Chapter 13.
A Sudden Alarm WHEN BOB ARRIVED AT HQ the next morning, Jupiter was just hanging up the telephone receiver.
"Pete can"t come! His dad told him to quit procrastinating and prune his neighbours" bushes. We"ll have to go ahead without him. He"ll meet us at the Lair as soon as he can."
Bob grinned. "I"ll bet he"s as mad as a hornet."
"He did not sound pleased," Jupiter admitted. "I"m not pleased either. It gives us one less person to help find where Kames is digging, and I don"t expect that"s going to be easy. We may have to separate while we do our scouting. Let"s take all three walkie-talkies along."
After Bob had stuffed the devices into his backpack, the two Investigators went out to their bikes and pushed them through Green Gate One out into the street in front of the salvage yard. Soon they were riding cautiously through the low early-morning fog to the Purple Pirate Lair.
Heavy mist hung silently over the deserted Pirates Cove.
"I called Jeremy," Jupiter reported, "and he said he"d make sure his father was waiting for us."
As they reached the open gates to the Purple Pirate Lair, Bob said in a low voice, "That fake ice cream van"s over on the road, and I think Hubert is trying to hide in the trees."
Jupiter glanced over and grinned. "Hubert"s there all right. Hidden like a whale in a bathtub! He keeps peeking out to make sure no one can see him."
Inside the fence the boys hurried around the refreshment stand to the house trailer. The door opened before they rang.
"Come in, guys," Jeremy said eagerly. "I told my dad you"ve solved the case!"
Captain Joy was seated at the breakfast table in the kitchen. He offered the boys some coffee. They declined politely, and the captain studied them over his cup.
"I told you not to bother Major Karnes," he said.
"Yes, sir," Jupiter agreed, "and we haven"t. He has no idea we"re investigating his activities."
"I hope not," Captain Joy said. "All right, if you"ve solved your mystery, you might as well tell me about it."
"Jeremy is a little optimistic, sir," Jupiter admitted. "We haven"t solved the mystery of Major Karnes"s actions, but we have determined that there very definitely is a mystery!" He went on to tell the captain everything they had seen and heard the day before. When Jupe had finished, Captain Joy poured himself a fresh cup of coffee, sipped it, and looked mystified.
"You"re saying that the whole thing, the Society for Justice to Buccaneers, Brigands, Bandits, and Bushwhackers, is just a trick to get us away from here so Kames can dig for something?"
"That, sir, is what we think," Jupiter said.
"But what is it all about? Why watch the place so much?"
"I can"t explain the stakeout yet," Jupiter said, "but we have a pretty good idea what it must be about. The Purple Pirate must have hidden some of his loot here at Pirates Cove, and Major Karnes and his gang know that. They may even have a map."
He told Captain Joy about the doc.u.ment they had seen Karnes studying and measuring, and pointed out that the gang had been digging for three nights.
Captain Joy was doubtful. "There hasn"t been even a rumour of treasure at Pirates Cove in a hundred years. After William Evans returned and died, people did think he might have left some treasure, and they dug up the whole cove. But they found nothing, and no one"s ever even mentioned the idea since."
"Possibly it isn"t treasure," Jupiter agreed, "but Karnes and his gang are digging for something, sir! Whatever it is, I suggest we try to find where they are digging."
"Good grief, there should be a big hole after three days," Jeremy exclaimed.
"Then it should be simple to find," Captain Joy said.
"I wonder," Jupiter said uneasily. "If removing the dirt would hide the digging, then the hole is not in plain sight or where anyone can stumble on to it by sheer chance."
"I"ll go with Jeremy," Bob suggested, "and you go with the captain, Jupe. They both know the grounds."
Jupiter nodded. "For a start, you check the whole area between the refreshment building and the cove and we"ll start inside the refreshment building."
They agreed to meet near the Black Vulture.
As Jupiter and the captain entered the rear area behind the refreshment stand, the early-morning fog drifted in with them.
"This building and the museum building were stables originally, back when there was a big house over there in the trees. That was long before the cove road was built,"
the captain said. "Both buildings still have double doors for each separate stall. Plenty of room to drive a van in."
He unlocked the first pair of double doors. Inside, cases of soft drinks and boxes of food were stacked to the ceiling. There was enough room to hide a van, but there were no traces of tyre marks or signs of digging in the dirt floor. They had no better success in the areas behind the other two sections of the refreshment stand, and soon joined Bob and Jeremy beside the Black Vulture.
"Nothing," Bob reported. "We searched every inch of ground from building to water."
They decided there was no way to drive a van on to the Black Vulture. Captain Joy suddenly looked at his watch.
"Hey, it"s time to open. Salty Sam seems to have wandered off, so Anna will have to take care of the ticket selling. If we get a good crowd I may hire you boys to do some acting."
Jupiter"s eyes lit up. "As it happens, sir, I have considerable experience in that line.
I may even decide to return to acting when I grow up instead of becoming a great detective."
"Meanwhile," Bob said, grinning, "we"re trying to find where Karnes and his gang are digging. May we borrow your keys to the museum. Captain Joy?"
The captain willingly handed over the keys and then hurried off with Jeremy to start the first show. After the Joys had gone, Bob and Jupiter crossed the promenade and unlocked the first set of rear double doors in the museum building. Although the part.i.tions between the old stable stalls had been torn down in front to make the long museum display, there were still three separate dim rooms in the back.
"Look for tyre marks and digging," Jupiter emphasized.
In the first room they found nothing-no tyre marks, no loose dirt, no hole in the ground. The second of the dim back rooms was no more rewarding. As they started to leave it, Bob held up his hand in alarm! Someone, or something, was moving outside in the fog. Moving stealthily-and coming towards the door!
Chapter 14.
The Purple Pirate Strikes Again "QUICK!" JUPITER WHISPERED. "Behind the door!"
But before they could move an inch, a shadow leaped through the doorway and grappled with Jupiter! The stout leader of the trio and his shadowy attacker fell to the dirt floor in a tangle of arms and legs. Bob leaped on to the a.s.sailant"s back and all three rolled in the dirt of the dim room.
"I"ve got his leg!" Bob cried.
"I"ve got his hair!" Jupiter panted.
"I"ve got his neck!" Pete groaned.
The three figures slowly stopped moving.
"Pete?" Bob ventured.
"S-Second?" Jupiter stammered.
"Yes," the Second Investigator sighed wearily. "It"s me. I just got to the Lair. I heard someone inside the museum and came in to investigate. You want to let go of my hair, Jupe?"
Jupiter stood up red-faced.
"We heard someone sneaking up," Bob explained.
Pete said, "If you let go of my leg, Records, I"ll drop your neck."
"A small error on all our parts," Jupiter said. "Didn"t the captain or Jeremy tell you we were in here?"
"I didn"t see the captain or Jeremy. What"s up? Have you found where Karnes and his gang are digging?"
Jupiter shook his head. "But we still have one more room to check in this building."
The boys unlocked the last of the former stable rooms, and the result was the same. There was no sign there of digging.
Out in the thinning fog, the Three Investigators next spread out across the ground between the museum building and the grove of live oaks that separated the Purple Pirate Lair from Joshua Evans" stone tower. They could see a narrow line of customers straggling through the gates towards the Black Vulture. The refreshment stand was open now, with the captain himself behind the counter. The three boys searched every foot of ground from the water to the fence and up to the oak trees.
"No one"s been digging anywhere here," Bob said.
"Except that Karnes and Hubert are digging here," Pete said.
"And it"s impossible for both things to be true," Jupiter said.
"Unless," Pete suggested, "Karnes came back last night and filled it all in?"
"We"d see any freshly turned earth," Jupiter said. "No, we"ve looked everywhere now, and somehow we"ve missed-"
"Not everywhere, First," Bob said suddenly. "There"s still the stone tower and the old boathouse beyond these trees."
They looked through the twisted old oaks at the tower and the tumbledown boat- house standing at the edge of the cove. There were enough gaps among the oaks for a van to drive through.
"But," Pete wondered, "how do you dig in a stone tower or a boathouse? One"s stone, the other"s water!"
"But you could certainly hide a van in that boathouse if there"s enough dock area inside it,"
Jupiter said.
"Come on, Bob"s right. We must take a look."
"Hold on," Bob said. "That Joshua Evans was awful mad about me being on his land yesterday. Maybe we better wait for Captain Joy."
Jupiter sighed. "You may have a point, Records."
"Mr. Evans isn"t at the tower," Pete said. "I saw him drive away from the parking lot when I was coming in."
"Then," Jupiter cried, "let"s go and look!"
As they hurried through the oaks, they saw that Captain Joy was now on the ship, talking to a group of customers and looking at his watch. At the gates Anna still had the ticket booth open. The boys tried the old boathouse first. It had double doors on the land side, and it wasn"t locked. Just inside the doors there was room to park a van on the wooden floor, but there was no trace of tyre tracks or oil drippings. The dock jutted out into dark water inside the boathouse, with berths on each side for boats. No boats were tied up. At the far end doors large enough to let small boats sail through were closed almost down to the waterline. A sail loft that ran the length of the boathouse directly over the dock held sails, masts, and ropes. Under the dock the water lapped against wood; again there was no evidence of digging.
The boys saw no signs of digging all the way to the stone tower, either.
"Pete," Jupiter decided, "you stand watch in the oaks. Here"s your walkie-talkie and the backpack. If you see Joshua Evans returning, warn us. We"ll set our instruments on receive."
As Jupiter walked towards the tower, his eyes scanned the outside. The first floor had two doors and several windows. The second and third floors had one tiny window each. The top floor was gla.s.sed in on all sides like a lighthouse. Between those windows were a series of projecting step-like stones leading up to the flat roof.
Jupiter tried the front door of the tower. It was unlocked. The door opened directly into a small living room. It looked exactly like most other living rooms the boys had seen except that it was shaped rather like a large piece of pie, with a curved wall. There was a pie-shaped bedroom to the right, and a pie-shaped kitchen to the left. The back outside door was in the kitchen and was bolted shut from inside.
Wooden stairs led down along one inside wall from the kitchen to the cellar. On the other inside kitchen wall, towards the tip of the pie shape, a door opened into a kind of vertical well where a ladder went up to the next floor.
"We"ll try the cellar first," Jupiter declared.
They went down the worn wooden stairs into the pitch-dark cellar. Jupiter groped for a light switch.
A small ceiling bulb gave only a dim light, but the boys could see that they were in a low-ceilinged, semicircular room with a dirt floor and bare stone walls. The hard-packed dirt of the floor was smooth and solid as cement, and the stone walls were dry as dust and hadn"t been disturbed in a century.
"No one"s been digging here," Bob said.
"It would seem that way," Jupiter agreed reluctantly.
A door in a stone part.i.tion led into a storeroom filled with ma.s.sive old furniture covered with dust. The boys looked under the furniture for signs of disturbed earth.
"No one"s been digging anywhere in this cellar," Bob finally said.
Jupiter nodded and sighed unhappily.
"Aaahhhhhhrrrrrrgggggg!"
They whirled. The Purple Pirate stood behind them!
His cutla.s.s shone faintly in the dim light of the store- room.
"Hey, Mr. Davis," Bob said, annoyed, "it"s just us again."
The Purple Pirate said nothing. He stared at them through his purple mask and thick black moustache, his eyes glittering.