Mister Max: The Book of Lost Things: Mister Max 1

  “Actually, it’s a dog I’ve—”

  “Nor any animals. We’ve got a big tom for the mice, not that there are any mice in my kitchen, so get off with you, mister.”

  “—come to find,” Max persisted. “I’m the dogcatcher,” he told her, as sternly as if he actually were an official official and offended by her rudeness.

  “Well then,” she said. “In that case. I can assure you there are no dogs in here, and I haven’t seen one on the grounds, either. If you turn around and look, you’ll see that there’s not many places a dog could hide itself on this property. So you had better move on down the street to where the lawns aren’t so carefully kept nor the homes so well taken care of.” She clasped her hands together over the waist of her apron and pursed her lips in satisfaction with who she was and what she had just said.

  “You haven’t seen any unknown dog?”

  She let out an exasperated breath. “And didn’t I just tell you that?”

  Max could be as brusque as she was. He nodded and, without a word of farewell and especially without a word of thanks, turned away, bearing his butterfly net down the long drive and out through the gates. Nobody watched from behind the windows or the doors of the great house to be sure he did what he’d been told. In that house, people were accustomed to being obeyed. As he got back to his bicycle, he heard the distant bells of the clock tower ring four times, warning him that the afternoon was almost over.

  When that low brick wall ended, a pale yellow stucco wall began, a wall so high that even if Max had been twice as tall, he still would not have been able to see over the top of it. He rode along beside it until he came to a pair of stucco pillars, each topped with a statue of a fierce-looking eagle. The thick, high wooden gateway between the pillars stood open, so Max once again parked his bicycle and toted the net onto the grounds. A cobblestone drive led straight between short rows of thick-trunked beech trees to a two-story square yellow stucco mansion, its entire façade decorated with red-and-green-painted diamonds and small balconies. This house was surrounded by wide beds of flowers, the daffodils and tulips in bloom, and azalea bushes that were bursts of bright pinks and whites. The house glowed among the gardens like another, much larger and much fancier, flower.

  Max had learned from his first experience not to go up to the main entrance. Instead, he followed a slate pathway around the side to a back entrance. There he knocked loudly on another white wooden door.

  There was no response, although through an open window he heard voices. He knocked again, bam-bam-bam, pounding with a fist. The voices fell silent.

  It was a little round man, shorter than Max, who opened it. Like the other cook he wore an apron, but his was stained with reds and the occasional streak of bright orangey yellow, where an egg yolk might have fallen. He had suspicious eyes, like little gray pebbles, and restless, impatient hands. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m the dogcatcher, looking for—”

  “You don’t look like no dogcatcher to me. And that net’d never hold anything much bigger than a butterfly, so don’t try your tricks on me, mister.”

  Max took a deep breath and insisted, “Have you seen a dog running loose in the area, a large—”

  “I know a gypsy when I see one,” the man said. “Don’t think you can try your thieving tricks in this house, Mister Gypsy. And don’t try giving me that evil eye of yours, neither,” he went on. “You’ve got the eyes for it, I can see that. So I’ll tell you about the dog. Dogs, really,” he added with a little mean smile. “There won’t be any wild dogs here, not with our two.” He expanded his chest like a bird and leaned up at Max. Max stepped back. “That’s right,” the man said. “Rottweilers, ours are. I’ve half a mind to call them and introduce you, but if you scarper off fast enough I’ll just go quietly back to preparing dinner for the doctor and his guests. Who might be very disturbed to know that there is some gypsy horse thief going up and down the street, getting a look around with who knows what mischief in mind.”

  With as much dignity as he could muster, or would have been able to muster if he had been a real dogcatcher, but also with the little swagger he thought a gypsy might want the cook to see, if he had been a real gypsy, Max retreated. He went down the drive and through the gates without a backward glance, the net angled over his shoulder like a rifle.

  Max kept to the same side of the street, riding beside a fence of tall iron bars, each one topped with a pointed tip, like a row of soldierless spears standing at attention. The metal had once been painted black but was now rusting, much of its paint worn away by time and weather. Through the fence, Max saw an overgrown lawn and a two-storied gray shingle house with a long porch across its front. At each end of the house, the porch became a covered walkway leading out to a gazebo. Both gazebos looked out over what must have once been gardens but were now bushy tangles. Despite looking so worn-down and worn-out, like a much-loved stuffed bear or a frequently read book, this was a house Max could imagine living in. It didn’t feel like a mansion, although it was of the right size and on the right street for one. It had once been a fine home, that was evident, and it could be again, if its owners wished. This house was quite possibly the very place a dog who was accustomed to good food and a soft warm bed might choose. Max went up the weedy dirt driveway and around the side of the house, without even looking at the windows to see if anyone was inside. He didn’t expect to find anyone living in this house. He only chose to go to the back door out of officialdom. A dogcatcher, like any city official, would do things the proper way. After knocking, Max turned around to look for a shed or open stable door through which a dog might slip, and so when the house door opened behind him, he swung around in surprise.

  Two old ladies, wearing identical high-necked, long-sleeved, and long-skirted black dresses, stood in the doorway, the taller one in front, the shorter peeping out from behind. They both had round heads covered with short white curls; they were both staring at him out of identical pairs of round, faded blue eyes. Neither of them spoke.

  Max took off his cap. “Good afternoon. I hope I’m not disturbing you? I’m the dogcatcher and—”

  The taller one interrupted, turning to say to the shorter, “I told you, Sister. I told you someone would claim her. I did tell you, you remember, don’t you? That I wouldn’t be surprised if someone came looking.”

  The shorter one peered out at Max from behind her sister’s shoulder and asked, “Can you give us a description of the dog you’re looking for?”

  “It’s a golden retriever, young but not a puppy. Female,” Max said, in what he hoped was a dogcatchery manner. This seemed description enough because the two women looked at one another, as if to confirm what he had said.

  “The dog was lost on Friday,” he added.

  “No,” the shorter one corrected him from her sheltered position. “That dog wasn’t lost. That dog ran away. There was a leash, but it was chewed through. Not cut,” she pointed out with an emphatic nod. “Chewed.” Then she added quickly, “If it’s the same dog.”

  “Ask him if the dog he’s looking for had a collar,” advised the taller sister.

  “Did she have a collar?” the shorter asked.

  “I wasn’t told,” Max answered. “I imagine so. Also, I was told she was groomed, bathed, and brushed. Professionally bathed and brushed.”

  Their expressions clouded over, and once again they looked at one another. “Oh,” and “Oh dear,” and “I’m afraid,” and finally, “It’s her,” they said.

  “We didn’t know what to call her,” the shorter sister told Max, “so we called her Sunny, because she’s so sweet and happy. She always came when we called her, so maybe Sunny is her given name?”

  “Is she in the house now?” asked Max.

  “Oh no,” the shorter sister assured him.

  “Tell him why, or else he won’t know the kind of people we are,” the taller instructed the shorter.

  The shorter sister did. “We knew she had to belong
to someone. It isn’t right to take someone else’s dog into your house, where the dog might get used to being there and want to stay. But you’re a dogcatcher, you probably already know that.”

  The taller sister had been studying Max during this explanation. Now she turned to report, “He understands that dogs don’t like to be tied up.”

  Max tried again. “Where is the dog now?”

  “Somewhere nearby. She doesn’t go far. I can call her, if—” The shorter sister stopped speaking and studied Max carefully. After several seconds, she looked up at her sister and said, “He has a kind face.”

  “But can we be sure?” her sister asked. “Find out why he’s looking for her.”

  “Exactly why do you want to find this particular dog?” the shorter one asked.

  Max looked from one face to the other as he answered. “The family that owns her, the little girl, actually … Well, her father, really …” He put it officially: “Inquiries were made.”

  “Hmmh” and “Hunh,” the sisters said, not satisfied. Two sets of pale blue eyes now looked right into Max’s face, and he knew what they were thinking. He thought the same.

  Then the taller one turned to the shorter to say, “But you know, Sister, we couldn’t keep her here, keep her for ourselves. We’re too old, and who knows how long we’ll live? What would happen to her then?”

  The sister agreed, although reluctantly. “You’re right. I know, I know. There wouldn’t be anyone to take care of her. And we can’t walk her, either.” She explained it to Max: “A dog like that needs exercise. But you already know that, too, don’t you?”

  Max concentrated on thinking like the kindly dogcatcher they thought he was. “We never know everything about dogs, any more than we do about people,” he told the sisters, a kindly and philosophical dogcatcher.

  A few minutes later, he was walking down the driveway with his net over one shoulder and a large, brown-eyed, feather-tailed golden retriever loping along at his side. He had a rope tied to her collar, but she showed no sign of wanting to run away. From time to time she looked up at him, as if pleased to be in his company. Her tail waved enthusiastically. This was a happy creature, maybe not all that smart but easygoing and friendly and, most important, like all dogs ready to love. Max looked down at her and had to smile. “What made you run off like that?” he asked.

  She wagged her tail even harder and then looked to the road ahead with bright, curious eyes.

  “No, I mean it,” he said, as if he expected her to answer. It was, he knew, an important question.

  The late-spring twilight was slipping in among the winding streets and low houses of the old city when he finally leaned his bicycle up against his back steps, leaned the net against the bicycle, and ran across to his grandmother’s house, famished.

  Grammie and Ari were playing cards at the kitchen table, their cleaned dishes drying on the rack by the sink.

  Max stopped in the doorway, surprised. He’d never known Grammie to play card games. He’d thought she would find them, like most games, a waste of time that could be spent much more usefully doing something else, reading, perhaps, or cooking. They seemed equally surprised to see him, although they had been waiting for just this, for him to arrive.

  He ate the good dinner Grammie had kept warm for him and told them about finding the dog and leaving her in Joachim’s garden. “I had the net and the dog and the bicycle. It was—it was like walking with snakes winding around my feet, and I couldn’t ride.”

  They imagined his clumsy progress across the avenues and boulevards of the New Town, and it seemed to amuse them.

  “So I thought of Joachim’s garden, with the wall all around it, and he said as long as the dog didn’t insist on sleeping inside it was fine, as long as I come back tomorrow to take care of things.”

  “That was good thinking,” said Ari.

  “Very well done,” Grammie agreed.

  Max ate his meal and accepted their compliments. “You’re quite the detective,” Grammie said.

  Max didn’t see it that way. “I didn’t really detect anything. It’s not as if there were clues. I just—it’s more as if I was acting a part on the stage.”

  “Are you an actor?” Ari asked curiously, but before Max had to answer, Grammie asked, “Don’t you want to be a detective? I thought all boys did, and many girls, too. I certainly did when I was a girl. What about you, Ari, didn’t you want to be a detective?”

  “No,” Ari said, distracted by a memory. “Far from it. I wanted to be a shepherd, or a goatherd. I wanted to lead a simple life. Or even a cowherd, as long as I could live up on the high meadows with my flock.”

  “Cows don’t come in flocks,” Grammie pointed out to him. “And anyhow, everybody outgrows their childish dreams.”

  “Not everyone,” Ari said. “Not every dream. Have you ever seen the high meadows? With mountains all around, and heard the quiet?” Ari asked. “And the stars and—There’s so much time in the high meadows. It feels like there’s more time there, more hours in every day. There’s space for children to play, and nobody cares if they get dirty. They can learn how to not get lost, they learn what’s really important. A boy who lived in this high meadow wouldn’t—he couldn’t—”

  Grammie interrupted again. She had something she wanted Max to hear. “Detectives see people at their worst. It can be unsafe to be a detective,” she warned him.

  “I’m not a detective,” Max told her. “But I’m ready for bed,” and in part he was tired, but also he wanted to head off a quarrel he could see looming up over the metaphorical horizon of Grammie’s kitchen.

  “What are you going to do about that dog?” Grammie asked, then told him, “You should take her back to her mistress tomorrow and collect the rest of your fee. Your fee for not detecting.”

  “I’m thinking about it,” Max said. “It’s not that simple.”

  Back in his own house, on his way with Ari to the stairs leading up to the bedrooms, Max saw an envelope lying on the floor just inside the door, under the mail slot. On a Sunday, it must have been hand-delivered. Ari was in front, so he bent to pick it up. He looked at it, turned it over to look at the back, then passed it to Max with an odd expression on his face. Actually, his face had no expression at all. His eyes were stony, his mouth stiff, and that was what was odd about it.

  The envelope was made of heavy, cream-colored paper and the name Mister Max was written on it in bold, swooping strokes of very black ink. There was a crest engraved on the back, a long-necked bird with a frog in its beak. Max went to the kitchen to slit it open with a knife. This was not the kind of envelope you tore at with your fingers.

  Ari followed him. “You know,” Ari said, running fingers through his dark red hair as if to better arrange his thoughts, “when I came in this afternoon? I didn’t recognize you.”

  Max looked up. “I was being a dogcatcher.”

  “I didn’t think of a dogcatcher, not with that net. I thought maybe rat-catcher. I thought you’d maybe come in through the back door, looking for rats. But it’s made me realize: I don’t know anything about you, do I? I mean, you aren’t going to school, and you were living here alone until I arrived. I don’t even know how old you are. You’re young, but I can’t figure out how young. I know you’ve got a trunk full of all kinds of clothing— You left it open, Max. I don’t snoop. And there’s this huge mirror in your hallway, a dining room with theatrical posters on the walls and a bookcase of plays in it, so whoever owns the house is probably theatrical, but … And you have a grandmother next door, I know, and I’ve known Mrs. Nives for years at the library. And there’s this detective business …”

  Max stopped in the act of extracting the thick sheet of paper from its envelope, sensing danger. “But you do know me,” he told Ari.

  The tutor doubted this. “Only as a tutoring student. Only for a few days, a few dinners. As far as I know, you don’t even have a last name. What about your parents? Where are your parents? Who are you?”
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  Max chose his words carefully. “I can’t say,” he said, and tried not to think about the reasons why he couldn’t, each one of which could make him feel … more alone, more worried, more frightened than the one before. “Really, I can’t,” he assured Ari, then reminded him, “You do know Grammie.”

  Ari’s response to that was another odd thing: He entirely changed the subject. “Go ahead and read your letter,” he said. “I can tell you want to.” However, he didn’t turn away to let Max read in privacy. He stood watching, close enough to read over Max’s shoulder, and that lack of good manners in his tutor was, Max thought, perhaps the oddest thing of all. But he decided to ignore Ari, and read.

  It wasn’t a letter, not really. It was a summons. It might have had a please attached to it, but it was a summons all the same: Please come to the home of the Baroness Barthold at half past ten tomorrow, Monday, morning. She wishes to speak to you about employment. It was signed, in that bold handwriting, Baroness B. PS, it added, do not make the mistake of thinking that because the Baroness is a wealthy and important personage you can therefore charge an exorbitant amount.

  “Well?” asked Ari.

  “Why would she want me?” asked Max. “I’ve never met her. I’ve only seen her two or three times when—” He cut his words off, because he didn’t want to tell Ari that he’d been on the stage and looked out to see the magnificent elderly aristocrat seated in her private box. “When she was out in public,” he finished, hoping that the Baroness did go out sometimes.