POPPY OTT’S PEDIGREED PICKLES

“OH!” SHE CRIED. “AREN’T THEY PERFECTLY DELICIOUS!”
Poppy Ott’s Pedigreed Pickles. Frontispiece (Page [23])

POPPY OTT’S
PEDIGREED
PICKLES

BY
LEO EDWARDS
Author of
THE POPPY OTT BOOKS
THE JERRY TODD BOOKS

ILLUSTRATED BY
BERT SALG

GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Made in the United States of America

Copyright 1927, by
GROSSET & DUNLAP

To
AUNT DELL

CONTENTS

POPPY OTT’S
PEDIGREED PICKLES

CHAPTER I
POPPY’S PICKLE PARLOR

When Poppy Ott jumps into a thing he usually knows where he’s going to land. For he’s a pretty smart boy for his age, as you probably will agree with me if you have read the earlier books that I have written about him. But, bu-lieve me, his wits sure were tangled up the day he got that “Pickle Parlor” idea! Or, at least, that is what I told him when he first sprung his brilliant little scheme on me.

In arguing with him, to bring him down to earth as it were, I tried to convince him that a Pickle Parlor was about as sensible as a barber shop for hairless poodles. No one, I said, referring to the people who bought groceries, would buy their sugar and other truck in one store and then walk a block to buy their pickles in a pickle store. That would be just extra work for them.

“They will,” says he, sticking to his scheme, “if we have better pickles to sell them than they can buy in the average grocery store.”

“Pickles is pickles,” says I.

“Like almost everything else,” says he, as solemn and wise as an old owl, “there’s a big difference in pickles.”

“Yah,” says I, “some are sweet and some are sour.”

“I mean,” says he, “that of pickles of a kind some are much better than others. Take your own mother’s pickles for example. You must have noticed that they’ve got a better taste than boughten pickles. And that largely explains why a great many women prefer to make their own pickles. They want better pickles than they can buy. So how easy for us to build up our new business if we get the right kind of pickles to sell!”

I gave him a sad look.

“Poppy,” I sighed, “you’re too much for me.”

“What do you mean?”

“As long as you’re a boy,” I advised, as a further effort to pull him down to earth, “why don’t you be a boy? This Peanut Parlor stuff is out of your line, kid.”

“I didn’t say anything about a Peanut Parlor.”

“Well, a Pickle Parlor is just as crazy. You can’t make it work. For pickles are groceries. And the place to buy them is in a grocery store.”

“Jerry, if you wanted to buy a good cheap stove poker, what store would you go to?”

“To the Stove-poker Parlor,” says I, tickled over my own smartness.

“Be serious.”

“Well,” I complied generously, “I might try the ten-cent store.”

“But a stove poker is hardware. So, if your argument holds good, ought you not to go to a hardware store?”

“Tra-la-la,” says I. “Isn’t it a beautiful day.”

“The point is,” says he, “that people will buy hardware in a novelty store, or, for that matter, anything in any kind of a store, if you make it an object for them to do so.”

“Anyway,” says I, yawning, “running a store is a man’s job. So that lets us out.”

But he was as unmoved as though he were the hill of Gibraltar itself, or whatever you call it.

“Of course,” he reflected, referring to the suggested partnership, “it will be a fifty-fifty proposition.”

Seeing that it was useless to argue with him further, I sort of resigned myself to my fate as his pickle partner.

“I have a hunch,” says I, “that it’s going to be a whole lot worse than that. A Pickle Parlor! We’ll be the laugh of the town.”

“The Wright brothers were laughed at when they tried to fly. And Edison was laughed at when he started working on his talking machine. The easiest thing some people can do is to ridicule any new idea that comes up. But we should worry how much the Tutter people laugh at us. To that point, I’d rather have them laugh at us than ignore us. For to be ridiculed is recognition of a sort.”

“Help!” I cried, holding my head. “Get the dictionary.”

That set Poppy to laughing. And if you could have seen him then as I saw him you would better understand why I like him so well. With all of his wise talk there isn’t a boy in Tutter, where we live, who has more real he-kid fun in him than this long-legged, long-headed chum of mine. And that he has big ideas is, of course, the more credit to him. As he says, half of the fun of being a boy is getting ready early in the game to be a man. Take the stilt factory that I told about in the book, POPPY OTT’S SEVEN-LEAGUE STILTS. That was a big idea, let me tell you. Imagine two boys starting a real, honest-to-goodness factory! With a smokestack on the roof, and everything. When the brain storm first struck my ambitious chum I declared flat-footed that we couldn’t do it. But old long-head said we had to do it, for already he had two big stilt orders in his pocket. On the strength of these orders we borrowed money from the bank to get started. It was pretty tough sledding for us at first, and once we got a wallop that almost floored us. But Poppy is like a rubber ball: the harder he gets bowled over the higher he bounds on the come-back. Good old Poppy!

To-day the stilt factory that we started is a growing business. Mr. Ott runs it. And so spruce and businesslike is he that at sight of him it’s hard to believe that only a short time ago he was a shiftless, no-account tramp. In the book, POPPY OTT AND THE STUTTERING PARROT, I told in detail how Poppy made his father settle down and get a job. So you see my chum deserves credit for that good piece of work, too. Oh, you’ve got to hand it to Poppy, all right. He knows his cauliflower, as the saying is. From which, no doubt, you’ll gather that I wasn’t half as reluctant to become his Pickle Parlor partner as I had let on. I just talked against him for fun. All the time that I was running his scheme down I was thinking of the fun we were going to have and the money we were going to earn. Money! What boy doesn’t like to have money? And how much more it means to a fellow when he earns the money himself. Yes, sir, if old long-head wanted to start a Pickle Parlor or any other kind of a parlor I was with him till the cows came home. Of course, I had everything to learn. But I could watch him. And at the very least I could dust off the pickles while he cleverly punched the cash register. Deep down in my heart I even confessed to myself that I was pretty lucky to have this chance of being his business partner, which shows how much I appreciate him. And it makes me happy to know that he feels the same way toward me. Two peas in a pod! That’s what Dad calls us. But maybe, to better fit this particular case, I should make it two cucumbers on a cucumber vine! Huh?

Now that it was all settled in the leader’s active mind that we were going to be the prosperous proprietors of Tutter’s first and foremost Pickle Parlor, we did the squinting act up and down Main Street to find a suitable location for our young gold mine, thus getting track of an empty store building. It looked awfully big and roomy to me. I tried to picture in my mind what it would look like when we got it filled up with pickles. And my uneasy conclusion was that if we did succeed in filling it up with pickles we’d have enough pickles to feed the whole United States for the next sixty-seven years. Finding out who owned the empty building we trotted down the street to the Canners Exchange Bank, where we asked to see Mr. Foreman Pennykorn, the president.

Of the three Tutter banks Mr. Pennykorn’s bank is the smallest and shabbiest. It gets its name from the canning factory that he owns. And if it wasn’t for this factory I dare say the bank wouldn’t have any business at all. For people as a rule don’t like to do business with that kind of a bank any more than they like to trade in a dingy, sleepy-looking store. I’ve heard it said that the Pennykorn family is one of the richest in the county. But old Mr. Pennykorn is too tight fisted to spend any of his money for adding machines and other up-to-date bank stuff.

Waiting outside of the president’s office, at the orders of the grumpy, suspicious-eyed cashier, we heard voices through the unlatched door. Nor did we feel that it was our duty to stuff up our ears.

“And what price have you posted for early sweet corn?” we heard Mr. Pennykorn inquire, from which we gathered that he was talking with his son, Mr. Norman Pennykorn, who runs the canning factory.

“Nine dollars a ton.”

“Too much; too much,” came in a sort of petulant, disapproving voice.

“But the farmers won’t sell for any less.”

“Um.... What’s the Ashton Canning Company paying?”

“Ten-fifty.”

“Fools! They could buy for less.”

“The farmers aren’t dumb. They know our price is too low. And as a result a lot of them, I’ve been told, are planning to haul their corn over to Ashton. It’s only ten miles. And a difference of one-fifty a ton is a big item to them.”

A chair creaked; after which we heard footsteps going back and forth.

“I told you, Norman, when that Ashton plant was built that we’d suffer from it. If we don’t watch our steps they are going to seriously cut into our business.”

“Well,” came the grunt, “you won’t help matters any by cutting the price on the farmers. For they’re sore at us already.”

“Um ...” studied the crafty banker. “It might be wise for us to buy up this Ashton plant. That would give us control of the local bottom-land acreage. The farmers then would have to sell to us at our price. Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to sell at all unless they shipped. And the most of them are too dumb to attempt a thing like that.”

“But our canned-corn outlet doesn’t justify operating another plant. We’d lose money.”

“I’ve been thinking, Norman, that we ought to materially increase our pickle output. Our Dandy Dills went across fine. Very fine, indeed. The wholesale houses expressed disappointment at the early depletion of our stock. Considering the matter, I’ve come to the conclusion that the somewhat extraordinary acceptance of our Dandy Dills is due, not so much to the manufacturing processes, but to the cucumbers, themselves. Our bottom land has produced exceptional sweet corn. And I’m wondering if it can’t be made to further produce exceptional cucumbers in large quantities. That is, cucumbers of improved texture and flavor. You probably grasp my point. If we can greatly multiply our pickle business, which seems entirely feasible to me, we would be justified in taking over the Ashton plant.”

“For pickles?”

“Exactly. It is something for us to think about.”

“After our marked success last summer with the new pickle line, I encouraged Mrs. O’Mally to increase her acreage this year. And the other day I talked with another farmer from down the river who has a big patch. He’s feeling around for a market. So the prospects are that we’ll quadruple our dill output this summer.”

“Fine. Very fine. But don’t pay too much, Norman. Have an eye to profits. The less we pay out the more satisfactory our profits will be. As a whole, this promises to be a very good year for us. And if we can clean up fifty thousand dollars we’ll be in excellent shape to absorb the Ashton concern.”

“And you really think we should cut the price on sweet corn?”

“It galls me, Norman, to have to pay nine dollars a ton. But, to take a broader view, it would be awkward for us, I imagine, to—ah—antagonize the farmers at this stage in our contemplated development. So we probably had better let the nine-dollar price stand. Or, if necessary, with the future in mind, I even would consent to raising the price to nine-fifty or nine-seventy-five. That will win the farmers’ confidence. And at every opportunity you should talk with them guardedly about cucumbers. You might even contract for a limited acreage. By explaining that it is experimental cannage you can keep them from expecting too much.... By the way, what is the boy doing this summer?”

“Forrest? Oh, burning up gasoline mostly.”

“You should put him to work in the factory. He should be learning the business. Idleness and extravagance are twin evils, Norman. And I cannot countenance either, much less in the habits of my only grandchild.”

Not particularly interested at first in this long-winded business conversation, we had pricked up our ears at the mention of pickles. For that was stuff in our line! It was a sort of coincidence, I told myself, that we should overhear their pickle plans so soon after our decision to start up a Pickle Parlor. But I never dreamed that soon the two businesses, so to speak, would be kicking each other in the seat of the pants.

A sporty-looking roadster having pulled up in front of the bank, its owner, a boy of our age, now sauntered lordly-like into the lobby. Forrest Pennykorn is what I call a first-class snob. I never did get along with him at school, and probably never will, for the only way to keep peace with him is to toady to him, and that is something I won’t do with any kid, rich or poor.

Getting his eyes on us the snappily-dressed young millionaire brought out a scowl. For he has about as much love for us as we have for him.

“Some one must have left the back door open,” was his clever little slap at us, as he disappeared into his grandfather’s office. “Hi, Grandpop. Hi, Pop. Why don’t you turn on the electric fan? It’s hotter than an oven in here.”

“Not infrequently,” was the banker’s dry reply, “it is advisable to endure slight bodily discomforts in order to economize.”

“That’s all Greek to me. Say, Pop, can I have a ten-spot? I want to take a spin over to Ashton this afternoon.”

“Forrest, your grandfather and I have just been talking about you. And we both feel that you’re old enough to be of some help to me at the factory.”

“What?”

“The business will be yours some day. And you ought to begin now to—”

A gust of wind having blown the door wide open, it was now closed with a bang, staying latched this time. And not knowing how much longer we might be kept waiting, Poppy got up, sort of impatient-like, and went over to the cashier’s window.

“We’re interested in Mr. Pennykorn’s empty store building near the Lattimer meat market. Can you tell us what it rents for?”

“One hundred and twenty-five a month,” snapped the cashier, a bit peeved, I guess, that we hadn’t taken up the business with him in the first place.

“One hundred and twenty-five dollars?” says Poppy, drawing a deep breath.

The man nodded curtly, after which the president and general manager of Tutter’s leading Pickle Parlor gave a sort of wilted laugh.

“I guess, Mr. Blynn, that’s too steep for us.”

A stoop-shouldered old man had come into the bank. And I noticed now that he was standing where he could listen. His face looked peculiarly familiar to me. But for the life of me I couldn’t place him at the moment.

“Are you planning on starting up a store?” the cashier thawed out under the warmth of his own curiosity.

“A Pickle Parlor,” says Poppy, who felt, I guess, that the sooner he started advertising the new business the better.

“A what?” the bank clerk stared.

“A Pickle Parlor.”

“What in the name of common sense is a Pickle Parlor?”

“What is an ice-cream parlor?” countered Poppy.

“A place where you buy ice cream.”

“Naturally. So a Pickle Parlor is a place where you buy pickles.”

“I never heard of such a thing.”

“I rather imagine,” came modestly from the genius of Tutter’s new enterprise, “that our Pickle Parlor will be the first of its kind in the United States. When completely organized it is our plan to sell all kinds of quality pickles—apple pickles, beet pickles and various mixtures. But at the start we will specialize in cucumber pickles. I hope you will give us a trial, Mr. Blynn. Pickles is pickles for the most part, but you’ll always get preferred pickles when you deal with us. Even your wife, excellent cook as she no doubt is, will be unable to make better pickles than ours. And to serve with those tasty party sandwiches, which mean so much to an experienced hostess, who would want to use any pickle except the perfect pickles that are the fame of Poppy’s Pickle Parlor? As a matter of fact, we expect to get a corner on the whole pickle business of the town. And later on we may branch out and sprinkle a chain of Pickle Parlors all over the state.”

“I swan!” the cashier stared. “I swan!”

A jeering laugh followed us out of the bank, for young Pennykorn had come out of his grandfather’s office in time to overhear Poppy’s pickle oration.

“Well,” I grinned at my chum, when we were in the street, “we’re getting a lot of that ‘laughed-at’ recognition that you talked about. So you ought to be happy.”

“A Pickle Parlor!” smarty hooted after us from the door of his grandfather’s bank. “A Pickle Parlor! Haw! haw! haw!”

“Jerry,” came solemnly, “do you know what I wish?”

“That you could coax him into an alley and punch his face?”

“Oh, no! I wish I could make him come into our store and beg us to sell him some of our pickles.”

“Which reminds me,” says I, “that you haven’t told me yet where you’re going to get these wonderful pickles.”

“That,” says he, with a thoughtful look, “is still a puzzle to me.”

“Good night!” I squeaked, with much the same feeling as though, having skidded off the moon, I had landed kerflop! on the hard earth. “It’s a good thing, I guess, that they didn’t make us a special offer on that store. For we’d look cute trying to run a Pickle Parlor without any pickles.”

CHAPTER II
OUR “SILENT” PARTNER

“Our business career was kind of short and snappy,” I told Poppy, when we had turned a corner out of sight of the Canners Exchange Bank where our enemy, Forrest Pennykorn, had just given us the horselaugh.

“How do you get that ‘was’ stuff?” says he. “We really haven’t got started yet.”

I had known, of course, that he would say something like that. For when he starts out to do a thing he usually sticks to it until he finishes it. That’s the kind of a kid he is. But I pretended that I was surprised.

“What?” I squeaked, as we ran into a jam of people in front of the Parker grocery where a sale was going on. “Haven’t you given up that scheme?”

There was a crash of glass on the concrete sidewalk.

“My pickles!” cried one of the shoppers, glaring at poor Poppy as though she was mad enough to snatch him bald-headed. “Stupid! Why don’t you watch where you’re going?”

The offender, of course, had an apology a mile long. Then, in his quick-minded way, he got down on his knees and began fingering the pickled cucumbers as they lay in a puddle of juice on the sidewalk, acting for all the world as though he were conducting a pickle post-mortem, or whatever you call it.

“Mrs. Clayton,” he finally looked up with a long face, “you may not realize it, but this accident is nothing short of an act of Providence. And while it may seem to you that you have suffered a loss, you really are going to be benefited. The very fact that you made this purchase proves that you are a lover of good pickles. I say good pickles, for, as a pickle specialist, I can see that you bought the best pickles that the store had. Probably they are fairly good pickles, as pickles go. Because I am in the pickle business myself is no reason why I should run down anybody else’s pickles. Yet, on the other hand, I feel that I have a right to uphold the superior quality of my own pickles. And it is of such pickles that I am going to make good your loss. Not store pickles, Mrs. Clayton, as we usually accept the term, but home-made pickles, of which the more you eat the more you want; pickles that you never tire of; pickles with the lasting, lingering taste; pickles with a skin you love to touch; pickles,” the orator soared, like a rooster flopping over a fence, “that please but never pucker. A wonderful treat is in store for you. And once you have been initiated into the dinner-time joys of perfect pickles, I hope you’ll remember me, not as a blundering boy who bumped into you by accident, to the loss of your bottle of store pickles, but as the hand of Providence that led you into the light. Poppy’s Pickle Parlor! Easy to remember, isn’t it? If you’ll say it over two or three times you’ll never forget it. Poppy’s Pickle Parlor! Which is all to the point, Mrs. Clayton, that whenever you are in need of pickles, the place to buy them, if you want the best, is at Poppy’s Pickle Parlor, the home of perfect pickles.”

Well, say! I never felt so foolish in all my life. Poppy is all right. He is a smart kid, in fact. And no doubt this new scheme of his was water tight. But it struck me that he was spreading the gab too promiscuously. Enough people would laugh at us, I figured, without him making a monkey of himself (and me, too!) in public.

“The first thing you know,” I hinted, when we had escaped from the laughing crowd that had gathered around us as a result of the free show, “they’ll be locking you up in a padded cell.”

“What’s the matter, Jerry?” he grinned, in perfect contentment with himself. “Don’t you like my lingo?”

“You can’t keep it up,” I told him, “and get away with it.”

“It’s good advertising,” he modestly bragged on himself.

“But what’s the use,” says I, “of letting on that we have a Pickle Parlor when we haven’t?”

“A business is a business,” says he, “from the time it’s organized. And we’ve been organized for more than an hour.”

“But we haven’t any store. And you say yourself that you don’t know where we’re going to get our pickles.”

“I know where we’re going to get the first quart,” he grinned.

I saw then that he was holding something back. Which was like him, of course! And so I was prepared for something of a surprise as I followed him down the street to his home, where he reappeared from the cellar with a jar of cucumber pickles, which, on sampling, I had to acknowledge were the swellest home-made cucumber pickles that I ever had set my teeth into.

“Who made ’em?” I smacked.

“That,” says he, “is something I have yet to find out.”

“Don’t you know?” I stared.

He slowly shook his head.

“It may seem to you, Jerry, that I just jumped into this Pickle Parlor scheme on a moment’s notice. But it’s a fact I’ve been twisting the scheme around in my head for the past two days. And what put it into my head in the first place was this jar of pickles. Pickles like these, I told myself, would make a storekeeper rich in no time, providing he had enough of them to sell. And what fun it would be, I thought, to run a store of that kind. A Pickle Parlor! The name popped into my head just like that,” and he snapped his fingers in illustration. “But I ran up against a snag when I tried to find out who had made the pickles. I have them here, as you can see. But I don’t know where they came from.”

“But surely,” says I, puzzled over his words, “they didn’t drop out of the sky.”

“Last Saturday,” he explained, “the ladies of the Presbyterian missionary society held a food sale in Drake’s store. And there is where I bought the jar of pickles. I didn’t ask who made them, for I wasn’t interested ... then. And when I tried to find out later on no one seemed to know. First, I was sent to Mrs. Bowman on Elm Street. No, she told me, after tasting the pickles, they weren’t out of her kitchen. Nor could she help me. But she’d like to buy some of the pickles, she said, if it turned out that there were more of the same kind for sale. I went to three women in turn. No success at all. But here’s an important point, Jerry: Every woman who sampled the pickles wanted to buy some. So you can see the big money that’s waiting for us if we can find out who this unknown pickle genius is and win her over to our scheme.”

There’s nothing I like better than mystery stuff.

“What’ll you give me,” I laughed, “if I find out who the pickle maker is?”

“I’ll make you president of the company.”

“No,” I shook my head, “that’s your job. For it’s your idea.”

“Well, vice-president then.”

“All we’ve got to do,” I showed my stuff, “is to get a list of the women who contributed pickles to the church sale and then check off the names until we come to the right one.”

“That would be fine if there was such a list. But there isn’t, for I inquired. As I understand it, the newspaper invited people in general to bring cookies and other stuff to the sale, which explains how the pickles happened to be brought in. Evidently some one just walked in with them, and after setting them down quietly walked out again.”

“Then,” says I, as a second lead, “we’ll advertise in the newspaper. Or if that doesn’t do the trick, we’ll make a house to house canvass.”

It was close to eleven o’clock now. And thinking that maybe Mrs. Clayton would want her pickles for dinner, we filled a bottle of the same size as the one that had been broken and hurried down the street to the factory district, where we saw young Pennykorn’s classy car, together with several others, parked in a vacant lot across the street from the canning company’s office. Just beyond was an old-fashioned house well shut in by untrimmed trees and ragged bushes, a familiar place to Poppy, for he had worked here painting porches when he first came to town. At sight of the sleepy-looking house it suddenly popped into my head who the old man was whom I had noticed in the bank. It was old Mr. Weckler, the widower who had so generously and unexpectedly put up the money for the big assembly cabin in our Boy Scout camp. I had seen him once or twice in camp. So in a way it was strange that I hadn’t recognized him right off. Still, a fellow can’t remember every face that he sees. I’ll never forget the joy of the Scouts when the newspaper announced Mr. Simon Weckler’s donation. And were the Tutter people ever surprised! For it was the general public opinion that on top of being something of a miser the old man hated boys, which goes to show how easily one can be misjudged.

The housekeeper’s face broke into a smile when she saw us at the back door.

“I hardly knew whether to believe your silly talk or not,” she told Poppy, taking the pickles that we had brought her.

“Try one,” beamed the pickle specialist, as he caught her looking curiously into the jar, “and if they aren’t what I represented them to be I’ll run down town and buy you a tubful of the other kind.”

“Oh ...” she cried, biting into one of the pickles. “Aren’t they perfectly delicious! Did your mother make them?”

Poppy shook his head.

“No,” he explained quietly, “my mother is dead.”

Here old Mr. Weckler, himself, pottered into the kitchen, thumping along with his heavy cane, a huge yellow cat tagging at his heels. At sight of us he gave a dry smile, which showed clearly enough that he hadn’t forgotten about the pickle oration that our walking dictionary had so nobly squeezed out of his system in front of the cashier’s window.

“Found a store yet?” the old man inquired.

“No, sir,” was Poppy’s polite reply.

“I was in the bank when you were there and overheard you inquiring about Pennykorn’s empty building. Humph! If you would accept my advice don’t rent from that man if you can possibly help it. Too grasping; too grasping,” and the shaggy gray head waggled sharply in conclusion.

“I guess,” laughed Poppy, “there’s no danger of us renting any building for one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month.” Liking cats he got down on his knees. “Hello, Peter,” he held out his hand. “Remember me, old boy?”

As though it did remember him, the cat came over and rubbed against him.

“Up, Peter,” commanded the old man, pleased at the interest shown in his pet. “Show the boys what you can do. Up, I say,” and the cat sat up as pretty as you please.

“You old tyke,” says Poppy, affectionately petting the yellow head.

“He hasn’t forgotten,” says Mr. Weckler, “how you fished him out of that dry cistern and bandaged his foot.”

“I see it’s all well again.”

“A trifle stiff in the joint, but otherwise as good as ever.... How big a place do you figure you need for this Pickle Parlor of yours?”

“I imagine we ought to start up in a small way,” says Poppy thoughtfully. “For the chances are we won’t have much of a stock at first. In fact,” came the laughing admission, “after supplying you people we have only seven pickles left. Nor do we know yet where more of the same kind are coming from.”

Mrs. Clayton laughed when she heard about the unknown pickle genius. Then, at the old man’s invitation, we followed him into the back yard, where, almost hidden in a thicket of neglected apple trees, we were shown a small house on the order of a child’s playhouse, but made full height, which we were told we could use for a store if it were big enough for us.

“Originally a summerhouse, I built it over to please my daughter,” the old man told us quietly. And there was something in the tone of his voice that made us think that the memory of his daughter wasn’t a happy one. “It’s of no use to me now. As a matter of fact, this is the first time that I have been inside of it for years. For your purpose, of course, it would be better to move it to my vacant lot across the street from the canning factory.”

Poppy fairly danced with joy.

“Why, there couldn’t anything be better, Mr. Weckler. It fits our scheme to a ‘T.’ For like the scheme, itself, it’s different. Everybody will notice it. And it’s plenty big enough, too. We can build our shelves on the sides,” he began to plan, “and put the counter back here. Of course,” he ran off into a merry laugh, “it won’t be a very big counter.” Then he stopped. “But maybe,” he looked up at the old man with his big solemn eyes, “we can’t afford to pay you what it’s worth.”

“You paid for it,” came shortly, “when you went down into the cistern to rescue my cat.”

“But that wasn’t anything. I’d do that for any cat.”

I could see that the old man liked Poppy. For his eyes showed it.

“I dare say you would,” he nodded. “Which is all the more reason why you’re deserving of any help that I can give you. No, you needn’t say any more about it. The playhouse is yours to take or leave, as you see fit. As for moving it onto my lot, if you decide to do that you can pay me five dollars a month.”

“Only five dollars a month for the whole business?” cried Poppy. “That isn’t enough. We expect to make a lot of money when we get organized. And I don’t think it’s right for us to fill our own pockets and not pay you what we should.”

“Possibly,” came the dry suggestion, “you would like to take me into partnership with you.”

“Hot dog!” cried Poppy.

“Very well,” the old man gravely accepted the honor. “You may call me your ‘silent’ partner, if you wish. Which means that you’re to run the business as you see fit and I’m to look on. As for sharing in the profits, I’ll take my pay in pickles.”

“So many pickles as that?” Poppy looked his surprise.

“Oh,” came dryly, “it may not be so terribly many. Probably not more than two or three quarts a month at the most.”

CHAPTER III
WHOSE PICKLES

“What’s luckier than the left-hand foot of a tongue-tied graveyard rabbit?” says I to Poppy, when our “silent” partner had gone into the house to eat his dinner.

I thought at first that old long-face wasn’t going to answer me, so busy was he building shelves and counters in his mind. But finally it percolated into his crowded cranium that I had asked him a question.

“What?” says he, deciding that shelf number six was a trifle too high and that the wrapping counter needed to be shoved a thirty-second of an inch to the left.

“A cat in a cistern,” says I.

“Cuckoo!” was his lack of appreciation of my cleverness.

“I’m not talking about ‘cuckoos,’” I threw back at him. “I’m talking about cats—k-a-t-z, cats. And the point is, that if Mr. Weckler’s tomcat hadn’t skidded into a convenient cistern, thus giving you a chance to do the hero stuff, our Pickle Parlor might have cut its baby teeth in a dry-goods box instead of a juvenile bungalow. Hence the good luck to us, as I say. Oh, you needn’t look so disgusted,” I began to spar at him, “or the first thing you know I’ll show you how easy a vice-president can take a mere president down and rub dirt on the end of his nose.”

“Shut up,” he laughed, “I’m busy.”

“Don’t take it so seriously, Poppy,” I further kept at him. “For this isn’t a morgue—it’s a Pickle Parlor.”

“To listen to you,” was the nice little hunk of flattery that he shoved at me, “anyone would think it was a lunatic asylum.”

I picked off some of his high-falutin’ oratory.

“Poppy’s petrified pickles,” I swept the air with my arms. “The perfect pickles with a puckery past; the quicker you eat them the shorter you last.” Then I let out a yip. “Look me over, kid,” I strutted around. “I’m a real poet.”

“Yah, a poet ... but you don’t know it.”

“Say, Poppy?”

“Well, what now?”

“Have you got your private office picked out yet?”

“Sure thing,” he grinned. “It’s on the ninth floor.”

“Toot! Toot!” says I, pretending that I was an elevator. “Anybody going up to the president’s office?” Then I took a lath that lay on the floor and smacked old doo-funny a sharp crack on the seat of the pants. “Look out!” I staggered, pretending this time that my arms were loaded full. “I just dropped a jar of pickled carpet tacks.”

Poppy and I fool around that way a lot. It’s kid stuff, I know. And kind of silly. But in a way it bears out that old saying of Dad’s: Every day a little fun and a little business.

Having completed the entertainment, so to speak, I got down to business, making the suggestion that we paint the outside of our store yellow with green trimmings. The “yellow” would be the cucumber blossoms, I brilliantly explained, and the “green” would be the pickles. The inside was to be painted, too, but, of course, we couldn’t do that until the shelves and counter had been made. Spick and span and nothing else but—that was our idea of what a store should be. And it was the right idea, too.

“How about a sign?” says I, as the self-appointed decorator. “Do you want me to paint that, too?”

“What are we going to put on it?” says Poppy.

“‘Poppy’s Pickle Parlor,’ of course,” says I, looking at him in surprise. “I thought that was all settled.”

“But it’s your Pickle Parlor,” says he, “just as much as it’s mine.”

“Of course,” says I, getting the point of his unselfishness. “But ‘Poppy’s Pickle Parlor’ is a better name than ‘Jerry’s Pickle Parlor.’ For the ‘P’ in Poppy sort of rhymes with the ‘P’ in pickles.”

“Alliteration,” old brain-bag swung in.

“What do you mean by that?” I cheerfully showed my ignorance.

“Using the three words, all beginning with ‘P,’ is what is called alliteration. You see a lot of it in advertising. In fact,” he admitted, “that’s where I got my idea.”

Getting the measurements of our new store, which proved to be six feet wide by eight feet long, we made a diagram, or, as Poppy called it, a floor plan, a copy of which is printed on the opposite page. You may wonder where we expected to pick off a cash register. As a matter of fact, we didn’t expect to own a cash register for a long time. But a floor plan, to use the leader’s words, was intended to show everything complete. And that is why we put the cash register in ahead of time, along with the two prospective pickle barrels.

“Before we go any farther,” says Poppy, “I think we better check up and see how we stand on the money question. For it will take a good bit of jack to pay for the paint and shelf lumber. Then, too, we’ll have to hire a house mover.”

“It won’t cost much,” I grinned, “to move this house.”

“Probably not. But we won’t get the job done for nothing. How about putting in fifty dollars apiece?”

That was all right with me, I agreed. Then, as the lodge saying is, we adjourned, stretching our legs in the direction of home, having been reminded by the one o’clock factory whistles that we hadn’t had dinner yet. Later we met in Mr. Thomas Lorring’s bank where we opened a hundred-dollar checking account in the name of Poppy’s Pickle Parlor, after which we ordered our lumber and paint, not forgetting to put an ad in the Tutter Daily Globe.

Mr. Lorring, you will remember, was the banker who helped us start up our stilt factory, out of which we made several hundred dollars. He sure used us fine. And that is why we went back to him.

Poppy is a regular little gee whizz when it comes to sawing and fitting. Boy, you should have seen the way those shelves danced into place! I ran a race with him, slinging yellow and green paint right and left, but he beat me by a mile. Still, if I could have added to the paint that I put on the store what I got on the old overalls that Mr. Weckler had so wisely provided, I guess the race would have been a tie.

Throughout our afternoon’s work the old man pottered here and there, silently taking in everything with a critical, interested eye. Mrs. Clayton, too, came out to see how we were getting along, bringing a big pitcher of lemonade. Um-yum! The best lemonade I ever tasted. Having lapped up two or three quarts, more or less, my painting speed increased thirty-eight strokes to the minute.

People living in small towns usually keep pretty close tab on their neighbors. So, after Poppy’s two wild “pickle” spiels, first in the bank and again in front of the Parker grocery, it soon got noised about that a new local business was about to blossom forth. A Pickle Parlor! Kids who heard what we were doing came and rubbered at us over the fence that inclosed Mr. Weckler’s neglected garden. And older friends of ours smiled at us when they met us in the street. The general opinion was, as I had told Poppy in the beginning, that such a store would fizzle out for want of business. Of course, there was a “secret” side to our plans that our friends didn’t know about. And, to that point, I was to learn later on that my brainy partner had still other dope in his head that he hadn’t dished out to me. Not for one instant had it occurred to me that something bigger and better equipped than an ordinary kitchen would be needed to cook the big wad of pickles that we hoped to sell. But, as I say, old Poppy already had dreams of a pickle factory in the back part of his mind. That kid! First it was stilts and now it was pickles. I never saw the beat of him. And what is more I never expect to.

At six o’clock we knocked off for the day, telling Mr. Weckler that we would be back the first thing in the morning. Mother nearly had a cat fit when she saw me. And no wonder! For so “stuck up” was I from my painting job that it took me an hour to get the green and yellow paint out of my hair. But what was that to upset a young business man!

At the first chance I got the evening newspaper away from Dad and skimmed up and down the columns to find our ad. Here it is:

WHOSE PICKLES

Something of great value was found in a quart jar of cucumber pickles purchased last Saturday at the Presbyterian missionary food sale in Drake’s store.

Seven diamonds worth ten thousand dollars.

Were they your pickles? It will pay you to find out. Address, Box 9, Tutter Daily Globe.

I read the ad a second time, hardly able to believe my eyes. Seven diamonds worth ten thousand dollars! What in Sam Hill was Poppy’s object in telling a lie like that? I had helped him write the ad; and it was my understanding that the “something of great value” that had been found in the pickles was the idea that my chum had of selling the pickles in great quantities, which, of course, would bring riches to the pickle maker. But there had been no mention of “diamonds” to me.

“Say, Jerry,” my chum called up on the ’phone, “did you see our ad in to-night’s paper?”

“Yes,” I shot back at him, “and if you want to know the plain truth of the matter I don’t think much of it, either. For it isn’t on the square.”

“They pulled a boner in the newspaper office,” he then explained. “That line about the diamonds was lifted out of another article and put into our ad by mistake. The editor just told me so over the ’phone. I’m wondering now what the result of the mistake will be.”

We weren’t long in finding out. In the next two days we received sixty-three letters. Nor was it an easy matter for us to find out which one of these sixty-three pickle makers was the pickle genius of whom we were in search.

CHAPTER IV
A BUSY DAY

“The mistake that our proof reader made in your ad,” the newspaper editor admitted to us the following morning, “was nothing short of downright carelessness. Still,” he laughed, handing us six letters, “it doesn’t seem to have done you any harm.”

It was explained to us then just how the mistake had occurred. Right beside our ad in the newspaper “form” was an article telling about a jewelry-store robbery. A line in this article had to be reset on the linotype machine. And in making the correction the proof reader got the new “slug,” as the line of type was called, into the middle of our ad instead of in the robbery article, where it belonged.

Having been told by the editor that he would print the corrected ad free of charge, we thanked him and hurried out of the newspaper office, stopping at the first corner to see who our six letters were from.

“I saw your advertisement in to-night’s Globe,” wrote a woman on Oak Street. “I can easily identify my jar of pickles. My husband, who doubts the truth of the advertisement, says, anyhow, that it couldn’t have been our pickles in which the diamonds were found, for we never owned a diamond in all our lives except my engagement ring. Nevertheless, I would like to know for sure that mine isn’t the lucky jar.”

The next letter was from a woman by the name of Mrs. Hiram Springer.

“My attention was called this evening to your current advertising in our local newspaper. I certainly can’t say that the diamonds are mine, granting that your story of finding them is true, for I never owned but one small diamond. Were the diamonds in the cucumbers, or just in the bottom of the jar? I’m wondering if I actually pickled jeweled cucumbers! Yet how could the diamonds have gotten into the cucumbers? But tell me, please, what you know. And I’m hoping, of course, that it was in my jar that the diamonds were found.”

While it turned out that a lot of the women who wrote to us never had contributed pickles to the food sale, it isn’t to be thought of them that they tried to cheat. Take the case of Mrs. Cook on South Main Street. She hadn’t given the church people any pickles. But she had sent pickles to a number of her church-going neighbors. And so at sight of our ad her first thought was that possibly the diamonds, which could have been in the green cucumbers, though not without mystery, had turned up in one of these scattered jars. Naturally, if such was the case she intended to press her claim. Another woman having had some pickles sent to her by an eccentric country relative jumped to the excited conclusion that “rich Aunt Hattie,” as the relative was called, had put the diamonds into the pickle jar as a pleasing surprise. Some canned fruit had been stolen from her cellar, and how logical, was her quick conclusion, that a jar of “Aunt Hattie’s pickles” had thus peculiarly found its way into the hands of the church people! You can see from this why so many letters had been written to us. No one who had any possible chance of laying claim to the diamonds stood idly by. For nothing was to be lost by writing; and there was a chance of great gain.

As we had to have pickles before we could open up our business, it was of more importance, Poppy said, to find out who the lucky pickle maker was than to finish painting our store, so, after a hurried trip to Mr. Weckler’s house, to see if the paint was drying, we headed for 616 Elm Street to interview the first one of the six women who had written to us.

Mrs. Morgan was very eager to let us into her house when she found out that we had her letter. But she got rid of us in a hurry when she learned the truth about the “diamonds.” I couldn’t see, though, what right she had to get out of patience with us and accuse us of trickery. But that just goes to show how unreasonable some people can be.

Our next stop was at Mrs. Hempline’s house, where we were given much better treatment. Yes, was the cheerful, even eager admission, she had contributed pickles to the food sale. But we found on sampling her pickles that we were in the wrong house.

“Gosh!” says I, when we hit the street. “Did you see the look on her face when we backed out of the house? I bet anything she thinks we’re cuckoo.”

“How could she think different,” grinned Poppy, “with you along?”

The balance of our calls were no more successful than the first two. Of the six women, three had contributed pickles to the food sale. But the pickles that we sampled weren’t the pickles that we were looking for. In fact, at one house the pickles were no good at all. They tasted to me as though they had been put up in dish water.

“Hey!” a kid called to us across the street. “Mr. Stair wants to see you.”

Hurrying to the newspaper office, we were given fourteen more letters and a telegram.

“Evidently,” grinned the editor, “there’s a lot of people hereabouts who want to wear diamonds.” Then he looked at us curiously. “By the way,” he inquired, “what was it that you found in the pickles?”

“An idea,” says Poppy.

“But you said it was something of great value.”

“The right kind of an idea,” says Poppy, “is frequently worth a lot of money.”

“If it’s news ...” came the hint.

“I hope it will be big news some day,” says Poppy, thinking of a new factory. “But I can’t tell you about it now.”

The editor continued to regard us curiously.

“I understand that you boys are going to start up a pickle store.”

“A Pickle Parlor,” came the polite correction.

The newspaper man laughed.

“Pickles? A Pickle Parlor? Evidently,” he used his head, “this ‘big idea’ of yours has something to do with pickles.”

“If you were to guess for the next thousand years,” grinned Poppy, “you couldn’t guess any closer than that.”

“Aren’t you the boy,” the man’s eyes then showed their admiration, “who brought the stilt idea to town?”

“We’re the boys,” corrected Poppy, which shows what kind of a pal he is. Yes, sir, as I’ve said before, when the angels were putting old Poppy together they dumped in an extra gob of fairness. And then to sort of balance things they put in another extra gob of squareness, with the result that he’s the fairest and squarest pal I ever had or ever hope to have if I live a million years.

“Wire collect complete detailed description of diamonds,” our telegram read. And when we saw that it was signed by the Peoria chief of police you could have sliced off our eyes with a baseball bat.

“Wow!” says Poppy. “This is getting kind of complicated.”

I have no better grown-up friend in all Tutter than Bill Hadley, the town marshal. So we went to him to find out what we should do about the telegram. Billy had a good laugh when he heard of our predicament. We weren’t to worry about the telegram, he said. He’d take care of that matter for us.

“Evidently,” was his opinion, “there’s been a diamond robbery down in Peoria, an’ that’s why the chief wants a description of your diamonds.”

“What if we get more such telegrams from Chicago and other cities?” says Poppy.

“Just bring ’em to me.”

We put in the whole morning and the biggest part of the afternoon following up the letters that were mailed to us through the newspaper office. The second batch of letters brought us no more success than the first six. At noon we were handed more. Twenty-six this trip. Can you imagine! We called on short women, tall women, young women, old women, pretty women, cross-looking women, skinny women, fat women, women who had lost their husbands, and a few who still were wishing. For by three o’clock a total of fifty-four letters had been received at the newspaper office. We sampled so many pickles that they began to stick out of our eyes. Toward the last the sight of a pickle made me gag. And this, by the way, got us into trouble. For one woman caught me turning up my nose at her pickles and landed on me with a broom.

“I’ll teach you to ask me for pickles and then turn up your nose at them behind my back,” she screeched. “Take that, you young whippersnapper. And that and that.”

Poor me! The wonder is that I escaped without a broken neck. For that old girl sure could swat. As for Poppy, he never cracked a smile.

“Oof!” he gagged, when we were in the street. “I’m not surprised that you turned up your nose. For my part I almost turned up my toes. The worst pickles that I ever tasted in all my life.”

“I’m beginning to wonder,” says I wearily, when the street quit spinning around and around, “if we’ll ever be able to find this wonderful pickle maker.”

“We’ve got to,” says he. “For if we don’t our Pickle Parlor will be a fizzle. As I told you yesterday, the people will come to our store to buy better pickles. But we can’t hope to attract them with ordinary pickles.”

“Some of the pickles I’ve tasted to-day would kill a nanny goat with a cast-iron stomach.”

“Which should make us realize all the more,” says Poppy, “how popular our Pickle Parlor will be when we get properly organized.”

I thought of something.

“Did you ever read the book about Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde?” I inquired.

“Why do you ask that?” he looked at me curiously.

“Well, Dr. Jekyl got hold of a drug that changed him into Mr. Hyde, and then Mr. Hyde used another drug that changed him back into Dr. Jekyl. Everything was going along fine and dandy until the drug supply ran out. Dr. Jekyl couldn’t find any more drugs with the right kind of stuff in them, which proved to him that the original drugs were a sort of accident. It may be the same with this one jar of pickles.”

“That isn’t impossible,” says Poppy, “but I’m not going to let myself believe it.”

By the time I got home there were things going on in my stomach that weren’t right. Nor did it help matters any when I tried to hold down the celebrating pickles with mashed potatoes and gravy.

Mother beamed at me across the supper table.

“Have some pickles,” says she generously.

“No!” I cried, with a shudder. Pickles! The last thing I wanted was more pickles.

“Why, Jerry! What’s the matter with you? You look white.”

Dad glanced up from his newspaper.

“Too much candy, I bet a cookie. You shouldn’t eat so much sweet stuff, Son,” he lectured. “You’re getting too big for that.” Then, what do you know if he didn’t shove a second dish of pickles at me! “Here, try something sour for a change. It’ll do your stomach good.”

Pickles! Suddenly I was caught in a whirl of pickles. Mixed pickles! Pear pickles! Apple pickles! Cucumber pickles! String-bean pickles! Peach pickles! Tomato pickles! They came at me with blood in their eyes. I tried to run. But I couldn’t get away from them. Biff! The cucumber pickles soaked me a sledge-hammer blow on the end of the snout, while at the same time the string-bean pickles lifted up the tail of my coat and performed with perfect aim. Again I tried to run, but they got in front of me and cut me off. When I fell they landed on top of me. I saw I was a goner. And then—

Sort of coming back to earth, as it were, I found Mother steadying me.

“I’ll help what’s left of him to bed,” I heard her tell Dad, “while you get the scoop shovel and clean up.”

CHAPTER V
BUTCH MC’GINTY

I almost died. But when I got all ready to do it, sort of, with Dad flying around like a rooster with its head cut off and Mother rubbing my stomach with a hot cloth that looked to me like an old woolen petticoat, Doc Leland bustled into the house with his pill case, out of which he mixed up some dope that did the miracle, as the saying is. And how wonderful it was to know, in the relief that Doc’s pills and a hot-water bottle brought to me, that I was going to have the chance, after all, of helping Poppy run the Pickle Parlor.

“Let this be a lesson to you,” lectured Doc, oggling me through his big nose glasses, “an’ don’t make a pig of yourself the next time you happen to sneak up on an unchaperoned pickle dish.”

“Pickles!” I gagged ... and you should have seen Dad jump for the basin! “I never want to eat another pickle as long as I live.”

Poppy, the big monkey, came in the next morning with a hunk of cauliflower tied up in fancy ribbons like a sick-room bouquet.

“When you get through with it,” he grinned, “your ma can pickle it.”

“Stop!” I shuddered. “Talk of anything else but pickles.”

“Say, Jerry,” he earnestly leaned over the bed, “I’ve got some news for you. We had a burglar in our house last night.”

“What?” I cried, staring at him.

“I thought during the night that I heard a noise in the cellar. But laying it to the cat, I didn’t get up, though now I wish I had.”

“But what would a burglar be doing in your cellar?” I further stared at him.

“That’s the queer part. Nothing was taken. But every jar of pickles that we owned was opened and the pickles dumped into a pile in the middle of the floor.”

Again I raised the “Stop!” signal on him.

“Make it ketchup,” I grimaced.

“Come to think of it,” he laughed, “it was ketchup. But I’d like to have you tell me,” he went on, serious again, “why a burglar should break into our cellar and destroy our canned pick—I mean our ketchup.”

As I have written down in other books, mentioned in the preface of this book, I have had a good bit of experience solving unusual mysteries. At one time I really called myself a Juvenile Jupiter Detective. That was in my “Whispering Mummy” book. So I’m right at home on the “mystery” dope.

“The burglar was looking for something,” says I, showing my stuff. “And if you’re half as smart as I think you are you ought to guess what that something is.”

“Diamonds?” says he.

“Nothing else but.”