The Mouse and the Motorcycle Page 6

  “I’ll go find out,” said the father, and slipped out the door into the hall.

  “I’m so hot,” mumbled Keith. “I’m so hot.”

  His mother wrung out a washcloth in cold water and laid it on her son’s forehead. “You’ll feel better as soon as we get you an aspirin,” she whispered.

  The minutes dragged by. What’s keeping him? thought Ralph. Why doesn’t he hurry? The old hotel snapped and creaked. Keith rolled and tossed, trying to find a cool spot on the pillow, and his mother wrung out the washcloth in more cold water.

  “When’s Dad coming?” asked Keith, his eyes bright and his cheeks flushed.

  “In a minute,” soothed his mother. “He’ll be here in a minute.”

  I wish he would hurry, thought Ralph.

  Still the minutes dragged. Finally footsteps were heard in the hall and Mr. Gridley returned to Room 215.

  “He’s here with the aspirin,” whispered Mrs. Gridley to Keith.

  At last, thought Ralph. I thought he would never come.

  Mr. Gridley shook his head. “There isn’t an aspirin to be found anyplace.” He sounded thoroughly exasperated. “First of all, the night clerk was sound asleep on a couch in the lobby. I had a dickens of a time waking him up and when I finally did manage to, he couldn’t find any aspirin anywhere.”

  “Oh, no!” exclaimed the mother.

  Oh, no! echoed Ralph’s thoughts.

  “What about that little gift shop off the lobby?” asked Mrs. Gridley. “It must sell aspirin.”

  “Locked up tight and the clerk went home with the key,” answered Mr. Gridley.

  “Oh, dear!”

  “The night clerk was really very nice about it,” said the father. “He even came up and looked in the housekeeper’s office.”

  “How far is the nearest drugstore?”

  “Twenty-five miles back on the main highway,” answered the father. “And it closed at ten o’clock and doesn’t open until nine in the morning.”

  The mother held her watch under the lamp. “And it is almost one o’clock. It is hours until morning.” She crossed the room to wring out the washcloth again. “What will we do?”

  “What can we do?” asked the father helplessly. “I even telephoned the doctor, but there has been a bad accident back on the highway and he can’t come. The night clerk said he would telephone the milkman before he starts his route at six and ask him if he can bring some aspirin, but he won’t get here until seven or later. All we can do is wait.”

  Keith tossed under the cold washcloth. “Mom, I think I’d like to go to sleep now,” he muttered thickly.

  “I guess that is all you can do,” said his mother, and bent over to kiss his hot forehead before she turned out the light.

  Ralph did not even wait for the boy’s parents to leave the room. As soon as the light was out he leaped silently to the carpet, and by the time they had gone through the doorway into Room 216 he had hidden his little crash helmet behind the curtain and was halfway through the knothole. Somewhere, someplace in that hotel there must be an aspirin tablet and Ralph was going to find it. He only wished he had the motorcycle so he could travel faster.

  11

  The Search

  I have to go out into the hotel,” Ralph informed his relatives. “I’ve got to help the boy.”

  “Oh, no, not out into the hotel,” cried Ralph’s mother. “Not while the housekeeper is looking for mice. If you’re seen we’ll all be in danger.”

  “I’ll be back before dawn,” said Ralph staunchly. “I must go. Don’t try to stop me.”

  “See here, my boy, aren’t you being a bit dramatic?” asked Uncle Lester. “Whatever do you have to go out into the hotel for?”

  “To pilfer a pill,” said Ralph. “An aspirin tablet.” His answer was dramatic enough even for Uncle Lester. His entire family stared at him in disbelief. Not an aspirin! Not after his own father had been poisoned by one of the dread tablets.

  “An aspirin!” Ralph’s mother gasped. “No, Ralph, not that! Anything but that!”

  “It is the only way.” Ralph stood tall and brave. “The boy has a fever and he needs an aspirin. I’m going to find him one.”

  “Oh, Ralph!” His mother hid her face in her paws.

  “But Ralph,” quavered Aunt Sissy. “Remember your father. You can’t carry an aspirin in your cheek pouches. It would poison you. How could you get one here?”

  “I’ll find a way.” Ralph was outwardly steadfast in his determination, but inside he wondered how he would manage to get an aspirin into Room 215 if he did find one. Roll it, perhaps.

  “Ralph, stay here,” pleaded his mother. “You’re too young. Let your Uncle Lester go.”

  “Well, now, let’s talk this over,” said Uncle Lester.

  “I’m not too young and I haven’t a moment to lose.” Ralph, who was really frightened by what he was about to do, also enjoyed the drama of the moment. “Goodbye. I shall return before dawn.”

  “Ralph, promise me you’ll be careful,” pleaded his mother. “Promise me you won’t climb into suitcases like your Aunt Adrienne.” Ralph’s Aunt Adrienne, who liked nice things, had climbed into a suitcase to examine a nylon stocking, someone had closed the suitcase, and Aunt Adrienne had never been seen again. It was hoped she had been carried away to a life of luxury. “Promise me, Ralph,” cried his mother, but her son was already on his way out the knothole.

  Ralph scurried across the carpet of Room 215, flattened himself, and squeezed under the door. Once out in the hall, his courage ebbed. The aspirin tablet seemed a very small thing to find in such a vast place. It would be much easier to find the motorcycle. No, thought Ralph, I must not even think about the motorcycle.

  Ralph began to feel pretty small himself, much smaller than he had felt during his show of bravery back in the mouse nest. Down in the lobby a clock struck one. There was not a moment to lose. He ran to the next room, squeezed under the door, and searched under the beds and the dresser while the two guests slept soundly. All he found was a bobby pin.

  He skipped Room 211 because his enemy, the little terrier, was still there, and ran on to Room 209. A hurried search, frightening because of the loud and uneven snores that came from one of the beds, revealed nothing but a few pretzel crumbs, which Ralph did not have time to eat.

  On and on ran Ralph, down the hall, under doors, around under beds and dressers. There was not a single aspirin tablet to be found. In one of the rooms he did see a penny that had rolled under a luggage rack and remembered his mother’s wish to leave a tip for room service, but tonight he had no time for pennies. He must press on and find an aspirin.

  A small doubt began to creep into Ralph’s thoughts as he ran down the hall to the last room on the second floor. Maybe there was no aspirin. Maybe he was risking his life and the lives of his family for nothing. But Ralph pushed the thought aside. He would not let himself become discouraged. If there was no aspirin on the second floor, there had to be one someplace on the ground floor. Tonight he was willing to brave the stairs to find it. He flattened himself and squeezed under the last door on the second floor. There was nothing under either of the beds but the things Keith called dust mice. There was no sound but the rattle of the windows in the wind.

  Ralph started across the carpet toward the dresser when suddenly a light from the bedside table blinded him. He stopped, rooted to the carpet by fear, even though it was not likely that anyone was going to cut off his tail with a carving knife.

  He heard someone slip out of bed and utter a sound halfway between a squeal and a scream. Before Ralph knew what was happening, an ordinary drinking glass had been clapped down over him, and there he stood in a glass trap.

  By then his eyes were adjusted to the light and he found himself facing a pair of bare feet. Looking up, he saw that the feet belonged to a young woman in a pink nightgown.

  “Mary Lou, wake up,” she whispered to the young woman in the other bed. “Look what I’ve caught.”

&n
bsp; “Huh?” said Mary Lou, blinking and raising up on one elbow. Her hair was done up on pink rollers. “Betty, are you out of your mind? It must be past one o’clock in the morning.”

  The night was slipping by much too quickly for the trapped mouse. He was terrified and he was desperate. No one in his family had ever been trapped under a drinking glass before. Worst of all, he was failing Keith and endangering his family.

  “Wake up, Mary Lou, and look,” insisted Betty. “I was getting up to stop the rattle in the window and caught a mouse!”

  This news roused Mary Lou from bed, and the two young women knelt on the carpet to look at Ralph, who promptly turned his back. He did not care to be stared at in his misery, but it was no use. The women moved around to the other side of the glass.

  “Isn’t he darling?” said Betty.

  “Just look at his cunning little paws.” Mary Lou leaned closer for a better look.

  “And his little ears. Aren’t they sweet?” Betty was delighted.

  It was disgusting. It was bad enough to be trapped and stared at, but to have this pair carrying on in such a gushy fashion was almost more than Ralph could stomach. Cunning little paws indeed! They were strong paws, paws for grasping the handgrips of a motorcycle.

  “Oh, Betty, do you suppose we could take him back to Wichita with us?” asked Mary Lou. “My third grade would love him.”

  “So would my kindergarten,” agreed Betty. “We could keep him in a cage on the ledge and all the children could bring him food from home. It would be such a good experience for them to have a pet in the classroom.”

  Well, thought Ralph grimly, I always wanted to travel. A cage in a kindergarten in Wichita, however, was not exactly the destination he had in mind. The minutes were slipping by dangerously fast. He had to do something. “Look,” he shouted through the glass in desperation. “Let me go. Please let me go. There’s something terribly important I’ve got to do.”

  “He squeaked!” marveled Betty.

  “He’s adorable!” squealed Mary Lou.

  It was no use. Young women could not speak his language. Ralph was in despair. He thought of Keith tossing feverishly in his bed and of his family huddled in the mouse nest waiting for his safe return.

  “But I don’t see how we could take him back to Wichita,” said Betty sensibly. “We’re driving to San Francisco and then to Disneyland before we start back. How could we carry him thousands of miles?”

  The two teachers looked thoughtfully at Ralph, who knew his fate depended on their decision. Was he to be carried to Disneyland and eventually to a ledge in a kindergarten room in Wichita? Or would they let him go? A third possibility crossed Ralph’s mind. Perhaps they would leave him under the glass for the housekeeper to see. He hoped not. He did not think he could last that long. Already the inside of the glass was beginning to feel warm and airless.

  “I suppose we really shouldn’t turn him loose in the hotel,” said Mary Lou. “Mice are pests even if they are cute.”

  The teacher not only destroyed Ralph’s hopes, she hurt his feelings as well, calling him a pest when he was on an errand of mercy. From the mouse’s point of view, the teachers were the pests.

  “I know!” exclaimed Betty suddenly, causing Ralph to look over his shoulder for a clue to what it was she knew. “I know how we can get rid of him without hurting him.”

  The young teacher reached over to the bedside table, where she picked up a picture postcard. She slid it carefully under the glass and under Ralph’s feet so that he was now standing on a postcard. He noticed the picture was of a giant redwood tree, the same postcard all travelers bought when they came to California.

  “Now what are you going to do?” asked Mary Lou.

  “Watch.” Betty carefully lifted the postcard, Ralph, and the glass, and walked across the room.

  Even though he knew it was useless, Ralph scrabbled around in his tiny prison. He was afraid she was taking him toward the washbasin. He had heard of mice being drowned by people who did not like traps.

  The teacher walked not to the washbasin, but to the open window. She held Ralph across the sill, removed the postcard from the glass, and gave it a little jerk that shook Ralph off into the vines that grew up the side of the building.

  “There,” she said, and closed the window, leaving Ralph clinging to a vine high above the ground.

  12

  An Errand of Mercy

  Owls! thought Ralph, as he clung to the Virginia creeper and filled his lungs with the cool night air that was such a relief after the stuffy drinking glass. I’ve always wanted to climb down this vine and explore the ground floor, he reminded himself grimly, and now I have to. Ralph had never before been outdoors beneath the moon and the stars. He felt small and frightened and alone.

  Slowly, paw over paw, he worked his way along the shoots and tendrils. An owl, uncomfortably close in a pine tree, hooted, and Ralph huddled shivering in the shadow of a leaf, aware that he was losing precious seconds. A night wind rattled the windows and the owl glided off across the parking lot. Ralph inched his way down the vine. It was a long winding route full of detours to the ground-floor window, which, to Ralph’s relief, was open.

  Upon reaching the sill, Ralph leaped to the floor of the room, in which three young men of college age were sleeping, two in beds and one in a sleeping bag on the floor.

  An aspirin, I must find an aspirin, thought Ralph, darting under the bed. He bumped into a dust mouse, which startled him, but he did not find an aspirin. He was in such a hurry he ran right over the man in the sleeping bag instead of taking time to go around. There under the dresser, gleaming in a shaft of moonlight, he saw a round white pill. He went closer.

  Yes, it really was an aspirin tablet. At last! Ralph was positive it was an aspirin and not some other pill because it had letters stamped on it. Ralph could not read the letters, but he knew they stood for an aspirin. He had been warned about them often enough. Now all Ralph had to do was figure out how to get the pill upstairs to Room 215.

  Telling himself that in spite of all that had happened that night, it could not be much past one o’clock in the morning, Ralph half pushed and half rolled the aspirin tablet around the man in the sleeping bag to the door. He shoved it under the door and with great difficulty squeezed under himself. The first-floor carpet was thicker and of better quality than that of the second floor.

  Ralph worked his way with the aspirin down the hall to the lobby where the night clerk was asleep on a couch. The glassy eyes of deer heads mounted on the knotty pine walls seemed to stare at Ralph. So did the giant eye of the television set. Slowly he moved his precious load across the lobby to the stairs and there he stopped. How could he manage to get that aspirin up those stairs? He picked it up and tried lifting it, even though he knew he could not reach the first step with it.

  The night clerk tossed on the couch and made a gobbling, snorting noise. Ralph dropped the aspirin in a panic and looked wildly about for a hiding place. With one terrified leap he dived under the grandfather clock between the elevator and the stairs. It was immediately plain from the dust that no one ever cleaned under the clock.

  “A-haa. A-haa.” Ralph struggled to control a sneeze. Above him the works of the clock began to make grinding noises.

  “A-choo!” The sneeze could not be held back.

  Bong! The clock struck one thirty, forcing Ralph to clap his hands over his ears. How his famous ancestor, the one that ran up the clock, hickory-dickory-dock, stood the racket, he did not know.

  Peeking out, Ralph discovered the night clerk had slept soundly through the din, so he ventured out from under the clock to continue his struggle with the aspirin tablet.

  Since carrying the pill up the stairs was impossible, Ralph had to find another way. The elevator? Ridiculous. A mouse could not run an elevator. Then, quite unexpectedly, a whole plan of action popped into his mind. Ralph had a genuine inspiration.

  First he rolled the aspirin to a safe place behind the ashtray
stand beside the elevator. Then, empty-pawed, he climbed the stairs to the second floor and ran down the hall to Room 215, where he squeezed under the door. Keith was still half awake, his eyes glinting with fever under their heavy lids.

  “Pst!” said Ralph. “I’ve found an aspirin for you.”

  “Hm-m?” murmured Keith.

  “An aspirin tablet. I’ve found an aspirin!”

  “Where is it?” Keith was more awake now.

  “Down on the first floor.”

  “Oh.” Keith was obviously disappointed.

  “Now wait,” said Ralph. “I can get it up here, but I’ve got to have some help. You’ll have to let me take your sports car.”

  “You’re too young,” mumbled Keith.

  “I am not.” And it was true that Ralph felt very much older than he had when he lost the motorcycle. “Come on. You need that aspirin, don’t you?”

  “You already lost my motorcycle.”

  “Oh, come on.” Ralph was growing more impatient as he felt the night slipping by. “If you won’t let me take the sports car, will you let me take the ambulance?”

  “I guess so.” Keith did not feel equal to arguing with a determined mouse. He picked up his ambulance from the bedside table and set it on the floor. “Here.”

  “One more thing,” said Ralph anxiously. “Do you think you could manage to open the door for me? I know you feel terrible, but it is the last thing I’ll ask. Honest. And I promise I’ll have the aspirin up here in no time.”

  Keith sighed but he slid his feet out from under the sheet and, hanging onto the bedside table, reached over and opened the door.

  Ralph was already seated in the white ambulance with the red cross painted on the side. “Wh-e-e. Wh-e-e. Wh-e-e.” He took the corner into the hall on two wheels and sped down the bare floor between the wall and the carpet until he came to Room 211. Here he slowed down and then went, “Wh-e-e! Wh-e-e! Wh-e-e!” good and loud. This carried him, as he had planned, to the elevator. It was a crucial moment. Now he would find out if his plan was going to work.