The Yellow Cat Mystery (15 page)

“Look! Look!” Rilla shouted as she pressed through the people around Djuna. “He will
not
be all right. His head is bleeding! He—he—oh, look at the hole in the floor! Oh—oh—ooh
look! !”

Everyone who could crowded around the hole cut in the floor. They stared in shocked and horrified silence at the man who was sprawled in the vault below.

It was Mr. Hamilton who finally broke the silence. “What has happened here, young man?” he shouted at Djuna. “What have you been doing?”

“I—I haven’t been doing anything, Mr. Hamilton,” Djuna said wearily, “except trying to stop Dr. Hammer from robbing your bank. I couldn’t stop him, but I think the money he stole is safe.”

“Money!”
Mr. Hamilton said wonderingly.
“What
money? Where is it? What have you done with it, young man?” He was trying desperately to pull himself together and act in the way the cashier of a busy bank is supposed to act.

“It’s in the bag Rilla has there,” Djuna said, and he couldn’t help snickering as he looked at Socker Furlong. “Dr. Hammer gave it to her to take over to Captain Andy. Dr. Hammer was going to get it from Captain Andy later on and fly to South America with it. Rilla thought there were just shells in the bag and Captain Andy wouldn’t have had any idea what was in it, because Dr. Hammer said he was going to lock it.”

“Why, why, I took Rilla over to Captain Andy’s in my car,” Mr. Hamilton said with a stunned voice. Then his eyes bugged out as he added, “D-do you mean to say that Dr. Hammer used
me
to deliver the money he stole from our vault?”

“That’s the way it looks, podner,” Socker Furlong said, and when he began to laugh everyone in the room began to laugh with him at Mr. Hamilton’s confused embarrassment.

But their laughter stopped abruptly as the Chief of Police of Dolphin Beach, Ray Daley, looked into the hole again and cried, “That man is still alive down there.” Before he started down the ladder he gave orders to the two officers with him. “Hennessey,” he said, “get the police surgeon over here, and a detail to guard the outside of the bank. Yates, see that no one else comes into Dr. Hammer’s offices. Mr. Hamilton, you’d better go down and unlock the bank and the door of the vault, so the doctor can get in. And,” he added dryly as he looked at the pigskin bag Rilla still held. “Rilla, you’d better give me that bag for safekeeping. If it’s full of money, I’ll take it down to the vault.”

“No!” Rilla said, and she stamped her foot. “They’re my shells!”

“Rilla!”
her father barked at her, and she was so startled that she handed the bag to the Chief of Police.

“Prob’ly the key is in Dr. Hammer’s pocket,” Djuna said to the Chief. The Chief of Police nodded and started down the ladder with the bag in one hand.

“Look here, Chief,” Mr. Williams called after him. “When the police surgeon arrives, send him up here to look at Djuna before he bothers with that bandit down there.”

Socker Furlong had already started to look around the office for something with which to bandage the bruise under Djuna’s ear, and now he hurried back with a bottle of antiseptic fluid and a ready-made gauze bandage which he had found in old Dr. Pulham’s medicine chest. He gently swabbed the cut and then put on the bandage, while Tommy Williams kneeled beside him and gazed anxiously at his chum.

“Does it hurt much, Djuna?” he asked.

“Oh, kind of,” Djuna admitted, but he managed a feeble smile. “Did Champ get back all right?”

“He’s okay,” Tommy said, eagerly. “He was awful lame and tired when we found him last night, but he’s all right today.”

Djuna drew a deep breath. “Then
everything’s
all right,” he said. “I was awful worried about him!”

“Sure,” said Tommy, “but what about
you?
Weren’t you scared?”

“Scared!”
Djuna exclaimed. He shuddered, but managed to grin weakly. “I was so scared I almost hoped to die!”

“What did they do to you?” Tommy asked breathlessly.

“They took me up the Waterway in Pedro’s boat,” Djuna replied, “and into a kind of mangrove swamp where there was an old shack on an island—at least I think it was an island—”

A broad-shouldered young man in uniform, who had been listening intently, nudged Socker in the ribs and said:

“Hey, Socker, aren’t you going to introduce us?”

“Oh, excuse me,” said Socker hastily. “Djuna, this is my pal Dan Forbes, of the Border Patrol. Hell be proud to shake hands with you.”

They shook hands, and Forbes said:

“You’re right, Djuna, that was an island. We caught up with Pedro this morning, when he was trying to get through one of the canals into the Everglades. He took us back to the island where you were, but of course you had gone, long before we got there. Then Pedro broke down and told us how you had convinced him that Dr. Hammer was going to rob the bank, so we came here, just as fast as we could.”

“I’m awful glad he told you,” said Djuna. “I was afraid no one would find me until the bank opened on Monday morning! Say, would it be all right if Tommy and I went down to the corner to the Snack Bar for a minute? I haven’t had anything to eat since yesterday noon, except a couple of crackers.”

“Well take care of that as soon as the doctor has a look at you, kid,” said Socker, and from his place beside Djuna he looked up at Dan Forbes with an expression that asked: “What did I tell you? Isn’t he a wonder?” and the giant Border Patrol officer nodded silently in complete agreement.

“What did they do to you, Djuna, on the island?” Tommy asked eagerly.

“Well, they just threw me down on the floor of the shack and went on talking as if I wasn’t there,” said Djuna. “They’d tied me up, but they hadn’t plugged up my ears, and I could hear everything they said. From what Dr. Hammer said to Pedro, you could see that Pedro didn’t know anything at all about Dr. Hammer’s plan to rob the bank, so I was pretty sure that if I could get Pedro mad enough at Dr. Hammer he would let me go. And that’s exactly what happened. But after I had told him, early this morning, and he untied me and went off with his boat, I guess I fainted, or something, because when I woke up it was three o’clock in the afternoon, and—well, of course I should have gone to the police first, as soon as I got here, but there wasn’t a minute to lose and I was so tired that I couldn’t think, I guess. I’m sorry.”

“Yes,” said Socker, jokingly. “If you had been really up to snuff, you would probably have rounded up all the crooks in Florida, instead of just the one down there in the vault…. And by the way, now that you’re able to sit up and take nourishment—or at least ask for it—how’s about telling us how that guy happens to be lying down there?”

Djuna grinned, and explained how Pedro had told him about Dr. Hammer’s passport and how he had used it to force Dr. Hammer to go down the ladder to regain it.

Put I guess he would have got it and climbed up again and got away to some foreign country,” Djuna said, “if Tootler—that’s Mrs. Pulham’s yellow cat—hadn’t been here. When I started to push Dr. Hammer’s bowling ball over to that hole in the floor, Tootler thought it was a game, and he helped push. So Dr. Hammer is still down there, and so is his passport. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”

“You did plenty!” said Dan Forbes, and there was no mistaking the admiration in his voice.

“Look!” Socker Furlong said suddenly, and anyone could tell that he was more than a little excited. “You say this guy had his own bowling ball?”

“Yes,” said Bobby Herrick. “He bowls down in the alley where I’m a pin-boy. He’s been there half the time bowling or practicing. He’s crazy about bowling.”

“Oh, brother!”
Socker said, and he clapped a hand to his forehead. He looked at Dan Forbes and said, “One will get you ten that it’s Cross-eye Costello!”

“What do you mean, Socker?” Knowing Socker, Djuna was excited now, too.

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” Socker said, and he disappeared down the ladder into the vault.

A few minutes later he stuck his head up through the hole and said excitedly, “It’s Cross-eye Costello, all right. He’s a lone-wolf safe cracker, Djuna. He robbed a bank in a suburb of my own fair city about six months ago and completely disappeared. Old man Canavan, he’s my managing editor, if you remember, Djuna—”

“Oh, sure,” Djuna said. “I remember.”

“Well, old man Canavan didn’t have anyone else to pick on, so he picked on the police because they couldn’t find Cross-eye,” Socker explained. “He was driving the police nuts when one of our readers sent Canavan a tip that Cross-eye was in Florida, along with a lot of other crooks who have migrated down here. Canavan sent me down to check on it. He—”

“Is that why Dr. Hammer wears dark glasses?” Tommy asked. “Because he’s cross-eyed?”

“That’s why, my little interrogation point,” Socker said with a grin.

“Before I came down here I found out that Cross-eye was a bowling fiend. I learned, with a little legwork, that he had had his own bowling ball made. And with a little more legwork I found the company who made the ball, and found that Costello had registered it in his own name. I got the registration number and I’ve been haunting the bowling alleys in Miami trying to find the ball, if I couldn’t find Costello. The number on the ball you dropped on Dr. Hammer, Djuna, is the same number under which Costello’s ball is registered with the company who made it!” Socker shook his head and grinned at Djuna as he added, “Once again old man Canavan owes you a scoop, Hawkshaw!”

“Have they opened the bag Dr. Hammer gave me to take over to Captain Andy?” Rilla interrupted to say with her high, shrill voice.

“They have,” Socker said, looking a little alarmed at Rilla’s strident voice. “They found the key in Costello’s pocket.”

“Were the shells I sold him there?” she asked.

“No,” said Socker. “It was packed with treasure—pieces of eight, just as Djuna suspected.”

“How much?” Tommy asked with wide eyes.

“Over sixty thousand smackers,” Socker said. “A very pretty little haul, if he hadn’t run into Djuna.”

“Sixty thousand dollars!”
Rilla cried. “Then I really helped capture him, didn’t I? Will I get a reward?”

“Horsumpphat!” Tommy answered her, as the police surgeon pushed his way into the office and dropped down beside Djuna.

“Is that guy down there able to talk, Doc?” asked Forbes.

“He’s conscious,” the surgeon answered, “but he’s still dazed. I’ve ordered the ambulance to take him to the hospital, under heavy guard, of course. He’s as good as in the penitentiary, right now. All right, son, nice going!”

I
T
was the night before Christmas. The varicolored electric light bulbs at the base of the palm trees around the yacht basin at Dolphin Beach were blazing with holiday cheer. And, among the lights on the lavishly decorated pine tree that grew in front of the Yachtel, there was a loud-speaker that was singing Christmas carols.

In the basin, the
Amaryllis
rocked gently in the swell from another cruiser speeding up the Inland Waterway. Haunting music floated across the basin and the palm trees added their own soft lullaby as the whispering trade winds made harmony through their fronds.

In the spotless main cabin of the
Amaryllis
thirteen people sat at the trestle table that had been set up there and was covered with immaculate linen and silver that gleamed brightly in the shadows cast by the light of green and red candles. A great bowl of yellow flowers—amaryllis—adorned the center of the table.

Against the bulkhead behind Mr. Hamilton, who sat at the head of the table, there were three small wooden cages entwined with gay ribbons. They sat on pedestals about a foot apart and each one had been very carefully made by Captain Andy in his carpenter shop. In the first and third cages Champ and Bonzo were lying on their stomachs with their long black jaws cradled between their stubby forefeet. They were both pretending to be asleep, but their shoe-button eyes were quite alert behind the long shaggy hair that drooped over them. They were lying so that they faced each other and they were both carefully watching the middle cage. In the middle cage Mrs. Pulham’s big yellow cat, Tootler, was lying in the same position, only he was facing Mr. Hamilton’s back, and he was disdainfully ignoring the black dogs on each side of him. The three animals, lying mute as they were, looked as though they had been carved on the steps of a public library. And all three of them were keeping a wary eye on the thirteen people assembled, who were jabbering like mad in front of them.

In a corner of the cabin, lights twinkled merrily on a tiny Christmas tree and around the base myriad packages nestled, each carefully wrapped and tied with red ribbons. Everyone there was filled with that overwhelming feeling of good cheer and thankfulness that comes to one and all at Christmas time.

The one exception seemed to be Rilla Hamilton, who sat on one side of the table between Djuna and Billy Nielson. She kept crying in her shrill, petulant voice, “Well, why don’t we begin?” Mrs. Hamilton, from the other end of the trestle table, was doing her best to keep Rilla quiet. Djuna and Tommy Williams were sitting on each side of Bobby Herrick and little Billy Nielson; and Mrs. Pulham and Mrs. Williams were at Mr. Hamilton’s right and left. Chuck Nielson was sitting beside Mrs. Williams so that he could keep an eye on his son Billy; and at the other end of the table Ray Daley, Chief of Police of Dolphin Beach, and Captain Andy were on each side of Mrs. Hamilton, with Mr. Williams beside Captain Andy. Next to Mr. Williams and directly across the table from Rilla, Djuna and Billy, there were three empty chairs. Everyone there knew that Socker Furlong and Dan Forbes of the Border Patrol were going to sit in two of the empty chairs but no one could imagine who was going to occupy the other one.

Then Mr. Hamilton rose and he had a very happy smile on his lips and in his eyes. He held up his hand and everyone stopped jabbering as though he had waved a magic wand. The next instant Socker Furlong and Dan Forbes, dressed in his Border Patrol uniform, appeared at the bottom of the short companionway behind Mrs. Hamilton. Between them was a tiny little woman with white hair, a merry face, and an irresistible twinkle in the blue eyes behind the spectacles she wore.