Cry for Help "HELP ME!" the m.u.f.fled voice came again. "I"m smothering."
"There!" Pete pointed to a closet door in the opposite wall, between two sets of bookshelves. It had a spring lock on the outside, the kind that locked automatically.
Pete turned it, pulled, and the door swung open.
A small man was sitting on the floor of the closet, gasping for breath. His gold- rimmed gla.s.ses hung from one ear, his tie was twisted to one side, and his white hair was rumpled.
"Thank goodness you came," he whispered. "Please help me up."
Bob and Pete crowded into the small closet to help him to his feet, and Jupiter picked up the overturned swivel chair. As he set it upright, an expression of surprise crossed his face.
"Very odd," he said under his breath.
The boys helped Mr. Dwiggins to the chair, and he drew a deep breath. His hands shaking, he straightened his tie and put his gla.s.ses on properly.
"You came just in time," he said. "A little longer in there and I might have suffocated." Then, getting a good look at them, he blinked.
"But who are you?" he asked. "You"re just boys!"
"I"m August August, sir," the English boy said. "You told me to call on you today."
"Oh yes." Mr. Dwiggins nodded. "And these are friends of yours?"
"This will help explain, sir," Jupiter answered and produced from his pocket a printed card which he handed to the lawyer. It said: THE THREE INVESTIGATORS.
"We Investigate Anything"
First Investigator Jupiter Jones Jupiter Jones Second Investigator Peter Crenshaw Peter Crenshaw Records and Research Bob Andrews Bob Andrews "You"re investigators?" the lawyer seemed surprised.
"They"re going to help me solve the mysterious message Great-Uncle Horatio sent me, sir," Gus said.
"Oh." Mr. Dwiggins blinked again. He peered once more at the card. "It"s a very impressive card, young man. But may I ask what the question marks stand for?"
The three had been waiting for that question. Hardly anyone failed to ask it when they saw the card.
"The question mark, otherwise known as the interrogation mark," Jupiter said, "stands for things unknown, questions unanswered, mysteries unsolved, riddles of any sort. Our business is answering the questions, unravelling the riddles, solving any mysteries which come our way. Hence, the question mark is the symbol of The Three Investigators."
"I see, I see," the lawyer murmured. "That"s rather an ambitious programme. Still, I like to see young people with self-confidence ... But good gracious, I"m forgetting about my attacker!"
He sprang to his feet and looked around. He spotted the open filing cabinet.
"My confidential files! The scoundrel has been in my files! Now what did he take?
What"s this folder on my desk? I didn"t leave it there!"
He s.n.a.t.c.hed up the manila folder on the desk and began to leaf through the many papers inside.
"It"s your great-uncle"s folder!" he exclaimed to Gus. "I was his lawyer for twenty years and I kept all the papers relating to the business I handled for him in here. Now why should anyone be interested in ... the message! It"s gone!"
He looked at Gus. "The fellow who attacked me took the copy I made of your great-uncle"s message to you!" he exclaimed. "Although it seemed meaningless to me, your great-uncle obviously considered it very important, so I made a copy in case the original somehow was lost. Naturally, I expected it to be safe in my confidential files. But it"s been stolen!"
"Please tell us just what happened, sir," Jupiter requested. "This new development may be very significant."
The lawyer put the file folder back in the cabinet and locked the drawer. Then he sat down and told them what he could.
Mr. Dwiggins had been seated at his desk, working on some papers, when the door had opened. He looked up to see a man of average height, with a black moustache and heavy eyegla.s.ses. As Mr. Dwiggins was about to speak, the intruder reached out and put a hand over his eyes, half knocking off his gla.s.ses. Before the lawyer could make any move to defend himself, his attacker had pulled him from his chair, dragged him across the room, and shut him in the coat closet, which automatically locked.
At first Mr. Dwiggins had hammered on the locked door, shouting for help.
However, as he lived alone there was no one to hear him except the man who had locked him in. Realizing this, Mr. Dwiggins had stopped shouting and listened.
After a few minutes, he heard the outer door open and shut, indicating his attacker had left. Again he hammered on the closet door and shouted, until he realized he was only using up precious oxygen.
"Then I sat down on the floor and waited for help," Mr. Dwiggins finished. "I knew the air in the closet would only last a few hours. Thank goodness you came when you did!"
"What time did this happen, sir?" Jupiter asked.
"I"m not sure," Mr. Dwiggins answered. "Let"s see, it"s now " He looked at his wrist-watch. The hands had stopped at 9:17, more than an hour and a half before.
"My watch!" he exclaimed. "It must have broken when that scoundrel threw me into the closet."
"That means whoever it was has had nearly two hours to get away," Jupiter said. "He could be anywhere now. Did you notice anything else about him, Mr. Dwiggins?
Anything that might be a clue?"
"I"m sorry. I was so surprised I just had time to notice his moustache and gla.s.ses and the way his eyes seemed to gleam behind the lenses."
"Not much help there," Pete put in.
"I guess not," Jupiter agreed. "Do you see anything else in here that could have been disturbed, Mr. Dwiggins?"
The lawyer looked around his office.
"Apparently he went straight to the filing cabinet," he said. "Then as soon as he found what he wanted, he left."
"Hmmm," Jupiter murmured. "That means he knew exactly what he was looking for, and of course he could find the right file because the folders are arranged alphabetically.
But how did he know about the message in the first place?"
Mr. Dwiggins blinked. "Why I don"t know."
"Was there anyone else around when Mr. August wrote the message?" Jupiter asked.
Mr. Dwiggins nodded. "Yes," he said. "The couple who took care of him. An old fellow and his wife. They"d been with him for years. She did the housekeeping and he tended the lawn and the garden. Name"s Jackson. But when he died they went to San Francisco. Still, they were both of them in and out. One of them could have heard Mr.
August telling me the message was vitally important and I must get it to his great-nephew without fail the moment he died."
"They could have told somebody else about it," Pete suggested. "This somebody could have guessed Mr. Dwiggins would make a copy, and come here to look."
"Mr. August was generally supposed to have a lot of money hidden somewhere," the lawyer said. "Anyone hearing of a secret message would instantly jump to the conclusion that it told where to find the money. Actually, though, Mr. August died in rather poor circ.u.mstances. His home was mortgaged and the mortgage holder is taking possession of it. I had to have the furnishings sold to pay his final bills."
"But the message indicates that he hid something valuable for me to find," Gus said.
"Something he was afraid of for some reason."
"Yes, that"s true." Mr. Dwiggins took off his gla.s.ses and wiped them. "Whatever it was, he kept it a secret from me. Several times he said to me, "Henry, there are things about me you"re better off not knowing. One of them is my right name, which isn"t Harry Weston. Another is but never mind. Just remember this: if you ever see a dark-skinned man with three dots tattooed on his forehead hanging around here, look out for stormy weather."
"A very strange man, Mr. Weston I mean, Mr. August. Strange but likeable.
Naturally, I never tried to pry into his secret, whatever it was."
"Excuse me, sir!" Jupiter Jones blurted out. "Do I understand that Mr. August was actually known as Mr. Weston?"
"Why yes. All the time he lived in Hollywood he called himself Harry Weston. It was only when he was near death and gave me his great-nephew"s name and address that he revealed his true name to me."
Jupiter"s gaze turned towards the filing cabinet drawer which they had seen open when they first entered. On the front was lettered A-C.
"Excuse me, Mr. Dwiggins," Jupiter said, "but I notice you put the file folder in the A drawer A for August, of course. I suppose that when you learned his real name you changed the name on the folder from Weston to August?"
"Yes, of course. I do like to be accurate in these matters."
"But apparently the man who attacked you knew right where to look for it," Jupiter persisted. "Why didn"t he look under Weston in the W file?"
"Why, I don"t know." Mr. Dwiggins pondered. "Unless the Jacksons heard him tell me his real name ... Oh, of course. I have something to show you."
He went to the A file and brought out a slip of paper. It was a clipping from a newspaper.
"This was in the Los Angeles paper," the lawyer said. "A reporter got wind of the fact that there was some mystery about Mr. Weston. He came pestering me and as Mr.
August was dead, I saw no harm in telling his real name and what little else I knew about him. It"s all there, so anyone could have read it."
The other three crowded round Jupiter to see the newspaper clipping. The small headline said: MAN OF MYSTERY DIES AT SECLUDED HOME.
IN LONELY DIAL CANYON.
Jupiter read the newspaper article rapidly. From it he learned that Mr. Horatio August, using the name of Harry Weston, had come to Hollywood about twenty years before, after living for many years in the West Indies. He apparently then had a good deal of money, earned as a young man in trading ventures in the South Seas and the Orient.
He had purchased a large house in Dial Canyon, in the remote hills north of Hollywood, and had lived there very quietly with only two servants to attend him.
Making no friends, he had contented himself with collecting old clocks and books, especially old Latin books. He had also collected as many different editions as he could of the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. As a boy in England he had once met the famous author, and was a great admirer of his fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes.
He had lived quietly under his a.s.sumed name until his death, after a brief illness for which he had refused to go to the hospital. He had said that one of his ambitions had been to die quietly in his own bed, and he proposed to do so now.
A tall man, with bushy white hair, he had never allowed himself to be photographed.
His only known relatives lived in England. After his death the doctor who signed his death certificate had found upon his body the scars of many old wounds, apparently inflicted by a knife during some untold adventure of his youth.
Nothing else could be learned about his mysterious past.
"Golly!" Pete breathed. "He certainly was a man of mystery."
"Knife scars!" Gus said. "He must have had a very adventurous life. I wonder if he could have been a smuggler?"
"He was hiding from someone," Bob chimed in. "That"s pretty plain. First he must have hidden in the West Indies, then apparently he got scared he"d be found, and came here to hide in Dial Canyon. I guess he figured there are so many strange people in Los Angeles and Hollywood that he wouldn"t create any stir here."
"Anyway," Jupiter added, "he did die quietly in bed. But if that was his ambition, it means he was afraid of violence from someone, presumably someone with a dark complexion and three dots tattooed on his forehead."
"Wait a moment!" Gus cried. "I"m just remembering something happened about ten years ago when I was very small ..." He frowned in an effort to remember.
"One night after I"d gone to bed, I heard voices downstairs my father talking to someone. Then I heard Father raise his voice. He said, "I tell you I don"t know where my uncle is! As far as we know, he died long ago. If he is alive, I couldn"t tell you where he is, not even for a million pounds."
"That aroused me and I got out of bed and went to the head of the stairs. My father and a strange man were standing in the middle of the living-room. The stranger said something I couldn"t hear, and my father answered, "I don"t care how important it is to you. I never heard of The Fiery Eye. And I"ve never heard from my uncle. Now get out and leave me alone!"
"When Father said that, the tall man bowed and turned to pick up his hat. He looked up and saw me, but he acted as if I wasn"t there. He took his hat, bowed again, and went out. Father never mentioned the visitor, and I didn"t ask about it because I knew he"d be angry at my listening when I was supposed to be in bed. But "
Gus lowered his voice. "The man who"d been talking to Father had a dark complexion, and three dark spots on his forehead. I couldn"t figure out what they were at the time. Now I realize they must have been small tattoo marks."
"Wow!" Bob said. "Three-Dots was trying to locate your great-uncle through your father."
"Which is why Great-Uncle Horatio never communicated with us, I expect," Gus said. "He didn"t want to be located."
"The Fiery Eye," Jupiter murmured. "Mr. Dwiggins, did Mr. August ever mention such a thing to you?"
"No, my boy. I knew him for twenty years and he never mentioned it. All that I know about him is in that newspaper article. I regret now that I gave the reporter the information, but there seemed no harm in it at the time. One thing I must add towards the end he became very secretive. Seemed to feel there were enemies around and he was being spied upon. Didn"t even trust me. So he might easily have hidden something to keep it out of the hands of these imaginary enemies, and then sent you the message that he thought would enable you to locate it."
"I see," Jupiter said. "Well, we came to ask you about Mr. August, and I guess we"ve learned everything we can from reading the article. I think our next move is to visit the house in Dial Canyon and see if we can learn anything there."
"There"s nothing there now but the empty house," Mr. Dwiggins told him. "As Mr.
August"s executor, I sold off all the books and furnishings to pay his debts. In three or four days the gentleman who owns the mortgage on the house is going to tear it down and erect modern homes on the land.
"If you want to visit the empty house, you may I can give you permission, and a key to let you in. However, I don"t know what you can find, because it"s quite empty. There were a few books left, up till yesterday. And of course the statues busts, that is. Plaster heads of famous men. However, they weren"t worth anything so I sold them all to a junk dealer for a few dollars "
"Busts!" Jupiter moved as if he had been stung by a bee. Plaster busts from an old house! Why, those must be the ones t.i.tus Jones had brought to the salvage yard the day before. Caesar, Washington, Lincoln, and the rest.
"Mr. Dwiggins," Jupiter said swiftly, "we have to go now. Thank you very much. I think I understand the meaning of the secret message. But we have to hurry."
He turned and walked quickly out. Perplexed, Bob, Pete, and Gus followed. The Rolls-Royce was waiting with Worthington polishing its shining blackness with loving care.
"Worthington," Jupiter ordered as they all piled into the car, "back home! We have to hurry!"
"Very good, Master Jones," the chauffeur agreed. He backed the car out of the driveway, and headed for Rocky Beach at the fastest legal limit of speed.
"Gosh, Jupe, what"s the rush?" Pete asked. "You act as if we were going to a fire!"
"Not a fire," Jupiter said mysteriously. "A Fiery Eye."