Sinbad and Me Read online

  Copyright © 1966 Kin Platt, © 2015 Westside-Eastside Entertainment, llc

  All rights reserved

  First Edition

  PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

  New York, NY

  ISBN 978-1-63417-393-3 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-63417-716-0 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-1-63417-392-6 (digital)

  Printed in the United States of America

  DEDICATION

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF

  ROMEO MERRIMUG, GALLANT SON OF PRINCE

  JOHN, AND TO HIS LOVING MASTER AND COM-

  PANION, CHRISTOPHER PLATT.

  Part One

  CHAPTER 1

  How I Made My First Million Dollars And Got To Be Famous And Arrested

  Everybody wants to know how I did it.

  When I try to explain that Captain Billy Murdock told me how, they just stare and tap their heads. I guess that’s because everybody knows Captain Billy died way back in 1800.

  When I tell them Sinbad and me did it to help old Mrs. Teska, they say what kind of help was that? She’s disappeared. Mr. Snowden, my science teacher, says telling it all, right from the beginning, will maybe clear up the mystery. Also it may do me a lot of good.

  I guess he means it’ll help me pass the science course I was dumb enough to flunk. What I did, he says, shows good clear scientific thinking.

  Sheriff Landry of the Suffolk County Police Department here in Hampton says it shows a good clear criminal mind.

  One of the T–men from the Treasury Department in Washington, the stocky one with the keen sense of humor, says that if I ever get out of this mess alive I’ll probably have a TV series named after me. Called “The Unmentionables.” He says I ought to star in it. He thinks I’ll be a big hit. With the other prison inmates.

  My dad hasn’t come home yet but I know what he’ll think.

  I don’t know what Sinbad thinks. He just sits here with his big beautiful ugly head on my knee, the way bulldogs do, giving me that shining Boy–do–I–love–you look. Well, he’s got nothing to worry about. Who ever heard of anybody arresting a dog for stealing a million dollars?

  Now you know what the trouble is about.

  I want to say, right here and now, I never did steal any million dollars. I found it. I found it because Sinbad and me figured out where to look for it.

  If I hadn’t, I bet old Captain Billy’s ghost would have been restless another hundred and fifty years. He was a good ghost who wanted somebody to find his treasure.

  He talked to me in riddles. It was lucky that Sinbad and me were able to figure them out. Otherwise we’d be dead by now. Like a lot of others, I guess, who didn’t take the trouble.

  So, anyway, we found it.

  If we hadn’t, I bet Sinbad and me would be home now instead of sitting in this jailhouse. It’s one of the oldest buildings in town, and the only one I never did any thinking about.

  CHAPTER 2

  Sinbad And Me

  I got to admit Sinbad was the one who put me up to it, right from the beginning. I’m not blaming him. How many twelve–year–old kids ever get to find a million dollars anyway? And how many dogs could help them do it?

  I’ve brought Sinbad up from a pup. We’ve slept in the same bed and even eaten out of the same plate. He’s three years old now and weighs sixty pounds. That’s a lot of bulldog but he’s the son of Prince John, a great champion, one of the really big ones. Some breeders put out a kind that’s soft and plump and waddly. That’s not my dog.

  Sinbad is hard as a rock and he looks as mean and tough as a tiger. And twice as ugly.

  But big and powerful as he is, Sinbad wouldn’t dream of hurting anybody. That’s what makes English bulldogs so great. They could knock you down and chew your arm off if they wanted to. Only they don’t want to.

  Sinbad does knock me down at times, but only to show me he loves me. Once he’s got me down he stands over me and licks my face, and I grab him and try to knock him down and that’s not easy. And I’m pretty big and strong for my age, too.

  When he doesn’t feel like wrestling or bringing over a towel or a rope for a tug of war he has another way of showing how much he loves you. Like grabbing my hand or wrist, not really hurting or anyway not meaning to. You can see the love light shining in his eyes, even the red one that I guess all good bulldogs have. Hanging on to you that way is his way of hugging people. Only of course not everybody understands that.

  I don’t want you to think that he hugs and loves just everybody. He’s not that dumb. Those two guys who tried to frighten old Mrs. Teska found that out. They had it coming.

  Bulldogs are really like little kids. They don’t recognize rules and regulations, or hop to it like other dogs do. An English bulldog likes to think about it.

  I mean, Sinbad will mind okay but he’s got to feel like it. And he’s pretty hard to convince. Most of the time I leave it up to him. Maybe he’s got me trained!

  A lot of dogs mind because they like being petted afterward or getting some reward. But Sinbad has too much character. All he cares about is doing what he thinks is right.

  Some dogs mind of course because they’re afraid they’ll get beat or punished. That’s why they learn to roll over or play “dead” or practically stand on their heads.

  But Sinbad isn’t afraid of anything.

  Of course I’d never punish him, but you could beat him over the head all day and it wouldn’t change his mind. When I got Sinbad I started reading up on bulldogs and discovered that long before they ever were bred to bait bulls the old Romans had them fighting lions, using five or six dogs at a time. I guess from that time over a thousand years ago they got used to taking punishment.

  I don’t want to know how Sinbad would do against a lion. He’d fight all right and he’d get killed. A bulldog never gives up. That’s their mark. He keeps coming back, stronger and tougher every time. His mind works the same way, too. If he gets an idea he doesn’t forget it. And Sinbad, because he’s the greatest, naturally has the biggest one–track mind of all time. Whatever he thinks of, brother, that’s it!

  But most of all he tries to be helpful. Then you can really see how gentle he is. I guess his philosophy is, the best way to have friends is to act friendly. That way it’s no secret.

  Sometimes he’ll find a little bird that’s broken a wing or a leg and in those great jaws, without ruffling a feather, he’ll bring it back to me to fix up with a splint.

  Kittens too, he carries back to mama, putting them down nice and softly in front of her, scolding her a little with his deep rumble. The mama cats are too smart to tell him to mind his own business, or swell up their tails.

  So now you know the way I feel about Sinbad. Maybe, I’d feel the same way about him if he wasn’t a bulldog. All kids love their own dogs.

  But what other dog all by himself could have started me helping old Mrs. Teska out of her trouble?

  CHAPTER 3

  A House Ought To Be A Home

  Our town is near the eastern end of Long Island. On the map this section looks like a lobster claw. Hampton is on the top tip of the bottom claw.

  Because pf the way our jagged coastline juts out, we have water on three sides of us. West is Great Peconic Bay, dead ahead is Jonah’s Bay, and east is Block Island Sound. Beyond that is the Atlantic Ocean. When the fog lifts there are three islands we can see. Shelter, to the west, Ram Head to the north, and a small one called Plum Island, north by northeast.

  In the old days pirates and smugglers used to lay in there. So all around us we have Dead Man’s Cove, Smuggler’s Notch, Scuttle Point, and places like that. When I was growing up these were just names to me. Now I know they were all named for a reason.

  Nothing much happen in Hampton any more. Summ
er tourists mostly pass us by for Southampton or Montauk Point, but we have a summer theater, we’re near an Indian reservation, we have some nice beaches, and there’s good fishing and sailing and golf during the season.

  It’s a sleepy sort of town, like about a million others on the Island. Once in a while somebody in a hurry to get to Montauk or New York City gets a ticket. Sometimes a wild party starting in the big resort town of Southampton spreads out. Then there’s a lot of wild whooping at night, bottles get thrown out of cars or pranksters change the street signs around. We’ve got some nice schools and a newspaper and the Long Island Railroad runs through. But that’s about it.

  Hampton sort of wakes up for a few minutes, looks around to see what’s happening, and goes right back to sleep.

  You’d have to do something like getting involved in the crime of the century to really wake this town up.

  Naturally I never thought I’d be the one to do it!

  In winter sometimes it gets so cold you can practically feel your blood freezing. We wear a lot of heavy clothes but even then the wind cuts right through to your marrow.

  When the big winds start sweeping across from Hatteras you’d think they would blow us right off the map. But you can say one thing for Hampton. Its houses are well built.

  Most are old, some dating way back to before the Revolution. The early settlers built them to stand up to the weather, to Indian attack, or to marauding pirate bands and bloodthirsty crews like that. And they have. They’ve been time tested and fight tested and weather tested. And some of them, after over two hundred years, stand as straight and strong and proud as our oaks and elms.

  Of course a lot of these houses have been rebuilt, some so changed that the original architects or owners would hardly recognize them. These, I got to admit are no great pleasure to look at.

  But we’ve got quite a few that had better luck. Preserved and kept alive with loving care they’re exactly as they used to be, some with even the original furniture, Dutch fireplaces, imported English or French wallpaper. They sit back on our quiet streets and they’re about the most wonderful houses around.

  Most of the families in Hampton have been here for generations, too. Old stones in our graveyard date back to 1640. So there’s a lot of history behind us. Lately I’ve been learning more about that.

  There aren’t many new people. We don’t have much big industry so I guess we’ll never have any of those population explosions, which is okay with me. But every couple of years some tourists fall in love with the houses or the big wide shaded street or the climate and the easygoing life we’ve got, and wind up picking a house and settling down. Before you know it they’re natives too.

  We did pretty much the same thing. My dad came from Connecticut and my mother from Massachusetts. After he got out of the army they bought this old house we live in, after falling in love with it. I was born here. Then we got Sinbad.

  My pop studied to be an architect but after the war decided to see if he could make it being an artist. He’s a good one. Lately a few museums and private collectors have been catching on to his kind of painting and are buying it. This sort of bugs him. According to Dad, if you’re really any good you got to be dead and buried before people start to notice how good.

  When he’s not selling anything, he’ll help restore an old house that might be starting to fall apart. He’s kind of an expert on old American houses and hates to see them botched up by somebody who doesn’t know a summer beam from a broomstick.

  Years ago, when I was only a little kid, he began to talk to me about houses. Pop has a different way of looking at things than most people. Maybe that’s what makes him such a good original artist. But what he says makes sense, and he says it without raising his voice.

  He said you can tell a town by its people and the kind of homes they live in. People living in boxes, the kind the new builders throw up, might just as well still be living in caves. A house should be more than a shelter, he says. I agree.

  There are house types characteristic of every type of person, according to my dad. The big stately dignified houses that just dare you to step on their rich green lawns or come close. Or the mean nervous- looking houses, and worthless miserly houses, and big loudmouth bragging kind of houses with no taste at all, just a lot of noise and clutter.

  After a while, you get to know what to look for.

  A person’s hat can be a panama or a cap or even a derby. A roof can be a pitched gable or a gambrel or a mansard.

  A person’s suit can be a sharkskin or mohair or tweed or silk. The house can be a saltbox or a Cape Cod or a Colonial or a Georgian.

  Those ladies’ wild hats with berries or flowers and all kinds of feathers and other crazy stuff on it are the same as a Victorian house. Underneath all the phony curlicues and jigsaw scrollwork on the porchposts you know there’s a house. Just like under all the berries and flowers you know what the lady is wearing is a hat.

  Before long I got to be a bug on architecture, especially that of old houses. It’s the only thing I’m any good at really; I mean, besides eating.

  Some kids can look at the car and spot the model, year, type, braking ratio, number of cylinders, kind of camshaft, engine number practically. Others can tell you the batting averages of every player in the major leagues. Big brains I know can point out about a million stars and galaxies besides the Big Dipper, which is about my speed when it comes to astronomy. So I guess it’s safe to say that every kid has his own special interest.

  Only for me there’s something else. Houses are not just buildings taking up space. They’re mysteries to be explored. I can tell now how they were built and sometimes what kind of people lived in them. At times, I swear, I can almost hear old houses talking to me, and even get frightened. Not every house was always happy.

  Anyway, I guess you can call me some sort of house detective. Because I’m always trying to solve their mysteries.

  But I never thought solving Captain Billy’s would involve me in the crime of the century that woke this town up.

  CHAPTER 4

  Why I Won’t Will My Brain To Science

  The day I got my report card started me on my road to ruin. It said in nice red ink that the bearer didn’t make it in science.

  Despite all I know about houses I guess I’m not too big a brain in school. Science was my worst subject but I’d had a feeling I’d skin through somehow. Looking down at the card now I knew I’d been kidding myself.

  “I flunked science,” I said, sharing the joyful tidings with my pop.

  Well, he didn’t faint or look like I’d dishonored the family name. He just kept staring at the card as if he couldn’t believe it. “Is this really your mark or your chest measurement?”

  “I can make it up in summer school, Pop,” I said.

  “Summer school?” he said, “Do we have a summer school?”

  “Sure,” I told him. “I’m not the only one that flunks a subject, you know.”

  “Well, that’s a comfort,” he said, handing back the card. “I’d hate for all us taxpayers to spend all that money just for you.”

  “I’ll pass it,” I said seriously. “Just watch and see. I’m not taking science for granted this time.”

  He only grunted. After a few matches and a lot of puffing he got his pipe going good. Then he leveled its bit at me.

  “Never take science for granted, my boy. We’re all just numbers in a big machine. If they don’t like us, some day they’ll erase us. You better study hard so you can be a good scientist. Maybe letters will be more important than numbers then and you’ll let me be a letter.”

  Well, that’s the way he goes on. Kind of far out.

  My mom didn’t cry about it either. “Now you won’t be able to take that summer job you wanted, Stevie,” she said. “That’s a shame”.

  All of a sudden everything hit me and I started to feel real rotten about goofing up and flunking that dumb course. Apart from us not being rich, I like the idea of having a
summer job. It makes me feel like I’m really doing something in the world. And this job I had lined up was soda jerking at Miller’s drugstore in the old village. I’d spent nights dreaming up new concoctions and combinations. Naturally I intended to test them personally so I could tell the kids what was best. I happen to be crazy over ice cream. What a blow!

  That night it got to be even more of a problem. My dad got a long distance telephone call from his brother up in Maine. He seemed to have a lot of trouble trying to make up his mind about something. That’s not like him usually.

  After he hung up I found out my pop was supposed to help Uncle Fred get his hotel in Westport, Maine, in shape for the summer tourists. There was a lot of carpentry work and muscle needed. And my mother was supposed to help with slip covers and decorating the rooms. And now, because of me, they couldn’t go. I had to register for summer school the next day, Friday.

  They didn’t want to leave me alone and they couldn’t think of anyone to leave me with. Well, it went back and forth that way for a few hours until they saw I was beginning to get real down on myself for ruining everything by flunking. Uncle Fred and Aunt Martha might lose their shirts. So at last they let me talk them into believing I was big enough not to need any baby–sitters.

  Pop called his brother back and it was all set that they’d leave first thing in the morning. That way they’d have the whole weekend to work in.

  Dad said, “Too bad about that class tomorrow or we’d be able to take you along.”

  “It’s okay, Pop,” I said, “We can manage.”

  I sure would have liked seeing my Uncle Fred and Aunt Martha up at their place, a beat–up old inn near a cool lake. But what I wanted especially was to show them Sinbad. They hadn’t seen him since he was a pup so small you could hold him in your hand.