_ CHAPTER XXV. ANTICS OF A TALKING MACHINE
TOOTSIE BEDELLE, in the days following the opening of the summer season at Gates Harbor, was considerably mystified by the actions of the family phonograph. Now while a talking machine is admittedly endowed with one human attribute, it is supposed to be a talking and not a walking machine. Yet unless it were endowed with motive power, how explain the sudden oddities of its appearances and disappearances?
The evening after the first hop at the club, Tootsie broke upon the family dinner table with the frantic announcement:
"The phonograph's gone! Stolen!"
"Stolen!" said Skippy incredulously.
"Stolen!" said Mr. Bedelle with his eat 'em alive expression.
"Why it was there this morning," said Clara.
"Well, it's not there now and it wasn't there this afternoon!"
The entire Bedelle family broke for the parlor. There in its accustomed corner was the phonograph. When quiet had been restored Tootsie again announced.
"It was
not there this afternoon!"
"Who was there, Tootsie dear?" said Clara maliciously.
Tootsie's reply woke up Mr. Bedelle, who considered himself a nervous dyspeptic and, being already in a state of antidigestive excitation, glowered and imposed silence on the entire younger generation.
"Well, it's
my phonograph, anyhow!" said Tootsie sulkily, and dinner over she hastened to the parlor. The phonograph was still there. She went to bed a little shaken in her convictions. But the next morning, returning early from the beach, she happened to glance into the parlor. The phonograph had disappeared again! Tootsie could not believe her eyes. She advanced cautiously and felt with both hands, but her groping fingers encountered nothing but thin air. Then she searched behind the curtains, moved the furniture and opened all the hall closets. There was no question about it this time, the phonograph certainly had vanished from the house!
Half an hour later, as Mr. and Mrs. Bedelle were sauntering back from the morning plunge, the frantic figure of Miss Tootsie came flying down the road.
"Good gracious, Tootsie! What
has happened?" exclaimed Mrs. Bedelle, trying to remember whether the dioxygen and the bandages had been unpacked.
"It's gone!"
"Gone? What, who, where?"
"The phonograph's gone again."
"Now Tootsie," said Mr. Bedelle, elevating a cautionary finger.
"Don't agitate yourself, John," said Mrs. Bedelle.
"Father, it is gone! I saw it!"
"Saw it?"
"I mean I saw it wasn't there and I searched everywhere. I saw it with my own eyes," said Tootsie incoherently, and between rage and tears she repeated her account in a manner to be completely unintelligible. Mr. Bedelle was a theorist afflicted with indigestion. He carefully selected his diet with due regard for starch values and never ate a raw tomato without first carefully removing the seeds. He was likewise particularly careful never to sit down to a process of digestion in an agitated mood. His irritation therefore considerably aggravated by his daughter's case of nerves, he hastened on to the house.
"I looked everywhere, Daddy, honest I did and it--" Suddenly Tootsie stopped and her jaw fell. There in its accustomed place, reposing on the table, was the phonograph.
"Tootsie!" said Mr. Bedelle in puffy rage.
"Yes, Daddy."
"Go to that machine. Put your hand on it. Feel it. Is it or is it not a phonograph?"
"It is."
"Is it yours?"
"Yes, Daddy."
"Write out fifty times 'I must not get excited before mealtime,' Don't leave the house until you have done it."
"Very well, Daddy."
Mr. Bedelle went to his easy-chair on the back porch and began to fan himself. Tootsie, staring at the phonograph, began seriously to consider. Her suspicions were aroused and her first suspicion was the instinctive one of sister to sister.
"Good gracious! I believe the child thinks I did it," said Clara, at luncheon, after Tootsie's stare had remained in fixed accusation upon her.
"Not a word! Not another word about that phonograph," said Mr. Bedelle wrathfully, "If this whole family has got to be upset every time I sit down to the table, I will have the whole thing made into mincemeat."
"Well, it's my phonograph," said Tootsie sullenly, and immediately departed for her room--by request.
For two days the phonograph remained quiescent, but about this time Miss Clara Bedelle announced that some one had been tampering with her figure.
"Your figure, Clara? How shocking!" said the older brother.
"My dressmaker's figure, and what's more, some one," said Clara, looking hard at Tootsie, "
Some one has been in my closet and disturbed my dresses!"
"How
very strange," said Tootsie sarcastically. "Are you sure it isn't your imagination--child?"
"And I know who did it."
"Perhaps you know, too, who stole my phonograph," said Tootsie angrily.
The next afternoon the phonograph departed for four hours. Tootsie searched her sister's bedroom and then called Skippy into consultation.
"It's Clara all right," said Skippy. "We must set a watch on her."
"She has a mean and spiteful nature. She does it just to get me punished."
"Leave it to me."
"What will you do?"
"Say, what's it worth?"
"What do you mean?"
"What do I get if I catch her red hot?"
"I'll give a dollar," said Tootsie recklessly.
"That's too much," said Skippy, with an appearance of generosity. "I'll sleuth for a quarter a day. Cash in advance. But my orders go. Savvy?"
Tootsie paid down the fee, and following instructions departed next morning with the family for the beach, while Skippy, returning across lots, wriggled on his stomach over the lawn and slipped into the house by the cellar window. For three days Tootsie duly paid out her quarter and received the most comforting of reports. On the fourth day, however, a discussion arose.
"'Course if you sit there, no one's goin' to come," she said, fingering her last quarter. "I know it's Clara by the look in her eyes."
"Sit there! What kind of a sleuth do you think I am?" he said indignantly. "Look here. See that phonograph--see anything queer about it? Pick it up."
Instantly the grating sounds of a dinner bell were heard and a horrible crash.
"Lookout! Don't drop it, you chump! See that string that passes down the back of the wall and into the closet?" said Skippy, proudly exhibiting a patent alarm which he had constructed with the aid of a delicately balanced dishpan. "I'm in the dining-room under the table. Well what?"
"Heavens! If Daddy ever sets that off!"
"He won't. You bet, I'll see to that," said Skippy hastily. "Well what? Do I get another quarter?"
There was a slight mental indecision after which the quarter came reluctantly to the detective. Tootsie went thoughtfully down to the beach. The new method did redound to the stability of the phonograph, but was Skippy really working as rapidly as he could?
"I should have offered a dollar and no more," said Tootsie to herself. "If this keeps up I'll be broke in a week."
So distressing was this outlook, that her mind refused to be diverted, and after a brief hesitation she returned to the house, intent on a more satisfactory financial arrangement. Now Tootsie was as fond of mystery stories as Skippy himself, and so with due regard to etiquette she dodged down the hedge, slunk behind the lilacs, and noiselessly let herself into the dining-room window. Then, cautiously, on hands and knees, she approached the mysteries of the dining-room table, behind the red cloth of which Skippy was to be waiting.
"Hist! It's me," she said in a wary whisper. Then, having consumed ten minutes in moving six feet serpent fashion across the creaky floor, she gained the table. Skippy was not there. She rose violently, bumping her head, scrambled out and rushed into the parlor. The phonograph likewise had disappeared.
"He's on the trail at last," she thought excitedly. "Hurray!"
But at that precise moment the strangest of strange, uncanny sounds was heard. Tootsie stood stock still and listened with a pumping heart. There was no question about it, the phonograph was gone, yet faintly, like a sinking moan, she heard, she was sure she heard, the thin, tinny sounds of a Sousa two-step. The room was dim, the house deserted. For one brief moment she stood panic-stricken, poised for flight. Then she shook her head angrily.
"Fiddlesticks, phonographs don't have ghosts!"
And listening more intently, she gradually located the familiar strains as coming from the distant carriage house. In a fever of expectancy Tootsie flew across the lawns and gained the open door. Above her the phonograph was pumping out the thrilling measures of the latest two-step, but what puzzled her immediately were the scuffling, shifting sounds, like a scurry of rats, which accompanied it. Then a suspicion of the truth came to her and she tiptoed up the stairs. On the open floor Skippy with his arms about a strange shape was painfully treading in and out of a maze which, with a bench, a barrel and two chairs, he had arranged to visualize the perils of the ballroom.
"Thief!"
Skippy started, shied into the bench and went over backwards while the partner of his arms, escaping, rolled over towards Tootsie, discovering under Clara's best organdie dress the net-work of wire which made up the missing dressmaker's form! _