Chapter 4

Jerry found it a relief not to have to worry about Cathy's snooping, now that he was keeping Mr. Bartlett's money next door in the grandfather clock. The only trouble was that stopping off at the Bullfinches' on his way home often took considerable time. If Mr. Bullfinch had been to an auction--and besides attending a weekly auction in town he now and then went to one in nearby Maryland or Virginia--Jerry always had to be shown what treasure Mr. Bullfinch had acquired. One day it was a worn Oriental rug, another, an incomplete set of fine English porcelain. The prize purchase as far as Jerry was concerned was an old-fashioned phonograph with a horn like a big blue morning glory flower. Jerry's father had a hi-fi which made records sound as if the musicians were right in the same room with you, but Jerry enjoyed the faintly mechanical sound that accompanied music played on the old phonograph. It was like preferring canned peaches to fresh ones. Nice for a change anyway.

Jerry liked to stay at the Bullfinches' long enough to listen to a record or two. He was not so happy about being delayed by Mrs. Bullfinch. She was a great talker. She told Jerry very much more than he cared to know about her family, Mr. Bullfinch's family, and every college town they had lived in while Mr. Bullfinch was teaching. He had, it seemed, been a Latin teacher until the demand for Latin had grown so small that he had thought best to switch to teaching English.

"It was teaching Freshman English that turned his hair gray," said Mrs. Bullfinch. "Having so many students come to college without knowing how to write a grammatical sentence was a great sorrow to him."

Jerry's opinion was that Mr. Bullfinch's hair had turned gray from old age. Mrs. Bullfinch's hair was gray, too, and she hadn't taught Freshman English. Jerry would have asked her what had turned her hair gray if he had not been afraid it would have been too long a story. Not that Jerry disliked Mrs. Bullfinch even though she was long-winded. She was kind and she made good cookies. Jerry usually went home from the Bullfinch house munching an oatmeal cookie.

"You took long enough getting back from the store to have gone and come back twice," scolded Jerry's mother an afternoon when he had stopped to play "The Stars and Stripes Forever" on Mr. Bullfinch's phonograph on his way home from the store. It was Jerry's favorite record, with John Philip Sousa leading his own band. One reason Jerry liked this particular march was because he had shaken bells to it in the rhythm band at school. Next summer Jerry was going to take lessons playing a horn. He had already picked out the instrument he wanted to learn to play, a giant tuba in Kitt's music store downtown. By fall he would be ready to play in the junior high band.

Jerry was thinking of playing in a band and was not paying much attention to his mother's scolding, when she said something that shocked him into alertness.

"Next time I want something from the store in a hurry, I'll send Cathy," she said.

"Honest, next time I'll come home like the wind," Jerry promised. It wouldn't do at all to have Cathy go to the store. Mr. Bartlett knew her. He might ask her if she wanted the groceries charged before she got the money out to pay for them. And good-by then to Jerry's secret charge account. "You said running errands was my chore," he reminded his mother. "You haven't heard me gripe about having to go to the store, have you?"

"Not recently," his mother acknowledged. "It's something to have you so willing. But why can't you come right home with the groceries? Now I was going to make Bavarian cream for dessert tonight but you're too late getting back with the whipping cream."

"I'm sorry." Jerry really was. He was very fond of Bavarian cream.

"Let's see. I have a box of gingerbread mix. And I can make applesauce while it's baking."

"That will be swell," said Jerry.

"Go find Cathy, will you, Jerry? I wouldn't be surprised if you found her somewhere with her nose in a book. Tell her to come and peel the apples for me."

Jerry was glad to get away from his mother just then. It was not hard to find Cathy. She was on the window seat in the living room. Jerry could see the book jacket of the book she was reading. It was _Going Steady_ and had a picture of a boy and a girl gazing fondly at each other while skating. Cathy was not old enough to go steady--Jerry had heard his mother say so--and it made Jerry sick that his twin sister liked to read all that guff about having dates with boys and things like that. Now a horse story, or a dog story--they were good reading. So were books about rockets, planets, dinosaurs, Abraham Lincoln, and ever so many other interesting subjects. Cathy liked to read good books like that, too, Jerry had to acknowledge, but she also had developed an interest in books that had falling in love in them, an interest Jerry not only did not share but despised.

"Lift your big blue eyes from that lousy book," said Jerry in a mocking voice. "Mummy wants you to come out in the kitchen and peel apples."

Cathy put down her book reluctantly. Her eyes were dreamy. She sighed. "I suppose it's a girl's duty to help her mother," she said.

She got to her feet and glided out of the room, walking as nearly as she could like a movie star whose latest picture she had seen at the neighborhood theater the previous Saturday afternoon.

Jerry picked up _Going Steady_ and examined the cover more closely. He threw it down. "Cathy must have rocks in her head to like a book like that," he thought.

The clock on the living room mantel struck the half hour. Five-thirty. Jerry had an hour to kill before time for dinner. What was there to do? A wave of irritation against Cathy swept over him. She ought to be sharing all this work and worry about the charge account. A year ago he could have confided in her safely. She could have been counted on both to keep the secret and to help him. They always stuck together, he and Cathy, until she had changed. Now half the time she acted as if she were against him. Look at the way she had snooped around the attic like a bum detective. If she had found the money she would have very likely said it was her duty to tell on him. Jerry almost never could know in advance how she was going to act. Almost he did not like her any more.

Jerry went down to the recreation room and turned on the television.

"Send two box tops and twenty-five cents and you will receive--"

"Nuts!" cried Jerry, turning it off. He didn't want to listen to kid stuff. It seemed long ago that he had sent box tops and money away for secret rings and pasteboard telescopes.

He went to the bookshelves and took down _Black Beauty_. He had read it before but he didn't mind reading it again. He liked the book because he felt it showed just how a horse thought. He read until he was called to dinner.

Two days later Jerry ran into real trouble. It was nearly six and he had just come home from playing ball, when his mother said he had barely time to run to the store for a pound of cheddar cheese before the store closed. And the smallest she had was a five-dollar bill. Jerry took his bike and determined to get back in a hurry. No stopping to listen to a record this time, even if Mr. Bullfinch had bought some new old ones Jerry would like to hear.

Not more than ten minutes after leaving the house, Jerry was ringing the Bullfinch doorbell. He would rush in, get his change, and be home in a jiffy. But nobody answered the bell. Jerry rang again, with his finger pressed on the bell hard. He could hear the bell ring inside. Still nobody came to the door.

"But they're always home this time of day," Jerry worried. He decided it was no use to keep on ringing the bell. "They should have told me they weren't going to be home," he thought, yet he really knew there was no reason why they should. But he had to get in to change his five-dollar bill. He just had to.

"They'll probably be here any minute now," Jerry tried to reassure himself. "It's past time for Mrs. Bullfinch to be getting dinner." But what if the Bullfinches had been invited out to dinner? Jerry groaned at the thought. What could he do?

"I have to get in." That was the thought that kept repeating itself in his mind, the thought that sent him around the house testing every window he could reach to see if he could find one unlocked. "They told me to come in any time, didn't they?" Jerry argued with himself.

At last Jerry found a cellar window unlocked. He pushed and it swung in over an empty coalbin. The Bullfinches had an oil furnace but Jerry could see by the coal dust that there had once been coal in that bin.

"I'll be bound to get my pants dirty but I guess it will brush off."

Jerry was half in and half out of the window before he realized that he could not go on with it. He could not make himself break in the Bullfinch house. He needed to get in. He kept telling himself that probably the Bullfinches would not mind a bit, yet he still couldn't bring himself to going in a neighbor's house like a burglar.

"Don't be a sissy. What are you scared of? Nobody's going to find out. And if they did. I'm not going to hurt a thing."

It was no use. Jerry could not argue himself into even innocent housebreaking. As he was swinging his legs off the windowsill, he heard music, familiar music, "The Stars and Stripes Forever." While he had been fussing and fretting at the cellar window, the Bullfinches must have come home and Mr. Bullfinch had put on the Sousa record.

Jerry carefully pulled the cellar window shut and ran to the front door again. Again he pushed the bell. Again he listened. No footsteps coming toward the door. And the music had stopped. But Jerry had heard it. He knew he had heard it. Somebody must be there. Then why didn't somebody come to let him in? Giving up ringing the bell, Jerry knocked. He even kicked the door. No response to that either. "If they're there they've decided not to let me in," Jerry reasoned.

"But they like me. They wouldn't do a thing like that. I'll go and see if their car is in the garage and then I'll know for sure if they're home. I might not have heard the car come in while I was on the other side of the house."

Jerry hurried out to the garage. The garage door was open. No car. It was obvious that the Bullfinches were still not home.

"But I could have sworn I heard somebody inside playing 'The Stars and Stripes Forever.'" Jerry wondered if he had imagined he had heard the band music.

"Nobody's home," said a small voice. And there was Andy just outside the Bullfinch yard.

"Don't you suppose I know it?" barked Jerry.

Andy ran off as a car came up the street and stopped with a screech of brakes in front of the Bullfinch house. Here were Mr. and Mrs. Bullfinch home at last.

They were sorry to have kept Jerry waiting for them to get home. Mr. Bullfinch showed Jerry where he kept an extra key behind the mailbox, so if Jerry needed to get in again when they were not home, he could.

"It isn't every boy I would trust," said Mr. Bullfinch.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Bullfinch had been to an auction in Georgetown. They had bought a pair of hand-wrought andirons shaped like little lighthouses, but Jerry did not stop to admire them. As soon as he had changed the five-dollar bill he was off like a shot.

Mrs. Martin had the electric mixer going but she could scold above the noise. "Now you're home with the cheese too late for me to make cheese sauce for the broccoli. I'm at the end of my patience. Where on earth have you been? Why didn't you come straight home from the store?"

"He stops off on his way home to see the Bullfinches," said Cathy, getting ice cubes out of the refrigerator to put in the water pitcher. "I've seen him go in."

"Tattletale!" snarled Jerry.

"Just saying where you've seen a person isn't tattling, is it, Mother?"

"You shoot off your mouth too much," accused Jerry.

"Well, what do you _do_ over at the Bullfinches'?"

"None of your business."

Mrs. Martin shut off the mixer. "I wish you two could be in the same room without starting a cat and dog fight. Go get Andy out of the bathroom, Jerry. He came home looking as if he'd been in a coal mine and I sent him in to take a shower. Help him get dressed in a hurry. Dinner is about ready to dish up."

Jerry was glad his mother had her mind partly on dinner or she might have insisted on knowing what he did over at the Bullfinches'. He sighed. It was all getting too complicated. He certainly would be thankful when the month of the charge account was over.

The Martins were eating dessert--it was lemon pudding with meringue on top, one of Jerry's favorite desserts--when the doorbell rang.

"I'll go," said Jerry, pushing back his chair.

It was Mr. Bullfinch at the door. And the way he looked at Jerry made him feel all shriveled up inside. Mr. Bullfinch looked taller to Jerry than usual. His gray eyes were like steel. He had the tobacco pouch in his hand.

"Mrs. Bullfinch and I don't want you to keep this at our house any longer," he said coldly. "I'm unpleasantly surprised at you, Jerry. I didn't size you up as a boy who would break into a neighbor's house. It's not that I mind having you go in. It's the sneaky way you went in through the cellar window."

"But I didn't--"

"Oh, yes, you did. There was coal dust on the rug in my den. Though that I might not have noticed if you hadn't broken the record."

"What record? I tell you I didn't break any record."

"I would be willing to overlook it if you'd told me when I got home. You might have known I would put two and two together. I'm not sure it's not my duty to report you to the police. I won't this time, for the sake of your parents if nothing more. And you won't find the key to the house behind the mailbox. I gave permission to use the key to a boy I thought I could trust."

Jerry rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes as Mr. Bullfinch went down the steps and the walk. Never had he felt so unjustly accused. Nor so helpless about defending himself. Mr. Bullfinch was so sure Jerry had been in the house and didn't dare say so because of the broken record. Record! Now Jerry was sure he had not been imagining hearing music while he had been sitting on the sill of the cellar window. Somebody _had_ been in there playing "The Stars and Stripes Forever" on the phonograph. But who? And where had he gone to so quickly before the Bullfinches got home? It was almost enough to make Jerry believe in spirits.

On his way back to the dining room, Jerry slipped the tobacco pouch under the cushion of a big chair in the living room. No time for now to find a safer hiding place.

"Who was it?" asked Mr. Martin, as Jerry took his place at the table again.

"Mr. Bullfinch. He returned something I'd left at his house." Jerry's eyes were on his plate.

"What did you leave over there?"

Count on Cathy to want to know all of his business. "Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies," Jerry told her.

"I can whistle," Andy suddenly boasted. "I can whistle real good. Want to hear me?"

Without waiting for the wishes of his family to be expressed, Andy pursed up his lips and whistled. He still was not much of a whistler, yet from the shrill piping emerged a faint resemblance to a few bars of "The Stars and Stripes Forever."

A great light dawned on Jerry. Andy at the scene of the crime. Coal dust on Andy. And now the clincher, his whistling "The Stars and Stripes Forever." It had been Andy in the Bullfinch house. Jerry was as sure of it as of the nose on his face. "While I was out looking in the garage he would have just had time to get out of the house," Jerry thought. "I'll make him tell. It's not fair for me to be blamed for something he did. Mr. Bullfinch won't be hard on Andy. He'll think he's too little to know better."

"I guess we won't have any more whistling at the dinner table," Mr. Martin reproved Andy gently.

Andy looked as well-scrubbed and innocent as a perfect angel. Or a nearly perfect angel, Jerry thought. Jerry remembered how Andy would shut up like a clam about something he knew he should not have done.

"He can be like a can of sardines. You can't get a thing out of him unless you have a key," thought Jerry. And he wondered how he was going to pry the truth out of his little brother.

7

Working on Andy

Jerry wanted to shake the truth out of Andy before the little boy's bedtime. But Andy followed his mother and Cathy to the kitchen after dinner and conversed with them all the time they were doing the dinner dishes. He had a long story about how a boy had been so bad that morning in kindergarten that the teacher made him sit in a chair all the time the others were playing a hopping and singing game.

"I could have hopped the highest. I'm a good hopper. Not a grasshopper, just a hopper. Want to see me hop?"

"So it was you who were the bad boy. What did you do that was naughty?" asked his mother.

"Nothing. I didn't say it was me. Anyway, Tommy Jenks joggled my arm or I wouldn't have thrown a crayon at him. I didn't mean to hit him in the eye. Lots of times I throw things and they don't hit anybody."

"And that's the truth," remarked Jerry, who had stalked Andy to the kitchen. Andy's confession encouraged Jerry. If he owned up so easy about throwing a crayon, it would be a cinch to get him to acknowledge that he had been inside the Bullfinch house before dinner. "Come on up to my room," Jerry invited him. "I've got something to show you."

But it seemed that Andy didn't want to be shown anything just then. Usually Jerry tried to keep Andy out of his room instead of inviting him in. "He's not so dumb," thought Jerry.

Andy proved very hard to corner. Jerry could not get him alone until Andy was in the bathroom, brushing his teeth before going to bed. Then Andy tried to get rid of him.

"It's not polite to come in the bathroom when somebody's here. Mummy said so."

"Listen," said Jerry. "You listen to me, Andy Martin."

"What you want?"

"I want you to own up to breaking that record over at the Bullfinch house."

"What record?" Andy's voice was slightly muffled by toothpaste.

"You know as well as I do. 'The Stars and Stripes Forever.'"

Andy spit in the sink. There was a trace of toothpaste at the left corner of his mouth. His eyes were innocent. A bit puzzled maybe but unclouded by guilt. "I can't read the names on records."

"But you were whistling it at dinner."

Andy hung up his toothbrush. He tried to get past Jerry but Jerry grabbed him. It was like holding a small wild animal but Jerry held on. "Nobody's going to be hard on you, Andy. I _know_ you were in the Bullfinch house playing that record."

"Nobody knows where I am but me," said Andy.

"How did you get all that coal dust on you? You got it crawling in the window into the Bullfinch coalbin, didn't you?"

"I have a mineral collection that has a piece of coal in it. Some of the black must have rubbed off on me. That must have been it. I'm a very dirty boy. Every speck of dirt sticks to me. Mummy said so. She says I'm as dirty as a pig. Is a pig dirtier than a skunk, Jerry?"

Jerry said he thought that skunks weren't usually dirty.

"Remember that time we were out in the car and Daddy said he smelled skunk? Phew! It was an awful smell."

"Andy," called his mother from the foot of the stairs. "You get to bed. Double quick now."

"Jerry won't let me."

"Stop bothering your little brother, Jerry. Come on down. I'm sure you have homework to do."

Andy slid out of Jerry's hold and ran down the hall. "You can't catch me," he yelled.

Jerry didn't try. Sometimes Andy was more slippery than an eel, he thought dolefully. Getting him to confess that he had been in the Bullfinch house would have to wait till tomorrow.

The next morning Jerry woke up feeling heavy in spirit. He still had the secret of the charge account on his mind and now there was the added weight of Mr. Bullfinch's disappointment in him. Jerry had not realized how much he had valued Mr. Bullfinch's approval until he had lost it.

"I'll just have to make Andy tell," thought Jerry, as he dressed in a hurry after his mother had called him twice.

When Jerry came downstairs, his father was just leaving for work. Jerry heard the front door close. Cathy was alone in the dining room eating her cereal. She looked so cheerful Jerry could hardly stand it.

"Don't sit down, you might hurt your head," she greeted him. Ridiculous remarks were popular with the sixth grade right now and she was trying out one she had heard recently.

"Think that's funny? It stinks."

"I was just trying to be pleasant. Mummy especially asked me to try to be pleasant to you even when you were aggravating. And you certainly _are_ aggravating."

"Shut up!"

"Well, you needn't take my head off."

"You might be better-looking if I could."

"Jerry! Cathy!" Mrs. Martin came in from the kitchen with a platter of scrambled eggs and bacon. "I'm glad your father left before he had to hear such bickering. He wouldn't stand for it, and neither will I. Either be civil to each other or don't speak."

"Suits me," said Jerry. "I'll be tickled to death if Cathy stops ya-ka-ta-yaking."

"He's just awful." Cathy's blue eyes appealed to her mother for sympathy.

"Want me to wipe away your tears?" jibed her twin brother.

"Eat your bacon and eggs. I trust and hope you'll both feel better when you've had your breakfast," said their mother. "I don't know what's gotten into you two lately. Always at each other and you used to be as close to each other as the two sides of a pair of shears."

"Bet I always had the sharpest edge," mumbled Jerry.

"That's enough from you, young man."

When his mother spoke in that tone of voice, Jerry thought it best to keep still and tend to what he was doing. He took a large mouthful of scrambled eggs. They were good scrambled eggs. His mother sure knew how to fix them.

Mrs. Martin looked at Andy's vacant chair. "Oh, dear, that child's not down yet. He dawdles so getting dressed."

"He's coming," said Jerry, as they heard a thump that was Andy jumping down the last two steps of the front stairs.

In came Andy, an imaginary pistol in each hand. "Bang!" he cried, shooting his mother. "Bang! Bang! You're all dead. Aren't there any pancakes?"

"Come eat your cereal. I'm keeping your eggs and bacon hot for you out in the kitchen," said his mother. "Tuck your napkin under your chin. I don't want you to spill milk on your clean shirt. You should be thankful you have such a good breakfast. Plenty of children would be glad to have less."

"I'm not plenty of children. I'm me." Andy looked up and met Jerry's accusing gaze with a wide smile. Andy never remembered yesterday's mischief. Each day was brand-new to Andy.

"It will be harder than ever to get him to own up to what he did over at the Bullfinches'," thought Jerry.

Andy knew the way to school and usually Jerry walked to school with boys his own age while Andy poked along alone or with one of his fellow kindergartners. But today when Andy had kissed his mother good-by and had come out the back door, Jerry was waiting for him.

"I've got to hurry. I don't want to be late," said Andy, whose lateness had seldom worried him before.

"We've got loads of time. Now, look here, Andy. I'm in a jam and you're the only one who can help me."

Being talked to as his big brother's equal pleased Andy. "What you want me to do?"

Jerry described vividly how unjustly Mr. Bullfinch had blamed him for getting into his house and breaking the Sousa record. "He's awfully down on me now," said Jerry. "Do you think it's fair for me to be blamed for something I didn't do?"

"Just tell him somebody else must have done it," suggested Andy.

"I did but he didn't believe me."

"Then he's a bad, bad man."