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

“What was the message?” Jupiter asked, ignoring his uncle’s chuckles.

“It was more like a riddle,” Mr. Jones replied. “’Let me see now, what they said was, ‘A frog in a pond with hungry fish must jump hard to get out.’ Does it mean anything to you?”

Jupiter gulped slightly. Bob and Pete swallowed hard.

“I’m not sure,” Jupiter answered. “Maybe it’s an old Gypsy proverb. You’re sure they were Gypsies?”

“Positive,” his uncle said. “I’ve seen enough to know. Besides, as they left I heard them talking in Romany — that’s the old Gypsy language. I couldn’t understand everything they said, but I heard what sounded like ‘danger’, then ‘keep a sharp eye’. I certainly hope you aren’t involved in anything dangerous.”

“Gypsies!” Mrs. Jones snorted, seating herself at the table. “Jupiter, now that you’ve got rid of that horrible old skull, don’t tell me you’re getting mixed up with Gypsies somehow.”

“No, Aunt Mathilda,” Jupiter answered. “At least I don’t think I am.”

“Well, they seemed friendly.” Titus Jones stated, helping himself to more sausages.

The three boys finished eating in silence, and then returned to Headquarters.

“A Gypsy message,” Pete said hollowly. “ ‘A frog in a pond with hungry fish must jump hard to get out’. Does that mean what I think it means?”

Jupiter nodded. “I’m afraid so. It’s a veiled warning to us that we’d better work hard to solve this case. I wish I knew where the Gypsies fitted into this, though. First I talked to Zelda. Then Zelda and all her people disappear. Now two Gypsies show up to leave a message for me, from a friend. I surmise that Zelda is the friend, but I wish she wouldn’t be so mysterious.”

“Me, too,” Pete said, and sighed.

“Well, what do we do now?” Bob asked.

“We talk to Spike Neely’s sister,” Jupiter said. “We know she lives in Los Angeles. Maybe she’s in the phone book.”

Pete handed him the telephone book and Jupe began phoning. In a deep voice that sounded quite adult, he said he wished to contact Mr. Spike Neely. The first three women he called said they’d never heard of Spike Neely, but the fourth replied that Spike Neely was dead and it was impossible to contact him. Jupiter said “Thank you” and hung up.

“We’ve located the right Mrs. Miller,” he told the others. “Her address is over in Hollywood, in one of the older sections. I propose we visit her immediately and see if she can give us any information.”

“It seems like an awful long shot to me,” Pete muttered. “What can she tell us that she didn’t tell the police at the time?”

“I don’t know,” Jupiter said, “but a frog in a pond with hungry fish must jump hard to get out.”

“I guess you’re right,” Bob said. “How will we get there? It’s too far to ride on our bikes.”

“We’ll call the Rent-’n-Ride Auto Agency and ask for the use of Worthington and the Rolls-Royce,” Jupiter said.

Some time earlier, Jupiter had entered a contest and won the use of a magnificent old Rolls for a short time. Later, the generosity of a boy whom they had helped allowed them to continue to use the car occasionally. However, when Jupiter phoned now, he learned that the car and Worthington, the chauffeur, were both out of town with a customer.

“Well, if we can’t use the Rolls-Royce,” he said to the others, “we’ll ask Uncle Titus to lend us Konrad and the light truck. Things aren’t busy today so he probably won’t mind.”

But it turned out that Mr. Jones first had an errand for Konrad and the truck. Konrad would not be free for several hours, so the boys decided to put in the time repairing some furniture. They worked in a spot where they could watch everyone who came into the yard, keeping alert for anyone who looked suspicious. But no one seemed in the least interested in them.

Finally Konrad came back with the truck and unloaded it. All three boys squeezed into the front seat beside him, Bob sitting on Pete’s lap, and they set off for Hollywood.

Mrs. Miller’s home turned out to be an attractive bungalow with a palm tree and two banana trees outside it. Jupiter pushed the doorbell and a pleasant-looking, middle-aged woman came to the door.

“Yes?” she said. “If you’re selling subscriptions, I’m sorry but I don’t need any more magazines.”

“It’s not that, ma’am,” Jupiter said. “May I give you one of our cards?” And he handed her one of The Three Investigators’ official business cards.

Mrs. Miller looked at it, puzzled.

“You boys are investigators?” she asked. “It hardly seems possible.”

“You might call us junior investigators,” Jupiter said. “Here’s another card that the police gave us.”

He let Mrs. Miller see the card Chief Reynolds had given him at the time of an earlier adventure. This one said:

This certifies that the bearer is a Volunteer Junior Assistant Deputy co-operating with the police force of Rocky Beach. Any assistance given him will be appreciated.

(Signed) Samuel Reynolds

Chief of Police.

“My, that certainly does look impressive,” Mrs. Miller said. “But why are you calling on me?”

“We hope you can help us,” Jupiter said frankly. “We’re in a little trouble and we need some information. It has to do with your brother, Spike Neely. It’s quite a long story, but if you’d let us come in I could explain better.”

Mrs. Miller hesitated, then held the door open.

“All right,” she said. “You look like respectable boys. I hoped I’d heard the last of Spike, but I’ll try to help you.”

A few moments later they were seated on the sofa in her living room. Jupiter was explaining as well as he could the curious set of events that had begun with his buying an old trunk at auction. He left out any reference to Socrates, however, as a talking skull would be hard for anyone else to take.

“So you see,” he finished, “someone apparently thinks there was a clue in Gulliver’s trunk to where the money is hidden. Because we had the trunk for a time, they may think we found the clue and know where the money is. They might — well, they might try to make us tell them, and we can’t. You can see what a problem it is.”

“Goodness, yes,” the woman said. “But I don’t see how I can help you. I never knew anything about the money, as I told the police at the time. Why, I never dreamed that my brother was a criminal until the police came looking for him.”

“If you could tell us what you told the police at the time,” Jupiter suggested, “we might spot some clue.”

“Well, I’ll try. It was six years ago, you know, but I can remember quite clearly. Frank — that was Spike’s real name — and I hadn’t seen much of each other since he left home when he was eighteen. Once in a long while he’d come to see me and my husband, for a few days, but he never said anything about what he was doing.

“I realize now that he was probably hiding out after committing a robbery, but at the time I just thought he was restless and liked to travel. When I asked him what his work was, he said he was a salesman. But, whenever he was staying with us, he used to help my husband out.

“My husband had a one-man home-repair business. He was a very good workman. If you needed your house painted, he could paint it. If it needed wall-papering, he’d do that, too. Or lay a new floor. Or install a bathroom. He could do anything around the house and he made good money.

“As I said, when Spike visited us, he helped on whatever job my husband might have at the time. But this time he didn’t seem to want to go out of the house. He seemed nervous. His speech defect was worse than usual. You know that’s how he was finally caught — he had trouble pronouncing the letter L in words. For instance, if he said ‘flower,’ it came out ‘f’ower’.

“Anyway, I know now that he was hiding out after the bank robbery in San Francisco. So for almost a week Spike stayed home by himself — I had a job then, too.