A large dark-grey motor-boat, old and rather shabby, was heading towards the little cove at high speed.
"Somebody sees us, they come to hunt, too," Chris said.
Then, as the boat did not slacken speed, he leaped to his feet.
"They crash on the reef!" he cried.
"Hi!" he shouted, waving his hands. "Sheer off! You hit the rocks!" Bob and Pete joined him, waving and yelling.
They could see a man in the stern of the boat, an old hat pulled down over his face.
Whether he understood their warning or not, they couldn"t tell. But abruptly the roar of the motor changed. The boat slowed as if the motor had been thrown into reverse.
At the same time the bow swung round.
Still with plenty of speed, the turning boat crunched into the side of Chris"s anch.o.r.ed sailing-boat.
The heavy prow of the motor-boat cut into the smaller boat as if it were made of cardboard. For an instant the two boats were locked together. Then the man in the motor-boat gave his engine a surge of power. It reversed and pulled free.
The next thing they knew the motor-boat was heading back into open water.
The three boys stopped yelling. With sinking hearts they watched Chris"s sailing-boat settle deep into the water and go under, disappearing from sight.
"Golly!" Pete groaned. "There go our clothes, our watches, everything!"
"There goes our ride home!" Bob said in dismay. "We"re stranded here. Stranded again!"
Chris said nothing. Only his clenched hands and anguished face said what it meant to have lost the only thing he owned, the little sailing-boat with which he had been desperately hunting for treasure to help his father.
A Warning to Jupiter
JUPITER was still engrossed in Bob"s notes about Skeleton Island when Mrs.
Barton came to tell him lunch was ready.
"My gracious, where are Pete and Bob?" she asked. "I"ve fixed lunch for them, too, and they aren"t anywhere in sight!"
Jupiter blinked. Bob and Pete had said they"d be back for lunch. But they"d probably got interested in searching for doubloons and forgotten the time.
"They"ll be along any minute," he said. "I"ll eat now. I have to go and see Doctor Wilbur soon."
Jupiter had a sandwich and a gla.s.s of milk at a scrubbed pine table in the kitchen.
His nose was running badly and he still wasn"t very hungry. Mrs. Barton told him how to get to Doctor Wilbur"s clinic, which was only a few blocks away.
Not many people were on the streets. He walked past rows of colonial-style houses, many of which needed paint badly. He also pa.s.sed a number of vacant stores with "For Rent" signs in the windows. Empty stores are usually a good sign that a town is having hard times, and business in Fishingport seemed very bad indeed.
Doctor Wilbur"s clinic was a neat brick building, fairly new. In the waiting room was a woman with two small children, and two elderly men who sat patiently looking ahead of them at nothing.
The nurse behind the desk sent Jupiter straight in. He found himself in a combination office and examination room, with a desk at one end, and an examining table and white cabinet full of medicines at the other.
Doctor Wilbur, a tall man with greying hair, sat at his desk eating a sandwich.
"h.e.l.lo, Jupiter," he said, eyeing the stocky First Investigator keenly. "I"ll be right with you."
He took a swallow of coffee from a thermos and stood up. Rapidly and efficiently, he examined Jupiter"s nose, throat and ears, listened to his heartbeat, tapped his chest, and took his blood pressure.
"Mmm," he said a few minutes later. "You seem to have a bad cold. Probably the sudden change of climate from California."
He got some white pills from the medicine cabinet, put them in an envelope and handed them to Jupiter.
"Take two of these every four hours for the next two days," he said. "Get plenty of rest and stay out of the water. I"m sure you"ll feel a lot better soon."
"Excuse me, sir," Jupiter said, "can you spare me enough time for a few minutes talk? I mean, if you"re not too busy "
"Have to finish my lunch," the doctor said, giving him another sharp look. "We can talk until then." He crossed to his desk and sat down again.
"All right, shoot," he said. "What do you want to talk about?"
"Well, I"m just trying to get all the information I can," Jupiter said. "Since you own Skeleton Island, where the movie company has been having so much trouble "
"Skeleton Island!" Doctor Wilbur exclaimed. "I"m getting sick of hearing the name!
That poor Sally Farrington was too nice a girl ever to become a ghost!"
"Then you don"t believe in the ghost these fishermen say they"ve seen?" Jupiter asked.
"I do not. Those fishermen are an ignorant, superst.i.tious lot. The ghost was seen just exactly once, and I can tell you the truth of that occasion. It was a silly practical joke by some very foolish pranksters. I was a young man at the time the island belonged to my father and I made it my business to find out. I know who it was three boys who have since moved away.
"They rowed out to the island, started up the merry-go-round, and one of them put on a white sheet. They waited until the lights and music had attracted investigators from town, then they left, rowing away in the darkness on the far side of the island.
"However, they never would admit it and I couldn"t prove it. I told people it had been a prank, but everyone preferred to believe in the phantom. Ghosts are much more exciting to believe in than practical jokers!"
Jupiter nodded. Doctor Wilbur"s story sounded like the truth.
"Once a wild story like that gets started," the doctor said, "you can never kill it.
From time to time thereafter people claimed to have seen the phantom. The story was partly responsible for Pleasure Park"s closing, but only partly. The truth is, another amus.e.m.e.nt park was built near Melville, and it was newer and more convenient. My father didn"t have the money to compete with it, so eventually he had to close.
"When he died, I inherited the island I couldn"t sell it and there was no point in reopening the park, so I"ve simply let it sit there.
"It"s never made me a cent, all these years, until you people came along and offered to rent it for your movie. If " and Doctor Wilbur looked at Jupiter from beneath bushy eyebrows "you really are making a movie. People seem to think you have a clue to a vast pirate treasure hidden on the island, and are hunting for it."
"No, sir." Jupiter shook his head. "That"s just a story, like the story about the ghost."
"Hmph! I rather hoped it was true, because if you found any treasure it would probably belong to me, being on my island."
"No, sir. We"re not looking for treasure. Everybody says any treasure hidden there was found years ago."
"Of course it was. And I believe you. But people aren"t rational about treasure.
They"ll believe anything."
"Doctor Wilbur," Jupiter asked, "why do you think some of the local people are trying to keep us from making a movie on your island? Because that"s what I think is happening."
"Hmph!" the doctor said again and poured himself some more coffee. "If they think there"s treasure, they"re trying to chase you away before you find it. Or they may just be trying to steal some of your equipment you know, many folks around here are terribly poor since the oyster fishing went bad. Or, it might be the mean streak some of the fishing people have. They may think it fun to plague you Hollywood people. Three possible reasons take your choice."
"It seems hard to understand," Jupiter said, frowning.
"Trying to solve the mystery, eh?" The doctor smiled. "Understand you"re sort of a whiz of a boy detective."
"I wouldn"t say that, sir," Jupiter answered modestly, though he did have a pretty good opinion of himself. "My friends and I have done some detection. Here"s our card."
He handed Doctor Wilbur one of The Three Investigators" business cards. It read: THE THREE INVESTIGATORS 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
"The question marks," Jupiter explained, "are our symbol. They stand for questions unanswered, mysteries unsolved, enigmas of all sorts that we attempt to unravel."
Doctor Wilbur smiled.
"Pretty highfalutin"," he remarked. "But I like to see a boy with confidence in himself. Tell me, why do you suppose Sam Robinson deliberately marooned you on The Hand when you got here?"
"To scare us, I think," Jupiter said. "To make us want to go back to Hollywood.
Because somebody is afraid we might find out the reason why the movie company is being bothered so. That makes the mystery even bigger, sir. It can"t be mere mischief."
"Mmm." Doctor Wilbur shot him another keen glance. "You have a point there, son. You"re smarter than you look."
"Thank you. Tell me, sir, I understand that stories about the ghost of the merry-go-round died out for many years, then suddenly began again ten or fifteen years ago. Can you tell me just when?"
"Let me see now " the doctor stroked his chin "I began to hear them just after I moved into this building. That was about ten years ago. Yes, that would be it. The ghost stories started up ten years ago and have been pretty thick ever since, at least among the more uneducated people in town. Why do you want to know?"
"I"m not sure," Jupiter confessed, "but anything might be important, sir. Thank you very much. I guess I"ve taken up enough of your time."
"Not at all." The doctor stood up. "Going to be very interested if you find any answers. And," he called after Jupiter, "if there"s any treasure on that island, remember it belongs to me!"
Jupiter went out in a thoughtful mood. He had learned some things but he wasn"t sure yet just what they meant. It would take a lot of thinking.
As he stepped out on the street, a pa.s.sing car stopped and backed up. Chief Nostigon was driving it.
"h.e.l.lo, boy," the chief said. ""Thought you"d like to know we traced that scoundrel Sam Robinson. He"s skipped."
"Skipped?" Jupiter asked.
"Got a job as a deck hand on a freighter, sailed out this morning. Won"t be back for months, if ever. Did say, though, one friend reports, he did it just for a joke. Because you lads came here with such big reputations. Can"t say I swallow that."
"I don"t either," Jupiter answered.
"Well, that"s all we"ve learned," the chief said. "I"ll be in touch with you folks if we get anything more." And he drove off.
Jupiter continued towards Mrs. Barton"s boarding house in a thoughtful frame of mind. He felt sure he should be able to guess the answer to the curious mystery of Skeleton Island, but so far it eluded him.
He hardly noticed his surroundings until, as he was pa.s.sing a tavern, a tall, thin man stepped out in front of him and barred his way. Jupiter had to stop to avoid b.u.mping into him.
"Hold on a second there, kid," the thin man said, his face twisting in an ugly grin. "I want to give you some advice."
"Oh? Yes, sir?" Jupiter recognized that the man was unfriendly, and he let his round face go slack so that he looked as he could when he wanted to very stupid.
"Just take a tip from me. Go back to Hollywood where you belong if you want to keep a whole skin. And take the rest of those movie fellows along with you. None of you are wanted here in Fishingport."
The man continued to grin nastily and Jupiter saw a tattoo mark on the back of his hand. It wasn"t too clear, but it looked like a mermaid. He felt a little shiver of fear run down his spine.
"Yes, sir," he said, keeping a dull expression. "I"ll tell them that. Who shall I say gave me the message?"
"Never mind the wise stuff, kid!" the man snapped. "Just vamoose if you know what"s good for you. That"s my helpful hint for today!"
Abruptly he stepped back into the tavern. Jupiter"s heart stopped beating quite so fast. Slowly, he walked on towards Mrs. Barton"s. It certainly seemed he"d been right about one thing. Someone was very determined to drive the movie company away from Skeleton Island.
An Exciting Discovery
"MY BOAT!" Chris was fighting hard to keep back tears. "It is gone. No more boat.
No more chance to find treasure."
"Gosh, yes," Bob said, realizing Chris"s loss was much greater than theirs. "What got into that guy anyway? Was it an accident or did he do it on purpose?"
"On purpose!" Chris said angrily. "Or else he would stop, see who owned boat, say he is sorry!"