The Mystery on the Mississippi Read online

  “Laugh if you want to,” Captain Martin said. “I long ago learned not to laugh at any legend I heard about the river. I’ll tell you one thing: Roustabouts along the river give Old One-Eye a wide berth. When they get all tuckered out, they drop tobacco in the water for the old garfish. They like it when he lights up his pipe. The smoke gets thicker than fog, and boats have to tie up. Then they get a rest from totin’ bales of cotton. See?”

  “No, sir, I don’t,” Trixie said solemnly. “But to get back to that man who jumped overboard—”

  “Forget that for the present, Trixie. I’m going on watch now. Come up to the pilothouse for a clear view of the river. It’s a beautiful morning.”

  As the Catfish Princess faithfully prodded its long tow toward Cairo, Captain Martin, sensing the restlessness of his visitors, talked.

  “The river’s in my blood. It’s been in my blood since I was a baby, for I was born in sight of the Mississippi. I was a lad of ten, running errands on the levee in St. Louis, when I made up my mind that life on the river was for me. Steamboats carried freight and passengers in those days. I got a job watching the roof of the pilothouse on the Crazy Nell, because sparks from the engine could set a boat afire. I was scared to death on my first job—scared I wouldn’t make good.

  “I was young. I didn’t touch a hundred pounds on the scales. I tried to lift the chains and heavy ropes, but I couldn’t make it. I couldn’t even lift a bag of grain. I kept at it, though, and when I was fifteen, I was toting big loads and getting ten cents an hour. That wasn’t much, but I had my keep on the boat. On shore, I could get dinner on the waterfront for twenty cents, and a movie cost a nickel. I could outfit myself in used clothes for a dollar, in a store on the wharf, and pick up a pair of shoes for a quarter.”

  “New shoes?” Mart wondered.

  “Oh, no! Used shoes, but with a lot of wear still in ’em. Well, after that I worked as a deckhand, still on the Crazy Nell. Then I got to be a steersman.”

  “Then you became a pilot?” Trixie asked.

  “No. It took me three years before I got a pilot’s license. By that time, I knew every inch of the river, every bend, every cliff, the ghost trunk of every sycamore—you ought to see one of them shine out in the searchlight on a foggy night. I could even shake hands with swamp frogs and call ’em by name. I was one pretty chesty kid when I got my first license. It was up to me, then, to steer my boat safely through the channel into Memphis port. I was a scared kid then, too. Now I’ve also got licenses on the Ohio, the Missouri, the Tennessee, and every tributary that flows into the near three-thousand-mile length of the Mississippi—the Ouachita, Bayou Mason, Yazoo, Sunflower.... When the diesel engines came on, I was whipped for a while. Now I’m all right, but I still like the churn of the paddle wheels and the lonesome call of a steamboat whistle on a winter night.”

  In their cabin, an hour or so before they were to leave the boat at Cairo, Trixie told Honey, “Of course, we know, both of us, that this business on board the Catfish Princess ties in with Pierre Lontard.”

  “Sure it does,” Honey agreed, “but how?”

  “I’m not sure. He was on board. That I know, even if Captain Martin doesn’t think anyone jumped overboard. He was after my purse and those papers. How he came to be on board, I don’t know. Dan swears someone jumped over him and ran across the deck. There are only three staterooms in our corridor—ours and the boys’ and the Aguileras’.”

  “That’s right. And that tray Mr. Aguilera was carrying still sounds suspicious to me.”

  “Another thing, too, Honey. Why did Mrs. Aguilera seem so interested in my purse when I stumbled out there on the barge?”

  “Well, you can forget any idea you may have that she made you stumble. Didn’t she risk her own life to pull you back? No, I think she’s perfectly all right.

  She’s been so kind and friendly. Maybe her husband’s a queer one, but I don’t even have any reason to say that. Captain Martin never questioned their explanation of the tray.”

  “You must remember that Captain Martin doesn’t know anything at all about the Lontard business. I was going to tell him, till I remembered how much fun he made of our detective agency.”

  “He didn’t mean anything by that. Most grownups don’t take us seriously till they know of the good work we’ve done—you, especially.”

  “Maybe so. Something else bothers me. I wish Mrs. Aguilera hadn’t heard me give the Bob-White whistle.”

  “Well, it really is supposed to be a secret. If that bobwhite hadn’t whistled from a nearby field on shore...” Honey mused.

  “I know. And when I heard it, I just answered, without thinking. After I’d done it, I felt sort of silly and thought I had to say something. I wish I weren’t so gabby.”

  “You’re not,” Honey said warmly. “You’re just friendly. Everybody loves you for it. As for worrying about Mrs. Aguilera—I wish you wouldn’t. I think I know people pretty well, and I’d trust her with anything. She’s so motherly. Now the boys are calling us. Hear them?”

  “Yes. We must be getting pretty close to Cairo.

  And, Honey, you may think Mrs. Aguilera is motherly and all that, but she’s not one bit like my mom. Say, I kind of hate to get to the end of our trip, don’t you?”

  “Kind of,” Honey said slowly.

  Trixie opened the bag, shoved her pajamas and slippers inside, and added a kit with her brush, comb, and lipstick. “I know just what you mean. When Pierre Lontard jumped overboard—and I’d stake my life that’s who it was—then our work on board this towboat seemed to be finished.”

  She stopped packing, looked intently at Honey, and continued, “This may be the biggest case we’ve ever worked on—if we can prove those papers in my purse have something to do with the space program, and if we can follow up that Pierre Lontard. Jeepers, Honey, think what it will mean to our agency. Do you have anything to put in this bag?”

  “A few things.” Honey paused a moment. “Aren’t the engines slowing down?”

  “Yes. We must be at Cairo.”

  “Then we must hurry. Captain Martin said he’d have a harbor boat come out to take us to shore. They aren’t going up to the wharf with the Princess. All the barges in this tow are headed for New Orleans.”

  Trixie helped Honey add her possessions to the bag. She checked her purse to make sure the papers were safe. “It doesn’t seem as though we’ve been here more than a few hours, and think of the things that have happened! I love the Catfish Princess. I can’t hear the engines at all now. Let’s find the boys.”

  Politely and cordially, the Bob-Whites said goodbye to Captain Martin and all the other officers and crew members who had been so gracious to them on their cruise.

  “You all come and visit us again. Now, see that you do!” Captain Martin told them. “When you get off the tug, go through Fort Defiance State Park to the motel, where you’re supposed to meet the car. You can’t miss the motel. It’s right on the main street. Good-bye, now.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Aguilera stood watching, and Paul and Deena waved wistfully from the boat’s rail as the water widened between the Catfish Princess and the chugging tug.

  Bob-White Luck • 7

  I WONDER WHICH way we’re supposed to go now,” Jim said when the group reached the river’s edge. He picked up one of the bags and motioned for Brian to take the other one.

  “Straight through that park.” Mart pointed confidently. “I’m sure the Heartland Motel is not far from the edge of it; just a few blocks, maybe.”

  “Then we won’t need a taxi.” Trixie took the scarf from around her sandy curls and stuffed it in her sweater pocket. “It’s hot here, isn’t it? It was so cool on the river. I hated to leave the Catfish Princess. ”

  “Me, too,” Honey said. “We didn’t have time to know Deena at all.”

  “Or Paul,” Mart added. “Do you want Dan and me to carry the bags now?”

  Brian shook his head. Jim said, “No, thanks,” and he swung the small s
uitcase he was carrying into his other hand.

  After a few minutes of walking in silence, Jim called out, “We’re practically there now. See the sign up ahead? I wonder why they call the motel ‘Heartland.’ ”

  “Because it’s in the Middle West... heart of the land,” Mart said pompously.

  Dan sighed. “I wish the time would come when you wouldn’t know all the answers, Mart.”

  “Can I help it if I’m just naturally bright? What’s bothering you, Dan? Your face is as long as a sad alligator’s.”

  “It’s nothing. It’s just that I can’t help wondering about that sneaky Lontard. I wonder if it really was Lontard who stowed away. I wonder where he’s going to turn up next.”

  “Captain Martin didn’t think there was a stowaway on board,” Mart said bluntly.

  Dan rubbed his head ruefully. “He would have if someone had practically knocked his block off making for the rail.”

  “Maybe he drowned,” Mart suggested cheerfully.

  Trixie shuddered.“Oh, I hope not. Mart, you’re bloodthirsty. I’ve been thinking about the same thing as Dan has, though. Of course Pierre Lontard swam to shore, and we haven’t seen the last of him. Since we couldn’t go all the way to New Orleans, I’ll be glad when we get back to St. Louis. Even if Captain Martin didn’t think a man jumped overboard, I know it was a man Honey and I saw swimming. It wasn’t any buoy. That man was Pierre Lontard, too. He’ll show up again. You just watch and see if he doesn’t.”

  “I hope I watch and see the car we’re to meet here,” Brian said as he put down the suitcase he was carrying and brushed the perspiration from his forehead. “Do you think we should go inside the motel?”

  “Of course,” Jim answered. “Whoever’s going to meet us wouldn’t be waiting around for us at the door. They’d be inside someplace. Here, Dan, you take this bag now, and I’ll go and look.” Jim held the door open for the girls.

  “We’ll wait over here in the lobby for you,” Trixie told him. “I hope we can get started back right away.” The Bob-Whites found seats facing the street. “That park we walked through was pretty,” Trixie said. “Some of the places we passed, though, looked pretty dilapidated. I guess that’s because there aren’t any steamboats anymore, and the town has probably moved away from the river. It’s kind of sad, isn’t it, Honey, for that to have happened?”

  “Yes. It would be wonderful to have seen Cairo when steamboats were all over the two rivers, the Ohio and the Mississippi. Don’t you remember that glamorous old movie of Edna Ferber’s Showboat that we watched on TV? I used to think it would be neat to be born on the Cotton Blossom, as Magnolia Hawks was. And when I saw the movie, I thought Gaylord Ravenal was so handsome.” Honey sighed blissfully.

  “Gosh! Girls!” Mart threw one leg over an arm of the lounge chair, where he was sprawled. “Give actors some black, flashing eyes and shirts with ruffles on ’em, and girls don’t care what’s inside of ’em.”

  “That’s not right, Mart Belden, and you know it,” Honey said indignantly. “Men were handsome in those days, and you’ll have to admit it.”

  “Why do you suppose the places around here have Egyptian names?” Brian changed the subject calmly. He couldn’t stand it when the Bob-Whites argued. “We passed Thebes on the way down, and that’s where Captain Hawks of your Cotton Blossom lived, Honey. Now we’re in Cairo, only they call it ‘Kayroh’ instead of ‘Kyeroh.’ How come all this Egyptian stuff around here?”

  “Well, you see, it was this way—”

  “Not again, Mart! You don’t know the answer again!” Dan hid his face in his hands.

  “I do. When I wonder about anything, I try to find the answer. Sometimes you just keep wondering. They call this area ‘Egypt’ because of all the rich delta land around here—like the delta of the Nile River. And it’s because of all the corn, too, that they raise in this rich soil.”

  “Okay, Mart. That figures. Thanks. Just to keep the record straight, though, I don’t spend all my time wondering.”

  “Dan sure doesn’t!” Trixie said emphatically. “If you’d just give someone else credit once in a while, Mart, you’d realize you don’t come up with all the answers. If Dan hadn’t done anything but wonder about those jewel thieves in New York, I’d have been found somewhere with my throat slit.”

  “What the heck are you talking about, Trixie?” Jim had joined the group and stood listening. “You all sound as though you’ve been racketing about something. I’ll give you something to bother about. The clerk at the desk said that no one has asked for any of us. He’s sort of a wise guy.”

  “In what way?” Trixie asked.

  “There are a lot of people around that desk. See them? I guess he was nervous. I asked him if anyone had inquired about someone named Wheeler. He said, ‘I don’t think so. I don’t remember. People ask me a dozen questions a minute. Now, if you’d asked about someone called Schimmelpennick—I’d remember a name like that.’ Of course, everybody laughed.”

  “That made him think he was a big shot, I guess,” Mart said. “Did you tell him off?”

  “In a way, I guess I did. I told him I thought Schimmelpennick was an honorable name, but I was inquiring about Wheeler.”

  “Thereby making an enemy of him,” Mart declared. “Deflate a windbag, and you have.... What did you say, Brian?”

  “I said it’s obvious that the guy who was supposed to pick us up hasn’t arrived,” Brian said calmly. “It won’t hurt us to wait here for a while. I like to watch traffic out there in the street. First thing you know, the car will drive up and park right in front of our eyes.”

  It didn’t, though. No car drove up. No one inquired at the desk for anyone named Wheeler.

  After the Bob-Whites had waited for two hours, Jim decided on action. “I’ll go and place a call for Dad. We must have misunderstood him, or whoever was supposed to come after us must have had trouble on the way.”

  “We’ll all go over to the booth with you,” Mart said. “You have to place the call through that girl at the switchboard.”

  The Bob-Whites waited in a semicircle while Jim talked to the girl with headphones. They saw him hesitate, turn around to leave, then go back to talk to her again.

  “Say, what do you know?” he told the waiting group. “Come over here by the window so no one can hear. There’s skulduggery going on, for sure.”

  “Oh, Jim, what is it?” Trixie begged in a worried voice. “Is it something that Lontard man has done?”

  “Looks like it, Trixie. It looks very much like it. When I asked the operator to put through the call to Dad in St. Louis, she told me it was the second call she’d put through to that number in the past few hours. She said a man telephoned Dad when she first came on duty at seven o’clock this morning.”

  Trixie put her hand to her mouth in dismay. “Did you find out what he told your father?”

  “Not at first. I quizzed her about it, and she got sort of huffy... said she never listens in. I told her I was positive she never did intentionally. When I went on to explain why it was so important to us, she opened up a little.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Just this, Trix: She heard the man tell Dad that we had decided not to stop at Cairo but to stay on the Catfish Princess and go on to Memphis instead; that the captain of our boat had talked to shore on the radiophone and said that we wanted this man to call Dad collect and tell him of our change in plans.” Trixie shook her head in bewilderment. “Now, why would he do a thing like that?”

  “To give him a chance to snatch your purse,” Dan said positively. “When that cops-and-robbers act he worked up on the towboat failed, he must have thought up another one.”

  “Heavens! These papers must really be important to him!” Trixie opened her purse, slid the sheets out, examined and rearranged them, then closed the snap and tightened her hold. “I’m certain they’re plans —figures concerning the space program. Somebody must be willing to pay a lot of money for the information we�
�ve got.”

  In her excitement, Trixie had raised her voice. Honey, aware of the fact that the desk clerk had left his post and passed very near them, held her finger to her lips to warn her friend.

  “Yes, you’d better pipe down,” Dan warned. “I’m beginning to think you’re in over your head, Trixie. That Lontard looks to me like a bad one. He probably has his eye on us at this very minute.”

  Jim whirled around toward the motel desk. “If that’s so, Dan, and I guess you’re probably right, then we’d better get out of here. I’m going to jam that call through to Dad in a hurry, tell him what’s happened, and see what he wants us to do. He may already have started a car on a wild-goose chase to Memphis.” He hurried off to the telephone.

  “Oh, I do hope Jim gets hold of Daddy right away,” Honey said in a subdued, troubled voice. “We really don’t know which way to turn, do we?”

  When Jim returned, the Bob-Whites became even more worried. “I couldn’t reach Dad,” Jim informed them. “He went someplace with Mr. Brandio, and no one seems to know when they’ll be back or how to reach them.”

  “That’s just swell, isn’t it?” Mart said. “Where do we go from here?”

  “We try to find some other way of getting back to St. Louis—and in a hurry,” Brian said.

  “What will we use for money?” Mart asked realistically.

  “Everybody empty out his pockets and see how much we have altogether,” Jim ordered.

  When the small bills and silver were counted, the amount came to thirty dollars and a few cents.

  “I don’t know why we don’t carry more money with us,” Honey wailed. “That won’t be enough to pay all our fares on the train or bus.”

  “We don’t carry more money because we never need it in Sleepyside,” Jim reminded her. “Everybody knows us there. When we need anything, we can charge it.”