Part 2 (1/2)
”I am sorry, my lad, it is out of the question.”
”We don't want any money, sir,” Jupiter said. ”But all famous detectives have someone write up their cases for people to read Sherlock Holmes, Ellery Queen, Hercule Poirot, all of them. I have deduced that that is how they become famous. In order to get potential customers to know about The Three Investigators, we will have our cases written up by the father of our other partner, Bob Andrews. He works for a newspaper.”
”Well?” Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k looked at his watch.
”Well, Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k, I thought if you could just introduce our first case ”
”Quite impossible. Please ask Miss Larson to come in on your way out.”
”Yes, sir.” Jupiter looked depressed as he and Pete turned towards the door. They had almost reached it when Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k spoke.
”One moment, lads.”
”Yes, sir?” They turned. Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k was looking at them with a frown.
”It occurs to me that you have not been entirely frank. What exactly was it that Miss Larson thought I should see? Not your business card, I'm sure.”
”Well, sir,” Jupiter said reluctantly, ”I can do various impersonations, and she thought you would want to see my impersonation of you as a boy.”
”Impersonation of me as a boy?” The famous director's voice grew deeper. His features clouded. ”Just what do you mean?”
”This, sir.” And once again Jupiter's face seemed to change shape. His voice deepened and took on an English accent, and he became a different individual.
”It occurred to me, Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k,” he said, in a voice entirely different from his own, ”that some day you might wish to have someone portray you as a boy in a motion picture, and if you did ”
Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k's brow had wrinkled. His face was dark with displeasure.
”Monstrous!” he said. ”Stop it at once!”
Jupiter resumed his own ident.i.ty. ”You don't think ifs a good likeness?” he asked.
”I mean, of you when you were a boy?”
”Certainly not. In any case, I was a fine, upstanding lad, not at all like that gross caricature you just attempted.”
”Then I guess I'll have to practice some more,” Jupiter sighed. ”My friends thought it was very good.”
”I forbid it!” Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k thundered. ”I absolutely forbid it! Give me your promise never again to do that particular impersonation and I ... confound it, I'll introduce whatever you write about your case.”
”Thank you, Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k!” Jupiter said. ”Then you want us to investigate the haunted house situation for you?”
”Oh, yes, yes, I suppose so. I don't promise to use it even if you find it, but investigate by all means. Now get out of here before I lose my last vestige of self-control. I take a very dim view of lads such as you. You are entirely too clever for your own good, young man.”
Jupiter and Pete raced out towards the car, leaving Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k looking darkly thoughtful as they went.
Chapter 3.
Report On Terror Castle IT WAS RATHER LATE in the afternoon, and Bob Andrews was puffing as he pushed his bike up to Green Gate One. What a time to have a flat tyre!
He rolled the bike inside the salvage yard and parked it. Over in the main part of the yard he could hear the voice of Mrs. Jones, giving orders to Hans and Konrad, her husband's two helpers. But Jupiter and Pete were not in their workshop.
Bob had expected that. He went behind the little printing press and moved aside a section of old iron grating that seemed merely to be leaning against the bottom of a work-bench. Behind the grating lay a very long, large galvanised pipe. He ducked into the open end of the pipe, pulled the grating back into place, then crawled as fast as his brace would let him through the pipe. This was ”Tunnel Two,” one of several secret entrances the boys could use to enter ”Headquarters.” It ended at a wooden panel.
He pushed on the panel and it swung up. He was inside Headquarters.
Headquarters was a thirty-foot mobile home trailer that t.i.tus Jones had bought for junk a year earlier. It had been badly damaged in a crash, and he hadn't been able to sell it because of the great dents in the frame. So he had allowed Jupiter to use it for a kind of office.
In the course of the year, the three boys, with the help of Hans and Konrad, had gradually piled heaps of junk all round the outside of the trailer. Now, from the outside, it was entirely hidden by piles of steel bars, a section of a dilapidated fire escape, and some stacks of wood and other material.
Mr. Jones had apparently forgotten all about its existence. And no one but the boys themselves knew that they had equipped the now well-hidden trailer as an office, laboratory and photographic darkroom, with several hidden entrances.
When Bob crawled out of the pipe, Jupiter was sitting in a rebuilt swivel chair behind a desk that had had one end scorched in a fire. (All the equipment in Headquarters had been rebuilt from junk.) Pete Crenshaw was sitting on the other side of the desk.
”You're late,” Jupiter said as if Bob didn't know it.
”I had a flat tyre.” Bob was panting. ”I ran over a big nail right outside the library.”
”Did you find out anything?”
”I certainly did. I found out more than I want to know about Terror Castle.”
”Terror Castle!” Pete exclaimed. ”That's a name I don't like!”
”Wait until you hear about it,” Bob told him. ”About the family of five who tried to spend a night in it and were never ”
”Begin at the beginning,” Jupiter requested. ”Give us the facts in sequence.”
”Okay.” Bob started to open the large brown envelope he had brought with him.
”But first I ought to tell you that Skinny Norris kept hanging over my shoulder all morning, trying to snoop into what I was doing.”
”I hope you didn't let that goop know anything!” Pete exclaimed. ”He's always trying to poke his nose into everything we're doing.”
”I certainly didn't tell tell him anything. But he was awfully persistent. When I arrived at the library, he stopped me to talk about Jupe's winning the car for thirty days. He asked me how I thought he was going to use it.” him anything. But he was awfully persistent. When I arrived at the library, he stopped me to talk about Jupe's winning the car for thirty days. He asked me how I thought he was going to use it.”
”Skinny is just annoyed because he wants to be the only one in school who has his own car,” Jupiter said. ”If his father wasn't a legal resident of a state where they give out drivers' licenses practically to infants, Skinny wouldn't be able to drive any more than we can. Well, he can't lord it over us now.”
”Anyway, while I was working in the library,” Bob went on, frowning. ”he kept watching me draw out all the old magazines and newspapers I needed to get the information for you, Jupe. I didn't let him get a look at what I was reading but ”
”Yes?” the First Investigator asked.
”You know our business card, on which you wrote 'Terror Castle' when you asked me to find out anything I could about the place?”
”I suppose you put it down while you were looking in the card catalogue, and couldn't find it again,” Jupiter said.