The Mystery of the Headless Horse - Arden William (электронная книга .TXT) 📗

“Over here, boys,” a policeman called from the first desk. “Andrews and Crenshaw? Private detectives?”

They nodded, swallowing. The officer typed their names and addresses on printed forms, then entered the name of the prisoner they were visiting and the nature of their business.

“Okay, stand over against that wall.”

Bob and Pete stood against the wall, and another officer searched them quickly and expertly for concealed weapons or anything else that might help a prisoner escape. Pete was glad that he wasn’t carrying his Swiss Army knife that day. Then the first policeman took the boys down to the barred visitors door, unlocked it, and sent them inside.

They saw a long, narrow room with a low, solid counter dividing the room lengthwise. On the counter was a double row of three-sided, desk-like cubicles. One set of cubicles opened towards the visitors’ door, and the second set opened towards the far wall, which contained a barred door that led into the jail itself. When seated at a cubicle, you looked over a chin-high barrier at the cubicle on the other side. A visitor and a prisoner could thus see and talk to each other in facing cubicles, but could not pass anything over the barrier between them without being spotted by the policeman who sat in the room.

Bob and Pete sat down in one of the cubicles. Soon the door on the prisoners’ side opened and a guard brought Pico in. Pico sat facing the boys across the chin-high barrier.

“It is good of you to visit,” he said quietly, “but there is nothing I need.”

“We know you didn’t make that campfire!” Pete exclaimed.

Pico smiled. “I, too, know that. Unfortunately, the sheriff does not.”

“But we think we can prove it,” Bob said.

“Prove it? How, boys?”

They told Pico all they had realized about the hat.

“So,” Bob explained, “at three p.m. you were still wearing the hat at the school in Rocky Beach. You couldn’t have left the hat near that campfire on the Norris ranch until after we all got to the hacienda. And by that time, the fire had already started — set by someone else!”

“Then,” Pico said, his eyes gleaming, “my hat must have got on to the Norris land after the fire started! Excellent, boys! You are very good detectives indeed. Yes, my hat must have found its way out there accidentally, or — ”

“Or,” Bob finished, “someone put it out there on purpose!”

“So that I would be falsely accused.” Pico nodded. “But you cannot prove that I was wearing my hat at the school. It is only your word.”

“Yes,” Bob agreed, “but we know the truth, and now we have to find out how the hat got out there near that camp fire.”

“So we have to know where you left it,” Pete said. “You were wearing it at the school, and I think I remember it at the salvage yard. Were you wearing it in the truck?”

“The truck?” Pico frowned. “We were all in the back, yes. I talked about our family. Perhaps… No, I can’t be sure. I don’t remember taking the hat off, or even wearing it!”

“You have to remember!” Pete said fiercely.

“Think!” Bob urged.

But Pico only looked at them helplessly.

Diego sighed wearily as he turned the microfilm reader to another page of the old newspaper he was skimming. He was in the Rocky Beach Public Library, where Jupe had sent him when they discovered that the Historical Society didn’t have a full collection of old newspapers. Diego had gone through two months’ worth of issues of the weekly newspaper published in Rocky Beach in 1846. He was now up to the fourth week in October. So far he had found very little. There was nothing about Don Sebastian at all except for a brief mention of his death. The account was clearly based on Sergeant Brewster’s report and said nothing new.

Diego sighed again, and stretched. The reading room was silent except for the steady sound of the falling rain outside. He turned to the small stack of books on the table beside him. They were all printed memoirs and diaries of local residents in the nineteenth century.

Diego opened the first memoir and began to look for entries from mid-September 1846.

Jupiter closed the fifth journal he had read and listened to the rain outside the Historical Society. The old handwritten journals of the Spanish settlers were fascinating, and he had to keep reminding himself to read only entries for the dates near the escape of Don Sebastian. But so far even the entries for those violent days of September, 1846, had given him no clues.

Dispirited, he opened the sixth journal without much hope. At least he wouldn’t have to work so hard to read this one. The sixth journal was in English, one kept by a second lieutenant of cavalry in Fremont’s small force of American invaders.

Jupiter located the pages for mid-September and began to read fast.

Some ten minutes later he suddenly leaned forward, his eyes bright and excited, and carefully re-read a page in the journal of the long-forgotten second lieutenant.

Then he jumped up, made a copy of the page, returned the old journals to the historian, and hurried out into the rain.

Pico shook his head again in the visitor’s room of the Rocky Beach jail.

“I cannot remember, boys. I’m sorry.”

“All right,” Bob said calmly. “Let’s go over it step by step. Now, you were wearing the hat at the school. Jupiter remembers that clearly, and I think I do. Now — ”

“I’ll bet Skinny and even that Cody remember Pico wearing the hat at the school, if they’d admit it,” Pete said bitterly.

“But they won’t,” Bob said. “Pete’s pretty sure you were still wearing the hat at the salvage yard. In the truck you told us about the Alvaro land grant. I remember you pointed to things, so you weren’t holding the hat in your hand. It was windy and chilly in the truck, so you were probably wearing the hat to keep your head warm.”

“Then we got to the hacienda,” Pete went on. “We all got out of the truck, and you talked to Uncle Titus about the statue of Cortes. Then what, Pico? Did you go into the hacienda and maybe take off your hat?”

“Well, I… ” Pico thought hard. “No, I did not go into the house. I… we all… Wait! Yes, I think I remember!”

“What?” Pete cried.

“Go on,” Bob urged.

Pico’s eyes gleamed. “We all went straight into the barn to look at the things I was to sell to Mr. Jones. It was dim in the barn and my hat brim shaded my eyes. So I took off the hat to see better, and… ” The tall Alvaro brother looked at the boys. “And I hung it on a peg just inside the barn door! Yes, I am sure. I hung it in the barn, and then when Huerta and Guerra called ’Fire!’ I ran out with all of you and left the hat in the barn!”

“Then that’s where it should have been, not at the campfire on the Norris ranch,” Bob said.

“So someone swiped it from the barn before the barn caught fire,” Pete said, “and put it out at the campfire to frame Pico!”

“But,” Pico said slowly, “we still do not have proof.”

“Maybe we can find some evidence at the barn, if everything wasn’t all burned!” Bob said. “Let’s go and tell Jupe, Pete.”

The boys said goodbye to Pico, and hurried out as the guard took Pico back to his cell in the jail.

Out in the rain, they rode straight to the Historical Society and ran inside. Jupiter wasn’t there!

“Where’d he go, Records?” Pete wondered.

“I don’t know,” Bob said, biting his lip. “But we’ve got a couple of hours before dark, Second. There’s time to go look for some evidence in the Alvaro barn that someone stole Pico’s hat.”

“Let’s go then,” Pete decided. “Maybe Jupe went out there with Diego anyway.”

They ran back to their bikes, and peddled swiftly through the steady rain out towards the burned Alvaro hacienda.