M. V. Carey - The Mystery of the Cranky Collector

“Better to follow him,” said Jupe.

Estava drove past Ramon. The boys looked out the back window and saw the man drop from the top of the fence to the ground outside the yard. He took off at a run toward the highway.

Estava went into a tight U-turn. He cut his bright lights and was using only his parking lights when they passed Ramon again. The man was walking now, and he had his thumb out, trying to get a lift.

“Do we pick him up?” asked Estava.

“No, he’d recognize us,” Jupe said.

Estava turned onto the highway and drove south a block or two, then pulled into the parking area next to a fish restaurant. The boys watched through the back window. They saw a van pull over and take Ramon aboard.

“Dark Chevy van,” said Jupe.

“Got it,” said Estava.

They stayed two cars behind the van all the way to Santa Monica. At Lincoln Boulevard the van shot up the exit ramp and pulled over. Ramon got out and the van drove away.

Again Estava passed the dishwasher as if he didn’t even see him. He zipped around a corner and stopped. The boys looked back.

Ramon was walking along with his head down and his shoulders hunched.

Estava turned back and followed, passing Ramon and parking to wait for him to go by, then following again. Ramon did not seem to have any suspicion that he was being trailed. He never looked at the gray car.

After a few blocks they came to a desolate area where the ground was scraped bare, as if someone had taken a giant razor to it.

“They’ve been tearing down old buildings along here,” said Estava. “Probably it will be a business park. It’s a cinch they won’t build houses here. It’s too close to the freeway. The noise is too much.”

Ramon was just a shadow now, trudging across the barren ground toward some dark shapes beyond the cleared area. They were the shapes of houses— empty, ruined houses. Ramon disappeared between two of the deserted-looking places.

“We’d better get out and go after him on foot,” said Jupe. He opened the car door.

Everyone jumped out. All four walked as silently as possible toward the place where they had last seen the dishwasher.

“Where’d he get to?” Pete whispered as they stumbled into the blackness between the houses.

“Shh!” cautioned Jupe. “Look!”

There was a gleam of light ahead — a tiny line of brightness showing in one of the abandoned houses. The young detectives crept forward. One careful footstep after another, they crossed the ground until they were close enough to see that there was a window. Shutters had been closed over it, but light showed between several broken slats.

The freeway roared very close to the house, and a blast from the horn of a semi made them jump.

When the truck had thundered by, Jupe put his eye to one of the broken places in the shutter. He looked into a room where there was a bed and a lopsided bureau. A kerosene lamp burned on the bureau. Ramon was standing over the bed, looking down at the man who lay there. The man appeared to be unconscious. He lay partly on his side, his face turned toward the window, his mouth open a little and his eyes closed. Jupe saw a shackle on one bare ankle. A chain was attached to the shackle. The other end of the chain was fastened to a ring set in the concrete slab of the floor.

Jupe backed away from the window and motioned to his friends to move back with him.

“We’ve found Jeremy Pilcher,” he whispered. “Now we’ve got to get him out of there!”

Ray Estava and the Three Investigators retreated across the rough ground to another empty building. There they stopped to plan their next step.

“We could just bust in there and grab Pilcher,” said Estava, “only that might not work if the guy who’s holding him has a gun. If he is armed and he gets desperate enough, it could be the end of Pilcher.”

“It could be the end of us, too,” Pete pointed out. “Why don’t we just find a phone and call the cops?”

“Okay,” said Estava. “I’ll go make the call. When the police get here and see the old man shackled to the bed and the other guy standing over him, they’ll know who the kidnapper is, and I’ll be off the hook. While I’m gone, you guys stay close to Pilcher, huh? I’d hate for anything to happen to him now that we’ve found him.”

Estava went off without waiting for the boys to agree or disagree.

“Maybe one of us should have gone with him,” said Pete after the sound of his footsteps had died away.

“What for?” said Bob. “He knows how to call the cops.”

“I hope he does call the cops,” Pete said. “He has plenty of reasons to hate Mr. Pilcher. He could change his mind and leave us sitting here like stranded ducks.”

“What would that accomplish?” said Jupe. “He knows we wouldn’t sit here forever. He’ll call the police. And he’s right about keeping close to Pilcher. I don’t like the way Ramon looks. He may be on the point of doing something desperate to Pilcher.”

The boys stole back to the house where the lantern burned behind the shuttered window. Jupe looked through the gap in the shutter. Ramon was still beside the bed, still staring down at his prisoner. His cheeks were hollows in the faint light from the lantern. He looked as if he had been hungry too often in his life.

“Old man, you do not fool me,” he told Pilcher. He shouted as if Pilcher might be deaf. There was no glass in the window, and the sound carried to the boys in spite of the noise of the freeway.

“You pretend!” Ramon bent and took hold of Pilcher’s ankle. He shook the old collector. “You can hear me. I know it, so do not act the sick man with me!”

At the window, the Three Investigators were tense. Would Ramon hurt Pilcher? Would they have to break in before Estava could return with the police?

“I want the book!” Ramon leaned close to Pilcher’s ear. “I earned that book. I paid for it with years of my life — years of disgrace, of prison. I would have shared with you, but you were so greedy, you wanted it all! It was you who told, wasn’t it? You went to the police the moment you had the book in your hands. You said you knew who took it. They told me when they came for me that they had information. They arrested me. Me! Ramon Navarro! They put me in a cell like a common thief!

“You know what happened when they could not find the book in my room? They said I had sold it. They said it could only have been me, so I went to prison.

“I know where you went, Pilcher. To the place where you could fill your pockets and make yourself a rich man!”

Ramon turned from the bed. He twisted his hands together and paced the room.

Pete looked back in the direction where Estava had disappeared. Why didn’t he come? What was taking him so long?

Inside the lighted room, Ramon stopped his pacing. He spoke again to the man on the bed. His voice was softer now, and the boys had to strain to hear. “Now you play for time,” he said. “You think that girl of yours, she will be at the police until they find you. You think they will look and look until they come at last to this place, and there will be a rescue like in the cinema. No. I watch, and I see she does nothing. She calls the little boys to come so she will not be afraid in the dark. When she is still afraid she runs to her mother. The police do nothing. And you are still here.

“You know where you are, Pilcher, my old friend? You are in a place where no one comes and no one hears. I have much time. I can keep you until you tell me what I must know. Look!”

He strode to the shuttered window.

Pete gasped and flung himself sideways.

Bob scrambled off in the other direction.