lfinch
went down the steps and the walk. Never had he felt so unjustly
accused. Nor so helpless about defending himself. Mr. Bullfinch was so
sure Jerry had been in the house and didn't dare say so because of the
broken record. Record! Now Jerry was sure he had not been imagining
hearing music while he had been sitting on the sill of the cellar
window. Somebody _had_ been in there playing "The Stars and Stripes
Forever" on the phonograph. But who? And where had he gone to so
quickly before the Bullfinches got home? It was almost enough to make
Jerry believe in spirits.

On his way back to the dining room, Jerry slipped the tobacco pouch
under the cushion of a big chair in the living room. No time for now
to find a safer hiding place.

"Who was it?" asked Mr. Martin, as Jerry took his place at the table
again.

"Mr. Bullfinch. He returned something I'd left at his house." Jerry's
eyes were on his plate.

"What did you leave over there?"

Count on Cathy to want to know all of his business. "Ask me no
questions and I'll tell you no lies," Jerry told her.

"I can whistle," Andy suddenly boasted. "I can whistle real good. Want
to hear me?"

Without waiting for the wishes of his family to be expressed, Andy
pursed up his lips and whistled. He still was not much of a whistler,
yet from the shrill piping emerged a faint resemblance to a few bars
of "The Stars and Stripes Forever."

A great light dawned on Jerry. Andy at the scene of the crime. Coal
dust on Andy. And now the clincher, his whistling "The Stars and
Stripes Forever." It had been Andy in the Bullfinch house. Jerry was
as sure of it as of the nose on his face. "While I was out looking in
the garage he would have just had time to get out of the house," Jerry
thought. "I'll make him tell. It's not fair for me to be blamed for
something he did. Mr. Bullfinch won't be hard on Andy. He'll think
he's too little to know better."

"I guess we won't have any more whistling at the dinner table," Mr.
Martin reproved Andy gently.

Andy looked as well-scrubbed and innocent as a perfect angel. Or a
nearly perfect angel, Jerry thought. Jerry remembered how Andy would
shut up like a clam about something he knew he should not have done.

"He can be like a can of sardines. You can't get a thing out of him
unless you have a key," thought Jerry. And he wondered how he was
going to pry the truth out of his little brother.

7

Working on Andy

Jerry wanted to