Read Ebook: Jerry Todd and the Talking Frog by Edwards Leo Salg Bert Illustrator

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Ebook has 1920 lines and 63904 words, and 39 pages

"Would you like to hear him say it in Yiddish?"

"I'd like to make a meal of his fried legs," I returned.

"You can have him," the other offered. Then, without another word, he let himself down limb by limb, scooting in the direction of town, a mile away.

Scoop gave a queer throat sound and came out of his thoughts.

"That's the new kid," he said.

"You talk like you know him."

"I know of him. He belongs to the new family in the old Matson house. Ricks is the name on the mailbox. There's a man and a woman and this boy in the family--only the woman is a Miss Polly Ricks, and not the boy's mother. The mother is dead, I guess."

Then my chum told me how his pa was the administrator of the Matson estate; and, of course, it was through Mr. Ellery, a Tutter storekeeper, that the new family had rented the long-vacant house where Mr. Matson, a queer old man, had been murdered for his money. It is a lonely brick house on the edge of town. The front yard is full of pine trees, just like a cemetery. And when the wind blows the pines whisper strange stories about the murder and about the vanished body.

It is no place for people to live. Everybody in Tutter says so. And I wondered why this new Ricks family had picked out such a lonely, spooky home.

It was a queer move for them to make.

We talked it over and exchanged opinions on the way into town. And when we came to the grove of pine trees, Scoop took me through a hole in the hedge and pointed out a brand new lock on the barn door.

A queer, droning sound weighted the air. I called the other's attention to it.

"Machinery," said Scoop, nodding toward the east wing of the big barn. "Not farm machinery," he explained, "but lathes for turning steel, and drillers. Pa helped unload the truck."

"Mr. Ricks must be a machinist," I said.

"I have a hunch," said Scoop, "that he's an inventor."

THE TALKING FROG

The following Monday morning the new boy started to school, entering our grade. And in the days that immediately followed I came to like Tom Ricks a lot. For he was the right sort. And soon we were visiting back and forth, playing in my yard one night and in his the next.

Scoop, of course, shared in our games, as did Red Meyers and Peg Shaw, my other chums. For I never would throw down an old friend for a new one. And it was during one of our trips to the old Matson place that we learned about the talking frog.

For Mr. Ricks, an inventor as Scoop had surmised, was working on a very wonderful radio toy. Tom called it an electro-mechanical frog.

We had promised our new chum that we wouldn't breathe a word about the talking frog to any one else. For a Chicago radio company had spies searching for Mr. Ricks. These people knew that the inventor was working on a radio toy, and it was their evil intention to steal the invention, the same as they had stolen a simplified radio transmitter that Mr. Ricks had designed and built in his little Chicago workshop. It was to save the new invention from being stolen from him that he was now hiding in our inland town, where he could work undisturbed.

"A Milwaukee company is interested in Pa's invention," Tom told us, "and if he can make the frog say, 'Hello!' or make it repeat any other single word, they'll pay him twenty-five thousand dollars for the idea and develop it in their laboratories."

Grinning, he added:

"So you can see what I had in my mind that day in the tree. I frequently get frogs for Pa, to guide him in tuning the tone bars. For the toy, of course, must sound like a real frog or it won't be a complete success."

"And you say the mechanical frog actually talks?" said Scoop, who had been eagerly taking in each word.

"Sometimes it does," said Tom. "But you can't depend on it. You see it isn't perfected." There was a short pause. "I tell you what: Come out to-night after supper and I'll try and coax Pa to let you see it. I'll explain to him that he can trust you to keep his secret."

"Hot dog!" cried Peg Shaw, thinking of the fun we were going to have listening to the talking frog.

This was on Friday. And directly after supper Scoop and I and Peg headed for Tom's house. Red couldn't go. He had queer spots all over his back. Not knowing whether it was scarlet fever or mosquito bites, his mother was keeping him in the house until the doctor had seen him.

"You fellows are lucky," he told us, when we called for him.

"You will be lucky," his mother told him sharply, "if you escape an attack of scarlet fever. For there's dozens of cases over in Ashton. And you were there last week."

"Aw!... I haven't got a fever. Please let me go, Ma."

"You'll go to bed," his mother threatened, "if you don't keep still."

We had met Aunt Polly in the times that we had been at Tom's house, but never had we seen Mr. Ricks until to-night. He was considerably taller than his sister, and older, with stooped shoulders and faded blue eyes that looked meekly at one over the top of small, steel-rimmed spectacles.

Tom introduced us. But he had to speak to his father several times and shake him by the shoulder to make the old gentleman put aside his book. It was a book on inventions, I noticed.

"Oh, yes; yes, indeed," said Mr. Ricks, vague-like, giving us a limp handclasp without actually seeing us. "Very glad to meet you. Very glad, of course. Um.... Now whar did I leave off?" and plunk! went his nose into the big book.

Later we came to know how very absent-minded he was, and how queer in a lot of his actions; but I am going to tell you about it here, before I go deeper into my story, else you might not fully understand what follows.

For instance, he never seemed able to quit thinking about his inventions. Even while eating his meals an idea would come to him, and there he would sit with his fork halfway to his mouth, his eyes making invisible drawings of things in the air. And you would be talking with him about the weather, or about fishing, and right in the middle of a sentence he would mumble: "Now if I file the end sharp, I bet it'll work easier an' won't bind," or, "Um.... I bet I've got one tooth too many in that thar gear."

I guess he wouldn't have known enough to stop working at mealtime and bedtime if Aunt Polly, in her bustling capable way, hadn't kept tab on him. And he needed some one like that to give him sharp attention. For I've seen him absent-mindedly hang his handkerchief on the towel rack and stuff the towel in his pocket. And once, going to church, he got as far as the front gate before his watchful sister discovered that he had on one shoe and one slipper. Golly Ned! It would have been fun to see him come into church dressed like that.

Peg tells the story, which he made up, I guess, that one time when he was eating breakfast at Tom's house, Mr. Ricks absent-mindedly poured the syrup down the back of his neck and scratched his pancake!

To-night Aunt Polly bustled from window to window, drawing the shades.

"Now," she nodded sharply to the inventor, who was pottering at her heels, book in hand, "you can bring it in."

The lowering of the window shades had filled me with uneasiness. For the precaution suggested the near-by presence of possible prying eyes. And I didn't like to think of the shadowy pines as holding such hidden dangers.

Then my nervousness melted away in the moment that the talking frog was placed on a small table in the middle of the room. Made of metal and properly shaped and painted, it squatted five inches high, which was considerably larger than a live frog, but it had to be oversize, Tom explained, because of the many gears, magnets and tone bars that his father had designed to go inside.

We had our noses close. And no movement of the inventor's escaped us as he wound a spring here and turned a knob there. It was a pretty fine invention I thought. And I realized that Mr. Ricks, with all of his queer forgetful ways, was a very smart man. He was what you would call a genius. I guess that is the right word.

Presently the worker straightened, sort of satisfied-like, so we knew that the frog was ready to perform.

"Hello!" he said, talking into the green face, his chin thrust out.

The vibration of his voice tripped the machinery and put the wheels into motion. The big hinged mouth opened in a natural way. But other than a dull rumbling of gears, no sound came out.

"Jest you wait," puttered Mr. Ricks. "I hain't got it 'justed quite right."

We watched him.

"Hello!" he said, after a moment.

"R-r-r-r!" responded the frog.

Aunt Polly laughed good-naturedly.

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