The Mystery of Sinister Scarecrow - M. V. Carey [7]
“I knew it!” cried the woman. She laughed hysterically. “There really is a scarecrow who walks! He’s real! I have a witness!”
And she put her hands to her face and burst into tears.
Chapter 4
The Crazy Woman
THE BOYS STARED AGHAST at the sobbing woman. They didn’t know what to do.
Fortunately she calmed down quickly, and looked at the boys with some embarrassment.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“You must think I’m crazy.
But then everybody thinks
I’m crazy. But I’m not, am I?
The scarecrow does wander
around!”
Jupe looked skeptically at
the legless scarecrow.
“Well,
of
course,
it
mightn’t have been that
scarecrow,” said the woman.
“Maybe it’s another one that
just looks like that scare-
crow.”
Jupiter grinned cautiously. “You mean that perhaps this scarecrow has a twin?”
“Who cares?” said the woman. “Just so that someone’s seen one walk! Would you mind coming up to the house with me? I’d like you to tell Mrs. Chumley that I wasn’t imagining it all.”
“There isn’t much we can tell anyone,” said Jupiter.
“Then you can just get off this property!” said the woman sharply. “What are you doing here anyway? It isn’t your business!”
“That’s true,” said Jupe, unperturbed. “But a scarecrow who walks is an interesting puzzle. We like puzzles.”
Jupe opened his wallet, took out a card, and handed it to her. It read: THE THREE INVESTIGATORS
“We Investigate Anything”
? ? ?
First Investigator – Jupiter Jones
Second Investigator – Peter Crenshaw
Records and Research – Bob Andrews
“I don’t understand,” said the woman.
“We are private investigators,” said Jupiter.
“You can’t be!” said the woman.
“But we are,” Jupe declared. He spoke in his most serious, grown-up way. “As the question marks on our card indicate, we find the unknown intriguing. And we do not regard anyone’s ideas as completely outrageous. Not before we investigate them.
That’s why we’ve been quite successful with cases that have baffled more conventional agencies.”
“I believe you mean it,” said the woman. “All right, I’ll pay you. Come up to the house and tell Mrs. Chumley that the scarecrow walks and I’ll make it worth your while.”
Jupiter looked at his friends. “We don’t want money just for repeating a man’s story, do we?”
“Nope,” said Bob.
“Well, come on, then,” said the woman.
She started up the path toward the house, and The Three Investigators fell into step beside her.
“Who is Mrs. Chumley?” asked Pete.
“She was my mother’s social secretary, and now she looks after the house for us,”
said the woman. “I’m Letitia Radford, by the way. I live here. Sometimes. When I’m not someplace else.”
“And you saw the scarecrow walk?” prompted Bob.
“Several times,” said the woman. “I think he . . . he comes looking for me. At dusk. Always at dusk.”
They were clear of the trees now, and crossing the lawn. “No one else ever sees him,” she went on. “They think I’m mad! They think I imagine it.”
She stopped. There was a look of fear and disgust on her face. “I hate scarecrows.
And bugs. I detest bugs!”
She shuddered. “Never mind. Just come and tell Mrs. Chumley what you told me.
She’s got me seeing a psychiatrist in Beverly Hills. Sure that I’ve gone round the bend.”
Miss Radford walked on across the lawn and went up several brick steps to the terrace at the side of the Radford mansion. The boys followed, and looked with admiration at the huge swimming pool that they had first noticed from the road. A table had been set for two near the pool. A slender, sandy-haired man in a white jacket hovered by it, as if checking to see that everything was in order.
“Burroughs, where is Mrs. Chumley?” demanded Letitia Radford.
“She’s in her room, miss,” said the man. He had a British accent. “Mrs.
Burroughs has gone to help her. She said —”
“Never mind. Here she is.”
A woman in a black uniform and a white apron pushed a wheelchair through a door onto the terrace. In the chair sat a woman who appeared to be in her sixties. Her white hair was crimped into