3 : Little Bo-Peep is Lost
THE TWO CARS stopped, the wing of the sedan barely an
inch from the gleaming paintwork of the fine old Rolls-
Royce. Worthington descended from the driver’s seat with
speed but dignity, and confronted the small, sharp-eyed
man who came charging out of the front seat of the sedan.
“Why don’t you watch where you’re going, you big
ape?” the small man shouted at him. Worthington drew
himself up to his full six feet two.
“My man,” he said. “I was leaving the premises at a
moderate speed. You were racing in here recklessly. If
you had damaged this car, it would have gone hard with
you.”
Worthington sounded as if be meant every word he
said, and the smaller man, dressed in new, flashy clothing,
fell back a step.
“Watch yourself!” he growled. “I don’t take lip from
servants.”
“Do not,” Worthington said, “call me a servant. Or I
shall chastise you properly.”
He reached out as if to take the small man by the lapels
of the coat and shake him. The other hastily darted a hand
in under his jacket. At that moment the rear door of the
sedan opened and a big man, very expensively dressed,
stepped out.
“Adams!” he said. “Get back into the car!”
His voice was crisp and commanding. He had a slight
French accent, wore a narrow black moustache, and had
a small mole at the corner of his mouth.
The driver hesitated, then, scowling, got back into the
car, where a third man, large and ugly, sat watching. The
man who had emerged from the car came forward.
“I am sorry,” he said to Worthington, “that my driver
was so careless. Fortunately, this wonderful car was not
struck. I could not have forgiven myself if I had damaged
such a car. Now, may I speak to your master?”
Up to this point events had moved too rapidly for Jupi-
ter and Pete to take any action. But now Jupiter emerged
from the car.
“You wanted to speak to me?” he asked.
The man looked surprised.
“You-ah—you are the owner?” he asked.
“It is mine for the moment.” Jupiter’s voice was off-
hand. Because of his childhood acting experience, he could
appear well poised in almost any situation. “I may make
a change later.”
“I see.” The man hesitated. “May I ask—are you a
friend of Mr. Fentriss, whom I was coming to call on?”
“I believe I can say we are friends, yes,” Jupiter said,
and Pete, watching, had to admire his partner’s air of
nonchalance. Jupiter certain knew how to talk to adults
when he had to. “We have just been calling on him.”
“Then perhaps you can tell me,” the man said, “how
his parrot, Billy Shakespeare, is.”
“Still missing,” Jupiter said. “Mr. Fentriss is very
despondent about it.”
“Missing!” The man’s face revealed nothing. “I’m sorry
to hear that. No sign of it, I suppose?”
“No sign whatever,” Jupiter said. “We are on our way
to the police to ask what progress they have made. Shall
we tell them you are interested in helping find it?”
“Oh, no, no,” the man said quickly, seeming alarmed
at the mention of the word police. “No need to mention
me to them. I’m just a friend who stopped by to ask about
Billy. But since he’s still missing, I won’t even bother Mr.
Fentriss. I do hope he gets the bird back, but at the
moment I think we will be on our way.”
Without giving his name, the well-dressed man with the
French accent climbed back into the car.
“Adams!” he said sharply. “Take me back to the
hotel.”
“Yes, sir,” the sharp-eyed driver grumbled. He gave
Worthington an ugly look, backed the sedan out of the
driveway, and in a moment car and men were gone.
“You handled the situation very well, sir,” Worthing-
ton said, as Jupiter got back into the car. “May I say that
I was proud of you?”
“Thank you, Worthington,” Jupiter said.
“Look,” Pete demanded, “may I ask what that was all
about? Those men in that car were tough customers. I
mean, the kind I’d hate to meet in a dark alley. How did
you scare them off?”
Jupiter let out a deep breath and slumped back into his
normal, somewhat stocky, boyish appearance again.
“It was a bluff,” he said. “I gambled that the mention
of the police would alarm them, so I falsely said we were
going there.”
“Sure,” Pete agreed, as Worthington backed the car
into the driveway and eased it out to the street again, “I
saw that But——”
“That driver, the one called Adams, probably carried a
weapon,” Jupiter said. “In a shoulder holster. Didn’t you
see him start to reach for it? Obviously he is a character
used to violence.”
“A weapon, huh? And used to using it?” Pete gulped.
“His employer restrained him,” Jupiter said. “His em-
ployer is a man of much higher type. I wonder why he
should want a gunman driving his car?”
“What I wonder,” Pete said, as the car rolled down the
street, “is why we have to get mixed up with such charac-
ters. All we started out to do was find a lost parrot”
“True,” Jupiter agreed.
“So far we’ve run into a sinister fat man, a man with a
foreign accent who has a hired thug driving his car, and
heard about a mysterious Mexican pedlar. And all of them
are interested in the same bird.”
“All but the pedlar,” Jupiter corrected. “Having sold
the bird, his interest no longer exists.”
“But why?” Pete asked, bewildered. “What is there
about a stuttering parrot that makes these rough charac-
ters seem to want it even if they have to steal it?”
“In the course of time,” Jupiter said, “I have no doubt
that our investigation will reveal the answer. At the
moment, I am in a state of total bewilderment”
“Well, at least we’re in the same state,” Pete grumbled.
“If you want to know what I think——”
“What is it, Worthington?” Jupiter interrupted to ask.
“Someone in the road, Master Jones,” the chauffeur
answered. “A lady who seems to have lost something.”
The boys looked out Turning a corner, Worthington
had jammed on the brakes, bringing the car to an abrupt
stop.
A small, plump woman was standing in the road, quite
oblivious to traffic, peering into the bushes and calling,
“Here, Pretty, Pretty. Come to Irma. I have some nice
sunflower seeds for you.”
“Someone in difficulty.” Jupiter said. “We’d better see
if we can help.”
They got out of the car and approached the woman,
who was still peering up into the thick bushes along the
street and holding out a sunflower seed hopefully.
“Excuse me,” Jupiter said, “have you lost something?”
“Why, yes. I have,” the woman said. As she spoke she
tilted her head to one side, quite like a bird, and spoke in
a birdlike voice. “Little Bo-Peep is lost, and I don’t know
where to find her.
“You haven’t seen her, have you?” the woman asked.
“You haven’t seen Little Bo-Peep?”
“No, ma’am,” Jupiter said. “Little Bo-Peep is a
parrot?”
“Why, yes.” The woman looked at him in surprise.
“How on earth did you know?”
Jupiter whipped out one of their business cards.
“We’re investigators,” he said. “I deduced that you were
looking for a parrot because you have put a parrot cage
on the grass near the edge of those shrubs, and because
you are trying to entice the bird with sunflower seeds, of
which parrots are very fond.”
Well, Pete had figured that much, but the woman
“Little Bo-Peep is lost . . .”
seemed to find it very remarkable. After exclaiming a few
times, she asked them to come into her house to talk about
the strange disappearance of Little Bo-Peep.
“Wait for us, Worthington,” Jupiter called to the
chauffeur, and he and Pete accompanied the small woman
up a brick path to a bungalow hidden behind a screen of
banana trees.
When they had seated themselves in the small living-
room, Jupiter asked, “Did you buy Little Bo-Peep a few
weeks ago from a pedlar with a strong Mexican accent,
Miss Waggoner?”
“Why, yes,” Miss Waggoner said, her eyes wide. “You
know that and my name, too. You must be very good
detectives.”
“It’s merely a matter of putting together information,
Miss Waggoner,” Jupiter said. “Mr. Fentriss mentioned a
Miss Irma Waggoner, and you were calling to Bo-Peep to
come to Irma, so you see I had all the facts necessary.”
“Many people have facts,” Miss Waggoner said, “and
never learn how to put them together properly. Having
facts is only part of the job. But don’t tell me poor Mr.
Fentriss still hasn’t found Billy?”
“No, ma’am. Billy is still missing,” Pete said. “We are
trying to find him. Can you tell us just how your parrot
happened to vanish?”
“Why, I just took a walk down to the store,” Miss
Waggoner said. “Little Bo-Peep was out of sunflower seeds
and she does love them so. As I started out I was almost
run down by a small, black foreign car coming round the
corner. Goodness, how people drive these days!”
Pete and Jupiter exchanged glances. Neither of them
had missed her reference to the small, black foreign car,
and they both had the same thought. When last seen, Mr.
Claudius had been driving in this direction.
“Well,” Miss Waggoner went on, “I continued on to
the store and bought the sunflower seeds. I strolled a bit
on the way back, enjoying the sunshine, and when I en-
tered the house I found the door of Bo-Peep’s cage wide
open and my little darling gone. I assumed I had left the
cage open and she had flown out and might be in the
yard someplace. I was hunting for her when you came.”
“The car that almost knocked you down, Miss Wag-
goner,” Jupiter said. “Did you see it again?”
“Oh, no.” She shook her head. “It turned the corner up
the block and disappeared behind all those trees and
bushes up there. My goodness, you don’t suppose that fat
man driving it stole Bo-Peep, do you?”
“I’m very much afraid he did,” Jupiter told her. “We
think he also stole Mr. Fentriss’s Billy.”
“Oh, my goodness!” Miss Waggoner said helplessly.
“What a heartless man! But why would he go to so much
trouble to get some parrots? He could buy his own.”
That was what Pete would have liked to know. But
Jupiter didn’t have any answer to the question.
“So far it is a mystery,” he said. “Did Little Bo-Peep
talk, Miss Waggoner?”
“Oh, she certainly did. She said, ‘Little Bo-Peep has
lost her sheep and doesn’t know where to find it. Call on
Sherlock Holmes.’ Isn’t that a curious speech to teach a
parrot?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jupiter agreed. “Did she say this in a
British accent?”
“Yes, a very cultivated British accent, as if she had
been carefully taught by a well-educated Englishman.”
Jupiter scribbled all this down for Bob Andrews, who
kept all the records of their cases.
“Miss Waggoner,” he said when he had finished, “I feel
sure the fat man who calls himself Mr. Claudius slipped
into your house in your absence and stole Little Bo-Peep.
You should call the police.”
“The police? Oh, my goodness, no!” Miss Waggoner
said. “It would mean going all the way down town to tell
them about it and—oh, no, you must help me! Please say
you will,” she begged, looking very flustered and upset.
“Very well, Miss Waggoner,” Jupiter said. “As I am
sure Mr. Claudius has both parrots, we can conduct both
investigations at the same time.”
“Oh, I’m so grateful to you. You’ve made me feel
better already.”
“One more question,” Jupiter said. “You bought Little
Bo-Peep from a Mexican pedlar driving a two-wheeled
donkey cart?”
“Yes. He was coughing badly and seemed ill. I was
sorry for him.”
“Did he give you a receipt or a bill of sale for the
parrot?”
“Why, no.” Miss Waggoner looked blank. “I never
thought to ask.”
“You didn’t notice any name or address written on the
donkey cart?” Jupiter persisted, but Miss Waggoner shook
her head. She couldn’t tell them a thing more.
Since there apparently weren’t any more clues, the boys
bade Miss Waggoner a polite good-bye and left. As soon
as they got outside, Pete grabbed his stocky partner’s arm.
“Jupe,” he said, “will you tell me how you expect to
find two parrots named Billy Shakespeare and Little Bo-
Peep, who could be anyplace by now? I admit they may
be very literary parrots, who know Shakespeare and
Mother Goose, but there must be millions of parrots back
in the jungle to take their place. We’re wasting our time.”
Jupiter looked thoughtful
“Did you think Mr. Claudius was a frivolous type of
individual?” he asked.
“Well, no,” Pete admitted. “When he pointed that pistol
at us I thought he was more of a brutal kind of indivi-
dual.”
“Exactly. Yet he has gone to much trouble to steal two
parrots with peculiar names and unusual abilities. His
reasons we cannot yet deduce. But we must assume they
are excellent reasons, must we not?”
“I suppose so,” Pete grumbled. “But how much chance
have we of ever finding him again?”
“We are investigators. We have intelligence,” Jupiter
said. The determined look on his face told his partner that
nothing was going to change his mind. “In addition——
Look out!”
He flung himself against Pete, and they went down to-
gether in a tangle of arms and legs. Something large and
solid whizzed by the place Pete’s head had been a moment
before, and ploughed into the soft turf.
“Get—get off me!” Pete gasped, all his breath gone,
for Jupiter had fallen directly on his stomach. “I can’t—
breathe. I can’t—move.”
Jupiter scrambled up, and Pete drew a deep breath.
Slowly he got to his feet, as his partner pulled the object
from the grass. It was a piece of red clay tiling, like the
red tiles on the roof of Miss Waggoner’s bungalow.
“If that had hit either of us.” Jupiter said, “it would
have incapacitated us for a long time. Fortunately I saw
a movement in the bushes just before it came sailing to-
wards us.”
“Th-thanks,” Pete said shakily. “Who threw it?”
“I did not observe the one who threw it. However, I
feel sure it was meant as a warning. Someone does not
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