Freddy and the Perilous Adventure by Walter R. Brooks

was just one of the houses on wheels that the circus people lived in, and all it contained was a very large and comfortable bed in which Mr. Boomschmidt slept, and a very small and uncomfortable chair before the desk at which Mr. Boomschmidt worked. The chair didn’t look as if it was used very much. At one end of the room was an oil painting of Mr. Boomschmidt’s mother, and at the other end, an oil painting of Mr. Boomschmidt himself. Except that Mr. Boomschmidt had on a silk hat and Mrs. Boomschmidt had on a bonnet, you couldn’t tell them apart.
    Freddy was pretty tired after his long hot walk, and so he took off his silk hat and lay down on the bed, and Mr. Boomschmidt covered him up with an afghan. Over in the big tent he could hear the hurrahs and the hand-clapping, and the ta-ra, ra-ra, oompah, oompah of the band. It was all very pleasantly far away and soothing … and the next thing he knew, somebody was shaking his shoulder and Leo’s voice was saying: “Hey, Freddy, wake up! You’ve got to get out of here!”

Chapter 11
    Freddy made one bound off the bed and into the middle of the floor, as if he had been set on springs. “Don’t you touch me!” he said. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t have anything to do with it. Send for my lawyer. Send for Mr. Bean. Send for—Oh,” he said, sinking down into the chair, “it’s you, Leo!”
    â€œMy! my! You certainly come out fighting, Freddy,” said the lion.
    â€œDreamt somebody stole the dome off the Capitol at Washington, and the police arrested me for it,” said the pig.
    â€œWell, you better dream some more. You don’t gain much by waking up. Because old Golcher is going to send for the police and have them search the circus grounds for you.”
    â€œYou mean—you mean he wouldn’t play ball with us?”
    â€œNo. I made him your proposition, and at first I thought everything was all right, because he said if you got the balloon back in time for you to go up tomorrow, he’d tell the police you didn’t steal it. But when I said of course he’d give the two hundred back to Mr. Bean, he said: ‘Of course, nothing! Bean didn’t pay me to make an ascension.’
    â€œâ€˜He paid you what you thought you’d lost by not being able to make it,’ I said.
    â€œBut he didn’t see it that way. The two hundred Mr. Bean paid him, he said, was for—how was it?—‘mental anguish and laceration of feelings,’—that was it. Meaning, I suppose, the worry he had over thinking the balloon was lost. Anyway, he’s going to keep both two hundreds.
    â€œWell I said to him—I said: ‘Some folks would call that dishonest, Mr. Golcher.’ He just laughed. ‘Golcher dishonest?’ he said. ‘Well, now, that’s a matter of opinion, and such opinions are usually settled in a court of law. If Mr. Bean, or that smart pig, thinks I’m dishonest, why all they got to do is argue it out before a judge and jury. ’Tain’t any good talking about dishonesty; you got to prove it, or it isn’t so.’”
    â€œWe couldn’t go to law about it,” said Freddy. “It’s too complicated a case, and besides, I’d be in jail.”
    â€œYou’ll be in jail anyway if you don’t get away from here,” said Leo. “Because after I’d argued with him for a while, he said: ‘Say, you seem to know a lot about this pig; where is he?’ and I said: ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ and he said: ‘I would, and I think I’ll have the police come search the circus and find out.’”
    â€œPooh,” said Freddy, “they’d never recognize me in this disguise.”
    â€œYeah? Well, listen to this. You remember Leslie?—he’s that young alligator that can turn cartwheels—well, he hangs out down at state police headquarters a lot,