Poppy Ott and the stuttering parrot

I guess you know who I am. My name is Jerry Todd. I have written a lot of books about myself. I’m writing this book, too. But it’s mostly about another boy. A new kid. I’ll tell...

As I say, old Cap’n Tinkertop had brought home a wad of money from his brother’s funeral. The dead sailor had been buried in Cedarburg. The week of the funeral a valuable black...

We were crazy to begin work on the mystery that had bobbed up in front of us. But we had no chance to do any regular detecting that morning. For we had to scour the town in sear...

Well, there wasn’t any more sleep for us _that_ night. First of all we got the old detective into the Cap’n’s bed. Then we sent a hurry-up call for Doc Leland. But old Doc was o...

I’ve got a pretty good head on me. In solving mysteries I can think things out pretty good. Still there are times when my mind goes jumpy. If a mystery takes a sudden surprising...

Poppy came along about nine o’clock. And I noticed right away that he had been in the creek. I didn’t say anything about it, though. I thought it might not be polite for me to l...

When dinner was over I got the wheelbarrow and started out. It was a mile to the river. And I can’t say that I was very crazy over my job. But I didn’t back down on account of t...

As I say, old Caleb Obed and the Cap’n are pretty thick. What one knows the other knows. They’re that way. They jangle like a couple of silly kids in playing checkers. But in ot...

Red and Peg were in a pickle. There was no doubt about that. Their parrot fight having ended in the escape of the black parrot--the mystery parrot, as we now called it--they kne...

“Not all the afternoon. He came to the back door about three o’clock and asked me if he could mow the lawn. I was surprised at first, for that’s your job. Then I thought maybe y...

We were sore at Bill Hadley now. And I must confess, too, that I was a little bit sore at Dad. This thing of locking up Poppy’s father was all wrong, we said--only, of course, n...

“My aunt’s got an awful temper,” says he. “She’s a regular old rip-snorter when she gets going. And she’ll get Ma on her side and between them they’ll salivate me.”

Red bragged afterwards that he whacked the burglar six times with his croquet mallet before the housebreaker got up and scooted into the night. But I can hardly swallow that her...

At the breakfast table the following morning Dad joked me, in his usual jolly way, about my skinned nose, inquiring, chummy-like, if I had been in a scrap with the Stricker gang...

Well, we had something to think about now. While we didn’t share the Cap’n’s crazy belief that his old friend had been “voodooed” by the escaped death parrot, it was a fact that...

I told them my story. They were excited, I want to tell you. Poppy pressed me with eager questions. Had I heard anybody in the store?--had I noticed if any doors or windows were...

The black parrot’s crashing escape from the Cap’n’s bedroom had left us dumb and dizzy. In planning our night’s work we hadn’t expected any such developments as this. In fact, w...

Coming out of the cellar, we found everything in the runaway’s quarters in apple-pie order. To one side was a sort of provision shelf made of two long coffin cases piled one on...

Coming to the dark cemetery, I paused to get my wind, my eyes anxiously seeking the path that I had to take among the tombstones in order to reach my chum. How weird the white s...

I was told then that I would be all right again in a few days, but I wasn’t to do any more swimming in the creek. For the sluggish stream was full of poison, Doc said.