Chapter Ten
Today Pyle and I baby-sat for the Lodges. Vince would have come, but he claimed he had papers to finish going through and a date with Bunny. He met some girl named Flo last night at the Congo Club. I don't know whether he's planning to leave Bunny for her or not. Frankly, I think he should stay with Bunny.
Anyway, to get back to the baby-sitting job, it was dusk when Pyle and I arrived at the Lodge mansion.
Samantha (or "Sam," as she wants to be called) answered the door. "Hi! Boy, am I glad to see you two! Come on in!" She gestured at the living room to make her point. "Louis had started peeling off the old woodwork," was the startling announcement. "It's his latest hobby!"
Louis was over in a corner of the living room, frantically trying to pull a tightly nailed piece of woodwork off the wall. I hurried over. "Well, that's one hobby that had better stop!" I said firmly, gently prying Louis away from the wall.
"That's right," Pyle agreed. "You could even get splinters from woodwork. Or get hurt with nails. Or . . ."
"Pyle! Don't scare the kids!" I exclaimed.
Pyle nodded. "Oh. Right."
"Where's Denise?" I asked.
"She's setting traps," Sam replied.
"Traps! What in the world for?" Pyle exclaimed.
"To catch any prowlers who try to break in! Just last night we heard about this group of burglars who stake out houses in our area and then break in. They're slippery, and the police have never been able to catch them yet. According to Mr. Fritz's calculations, our house is the next target!" Sam concluded.
"Mr. Fritz's calculations?" I repeated.
"Uh huh. He's the smartest cat in the world," Sam stated. "Why don' t you ask him a question? He's especially good in math, geography, and history."
"Shazam! Really?" Pyle exclaimed. "Well, I'd love to see what he knows. It's fascinating, how intelligent animals are."
At that minute, the blue-and-white Persian made an entrance. "Meow," he greeted everyone present.
Just out of curiosity, I asked him a question. "Mr. Fritz, who discovered America?"
Mr. Fritz ejected his claws and tapped out something on the wall.
I was bowled over. "He knows Morse code! He actually tapped out ‘Christopher Columbus'!"
"Shazam! You girls had better make sure that criminals don't hear about Mr. Fritz. They'd love to get their hands on a marvelous cat like him!"
Sam nodded. "They sure would. That's another reason for setting up traps."
Louis was bored with all the talk about smart cats and Morse code and Christopher Columbus, and he quickly toddled off to the kitchen.
"What's he going to do?" I asked, gesturing towards the baby.
"I don't know," Sam responded. "He might do any number of things."
"Such as . . .?"
"Such as pouring oatmeal or rice out of the cupboard," Sam said, as nonchalantly as if she'd been asked what color her hair was.
"Oh, mercy!" Pyle exclaimed. "We'd better go get him!"
So we all headed for the kitchen. When we arrived, Louis was on top of the stove range, attempting to climb to the bottom shelf of the cupboard. I gently brought him down.
"Actually, Louis, it's not such a great idea to climb on the cupboard. Or the stove range, for that matter," I told him.
"Corporal Boyle's right," Pyle agreed. "Why, you could get burned terribly if the range was on. I read this story once . . ."
"Pyle! Not in front of the kids—you'll scare them!"
Pyle's eyes grew wide. "Why, I'm sorry, Corporal. I'd never want to scare the kids."
Sam glanced out the kitchen door. "Denise sure is taking a long time to set up a few lousy traps," she remarked.
Pyle and I exchanged uneasy looks.
"Maybe one of us had better go find her," Pyle finally suggested.
"I'll go, Pyle," I replied. "You'd better stay with Sam and Louis."
"If she's still setting up traps, Corporal, tell her to set some up in the basement," Sam called as I headed up the stairs.
Diary of Cpl. Charles Boyle
October 19
I didn't see that ghost lady again, but just as I opened the door to a small family room (what a family room was doing on the fourth floor was beyond me) a bucket fell down from the ceiling. I narrowly missed getting struck.
"What in the world??" I exclaimed.
A young face peeked out from behind the door. "Oops. I'm sorry, Corporal. I thought you were a prowler."
I sighed. "Well, Denise, I'm not a prowler. You've been gone a long time and I came looking for you."
Denise restrung the bucket and we came down the stairs. "Well, it takes a while to set up crook-proof traps. And most are different, too."
"Really?"
"Uh huh," Denise said, growing enthusiastic about the subject. "See, the one in that room back there is supposed to fall on the criminals so they'll take a nap and we can get them arrested."
"Ingenious," I congratulated her. "But I'm glad I didn't find out personally how effective it is."
We arrived back on the first floor, where Louis was scribbling happily on a piece of paper and Sam was reading a (can you believe it?) Nancy Drew mystery.
Pyle was vacuuming the floor. "Oh, hi, Corporal Boyle and Denise! I was just vacuuming. Louis put some paper in Mr. Lodge's paper shredder and then threw it in the air like confetti."
"No-no," Louis announced, giggling.
"That's right, Louis," I replied. "It's a big no-no."
"What happened to Denise, anyway?" Pyle and Sam wanted to know.
"She was still setting up some fool-proof criminal traps," I told him. "Matter of fact, I was almost knocked out cold by one."
"Shazam! Denise, whatever kind of traps do you set up?" Pyle scolded.
"Kinds to trap criminals with," Denise said airily, waving her hands about. She explained about her sure-fire way to catch crooks.
"Well," Pyle said after she'd finished, "sounds like you and Sam have it all planned out. But you'd better warn us of the locations of your traps, 'cause we sure don't want to get hit with one!"
Sam laughed. "I'll draw a map of our house for you. The Xs will mark the spot where traps are." And she set to work.
"Oh, mercy!" Pyle cried. "Whatever's happening?"
"I think we've got a prowler caught," Denise deduced.
"I'll go check," Sam volunteered.
"Don't do that!" I exclaimed. "You might get kidnapped!"
So I went up to check. And the girls had caught somebody. He was lying facedown on the floor next to a bucket. Nearby, a window was open with the cold autumn air floating in.
"Pyle, you'd better call the police!" I yelled down the stairs.
"Alright." I could hear Pyle talking to a police officer on the phone several minutes later.
"Did you hear that, Sam?" Denise said, excited. "We've actually caught a crook!"
"Well, those traps work every time," Sam replied.
I decided I'd better keep watch on the crook incase he came to and barged downstairs.
In a few minutes two police officers arrived. In fact, they were Hansen and Kelly.
"Alright, where's the prowler?" Hansen asked.
"He's upstairs taking a nap," Denise stated proudly. "Sam and I caught him ourselves with a trap we set up."
The two policemen came upstairs. "Here he is," I pointed.
Kelly turned him over. "Why, this is Ike ‘Artful Dodger' Malconi! Hansen, we've been trying to catch him for months!" he said to his partner.
"That's right," Hansen agreed. Then he turned to me. "This guy is nicknamed ‘Artful Dodger' because he continually evades the police. His specialty is robbing houses, whether they belong to the rich and famous or the poor and lowly. Those kids you and that other Marine are tending must be pretty smart to come up with the idea of setting up traps to catch burglars."
"Yes, they're smart ones alright," I said, thinking of Sam reading a Nancy Drew mystery.
"Are you sure no other burglars came in?" Kelly asked.
"Well, actually, I'm not," I admitted. "This is a large house and some more might have come in on another floor."
"I'd better go look," Hansen decided, leaving Kelly with the prisoner.
Kelly stared at me thoughtfully. "Haven't we met before?"
"I think so," I responded.
"Oh, yes!" Kelly exclaimed. "You were the one who called about your friend disappearing!"
"Yeah, that's me," I said.
"And the Marine downstairs is the one who did the disappearing act," Kelly continued. He paused. "Wasn't there another Marine?"
"There is—Sergeant Carter—but he didn't come with us," I answered.
Hansen returned shortly after. "Well, I checked every room and every closet, but I couldn't find anyone else," he reported. "We'd better get this bird over to the jail."
I followed them downstairs. As they carried Ike Malconi out the door, Hansen turned to Sam and Denise. "Good work, girls! Keep it up!"
"But don't do anything dangerous," Kelly added.
"Golly, sure is something, isn't it?" Pyle mused. "All those strange things happening."
"Yeah, it's strange alright," I agreed.
As we drove on, I couldn't help thinking that I'd seen Malconi before. Where was it? Maybe somewhere in the old Crawford mansion? Maybe. He could have even been the guy who knocked me out. Coming to think of it, it did seem like I'd caught a brief glimpse of a guy just before I lost consciousness, but I couldn't remember whether it had looked like Malconi or not. Maybe I'd remember soon. If he was that guy (or some other guy vaguely connected with our mystery) he could be a vital source of information . . . if he'd talk.
