William Arden - The Mystery of the Laughing Shadow

“Looking around. We thought the amulet might have been lost near the gate, or perhaps the thief would return in the dark,” Jupiter explained glibly. “We do have your aunt’s permission to try to find the statuette.”

Ted hesitated. “I don’t know if I should believe you.”

“What about us believing you!” Pete blurted out. “You knew we were investigators all along! You found our card!”

Jupiter tried to stop Pete with a kick on the leg, but it was too late. Ted Sandow stared at Pete:

“How do you know that?”

Pete told the English boy about his slip in mentioning the question marks before he had, supposedly, even seen one of their cards. Ted looked rather chagrined, but at the same time it was, clear that he admired the boys’ keen thinking.

“I say,” Ted exclaimed, “that was clever of you!” He smiled and lowered the rifle. “Yes, I found your card near the gate, you see. I told Mr. Harris, but he said that your card might be just a coincidence, that I should proceed with care because I could be wrong. So I asked Aunt Sarah’s lawyer if he knew any boys in Rocky Beach who called themselves The Three Investigators, and he sent me to Skinner Norris, as I said. That was how I found out about you boys and the salvage yard and thought up the idea of approaching you with the offer of Aunt Sarah’s junk. That’s the true story, I’m afraid.”

Pete suddenly understood. “You thought we were the thieves who had stolen the statuette!”

“I suppose I did, fellows,” Ted admitted. “I told Mr. Harris, but he wasn’t sure. He suggested that perhaps the real thief had lost the statuette, and you boys had simply found it. So we decided to get you out here, offer a reward, and maybe persuade you to return it under the pretext that you had succeeded in finding it.”

Jupiter seemed to be considering Ted’s story. “If you thought we stole it, why not just accuse us?”

“As I said, Jupiter, Mr. Harris thought you might perhaps have found it quite innocently. He pointed out that unfounded accusations are very dangerous.”

“If you thought we had accidentally found it, why not just ask for it back?”

“Well, we discussed that, but Mr. Harris thought you might not want to admit that you’d picked it up. He thought you might be afraid to come forward.”

“So you decided to contact us,” Jupiter mused, “offer a reward, and let us think that you didn’t know we had the amulet? You wanted to give us a way out, plus an incentive.”

Ted nodded. “I’m really sorry. chaps, but I didn’t know you then. Now that I do, I know you’ll give it back. You did find it, didn’t you?”

“Bob and Pete did,” Jupiter admitted, “but we can’t give it back. We don’t have it now.” And Jupiter explained how the dark man had stolen the amulet from them.

“Then it’s gone,” Ted said, crestfallen.

Jupiter shook his head slowly. “No, there may still be a chance of recovering it. If we can find that man.”

Ted grinned. “I say, some secret method? Can I help? I’d really like to work with you chaps.”

“Maybe you can help, Ted,” Jupiter agreed. “You keep your eyes open out here, and when we find the man we’ll call you.”

“Wonderful!” Ted beamed.

“But now we had better get home,” Jupiter said. “It’s late.”

Ted let them out through the gates. On their bikes they steered slowly towards the pass in the dark night. Pete was still puzzled as he rode beside the stocky First Investigator:

“Jupe, why didn’t you tell what else Bob and I saw last night? About the call for help, and the laughing shadow?”

“Because I’m not sure Ted told us the truth,” Jupiter said grimly. “If he really thought we’d stolen that amulet, Pete, I think he would have denounced us right away — unless, for some reason, he doesn’t want anyone else to know how we got the amulet. I think he’s hiding something, Pete!”

Pete looked troubled as they began the long descent down from the pass to Rocky Beach.

Early the next morning Bob jumped out of bed and dressed quickly. On his way downstairs he knocked on his parents’ door.

“I’ll get my own breakfast Mom!”

Her sleepy voice answered, “All right, Bob. Clean up after yourself. Where will you be today?”

“At the salvage yard, Mom!”

In the sunny breakfast alcove he ate a quick bowl of cereal, drank a glass of orange juice, and then phoned Pete. Pete’s mother told him that Pete had already gone to the salvage yard, Bob washed his bowl and glass and ran for his bike.

At the salvage yard he ran full tilt into Aunt Mathilda. “Well, at least I’ve found one of you! When you find the others, Bob, you tell Jupiter we’ll need him to go with us to the Sandow Estate this morning.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Bob walked casually to the rear of the salvage yard and, when Aunt Mathilda could no longer see him, hurried to the main entrance to the hidden trailer, and crawled into headquarters. As he came up through the trap door, he found Jupiter and Pete staring glumly at the silent telephone.

“No calls at all!” Pete announced in dejection. “Jupe’s message recorder was blank.”

Pete referred to the recording device Jupiter had built to attach to the telephone to record messages that came in while all three boys were out of headquarters.

“I’m afraid the Ghost-to-Ghost Hook-up isn’t working this time,” Jupiter admitted.

“It may be too soon, Jupe,” Bob said optimistically. “Listen to what I found out last night!”

“You listen to what we saw!” Pete countered, and told Bob about their adventure at the estate. Bob’s eyes widened as he heard about Ted, the weird shapes, and the laughing shadow.

“Of course,” Jupiter said, “they weren’t headless midgets, but they sure looked like it. I was hoping there would be a message on the Ghost-to-Ghost this morning. I think that the dark men are the key to all the mystery, somehow, if we knew who they were and what they wanted. Bob, what did you find out about the Chumash Hoard?”

“It sure looks as if there’s something to it according to the local history books,” Bob reported. “After that renegade band disappeared, everyone started looking for the Hoard. They searched for a long time, but no one ever found it. One of the troubles was that the Chumash band had hideouts all over the mountains. The Sandow Estate was just one place where they hid. And no one ever found any clues to the whereabouts of the Hoard.”

“Not even the two amulets Miss Sandow’s brother had?” Pete asked. “Did the histories mention him?”

“Yes,” Bob answered. “His name was Mark, and he killed a man and had to run away. It seemed to be sort of mysterious about the man he killed. He was a hunter who lived up in the hills on the estate. No one knew why Mark Sandow killed him. The records don’t mention the two Chumash amulets.”

“Professor Meeker said he’d never heard of the amulets,” Jupiter said, frowning. “Did you find any reports on exactly what old Magnus Verde said before he died?”

“In four different books,” Bob reported, “and they were all different!” Bob dug out his notebook. “According to one book Magnus Verde is supposed to have said, ‘What man can find the eye of the sky?’ Another writer quotes him as saying, ‘The sky’s eye finds no man.’ And two others report that he said, ‘It is in the eye of the sky where no man can find it.’ I guess it wasn’t easy to translate from Chumash.”

“Professor Meeker explained that,” Jupiter reminded him. “Besides, they’re all pretty similar. Each one refers to the ‘eye of the sky,’ which the professor didn’t mention, and they all say that Magnus Verde was sure no one could find the Hoard.”