THE SECRET OF THE TERROR CASTLE.
by Robert Arthur.
INTRODUCTION.
I SEEM TO BE constantly introducing something. For years I"ve been introducing my television programmes. I"ve introduced motion pictures. And I"ve introduced books of mystery, ghost and suspense stories for my fans to shiver with.
Now I find myself introducing a trio of lads who call themselves The Three Investigators, and ride round in a gold-plated Rolls-Royce, solving mysteries, riddles, enigmas and conundrums of all kinds. Preposterous, isn"t it?
Frankly I would prefer to have nothing to do with these three youths, but I rashly promised to introduce them. And I am a man of my word even though the promise was extorted from me by nothing less than sheer skulduggery, as you will see.
To the business at hand, then. The three boys who call themselves The Three The Three Investigators Investigators are Bob Andrews, Pete Crenshaw, and Jupiter Jones, all of whom live in Rocky Beach, a small city on be sh.o.r.e of the Pacific Ocean some miles from Hollywood. are Bob Andrews, Pete Crenshaw, and Jupiter Jones, all of whom live in Rocky Beach, a small city on be sh.o.r.e of the Pacific Ocean some miles from Hollywood.
Bob Andrews, who is small but wiry, is something of a scholarly type, although with an adventurous spirit. Pete Crenshaw is quite tall and muscular. Jupiter Jones is well, I shall refrain from giving you my own personal opinion of Jupiter Jones. You will have to decide about him for yourself after reading the pages that follow. I shall simply stick to the facts.
Therefore, though I would be surely tempted to call Jupiter Jones fat, I will simply say, as his friends do, that he is stocky. As a very small child, Jupiter Jones appeared in a television series about a group of comical children a series I am happy to say I never encountered. However, it appears that as an infant he was so fat and comical in appearance, he was known as Baby Fatso and made millions laugh at the way he kept falling over things. This gave him a deep aversion to being laughed at. In order to get himself taken seriously, he studied furiously. From the time he could read, he read everything he could get his hands on science, psychology, criminology, and many other subjects. Having a good memory, he retained much of what he read, so that in school his teachers found it best to avoid getting into arguments with him about questions of fact. They found themselves proved wrong too often.
If at this point Jupiter Jones sounds rather insufferable, I can only agree with you heartily. However, I am told he has many loyal friends. But then, there is no accounting for the tastes of the young.
Now I could tell you a great deal more about him and the other boys. I could tell you how Jupiter won the use of the gold-plated car in a contest. I could tell you how he established a local reputation for finding lost articles, including runaway pets. I could But I feel I have done my duty. I have more than lived up to my promise. If you haven"t skipped all this long ago, you are probably even gladder than I am that this introduction is ended.
ALFRED HITCHc.o.c.k.
Chapter 1.
The Three Investigators BOB ANDREWS PARKED his bike outside his home in Rocky Beach and entered the house. As he closed the door, his mother called to him from the kitchen.
"Robert? Is that you?"
"Yes, Mom." He went into the kitchen. His mother, brown-haired and slender, was making doughnuts.
"How was the library?" she asked.
"It was okay," Bob told her. After all, there was never, any excitement at the library. He worked there part time, sorting returned books and helping with the filing and cataloguing.
"Your friend Jupiter called." His mother went on rolling out the dough on a board. "He left a message."
"A message?" Bob yelled with sudden excitement. "What was it?"
"I wrote it down. I"ll get it out of my pocket as soon as I finish with this dough."
"Can"t you remember what he said?"
"I could remember an ordinary message," his mother answered, "but Jupiter doesn"t leave ordinary messages. It was something fantastic."
"Jupiter likes unusual words," Bob said, controlling his impatience. "He"s read an awful lot of books and sometimes he"s a little hard to understand."
"Not just sometimes!" his mother retorted. "He"s a very unusual boy. My goodness, how he found my engagement ring, I"ll never know."
She was referring to the time the previous autumn when she had lost her diamond ring. Jupiter Jones had come to the house and requested her to tell him every move she had made the day the ring was lost. Then he had gone out to the pantry, and found the ring behind a row of bottled tomato pickles. Bob"s mother had taken it off and put it there while she was sterilising the jars.
"I can"t imagine," Mrs. Andrews said, "how he guessed where that ring was!!"
"He didn"t guess, he figured it out," Bob explained. "That"s how his mind works ... Mom, can"t you get the message now?"
"In one minute," his mother said, giving the dough another flattening roll.
"Incidentally, what on earth was that story on the front of yesterday"s paper about Jupiter"s winning the use of a Rolls-Royce sedan for thirty days?"
"It was a contest the Rent-"n-Ride Auto Rental Company had," Bob told her.
"They put a big jar full of beans in their window and offered the Rolls-Royce and a chauffeur for thirty days to whoever guessed nearest to the right number of beans.
Jupiter spent about three days calculating how much s.p.a.ce was in the jar, and how many beans it would take to fill that s.p.a.ce. And he won ... Mom, please, can"t you find the message now?"
"All right," his mother agreed. She began to wipe the flour from her hands. "But what will Jupiter Jones do with a Rolls-Royce and a chauffeur, even for thirty days?"
"Well, you see, we"re thinking " Bob began, but by then his mother wasn"t listening.
"These days a person can win almost anything," she was saying. "Why, I read about a woman who won a houseboat on a television programme. She lives up in the mountains, and she"s almost frantic, not knowing what to do with it." While she was talking, Mrs. Andrews had taken a slip of paper from her pocket. "Here"s the message," she said. "It says "Green Gate One. The presses are rolling"."
"Gosh, Mom, thanks," Bob yelled, and was almost out the front door before her voice stopped him.
"Robert, what on earth does the message mean? Is Jupiter using some kind of fantastic code?"
"No, Mom. It"s plain, ordinary English. Well, I"ve got to hurry."
Bob popped out the door, swung on to his bike, and started for The Jones Salvage Yard. When he was riding a bicycle, the brace on his leg bothered him scarcely at all.
He had "won the brace", as Dr. Alvarez put it, by foolishly trying to climb one of the hills near Rocky Beach all alone. Rocky Beach is built on a fiat spot, with the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Santa Monica Mountains on the other.
As mountains, they might be considered a bit small, but as hills they are very big.
Bob had rolled down some five hundred feet of slope and wound up with his leg broken in umpteen places. A new record, the hospital a.s.sured him. However, Dr.
Alvarez said that eventually the brace could come off and he would never know he had once worn it. Although it was sometimes a nuisance, it didn"t really bother him most of the time.
Getting outside the main section of town, Bob reached The Jones Salvage Yard. It had been called Jones"s Junkyard until Jupiter persuaded his uncle to change the name. Now it handled unusual items in addition to ordinary junk, so that people came from miles away when they needed something they couldn"t find elsewhere.
The yard was a fascinating spot for any boy, and its unusual character was obvious from as far away as one could see the board fence that surrounded it. Mr. t.i.tus Jones had used a number of different colours of paint, acquired as junk, to paint the fence.
Some of the local artists had helped him, because Mr. Jones was always letting them have some little piece of junk free.
The whole front section was covered with trees and flowers and green lakes and swans, and even an ocean scene. The other sides had other pictures. It was probably the most colourful junk yard in the country.
Bob rode past the front gate, which consisted of two enormous iron gates from an estate that had burned down. He went on almost a hundred yards farther and stopped near the corner, where the fence showed a green ocean with a two-masted sailing ship foundering in a raging storm. Bob dismounted and found the two green boards Jupe had made into a private gate. That was Green Gate One. He pushed against the eye of a fish that was looking out of the water at the sinking ship and the boards swung up.
He shoved his bike through and closed the gate.
Now he was inside the junk yard, in the corner which Jupiter had arranged as his outdoor workshop. It was outdoors except for a roof about six feet wide that ran around most of the fence on the inside of the yard. Mr. Jones kept his better junk under this roof.
As Bob entered the workshop, Jupiter Jones was sitting in an old swivel chair, pinching his lower lip, always a sign that his mental machinery was spinning in high gear. Pete Crenshaw was busy at the small printing press which had come in as junk, and which Jupiter had laboured over until it would operate again.
The printing press was going clink-clank, clink-clank, back and forth. Tall, dark-haired Pete was busy putting down and picking up white cards. That was what Jupe"s message had meant simply that the press was working and he wanted Bob to come and meet them through Green Gate One. back and forth. Tall, dark-haired Pete was busy putting down and picking up white cards. That was what Jupe"s message had meant simply that the press was working and he wanted Bob to come and meet them through Green Gate One.
No one could see the boys from the main part of the junk yard where the office was especially Jupiter"s Aunt Mathilda, who really ran the business. She had a big heart, and was endlessly good-natured, but when she saw a boy around she had only one idea: Put him to work!
In self-defence Jupiter had, bit by bit, arranged the piles of various types of junk so they hid his workshop from sight. Now he and his friends could have privacy when he was not needed to help his uncle or his aunt.
As Bob parked his bike, Pete shut off the press and handed him one of the cards he had been printing.
"Look at that!" he said.
It was a large business card. And it said: THE THREE INVESTIGATORS.
"We Investigate Anything"
First InvestigatorJupiter Jones Second InvestigatorPeter Crenshaw Records and ResearchBob Andrews "Golly!" Bob said admiringly. "That really has zing. So you decided to go ahead with it, Jupe?"
"We"ve been talking for a long time about starting an investigation agency," Jupiter said. "And now my winning the use of a Rolls-Royce sedan for thirty days of twenty-four hours each, gives us freedom to seek mystery wherever we may find it. For a certain time, anyway. Therefore we are taking the plunge. We are now officially The Three Investigators.
"As First Investigator, I will be in charge of planning. As Second Investigator, Pete will be in charge of all operations requiring athletic prowess. As you are at present somewhat handicapped in shadowing suspects or climbing fences, and similar duties, Bob, you will handle all of the research our cases may need. You will also keep complete records of everything we do."
"That"s fine with me," Bob said. "With my library job it will be easy for me to do research."
"Modern investigation requires extensive research," Jupiter said. "But you are staring at our business card ban odd manner. May I ask what is troubling you?"
"Well, it"s these question marks," Bob said. "What they for?"
"I was waiting for you to ask that," Pete said. "Jupe said you would. He says everyone will."
"The question marks," Jupiter said impressively, "is the universal symbol of something unknown. We are prepared to solve any puzzle, riddle, mystery, enigma or conundrum which may be brought to us. Hence the question mark will be our trade-mark. Three question marks will stand for The Three Investigators."
Bob thought Jupiter was finished, but he should have known better. Jupiter was just warming up.
"In addition," Jupiter said, "the question marks will provoke interest. They will make people ask us what they mean, just as you did. They will help people remember us. They will be good publicity. Every business needs publicity in order to attract potential customers."
"That"s great," Bob said, putting the card back on the pile Pete had already printed. "Now we"d be in business if we only had a case to investigate."
Pete looked important.
"Bob," he said, "we"ve got got a case!" a case!"
"Correction," Jupiter said. He straightened up and set his jaw. When he did so, his face, normally rather round, seemed longer and he looked older. Stockily built, Jupiter could look a little fat when he did not hold himself erect.
"Unfortunately," Jupiter explained, "one small obstacle remains. There is a case available for us one I feel we can easily solve but we have not yet been engaged."
"What is the case?" Bob asked eagerly.
"Mr. Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k is looking for a real haunted house for his next picture,"
Pete said. "Dad heard about it at the studio."
Mr. Crenshaw was a special-effects man who worked at one of the movie studios in Hollywood, a few miles away across the hills.
"A haunted house?" Bob frowned. "How can you solve a haunted house?"
"We can investigate the haunted house and find out if it is really haunted or not.
The publicity will get our name known and The Three Investigators will be launched."
"Only Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k hasn"t asked us to investigate any haunted houses for him,"
Bob said. "Is that what you call a small obstacle?"
"We shall have to persuade him to engage our services," Jupiter said. "That"s the next step."
"Sure," Bob said with rich sarcasm. "I suppose we are going to march into the office of one of the most famous movie producers in the world and say, "You sent for us, sir?""
"The details are not quite correct but the idea is roughly accurate," Jupiter told him. "I have already telephoned Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k for an appointment."
"You have?" Pete asked, looking as surprised as Bob. "And he said he"d see us?"
"No," the stocky boy admitted. "His secretary wouldn"t even let me talk to him."
"That figures," Pete said.
"In fact, she said she would have us arrested if we came anywhere near him,"
Jupiter added. "It turns out that Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k"s temporary secretary this summer is a girl who used to go to school here in Rocky Beach. She was a number of grades ahead of us but you should remember her. Henrietta Larson."
"Bossy Henrietta!" Pete exclaimed. "You bet I remember her."
"She used to help the teachers and boss all the little kids around," Bob added.