Chapter 35 Doctor Dolittle's Zoo by Hugh Lofting
OUR ARREST
It was true. In the thrill and excitement of our nocturnal adventure none of us had noticed whether the Doctor had come away from the Manor bareheaded or with his hat on. But now that we came to think of it we could all recall that he had worn it on the way there. Next, he himself remembered clearly that in getting into the secret cupboard he had laid it aside on a chair because it was in the way.
“Dear me!” he sighed, shaking his head. “That's the kind of a burglar I am—leave my hat behind me, the one thing that everybody in the neighborhood would recognize as mine.... Hah! It would be funny if it wasn't so serious. Well, more than ever depends on the white mouse now. Dear, dear! Anyhow,” he added as Dab-Dab appeared at the door, “let's not meet our troubles half way. Breakfast ready, Dab-Dab?”
“No,” said the housekeeper, coming forward into the room and lowering her voice. “But there are three men walking up the garden path. One is carrying your hat. And one is a policeman.”
At that Matthew sprang up and in a twinkling was half out of the garden window. Then, apparently changing his mind, he stopped.
“No, Doctor,” said he, coming back into the room, “I ain't goin' to skedaddle and leave you to face the music. I bin in jail before. I'll tell 'em I done it.”
“Look here, Matthew,” said John Dolittle firmly: “I want you to do one thing only throughout the rest of this business, and that is keep your mouth closed tight—unless I ask you to talk. Stubbins, will you please let them in?”
I went and opened the door. I knew all three men by sight. One was Sidney Throgmorton; the other his lodge keeper; and the third our local police sergeant. The Sergeant's manner was distinctly apologetic. He knew John Dolittle and this duty was distasteful to him. Throgmorton's behavior, on the other hand, was offensive from the start. He brushed by me before I had invited him to come in and walked straight to the Doctor's study.
“Ah!” he cried. “We have the whole lot here, Sergeant—the same party exactly that came pretending to put the fire out when they wanted to learn their way around the house they meant later to rob. Put them all under arrest and bring them at once to the Manor.”
The Sergeant, while he was somewhat impressed by Throgmorton's position in the community, knew what his duties were without being told. He addressed himself to John Dolittle.
“This gentleman has brought a charge, Doctor,” he said. “A valuable diamond was stolen from his house last night and your hat was found on the premises this morning. I shall have to ask you to come up to the Manor, please.”
We were all glad that the early hour gave us practically empty streets to walk through. For certainly our party with the Sergeant for escort would have set gossip running all over Puddleby if there had been many abroad to see us.
Hardly a word was said the whole way by any one except Throgmorton, to whose indignant fumings no one seemed to want to make any reply.
At the house the old man-servant let us in and we went straight upstairs to the master's bedroom. Here Throgmorton at once plunged into a dramatic recital, for the sergeant's benefit, of how he had arisen at his usual hour of six and had at once noticed that his stud box had been moved from the place where he had left it the night before. He opened it, he said, and found one stud missing. After the servants had been summoned and a search made of the house, the Doctor's hat had been found in a room on the top floor. This, and the fact that we had all behaved in a suspicious manner the night of the fire, at once convicted us in his minds as the culprits.
“Just a minute,” said the Doctor. “Is the box now in the exact place where you found it when you got up?”
“Yes,” said Throgmorton.
“Well, would you show us, please, just how you went to the dressing-table and opened it?”
“Certainly,” said Throgmorton. “I walked from the bed, like this, and first threw back the curtains of the window, so. Then one glance at the dressing-table told me something was wrong. I stepped up to it—so—lifted the box and opened it. Like this.... What the——!”
At that last exclamation of astonishment we all four breathed a secret sigh of relief. For it told us that the white mouse had done his work. I shall never forget Throgmorton's face as he stood there, staring into the box he had taken up to demonstrate with. In it there were not three studs as he had expected, but the complete set of four.
The Sergeant looked over his shoulder.
“There's been some mistake, Sir, hasn't there?” said he quietly.
“There's b-b-b-been some trickery,” cried Throgmorton, spluttering. Indeed his discomfited indignation was understandable enough in the circumstances. He would much sooner have got John Dolittle into jail than have recovered his stud. And this small quiet man seemed to have a knack for making a fool of him at the most dramatic moments.
“If you didn't do it,” he snarled, swinging round on the Doctor and pointing a fat accusing finger at him, “how did your hat come to be in my house?”
“I think,” said the Doctor, “it would be best if I gave you an answer to that question in private.”
“No,” snapped Throgmorton. “If it's the truth there's no harm in the police sergeant hearing it.”
“As you wish,” said the Doctor. “But I thought you would prefer it that way. It has to do with a will whose existence we discovered by accident.”
Astonishment, fear, hatred flitted across Throgmorton's face in quick succession during the short moment that passed before he answered.
“All right,” he said sullenly at last. “We will go down to the library.”
In a silent, very thoughtful procession we returned down the several flights of stairs. At the tail of it came Matthew and myself.
“Thank goodness for the white mouse, Tommy!” he whispered in my ear. “But I don't like trusting that fellow alone with the Doctor.”
“Don't worry,” I answered. “We'll be outside the door. He'll hardly dare to start any violence with the Sergeant here as a witness. His game's up.”
I heard the big grandfather clock in the hall strike as the Doctor and Throgmorton went into the library and closed the door behind them. And it was exactly three quarters of an hour before they came out.
Throgmorton was very white, but quite quiet. He immediately addressed himself to the policeman.
“The charge is withdrawn, Sergeant,” he said. “A mistake—for which I tender my apologies to—er—all concerned. I'm sorry I got you up here so early when there was no need.”
Again in silence we trailed across the wide carpeted hall and out into the gravel court.
At the gate we bade farewell to the Sergeant, whose direction was a different one from ours. I noticed that the Doctor made no comment upon the matter to him.
When he was well out of earshot Matthew asked eagerly:
“But, Doctor, how did you explain your hat's being there?”
“I didn't,” said John Dolittle. “But I told him that all four of us were convinced he lit that fire himself. And after that he was much more anxious that I should keep my mouth shut than that I should do any explaining. He has got sort of scared of me now, I imagine. And he probably thinks that I can prove he lit the fire. Which I can't. But it is just as well that he should think so, because I feel sure he did. He is going back to Australia now.”
“To Australia!” cried Matthew. “Why?”
“Well, he has to earn a living, you see,” said the Doctor. “The will left not only the hundred thousand pounds to the prevention of cruelty to animals, but when I came to read it through I found it left the rest to other charities.”
When the outcome of the Moorsden Manor mystery became generally known in the Dolittle Zoo, jubilation and rejoicing broke forth and lasted two whole days. Accustomed as it was to celebration, Animal Town admitted it had never seen the like before. The white mouse's genius for parade organization surpassed itself; and he was elected to a second term of office as mayor on the strength of it.
He felt since animals in general had by the Doctor's victory come into such a considerable fortune, that this occasion should be made a larger and more important one than any in the history of the zoo. So for the second day's celebrations he got the Doctor's permission to send out an invitation to all the creatures of the neighborhood who wished to come. An enormous amount of preparation was made in expectation of a large attendance. The whole zoo was most gaily decorated, with ribbons and bunting by day and with lanterns and fireworks by night. Great quantities of all sorts of things to eat and drink were bought and set out at several buffets in the enclosure.
But the crowd that actually did come was even much, much vaster than had been anticipated. All the regular members of the Rat and Mouse Club, the Rabbits' Apartment House, the Home for Cross-bred Dogs, the Badgers' Tavern, the Squirrels' Hotel and the Foxes' Meeting House had to set to and do duty as hosts. So did Gub-Gub, the pushmi-pullyu, Chee-Chee, Too-Too, Dab-Dab and Polynesia. And even with this extra help it was only by working like bees that they managed to feed and entertain that enormous crowd of visitors.
As for the Doctor, Matthew, Bumpo and me, we were kept busy running between the house and the town for more, and still more, refreshments, as the ever-increasing attendance did away with what we had already. Too-Too the accountant told me afterwards that according to his books we had bought more than a wagon-load of lettuce, three hundred-weights of corn and bird seed, close to a ton of bones and meat, four large cheeses and two dozen loaves—besides a great lot of delicacies in smaller quantity.
Within the old bowling-green it was almost impossible to move along the lawns, so thronged were they with hedgehogs, moles, squirrels, stoats, rats, badgers, mice, voles, otters, hares and what not. At frequent intervals cheers for the Doctor, old Mr. Throgmorton or his association for the prevention of cruelty to animals would break out in some corner and be rapidly taken up all over the vast assembly. Every tree and shrub in the zoo enclosure—and throughout the whole of the Doctor's garden too—was just packed and laden with perching birds of all kinds and sizes, from wrens to herons. The din of their chatter was constant and terrific.
Before the day was over the grass of the bowling-green was all worn away by the continuous passing of those millions of feet. And after the guests had departed it took the members of the Dolittle Zoo another whole day to clear away the scraps and put the place in order.
THE END