Oh, come on,” Jimmy urged as the truck turned into the driveway and stopped. “It won’t take long. You can look for a job any old time, can’t you?”

Djuna peered through the country club gate, picturing to himself a whole world of cropped velvet greens and emerald fairways. This prospect seemed even more enticing than Mr. Evans’ soda fountain. So, impulsively, he said to Jimmy, “Thanks!”

Jimmy nodded and squeezed into the cab. “We go up this drive a way,” he told the driver, “then we turn off on that little unpaved road up there, and we wind around till we get to the woods. That’s where the house is.”

“I’m glad somebody knows where we’re going,” the truck driver grumbled. He let in his clutch and the van lurched ahead. Djuna and Champ followed on their bike, Champ sneezing as the van’s exhaust fumes tickled his nose.

The unpaved road Jimmy had mentioned proved to be a rough winding track that branched off the main club driveway about two hundred yards from the gate and snaked its tortuous way through the Fieldcrest course until it dead-ended in a wide turnaround before a small attractive house. The house nestled cosily in the patch of oak, beech and mountain ash. It was two stories high, with a steeply sloping roof; there was a flagstone terrace outside the front door; and four steps descended from this terrace to the turnaround where the moving van pulled up. The terrace faced a gap in a stand of trees through which the seventh tee and fairway of the golf course were clearly visible twenty-five yards away.

A gray station wagon was parked under an oak beside the turnaround.

Jimmy jumped down from the truck cab just as a sunburned, tall, rangy man emerged from the house onto the terrace. “Here’s the truck, Pop!” Jimmy called to him.

“Good,” said the man in a deep pleasant voice. “And who’s this, Jimmy?” He waved at Djuna, who had ridden into the turnaround behind the truck and was now standing beside his bike, puffing from his hilly ride.

“That’s my new friend, Djuna,” Jimmy told his father. “Djuna, this is my father.”

“Hello, Mr. Douglas,” Djuna said, with awe. “Jimmy says you’re a real golf professional.”

“That’s right.” Mr. Douglas grinned and stuck out his hand, and Djuna leaned his bike against the terrace wall and went up onto the terrace to shake hands with him. “Why don’t you introduce Djuna to Grandma, Jimmy? She’s inside.”

“I’m
outside!”
said a brisk voice, and a small, bright-eyed old lady came bustling out on the terrace. “Glad to know you, young man,” she said heartily. “I’d say it’s a good sign when Jimmy makes a friend his very first morning at Fieldcrest.”

“Are you Mr. Douglas’s mother?”

“That’s exactly who I am,” she said warmly. “Call me Grandma, the way Jimmy does, if you want to. I suppose you’re a golfer, too?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, we’ll have to fix that!” Grandma said to her tall son. “Did you hear that, Andrew?”

The golf pro, who was propping open the front door of the house while the movers were laying a wide plank from the tailgate of their van to the edge of the terrace, smiled at Djuna. “Grandma has always been so surrounded by golf that she can’t believe there’s anything else for a boy to be interested in,” he said. “I’ll tell you a secret, though. She makes the best chocolate cake in the state!”

The movers opened the back doors of the van and unloaded the first pieces of furniture onto the terrace. “I have to go inside and tell them where to put everything,’ Grandma said to Djuna. “So excuse me, please. As soon as I get my kitchen things settled, I’ll bake one of those cakes for you and Jimmy.”

Djuna said, “Gee, thanks. I
love
chocolate cake!”

Grandma hurried into the house, calling to the movers, who were unloading a large divan, “Mind you don’t bump the walls, now!”

F
OR
more than an hour Jimmy, Djuna and Champ sat on the terrace steps and watched the van being emptied. The muscular movers clumped from basement to attic to the accompaniment of Grandma’s instructions and warnings.

Jimmy said, “I wonder when they’re going to unload my bike. I hope it didn’t fall off the truck or something. It’s English, with hand brakes and thin tires for racing.”

“Boy, that’s the kind of bike that will really go!” Djuna returned politely, although he preferred his own American bike with its coaster brake. “They ought to be bringing it out pretty soon, Jimmy. The van’s almost empty.”

“After my golf clubs, my bike is what I like best,” Jimmy confided. “I didn’t let the movers bring my clubs from Philadelphia, believe me! I brought them in the station wagon when we drove here this morning.”

“I thought you must have,” Djuna said, “because you had a golf club in your hand when I met you at the gate. And the moving van hadn’t got here yet.”

“Hey, you sound like a detective or something,” Jimmy laughed. “Do you like mysteries?”

“Sometimes,” Djuna said, remembering Miss Annie’s parting words about getting mixed up in them. “I guess I just notice things—like your golf club—without realizing it; and then later on, maybe, it means something to me. You know?”

“But out here in the country, nothing much ever happens, does it?”

Djuna grinned at him. “Once or twice we’ve had a burglary or a disappearance or something like that. And once in Philadelphia my friend Socker Furlong, who works for a newspaper there, the
Morning Bugle
, he and I solved a mystery about a haunted house.”

Jimmy said with reverence, “No kidding!” You mean you were like a detective, in a real mystery?”

“Oh, I didn’t do so very much,” Djuna disclaimed modestly.

“Tell me about it.”

“I will some time. But Miss Annie Ellery doesn’t like me to talk about such things. She …” He broke off as two of the movers wrestled a heavy chest of drawers to the rear of the truck, preparing to carry it across the plank to the terrace. “What’s that old chest, Jimmy? It’s different from your other furniture.”

“That’s my chest of drawers that I keep my clothes in. It’s an antique, Grandma says. It used to belong to my great-grandfather, or my great-great-grandfather, or something like that.”

The chest was a massive mahogany piece with a flat top and three drawers. The feet and base were hand-carved in a simple floral pattern. On the drawer fronts and the chest’s top the grain of the wood was beautifully brought out by a rich patina, the result of age and countless polishings.

“It must be pretty heavy,” Djuna said as the movers Wrapped the ends of their sling straps around their wrists and heaved the chest to the truck’s tailgate.

“It is. The old thing weighs about a ton.”

One of the movers, bearing his end of the chest, backed slowly onto the plank and began to inch across toward the terrace. The second mover, bearing the weight of the chest’s other end, walked forward slowly, accommodating his progress to his partner’s.

They had reached the exact center of the yielding plank with their burden when, without warning, it happened.

From the fairway of the golf course only a few yards away came the sudden chuckling staccato call of a pheasant. The piercing sound, coming so unexpectedly, thoroughly startled Djuna and Jimmy where they sat with Champ on the terrace steps. But the pheasant’s call did more than startle Champ; it threw the little Scottie into a frenzied barking, and sent him plunging, as fiercely as any bird dog, toward the source of the exciting challenge.

With his very first lunge Champ snapped his worn leather leash and took off, ears pricked and shaggy hair blowing, for the fairway and the pheasant. Djuna shouted, “Champ! Come back here!” in a vain attempt to control his dog. But Champ, in full cry, darted underneath the sagging plank on which the two movers were struggling with Jimmy’s heavy chest.

With a bundle of black yapping fury streaking by his feet, the mover who was going backward momentarily slackened his grip on the sling strap supporting the chest. The heavy piece of furniture began to tilt to the left. The man scrambled wildly to right the chest and save it from falling off the plank, and his companion lowered the other end of the chest as his contribution to the rescue. But the chest had tilted too far.

Its bottom drawer slid out, hesitated for an instant on the edge of the movers’ plank, then fell to the ground with a splintering crash.

Djuna and Jimmy jumped down the steps and ran over to pick up the drawer.

“Hey!” Jimmy said. “Look, Djuna. The bottom broke.”

“It fell on that brick edging around the driveway, I guess.”

One of the movers looked down from the plank. “Bad damage?” he asked Jimmy.

“Well, a couple of bottom boards broke. Here, we’ll put the drawer back.” Jimmy and Djuna picked up the drawer and slid it back into the chest.

Mr. Douglas had come over to the edge of the terrace at the sound of the drawer’s falling. “The front of the drawer wasn’t even scratched, luckily. And that’s the part that shows. I can fix the bottom of the thing myself with no trouble at all.”

“That’s a break for me.” The mover picked up his end of the chest again, and backed toward the terrace. “I could just as well have dropped the whole chest when that blamed pup let go under this plank.”

Mr. Douglas. smiled at Djuna. “Champ’s a bird-chaser, I see. Will he come back if you call him? I wouldn’t want him to bother the golfers out there on the fairways.”

“Oh, yes, sir. Champ just gets excited sometimes.” Djuna gave a shrill whistle and shouted, “Champ! Come back here!”

Champ came bounding off the fairway, strutting as proudly as if he had routed a lion.

“Good,” said Mr. Douglas. “Jimmy, pick up those two bits of broken board from the drawer and throw them away.”

Jimmy gathered up the splintered pieces and was just heading for the back of the house when a pleasant voice said, “What’s going on over here? I heard a crash. Anything I can do to help?”

The newcomer was a man of medium height with shiny black hair and eyebrows that met over his nose. He was smiling as he addressed Mr. Douglas, tilting his head to look up at the tall golf pro on the terrace above him. He was dressed in two-toned spiked shoes, doeskin slacks, and a short-sleeved yellow knit shirt with a green alligator sewn on it; he had a golf club in one hand. Standing behind him was a short, chunky man of perhaps thirty, carrying a bulky golf bag, obviously the stranger’s caddy.

“My name’s Martin,” the golfer continued smoothly, “and I was just teeing off on number seven tee when I heard the commotion over here.”

Mr. Douglas said, “Oh, we had a little accident with a piece of furniture, that’s all. A couple of boards broken out of the bottom drawer of that old chest there.” He pointed to the chest, which was being eased through the Douglases’ front door by the movers.

Djuna saw the eyes of both Mr. Martin and his caddy follow the pointing finger intently.

“I’m glad it was nothing more than that,” Mr. Martin said. He cast a sharp glance at Djuna, then at Jimmy, who had paused with the broken boards in his hands. “Are these boys your sons?” he asked in a friendly way, making no move to leave.

“Just that one,” Mr. Douglas said, “with the drawer scraps. That’s Jimmy. This young fellow with the dog is Djuna, who lives in Edenboro.”

“Nice to know you, boys,” said Mr. Martin. The caddy stepped forward a pace and muttered something into his ear. “Oh, really?” Martin exclaimed. He turned to Mr. Douglas. “My caddy tells me you’re the new pro at Fieldcrest. Douglas, isn’t it?”

“That’s me, all right,” Jimmy’s father acknowledged. “I start officially on Thursday. I take it you’re a member of Fieldcrest, Mr. Martin?”

“Ah, not exactly. A guest, you might say.” At this point, the caddy said something else to Mr. Martin in an undertone. “Right,” the golfer said briskly. “Joe here says the foursome behind me is ready to tee off seven. See you again, I hope.” And Martin and his caddy walked back toward the fairway.

Djuna looked after them, stirred by a sudden suspicion that something about the two men didn’t ring quite true—that Mr. Martin and his caddy weren’t exactly what they seemed. But he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why he should have got that impression. So with a shrug of impatience at his imaginings, he turned back to Jimmy’s father. “Mr. Douglas, it was my dog’s fault that the chest drawer got broken. I’m awfully sorry, and I’m ashamed of Champ.”

“Don’t give it another thought, Djuna.”

“But I feel responsible, Mr. Douglas. I’d like to pay for the damage to the drawer, or have it repaired for you. Miss Annie says …”

“Pay for it?” Mr. Douglas’s tone was understanding. “Can you afford to go around paying for other people’s accidents, Djuna?”

“Well, no,” Djuna admitted, “but I have this friend in Edenboro who’s a carpenter and cabinet maker, Mr. Boots. If I asked him, he’d fix up the chest drawer as good as new and he wouldn’t charge me anything for it. Will you let me ask him?”

“If it’ll make you feel better, go ahead,” Jimmy’s father said with a laugh.

“And could Jimmy go with me? I’d like him to meet Mr. Boots. He’s an awfully nice man. And Jimmy could meet Miss Annie Ellery, too, while we’re over there.”

“Of course. I see his bike’s been unloaded now. Just tell Jimmy to be back here in time for lunch.”

Jimmy, returned to the terrace from the rear of the house, said, “In time for lunch? Where are we going, Djuna?”

“To see Mr. Boots in Edenboro about fixing your chest drawer. Do you feel like riding over there with me? Your father says it’s okay.”

“Sure,” said Jimmy promptly. “The moving’s almost finished now, anyway.”

After calling goodbye to Grandma, Mr. Douglas, and the movers, the two boys mounted their bikes and rode off. Champ, chastened by Djuna’s open disapproval, sat gloomily in his handlebar basket and chewed on the trailing end of his broken leash.