The Mystery of the Talking Skull - Arthur Robert (библиотека книг бесплатно без регистрации .TXT) 📗

He closed the lid and snapped the lock shut. Just as Jupiter was trying to think of an argument, they heard Hans calling.

“Jupe! Hey, Jupe! Somebody here to see you.”

“I bet that’s Mr. Maximilian,” Bob said as he and the others started towards the front of the salvage yard.

It was indeed the tall thin magician, standing waiting for them, ignoring the other customers wandering around and the piles of interesting junk.

“Well, boy,” he exclaimed, peering at Jupiter. “So Gulliver’s trunk turned up, did it?”

“Yes, sir,” Jupiter answered. “And you can have it if you really want it.”

“Of course I want it! Didn’t I say so? Here’s the money — one hundred dollars.”

“I’m not going to charge you a hundred dollars for it,” Jupiter said. “I paid a dollar for it and you can have it for a dollar.”

“Humph!” the man snorted. “Why are you being so generous, may I ask? Have you taken something valuable from it?”

“No, sir, the trunk is just the way it was when we got it. But there’s a mystery connected with it, and somebody seems to want it very much. It may be dangerous to own it. I’m not sure we shouldn’t turn it over to the police.”

“Nonsense, boy! I shall not worry about any danger. I can take care of myself. I made the first bid for the trunk and now I demand you sell it to me. Here’s your dollar.”

He stretched out a long arm, snapped his fingers, and apparently took a silver dollar from Jupe’s ear.

“Now the trunk is mine,” he said. “Pray produce it.”

“Bob, will you and Pete bring the trunk?” Jupiter asked.

“You bet we will!” said Pete. In less than a minute he and Bob brought out the trunk. The magician directed the boys to put it on the back seat of his blue saloon, parked near the gate. They were all so intent on their business that they failed to notice two men covertly watching them. Maximilian got in behind the wheel.

“Next time I give a performance,” he said, “I’ll send you tickets. Until then, good-bye.”

The car vanished out of the gate. Pete gave a sigh of relief.

“Well, there goes Socrates,” he said. “I bet Mr. Maximilian hopes he can learn the secret of how it talks and use it in his magic act. He’s welcome to it. We’ve seen the last of that skull and that trunk and I’m glad of it.”

He wouldn’t have sounded so happy if he’d known how wrong he was.

8

“They’ve Flown the Coop!”

The rest of the day passed without anything special happening. Bob went home early to see his father. Mr. Andrews, a feature writer for a big Los Angeles newspaper, was often away in the evening, but tonight he would be home.

“Well, Bob,” his father remarked during dinner, “I saw your picture in the Hollywood paper, with the story of your friend Jupiter buying an old trunk at auction. Did you find anything interesting in it?”

“We found a skull that was supposed to be able to talk,” Bob answered. “It’s name is Socrates.”

“A talking skull named Socrates!” his mother exclaimed. “Good gracious, what an idea! I hope it didn’t talk to you.”

“No, Mom, it didn’t talk to me,” Bob said. He thought of mentioning that it had talked to Jupiter but decided against it. Especially as his father immediately remarked, with a smile, “Some simple trick of that magician it was supposed to have belonged to, of course — what was his name? Alexander?”

“Gulliver,” Bob corrected. “The Great Gulliver.”

“I imagine the man was a good ventriloquist,” Mr. Andrews said. “What is Jupiter doing with it? Not keeping it, I hope.”

“No, he sold it,” Bob said. “To another magician who said he used to know Mr. Gulliver. A man who calls himself Maximilian the Mystic.”

“Maximilian the Mystic?” his father frowned. “We had a short news flash at the paper just before I left. He was hurt in a car accident this afternoon.”

Maximilian hurt in a car accident? Bob wondered if the talking skull had brought him bad luck. Then his father interrupted his thoughts.

“Say, how would you like to go sailing next Sunday?” he asked. “A friend of mine has invited us all to spend the day on his boat sailing out around Catalina Island.”

“That would be great!” Bob said enthusiastically. He forgot about Maximilian’s accident. He did not even remember it the next morning when he joined Pete and Jupiter at The Jones Salvage Yard.

The three boys set to work taking apart the second-hand washing machine Titus Jones had bought. By using some parts from another machine, they were able to put it in perfect working order. They had just finished the repair job when a Rocky Beach police car drove into the yard. They looked up with surprise as the heavy-set figure of Police Chief Reynolds got out and walked over towards them.

“Hello, boys,” he said. He looked very serious. “I have some questions to ask you.”

“Questions, sir?” Jupiter asked, blinking.

“Yes. About a trunk you sold yesterday to a man who calls himself Maximilian the Mystic. He had an accident as he was driving home. His car was smashed up and he was badly hurt. He’s in the hospital now. At first we thought it was an ordinary accident — he was unconscious and couldn’t talk.

“But this morning he woke up and told us that another car, with two men in it, had forced him off the road. He told us about the trunk, too. Apparently the two men stole the trunk, for it certainly wasn’t in his wrecked car when we had it towed to a garage.”

“Then apparently the two men deliberately wrecked Mr. Maximilian’s car in order to get the trunk!” Jupiter exclaimed.

“Exactly what we figured out,” agreed Chief Reynolds. “Maximilian couldn’t talk much — the doctor wouldn’t let him. He said he bought the trunk from you, Jupiter, and then the doctor said he’d talked enough. So I’ve come to find out what was in the trunk that would make someone want to steal it.”

“Well,” Jupiter told him as Pete and Bob listened intently, “there was mostly clothing in it. There was some magical apparatus. The main thing in it was an old skull that was supposed to be able to talk.”

“A skull able to talk!” Chief Reynolds exploded. “That sounds crazy! Skulls can’t talk!”

“No, sir,” Jupiter agreed. “But this one used to belong to another magician named The Great Gulliver and — ” He proceeded to tell Chief Reynolds the whole story of how they had bought the trunk at auction, what they had learned about Gulliver, how he had spent some time in jail, then had disappeared after being released.

Chief Reynolds listened, frowning and chewing his lips.

“That’s certainly a mixed-up story,” he said when Jupiter had finished. “You must have imagined it when you thought you heard the skull talk to you in your room the other night. Maybe it was a dream.”

“I thought of that, sir. But when I went to the address it gave me, I found the Gypsy woman, Zelda, who seemed to know about Gulliver. She said he was no longer in the world of men.”

Chief Reynolds sighed and mopped his forehead.

“And she spouted this stuff about hidden money that she claimed to see in the crystal, eh?” be muttered. “Well, it’s certainly strange. Now about this letter you found in the trunk and put back. You say you took photographs of it. I’d like to have those photographs.”

“Yes, sir,” Jupiter said. “I’ll get them.”

He hurried back to the workshop section, slid into Tunnel Two, and was soon inside Headquarters. Early that morning he had developed the film he had taken the day before and hung up the prints to dry. He had only one set of prints, but he could make more if he needed them.

He put the dry prints in an envelope and a moment later was back, handing them to Chief Reynolds. The Chief glanced at the photographs and shook his head.

“Don’t suppose they’ll mean anything to me,” he grumbled. “But I’ll study them. Next thing I want to do, though, is talk to that Gypsy woman, Zelda. Suppose you drive down there with me now, Jupiter, and we’ll see what she has to say. I have a hunch she knows more than she let on.”