The boys stood up and stared ahead in dismay. The flat area held several large trucks, a bulldozer, and a giant diesel-operated shovel.
Just now the huge steel jaws of the shovel were chewing away at the house of Horatio August. Most of the roof and one side was gone already, for the shovel simply took large bites out of the structure and dropped the debris into a waiting truck. The bulldozer was smoothing the ground behind the house, ripping up trees and the remnants of a garden with the greatest of ease.
"The demolishers!" Pete exclaimed. "Mr. Dwiggins said the house would be torn down soon so that several new houses could be built here."
"And they"re bulldozing the grounds to level them!" Bob groaned. "Maybe they"ve already dug up The Fiery Eye!"
"I think not," Gus said, frowning. "Look. The shadow of the mountain is over that way, on the lawn, and they"re nowhere near there yet."
A truck full of debris from the house pulled up in front of them.
"Out of the way!" called the driver. "I"ve got to get by. We"re on a time schedule on this job."
Hans pulled the salvage yard truck off the road and the other vehicle roared by.
Already another truck was being filled with splintered rubbish from the fast-disappearing house.
"Drive on to that open spot," Jupiter called to Hans. "Then stop. If anybody asks us any questions, I"ll do the talking."
"Okay, Jupe," Hans agreed. He drove the truck another two hundred yards and stopped where it would be out of the way. The boys piled out and stared at the remains of the house. A short stout man, dressed in a suit but wearing a metal safety helmet, came across the lawn towards them.
"What are you kids doing here?" he demanded, his tone unfriendly. "We don"t want any spectators."
Bob and Pete had no idea what to say, but Jupiter had an answer ready.
"My uncle bought all the old furniture left in that house," he said. "He thought he might have left some so he sent us out to look."
"Nothing in that house!" the short man said emphatically. "Stripped bare. So turn round and get going."
"Can"t we watch for a few minutes?" Jupiter asked. "Our friend " he pointed to Gus "is from England and he"s never seen American demolition methods. He"s very interested."
"I said get going," the man growled. "This is no circus. You kids might get hurt and our insurance doesn"t cover that."
"Just for " Jupiter took a quick look at his watch. It said two-fifteen. "For fifteen minutes?" he begged. "We"ll stay way over here, out of the way."
But the man, who seemed to be the foreman, was not in an agreeable mood. "Now!"
he said. "On your way!"
The boys all stared at the shadow of the peak that lay across the lawn. In fifteen minutes that point of the shadow would indicate the spot where The Fiery Eye was hidden.
"Yes, sir, we"ll go," Jupiter said. "I"m sure you won"t mind if I take one picture of the house, though. It won"t take a minute."
Without waiting for an answer, he started for the point of the shadow on the lawn, adjusting his camera as he went. The foreman started to yell after him, then decided it was not worth the trouble. Jupiter stopped about a yard away from the end of the shadow, faced the house, and took a picture. Then he put down the camera and tied his shoelace. After that he came trotting back.
"Thank you, sir," he said. "We"ll leave now."
"And don"t come back!" the man said disagreeably. "To-morrow we"re bulldozing this whole place. In three months we"ll have six new homes built round a central swimming pool. If you want to come back then, you can buy one of the houses!" And he gave a short laugh.
Jupiter climbed into the truck, and the others glumly followed him. Hans started the motor and drove slowly away. Pete sighed.
"That"s rough," he said. "To be chased away just as we almost have our hands on Gus"s inheritance. And tomorrow they"ll bulldoze the lawn. We"re licked."
"Not yet," Jupiter said, his lips set tightly. "We"ll come back to-night when it"s dark and try again."
"In the darkness?" Bob asked. "How can we find the right spot in the darkness? The peak won"t be casting any shadow then."
"We"ll ask the eagle to find it for us," Jupiter answered.
And with that mysterious remark, he refused to say anything more.
Chapter 16.
Unwelcome Intruders TIME CRAWLED PAST like a tired snail for the rest of the afternoon. To make up for the time they had taken Hans and Konrad away from their jobs, Pete, Bob and Gus worked in the yard, painting a batch of metal lawn chairs so they looked almost new and ready for sale.
Jupiter spent the afternoon in the workshop section, fussing over some gadget he was devising. Just what it was he wouldn"t say, but they guessed it had something to do with hunting for The Fiery Eye that night.
When the day"s work ended, they all had dinner at Jupiter"s house. After dinner Hans drove the smaller truck out of the yard. He parked it several blocks away in an inconspicuous spot, and settled himself to wait for them.
"Now," Jupiter said, "it is up to us to prepare a false trail in case anyone is watching us. I have phoned for the Rolls-Royce and Worthington to come as soon as it is dark.
We must be ready for them."
"You"re going to use up our last time to have the Rolls?" Pete asked. "Gosh, after this we"ll be on foot!"
"We"ll have our bikes and the use of the truck sometimes," Bob pointed out.
"That won"t be enough," Pete grumbled. "Just when we need the truck for a case it won"t be available. Mrs. Jones is getting pretty tired of us using it as it is. We"re washed up as investigators."
"We"ll have to do the best we can," Jupiter said. "It won"t be easy, though."
Gus was interested in the Rolls-Royce and the manner in which Jupe had won the use of it.
"But now our time is up," Pete sighed, after giving Gus the details. "Jupe thought we had a lot more time coming, but Mr. Gelbert at the Rent-"n-Ride Auto Agency wouldn"t listen to reason. So one more time and we"re finished."
"That"s too bad," Gus said. "Now that I see how vast this southern California region is, I realize how badly you need a motor car to get around."
"We"ll try to think of something else," Jupiter said. "Now it"s time to prepare our decoy. Everybody is to wear an extra jacket of mine out to the workshop. I have them here."
From the closet he got four jackets of different types and pa.s.sed them round. The boys all struggled into them. They didn"t fit too well, especially on Pete, but they managed.
"Lands and goodness, what game are you boys playing?" Mrs. Jones asked when she saw them. "I declare, I can"t understand youth these days."
"We"re going to play a trick on some, uh, friends, Aunt Mathilda," Jupiter said, and Mr. Jones chuckled.
"Just boyish pranks, Mathilda, dear," he said. "When I was a lad, I was full of such high spirits."
Jupiter led the way from the house back to the workshop section. The contraption Jupiter had been working on was lying on a table. It was a round metal object with a long handle, vaguely like a vacuum cleaner. A pair of headphones was connected by wire to the round metal section.
Also in the workshop were four of the dressmakers" dummies that t.i.tus Jones had bought several days before. They stood in a row like headless soldiers standing at attention.
"Now we must dress these dummies," Jupe announced. "That"s why I had you wear the extra jackets. If anyone is spying on us at this moment, I didn"t want him to see us carrying spare clothing. Each of you put a jacket round one dummy and b.u.t.ton it tight."
They did as instructed. When they had finished, the dressmakers" dummies each wore a jacket with the sleeves hanging limply.
"They don"t look very real to me," Pete observed. "That is, if you"re going to try to fool anyone."
"They"ll look better when they have heads," Jupe said. "Here are their heads."
He opened a paper bag and took out four large blue balloons.
"Each of you blow one up to the right size and tie it to a dummy"s neck," Jupe said.
They followed his example. But even with balloons for heads, the dummies looked pretty sad.
"They"ll look better as shadows in the darkness," Jupe said.
They waited. Slowly it got dark. The four dummies with balloon heads began to look strange and scary in the shadows.
A horn sounded in the salvage yard.
"That"s Worthington," Jupiter said. "I told him to park as close as possible to this spot. Come on, each of us can carry a dummy."
Carrying the grotesque dummies, they filed through the piles of junk until the dark bulk of the Rolls-Royce blocked their way. Worthington had the door open, with the inside lights turned off.
"Here I am, Master Jupiter," he said. "Awaiting orders."
"These are your pa.s.sengers, Worthington," Jupiter said. "They are our stand-ins."
"Very good," the chauffeur answered. "Let me help them into the car."
Between them they got all four dummies into the car, leaning back against the seat.
With the door shut and all lights off, all that could be seen were four shadows with bobbing heads. From a distance you could have imagined they were excited boys in the back seat.
"All right, Worthington," Jupiter said. "Now go up the coast road fairly rapidly, then turn into the hills and drive round for about two hours before you come back here and unload the dummies. Then I guess we won"t be seeing you again. Our use of the car is up."
"So I understand," the tall English chauffeur said. "I"m sorry to hear it. I"ve enjoyed our a.s.sociation immensely. Very well, now I"m off."
"Drive out without your headlights. Don"t put them on for a block," Jupiter instructed.
[image]
The boys watched him drive away, the car dark, just exactly as if trying to avoid attention.
"Well," Bob said, "if anyone"s watching, I guess they"ll think that"s us. At first, anyway."
"I"m trusting any watchers will follow the car to see where we go," Jupiter replied.
"Now it is our turn. We will all go out through Red Gate Rover and meet Hans and the truck. Pete, you carry my detector."
Pete picked up the long-handled object Jupiter had been fixing, and they all crept through the salvage yard to Red Gate Rover, some special swinging boards at the rear of the salvage yard. They slipped out into a dark alley-like street and trudged several blocks until they found Hans and the truck waiting for them in the deep shadows. They climbed in and started off. So far as they could see, no one followed them.
The trip to Dial Canyon was without incident. When they pulled up near the half-wrecked house of Gus"s great-uncle, there wasn"t a sound or a movement to be detected. Several big trucks were parked on the lawn and the bulldozer stood nearby, awaiting the next day"s work. But fortunately there was no night watchman.
"After we get out, Hans," Jupiter told the driver, "turn the truck round and block the road. Keep watch. If you see anyone coming, honk the horn as a warning."
"Okay, Jupe," Hans agreed.
"So far, so good," Jupiter said, lowering his voice. "Now to see if my detector can ask the eagle for the right spot."
"I wish you"d explain what you"re talking about," Pete said as they climbed out with the two spades and Jupiter"s gadget.
"This is a metal detector," Jupiter said, taking the instrument and leading the way across the lawn. "It will detect any buried metal several feet down."
"But The Fiery Eye isn"t metal!" Bob objected.
"No, but when I stooped to tie my shoe this afternoon, after I took a picture of the house," Jupiter told him, "I shoved a silver half dollar into the ground to mark the spot.
The half dollar has an eagle on the back.
That"s the eagle I"m going to ask."
"But it wasn"t two-thirty, Jupiter," Gus put in as they walked over the lawn in the darkness. "Only two-fifteen."
"I made allowance for the probable movement of the shadow in the next fifteen minutes," Jupiter told him. "We shouldn"t be too far off the right spot now."
He stopped and put the flat bottom of the instrument he carried on the ground. He put on the head phones, then snapped a switch and began to move the metal detector back and forth over the lawn.
"As soon as it finds any metal, it"ll buzz," Jupiter said. "It"s pretty dark but this seems about where I stood, judging by the house."
He moved the metal detector back and forth, over a wider and wider area. After he got tired, Pete took over. Still it refused to buzz.
"We"ve lost the eagle," Pete said wearily. "This is just too big a lawn. We could spend all night looking."
"It has to be somewhere nearby," Jupe said. "I pushed it into the ground edgewise so it couldn"t be spotted. Just give a swing over this way, Second."
Pete did as requested. Then he jumped. The machine had buzzed for a moment!
"Back! You pa.s.sed over it," Jupe whispered.
Pete moved the instrument back an inch at a time. Presently it started to buzz loudly in his ears, and he let it rest on the gra.s.s.