Hurray for Ali Baba Bernstein Read online

  The first mouthful of chocolate syrup was wonderful. Ali Baba held the syrup in his mouth to savor the thick liquid. He swallowed and took another gulp. The second mouthful seemed less wonderful, and it was hard to swallow. Somehow Ali Baba didn’t even want to take another swallow. He poured the rest of the syrup down the drain and rinsed out the glass. He filled it with water and drank. He felt a little sick. Probably he should have settled for orange juice today, especially since he had a cold.

  Ali Baba went back to his bedroom. His books were all over the floor, and the drawers from the chest were on the floor, too. He pushed the bed into the new location. But when it was there, he realized something he had never been aware of before. The closet was in the middle of this wall. And now the end of Ali Baba’s bed was blocking the door. It would be impossible to ever open the closet door if the bed remained in this new place. That meant that Ali Baba would have to push everything back to the way it was before.

  He didn’t feel like doing that just now. He went into the living room and left the mess in his bedroom behind him. He turned on the television set. He rarely had a chance to watch daytime television. Perhaps there was a super program on right now. Unfortunately, the Bernsteins’ set was not working too well lately. The picture bounced up and down in black and white. Ali Baba changed the channel. Sometimes one channel worked, even when another one didn’t. However, although Ali Baba switched the dial from one channel to another, none of them worked very well. Perhaps he could adjust one of the buttons in the back of the machine.

  He turned one of the switches in the back and waited to see if the picture improved. It didn’t, but the program was a rerun of one of Ali Baba’s favorite shows. Even though he knew just what was going to happen, he sat down to watch. It was a little disconcerting to have the picture bouncing up and down, but Ali Baba wanted to hear his favorite exchange toward the end of the show, when the actor pretended to speak French and made up a lot of nonsense words. He thought he must have seen this show at least half a dozen times over the past couple of years, and every time he found the ending hilariously funny.

  The wobbly picture on the screen began to hurt Ali Baba’s eyes. Just as the actor was about to begin his phony French, the telephone rang. Ali Baba went to answer it. It was his mother, checking to be sure that everything was all right.

  “Our TV is the one that’s really sick,” Ali Baba complained. He was annoyed that he had missed his favorite part of the show.

  He went back to the living room. He turned off the set and went into his bedroom. The mess was not inviting. Ali Baba turned away and went toward the kitchen. His head was aching, and his stomach didn’t feel too great, either. Still, once in the kitchen, he remembered the frankfurter in the refrigerator. Maybe he would feel better if he ate his lunch.

  Ali Baba filled a small pot with water and put the frankfurter inside. He took a slice of whole-wheat bread out of the refrigerator. Too bad his mother didn’t have any frankfurter buns. He got the jar of mustard from the shelf in the refrigerator door, then he took a couple of cherry tomatoes, too.

  When the water boiled and the frankfurter was cooked, Ali Baba turned off the stove. He stabbed the frankfurter with a fork and put it in the center of the slice of bread. He spread a thick layer of mustard on the frank and folded the bread in half. He took a big bite. It tasted pretty good. He guessed he was a better cook than he had ever realized. However, when he had finished eating the frankfurter and bread and the cherry tomatoes, he realized that his stomach still felt bad. His headache was still bothering him, too, and his throat felt scratchier than ever.

  Ali Baba remembered what his father had said about a cup of hot tea with lemon and honey. Perhaps the tea would cure him of all his ailments. He went to the stove and saw the pot half-filled with water in which he had cooked his frankfurter. So instead of filling the tea kettle with water, he turned on the stove and reheated the water he had used to cook the frankfurter. He would save time by using that same water because it was still quite warm.

  While the water boiled, Ali Baba looked for the jar of honey in the cupboard and for some lemon. He got a mug and put a spoonful of honey in it. Then he got a tea bag and put that in the mug, too. When the water had reboiled, he poured some on top of the honey and the tea bag. He couldn’t find any lemon, so he stirred the tea and honey and water and blew on it gently, waiting for it to cool a little. Then he took a sip.

  For some reason, the tea had a greasy taste. It was a little like drinking a liquid, sweetened frankfurter. He took two sips and then poured the rest down the drain. Now he felt like throwing up. In the bathroom, Ali Baba waited. But he didn’t throw up after all. He just stood there thinking about it. His stomach felt bad. His head felt bad and his throat felt bad. He sneezed a couple of times and his eyes watered from the effort. He decided to lie down on his bed and rest.

  He had to climb over all the books and the drawers that were still on the floor. Later, when he was feeling better, he would have to put everything back the way it was before. He lay on his bed and wished his mother would come home. It was hard work taking care of himself.

  It was only another half-hour till Mrs. Bernstein returned home. She was pleased with the way her meeting had gone. On the way home she had stopped for some groceries. “I have lemons to make you some tea with honey,” she said. “It will make you feel better.

  Ali Baba sat up in bed. “I feel awful,” he said.

  Mrs. Bernstein came into the bedroom. “This room looks awful,” she exclaimed. “What went on here while I was gone?”

  “I thought I’d move the furniture around, but it doesn’t fit,” explained Ali Baba.

  “Did you have your lunch?” she asked.

  Ali Baba nodded. “It was okay,” he said. “But you cook better than I do.”

  “That’s all right. You’re only nine,” said Mrs. Bernstein, removing her hand from his forehead. “You don’t have any fever,” she said, smiling at him. “And you’ll learn how to take care of yourself better as you get older.”

  Later, because Ali Baba wasn’t feeling too well, his parents put all the furniture back in its proper location in the bedroom. They even put the books back on the shelves and the drawers back in the chest. When they were finished, everything looked just as it had in the morning. Ali Baba decided that he liked his room as it was — especially since nothing was on the floor waiting for him to pick it up.

  For supper his mother made a pot of chicken soup. Ali Baba didn’t know if chicken soup really could cure a cold, but it certainly tasted a whole lot better than the glass of chocolate syrup and the greasy tea he had drunk earlier in the day. There was time enough for him to be on his own when he was ten, he decided.

  6. ALI BABA AND THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING CIRCUS TICKETS

  On the Sunday morning when Ali Baba was nine years, eleven months, and four days old, his best friend, Roger Zucker, was ten years old. As a birthday treat, Roger’s parents had bought three tickets to the circus. Originally the plan was for both parents to take Roger. But then Roger’s little sister, Sarah, who was nicknamed Sugar, got the chicken pox. So Mrs. Zucker said that she would stay home with Sugar instead of leaving her with a baby-sitter. And that meant there was an extra ticket. Roger phoned at nine-thirty in the morning and invited Ali Baba to go with him and his father.

  “Super!” shouted Ali Baba into the telephone. What great luck that Sugar had gotten the chicken pox!

  Ali Baba and Roger had both had chicken pox already. They had caught it two years ago when almost the entire second grade had had the disease. But Sugar, who wasn’t born at the time, had not caught it then. Ali Baba did a happy little dance around the kitchen. He loved the circus and couldn’t wait till the afternoon.

  Then the phone rang again. It was Roger.

  “You didn’t change your mind, did you?” asked Ali Baba nervously. Perhaps Roger was going to invite someone else instead. Or maybe Sugar had miraculously recovered.

  “No, but
something terrible has happened,” said Roger. “My mother can’t find the tickets. She said they were in her pocket-book, but they aren’t there now.”

  “Maybe she put them someplace else,” suggested Ali Baba.

  “No. She says she’s certain that she put them right in her pocketbook when she bought them a couple of days ago. And she called the ticket office and they told her they’ve sold out all the tickets. This is the last performance, so we can’t go to the circus after all.” Roger sounded miserable. “This is turning out to be a rotten birthday,” he said.

  “Wait,” said Ali Baba. “I’m coming over. We’ll search your house. If they weren’t stolen, we’ll find them.”

  He hung up the phone and raced to get his jacket. “I’m going over to Roger’s house,” he informed his mother. And then, without any further explanation, he rushed out.

  Ali Baba wanted to go to the circus very much. But there was something that he loved even more than the circus. He loved mysteries. And here were both at the same time. A mystery about the tickets, which if he solved it would mean that he would get his afternoon entertainment, too. But he had to work fast. It was already after ten o’clock. The circus was scheduled to begin at two. He had less than four hours to locate the missing tickets.

  “Are you sure you put the tickets in your pocketbook?” he grilled Mrs. Zucker when he got to Roger’s house. Mrs. Zucker was sitting at the kitchen table with the entire contents of her pocketbook spilled onto the table. There were her keys, sunglasses, wallet, a small notebook, a makeup case, and a package of sugarless gum. There were no circus tickets.

  “I know!” said Ali Baba suddenly. “You were carrying a different pocketbook when you bought the tickets!”

  It was a good idea on his part. His mother had several different pocketbooks, and which one she carried depended on which outfit she was wearing. (And Ali Baba noticed that her keys were almost always in a pocketbook that she wasn’t carrying.)

  Mrs. Zucker shook her head. “The handle just came off my other bag,” she said. “I have to get it repaired or replaced. This is the only pocketbook I’ve used for the past two weeks.”

  Roger sighed.

  “Where do you leave your pocketbook when you are at home?” asked Ali Baba. “Did anyone touch it? Could Sugar have taken the tickets out? I don’t mean she stole them, but she could have taken them to play with, couldn’t she?” he asked.

  “I keep my pocketbook on a shelf in the closet. She can’t reach it,” explained Mrs. Zucker. “Besides, even if she could, she wouldn’t be able to open the clasp on the bag.”

  Ali Baba sighed.

  “I’m looking to see if there is a good movie playing,” called Mr. Zucker from the next room. He had the newspaper open before him and had promised the boys to take them to a film as a consolation. But neither boy wanted a movie. What was a movie compared to the circus?

  “Could you have put the tickets in your pocket?” Ali Baba suggested. “Did you look in your coat pocket?”

  Mrs. Zucker gasped. “I think you’re right!” she said, jumping up. “I think I stuffed the tickets into my raincoat pocket. How silly of me to forget.” She jumped up and went to the closet. “See, here they are,” she said, pulling an envelope out of the pocket. However, the envelope did not contain circus tickets. There were grocery coupons to get fifteen and twenty cents off on cat food and coffee and things like that.

  “How did these get into my pocket?” Mrs. Zucker asked. She inspected the coat closely. “This isn’t my coat,” she exclaimed.

  “Whose coat is it?” asked Ali Baba excitedly. This mystery was getting more and more mysterious.

  Mrs. Zucker shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess someone took my coat from the closet and left this one instead.”

  “How can we find out who it was?” asked Roger.

  Just then the telephone rang. Mrs. Zucker went to answer it as Roger and Ali Baba stood looking at each other helplessly.

  “It’s here! I have it!” Mrs. Zucker shouted happily into the phone. “I’ll have Roger bring it over to you right away.”

  She hung up the receiver and smiled brightly. “Your worries are over,” she said. “That was Rosie Relkin. She was here last night with some of our other friends for coffee and dessert. And she accidentally took the wrong raincoat when she went home. So all you have to do is drop off this one at her apartment and get mine.”

  “Did you ask her if there were circus tickets in the pocket?” asked Roger.

  “Don’t be silly,” said his mother. “Of course the tickets are in the pocket. You’ll see for yourself as soon as you get the coat.”

  “Let’s get going,” said Ali Baba. “Where does Rosie Relkin live?”

  It was only two blocks to Rosie Relkin’s apartment. She opened the door as soon as the boys rang the bell. She had been waiting for them.

  “Here,” said Roger, exchanging the tan raincoat in his arms for the one Rosie Relkin held out. Roger put his hands into the pockets and immediately pulled out an envelope addressed to Kit Conners and a subway token. But there were no circus tickets.

  “Where are the tickets? They’re not in either pocket,” said Roger, mystified. “And what is this letter doing in my mother’s pocket?”

  “That can’t be your mother’s coat,” Ali Baba said. “It must belong to someone named Kit Conners.”

  “This isn’t my coat, either,” said Rosie Relkin, handing back the coat that Roger had given her. “Mine has a red plaid lining. This is blue.”

  Roger took one raincoat, and Ali Baba took the other. “Who do they belong to?” Ali Baba asked.

  “And what about the circus tickets?” asked Roger.

  “I bet Kit Conners took my coat,” said Rosie Relkin. “She was at the Zuckers’ apartment last night, too.”

  “What about Mrs. Zucker’s coat?” asked Ali Baba. “Where do you think that is?”

  Rosie Relkin shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “This is quite a tangle. But I’d really appreciate it if you took this over to Kit Conners’s apartment and brought my coat to me. Kit only lives a block away.”

  “I wonder if we’ll ever get to the circus?” Roger sighed as the two boys and the two raincoats went off in the direction of Kit Conners’s apartment.

  “Maybe Kit Conners has your mother’s coat,” said Ali Baba. “We’ve got to find those tickets before two o’clock.”

  “And we still have to find Rosie Relkin’s raincoat for her, too,” Roger said.

  “You know something?” said Ali Baba. “If I were president of the United States, I would make a law against these tan raincoats. Why does everyone wear the same kind of coat?”

  Kit Conners was delighted to see the boys. “Rosie Relkin phoned to tell me you were coming. She said you had my coat. I didn’t realize that I had taken the wrong one last night. But I looked now, and sure enough, I’ve got someone else’s.”

  She took the coat that Roger gave her. “It’s mine, all right,” she said. “I wonder whose coat I wore home last night?”

  “It must be my mother’s,” said Roger.

  “It might belong to Rosie Relkin,” Ali Baba reminded his friend. “Her coat is still missing, too.”

  Kit Conners handed Roger a coat that was a clone of the one that he had given her. However, on closer inspection, the lining was different. “It’s not Rosie Relkin’s raincoat,” said Ali Baba. The lining was green plaid.

  “I never noticed what color lining my mother’s coat had,” said Roger. “Up until today it never mattered. But I sure hope the lining of her coat is green plaid and that this is it.” He put his hands inside the pockets of the coat that Kit Conners had handed him. “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Let’s see,” demanded Ali Baba.

  Roger handed Ali Baba a baby’s pacifier.

  “Does your sister still use one of these?” asked Ali Baba.

  “No,” said Roger with disgust. “She outgrew it ages ago.�
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  “Margie and George Upchurch were at your house last night,” Kit Conners told Roger. “They have a six-month-old baby. I bet this coat belongs to Margie. Let me give you her address.”

  “Your parents have too many friends,” complained Ali Baba.

  A minute later the boys were off looking for the street where the Upchurch family lived.

  “That can’t be my coat,” said Margie Upchurch when Ali Baba and Roger Zucker tried explaining about the mix-up of the raincoats the night before. “I wore my coat home,” she shouted above the wails of a crying baby.

  In the background Ali Baba could see Mr. Upchurch, unshaven and still in his bathrobe, trying to comfort the infant.

  “It must be your coat,” said Ali Baba. “There was a pacifier in the pocket, and we can see you have a baby.”

  Mrs. Upchurch looked surprised at this piece of information. “A pacifier?” she asked with delight. “We’ve been looking all over the house for one of the baby’s pacifiers, and they’ve all disappeared.” She examined the object that Roger handed her.

  “Let me just go and wash it,” she shouted above the baby’s cries. A minute later the clean pacifier was in the baby’s mouth and all was quiet. Then Margie Upchurch went to her closet and took out still another tan raincoat.

  “I don’t know who this one belongs to,” she said.

  Roger looked at the coat hopefully. “You look,” he told Ali Baba. “I’m scared.”

  Ali Baba wasn’t scared at all. He was confident that they had finally tracked down the correct coat. He put his hands into the pockets and triumphantly pulled out a small envelope from one of them. Inside there were three tan tickets for that afternoon’s circus performance. The tickets were the same color as all of the coats.

  “Hurray! We did it! We found the tickets!” he began shouting. Of all the mysteries he had ever attempted to solve, this had been the most successful.

  But there was still one small mystery before the boys.