“And you say the dog barked at something, or someone, in the alley? Did he usually do that? Bark at people, say, if there was someone around?”
“He never barked at anybody before that I know of,” Nick said. “Not while I was walking him. Even when we passed other dogs that barked at him, Rudy didn’t. He’d chase cats, though,” he felt compelled to say. “He could have been after a cat when he pulled away from me. We didn’t hear anything.”
“No feet on the gravel, nothing like that?”
“No, sir. Not that I noticed.”
And then Mr. Conrad said something that made Nick both alarmed and angry, all at once. “You boys didn’t start it, did you? Trying out a smoke back here, something like that? Playing with matches?”
Nick was so stunned that for a minute he couldn’t reply at all. It was Sam who yelped a protest. “Hey! No, we never did anything like that!”
“Better to admit it now, if you did,” Mr. Conrad told them, and he didn’t sound friendly the way he did when he greeted Nick’s father at church on Sunday mornings. “Because our investigators will be out here to find out what happened. We can’t have people setting fires, and we try to find out how every fire got started so we can prevent future ones. I know boys sometimes snitch a few cigarettes and try smoking, and once in a while they drop a match or a cigarette and start a fire when they don’t mean to.”
“Well, we didn’t,” Sam said, sounding indignant. “My folks would about kill me if I ever did that, and besides, I think it’s stupid to smoke. Or play with matches, either. We’re not little kids, to do something dumb like that.”
Mr. Conrad asked more questions, and he wrote down their names and addresses, which struck them both as ominous. Not that he could prove anything against them, because of course they hadn’t done anything wrong, but it was most uncomfortable to be under suspicion.
Finally the firemen turned off the flashing red lights and the neighbors drifted back to their own homes. The Jamisons were among the last to leave.
“I still don’t understand how our boxes got over against the back of the house next door,” Mr. Jamison said, sounding troubled. “I hope it wasn’t because someone moved them just to start a fire in them.”
“Why would anyone do that?” Mrs. Jamison asked. She was a pretty woman, looking much like Melody, though now that the trucks had gone it was too dark to see her.
“I don’t know. Well, I hope that’s the end of the excitement. And I still think you did a fine job,” Mr. Jamison told Nick. “A good thing you noticed where Dickie left the hose. Come on, let’s go inside; it’s too cold out here to stand around in our shirtsleeves.”
And so at last only Nick and Sam were left, holding Maynard.
“Criminy,” Sam said. “Imagine, blaming us! If we hadn’t seen the fire and turned in the alarm, the whole house could have burned down.”
“Yeah,” Nick agreed. “Listen, Sam, I have to find Rudy. Let’s walk through the alley and see if he’s down there somewhere.”
“What if there’s somebody there?” Sam asked. “I mean, we know we didn’t start any fire, but somebody did. Either accidentally or on purpose. Nobody ran out of the alley on this end, but somebody could have gone the other way.”
“We didn’t hear anybody,” Nick reminded him. “Nobody could run on the gravel without making some noise.”
“Rudy didn’t make much noise. I’ll bet somebody who was barefooted wouldn’t have, either.”
“Why would anybody be barefooted, when it’s cool enough to wear a jacket?” Nick asked, and then, more slowly, said, “You mean someone deliberately started the fire and was barefoot so he could move quietly? But why would anybody do that, Sam?”
“Why did somebody move the packing boxes from behind the house next door over to this one? They weren’t over here when you went through the alley this morning, were they?”
“No. Well, a couple of small ones, but that’s all.” Nick frowned in the darkness. “Sam, you think somebody really did it on purpose? Not just accidentally?”
It was hard to believe that anybody would do such a thing. Yet Nick knew such things did happen. More and more often, when the TV news reported a major fire, the word arson came up. And arson meant a fire that was deliberately set.
They began to walk down the alley, and Nick whistled and called “Hey, Rudy! Here, boy! Here, Rudy!”
Maynard trotted along on his little leash; like the bigger dog, he enjoyed poking his nose into the refuse set out for tomorrow’s trash collection, but when he tried to go too far in the wrong direction, it was easy to pull him back. Suddenly Maynard whined and tugged Nick to one side, and there was a joyful barking reply.
“It’s Rudy! Here, Sam, take Maynard. Where are you, boy? Behind the fence?”
Now Rudy whined and leaped happily against the picket fence; his warm rough tongue licked at Nick’s fingers when they were pressed between the boards. Nick groped along, feeling for a gate and not finding one.
“You stupid dog, how’d you get in there?” Perplexed, Nick glanced toward the lighted house set in the middle of the yard. “There are people up, but to get to their door we’d have to go all the way around the block. And they might not like finding out they’ve got a horse-sized dog in their yard.”
“There must be a gate somewhere,” Sam said, and joined in the effort to find it. “If he could jump over it to get in, you’d think he could jump over it to get out.”
Rudy, however, though he tried to reach them, didn’t jump nearly high enough to get over the fence. And if there was a hole where he could have crawled under, Nick couldn’t find it.
Finally Sam gave a cry of triumph. “Here’s a gate! Only it’s locked on the inside. My foot’s too big to fit between the boards, and I can’t reach the latch. See if you can step in there, Nick, and reach up and unlock it.”
Nick’s running shoe would fit between the slats in the fence if he forced it. He hoped he wasn’t stuck there. He reached up and found the latch, a difficult one to manipulate without seeing it, and then heard the welcome click as it gave way.
Rudy bounded out to meet them, knocking Maynard over so that the little mop dog yipped once, then threw himself with delight against his rescuers.
“Down!” Nick commanded sharply. “Sit!”
Rudy sat . . . right on Maynard. This time Maynard ki-yied, and Sam untangled the dogs while Nick got the gate relocked and pried his foot out of the fence. Just as he jerked free, a door opened in the house inside the yard and a man’s voice called out, “What’s going on out there? Is somebody running through my yard again? Doggone it, I’m going to call the cops if people don’t stay out of here! Why you think we lock the gate, if we wanted people in our yard?”
Nick wasn’t sure why he felt guilty, but he did. Was that what had happened? Had Rudy chased someone from the scene of the fire and jumped over the fence after him, only to be trapped because he couldn’t unlock the gate and didn’t find his way out the front?
Rudy’s chain dragged across his foot, and he grabbed for the leather loop at the end of it. “Come on, let’s get out of here,” Nick muttered, and they all turned and ran.
The smell of wet burned wood was a strong reminder of the near catastrophe as they walked back down the alley and to the street. Nick was getting cold, and he zipped his sweatshirt and pulled up the hood, as well. Someday, he thought, he was going to try living in a climate where it stayed warm in the evenings in the summertime, the kind of places Sam talked about. He had lived in Indiana and in Nevada and Texas, before his family moved to Northern California.
His guilt increased when he saw that old Mr. Haggard was still waiting on the front porch. The outside light had once more been replaced, and Mr. Griesner was even now on a ladder, screwing a new bulb into the fixture in the entry hall.
“We found him. Somehow he got inside a yard and couldn’t get back out until we unlatched the gate,” Nick said. Up close, he saw that the old man’s face was deeply creas
ed with fatigue or pain. “I’ll come back after I’ve put Maynard in his apartment and make you some cocoa, shall I?”
“That would be very kind of you,” Mr. Haggard said. He smiled, reaching out a hand to Rudy’s big head. “I knew you wouldn’t let anything happen to him, boy.”
It made Nick uncomfortable, because he really had no control over what happened to Rudy. And he still wondered how the big Airedale had gotten behind a locked gate. All the pets in his care were still safe, though. He was sure glad about that.
Fred had returned and followed them into the house. He and Maynard headed for their brightly colored bowls to eat and drink, and Nick locked the door behind them. At Mrs. Sylvan’s door he could see a crack of light, so she had come home, too. He was glad the fire hadn’t spread so he’d have had to get Eloise out of there; he didn’t know how he could have kept her from running away.
It was only after he’d fixed Mr. Haggard’s cocoa, and the boys had each shared a cup with him, that they emerged from apartment one, ready to go home. His folks would be wondering why he was so late, and Sam’s would, too.
Sam opened the front door, then turned his head. “What are you doing? What’s under there?”
For Nick, struck by the memory of that red gas can in the closet under the stairs, had turned back. What if it had been there, and there had been a fire! For a moment he thought the door was locked, for it resisted his effort to open it. And then it gave under his hand, and in the light of the newly installed hall bulb Nick stared into the closet.
The red can was gone. Then Mr. Haggard had done something about it. The old man had been in so much pain lately, it had seemed unlikely to Nick that he would. But the idea of it must have worried him, too.
Chapter Five
Nobody noticed that Nick was unusually late getting home. He had been spending time with Sam after his evening walk with Rudy, and now everyone just assumed that’s where he had been. He wondered if he should tell about the fire. But even if he had really wanted to, everyone was so busy talking that no one would have listened.
Mr. and Mrs. Reed were still spending a lot of time at the hospital. Grandma was better, but she was still uncomfortable. Molly was full of stories about the outrageous things the Franklin kids tried. And Barney, as usual, was eating up a storm.
Nick remembered guiltily that he had never mentioned his chance to make extra money by staying a few nights a week with Fred and Maynard. Mrs. Monihan had been gone now since Tuesday, and he would have to do something about that soon. Fred and Maynard were always glad to see him when he came, but he had never had the sense that they were suffering at being left alone. Still, the extra money did look good. On the other hand, if someone had tried to burn the place down, he’d rather be sleeping at home, in case they tried again. But that would leave Fred and Maynard alone in a burning building, and he didn’t like to think of that either.
If it hadn’t been for that gas can stored in the front closet—the can that was now gone—and the lightbulbs that burned out so readily, it would be easy to believe that the fire in the alley had been started by kids, stupidly fooling around with matches. As it was, Nick felt distinctly uneasy about the entire matter, and he decided he’d really like to talk to his father about it. Only his father looked awfully tired, and went upstairs before there was a chance to say anything.
So Nick tried telling his brother. Barney’s half of the room was meticulously neat, compared to Nick’s, and he stood in his pajamas, writing in a new page of lawn-mowing dates on the sheet Scotch taped to the closet door.
“And when I looked in the closet again,” Nick concluded, after speaking to Barney’s back for several minutes, “the gas can was gone.”
Barney, finished with his chart, turned and came to sit on the bed opposite Nick’s. “Well, you told that old Mr. Haggard about the can being in the closet, didn’t you?”
“Yes. It seemed dangerous there.”
“So he probably told Mr. Griesner, and he took it out and put it in a better place.”
Nick hadn’t thought of that. Of course, that was logical.
“You didn’t smell any gasoline at the scene of the fire, did you?”
Nick tried to remember. “No. I’m sure I’d have noticed if there’d been a smell like gasoline.”
“Well, then, it’s not very likely anybody poured gas on the boxes to get them going. You wouldn’t need to, anyway, because cardboard and packing stuff burns like crazy without any help at all. Besides, the fire department men are trained to look for things like that. If it’s arson, they can just about always tell. Why would anybody want to burn down that old dump, anyway?”
“It’s not a dump,” Nick protested. “It’s old, and old-fashioned, and it needs paint and some fixing up, but Dad says most of those old houses were built better than the places they build today, or they wouldn’t still be here after a hundred years. But Rudy did bark, and chase after something, off down the alley.”
“Probably a cat,” Barney said. He slid into bed and twiddled his radio dial, bringing in some of that music Nick hated instead of what had been playing when Nick entered the room. “You said he’s wild to chase cats.”
“It wasn’t a cat that locked him inside that fence.”
“He could have chased a cat in there. If he was running and took a jump, he could clear a pretty high fence, couldn’t he? And then the cat climbed a tree, or went in the house, or something, and Rudy was stuck in the yard, too dumb to jump back out the way he came in. Come on, Nick, turn out the light. I have to be up early.”
“Turn off the radio, then, so I can go to sleep, too.”
“I’ve got it down low,” Barney said, and closed his eyes, hands folded on his chest.
Nick considered throwing his fielder’s glove at the radio and knocking it off the table. Maybe it would break and stop playing. Only he supposed his parents would expect him to pay for it if he broke it. He turned out the light and hoped the investigator from the fire department would decide that the blaze had simply been an accident. He’d sure feel better about it then.
• • •
On Saturday morning, though, when he reached the Hillsdale Apartments, he saw with alarm that there was an ambulance at the curb, along with the Cadillac belonging to Mr. Hale, and another car that, while unmarked, bore an official license plate.
The front door stood open, and the entry hall was full of people. Nick stood looking in, not wanting to push through between them. Mr. Hale was talking, sounding agitated and upset.
“Well, what are you doing to find out who did it?”
A stranger in a checked sport coat and slacks replied more calmly. “We’re doing everything we can, sir. At this point there’s no reason to think it was an attempt to burn your house. We found a few matches, unlighted ones, scattered along the edge of the alley, behind the house next door. More than likely it was kids fooling around, and when the fire went up, they got scared and ran and threw the rest of the matches. We’ll talk to the people on this block, sir, make sure the parents of all youngsters are aware of the situation.”
“You don’t think the streetlights being out had anything to do with it?” Mr. Hale persisted. “Funny one on each end of the block would go out at the same time, just before the back of my house catches fire.”
“We’re investigating,” the newcomer said smoothly. Then his gaze fell upon Nick. “You live here, young man?”
“Is somebody hurt?” Nick asked, because the ambulance was there, back door open as if the attendants were here, inside the house.
“Old man is sick, I guess,” Mr. Hale said. “Apartment one. Fire was too much for him.”
“Mr. Haggard?” Nick stepped inside, now able to see that the door was open into the front apartment. “What happened? He was all right when I was here last night!”
“You were here last night? Were you here the time of the fire?” the investigator said, but Nick was already moving past him.
“Mr. Haggard! Mr. Hag
gard, what happened?” Nick demanded. Nobody stopped him from going inside, and the two men easing the old fellow onto the wheeled cart turned to look at him.
“You a relative?” one of them asked.
“No, no,” Mr. Haggard said, struggling to sit up as the attendant fastened straps across his torso. “I told you, I have no relatives. Only Rudy, my dog. This is Nick, the boy who takes care of Rudy for me. I was afraid you wouldn’t come, boy, before they took me away.”
Nick moved to the stretcher and stood close to the old man. “What happened?”
“My leg is worse. Hurt so bad I couldn’t hardly stand it, all night. Must have been getting out of here in such a hurry last night. They may have to operate on it. Listen, boy, you stay over here and take care of Rudy, all right?”
“Sure, Mr. Haggard, I’ll take care of Rudy,” Nick assured him. He felt deeply sorry for the old man; pain was evident in his face.
“Be sure he gets his vitamins,” Mr. Haggard said. “Bottle just inside the cupboard. He won’t eat his dog food unless you put the vitamins on it. And bring in my mail, will you? Don’t get much that’s important, except my pension check, but you bring it inside.”
“Sure. I’ll bring it to you in the hospital, if you want,” Nick offered. It made him feel bad to see the old man suffering this way. “Don’t worry about Rudy. I’ll take good care of him.”
The blanket was tucked around Mr. Haggard and the straps pulled tight enough to keep him in place when he was lifted into the ambulance. The men began to roll the gurney toward the door.
Rudy whimpered, knowing something was wrong, and Nick caught him by the collar and held him back. “Sit, boy,” he said, and Rudy sat, though he continued to make sounds of distress, deep in his throat.
Nick got the dog’s leash and slipped the choke chain over his head. He wasn’t allowed to take the Airedale for a walk, though, not yet.
The stranger was still there in the hall, and he blocked the outside doorway. Nick had to stop, though Rudy strained at the leash in his eagerness to get out of doors.