Robert Arthur - The Mystery of the Talking Skull

Mrs. Miller’s home turned out to be an attractive bungalow with a palm tree and two banana trees outside it. Jupiter pushed the doorbell and a pleasant-looking, middle-aged woman came to the door.

“Yes?” she said. “If you’re selling subscriptions, I’m sorry but I don’t need any more magazines.”

“It’s not that, ma’am,” Jupiter said. “May I give you one of our cards?” And he handed her one of The Three Investigators’ official business cards.

Mrs. Miller looked at it, puzzled.

“You boys are investigators?” she asked. “It hardly seems possible.”

“You might call us junior investigators,” Jupiter said. “Here’s another card that the police gave us.”

He let Mrs. Miller see the card Chief Reynolds had given him at the time of an earlier adventure. This one said:

This certifies that the bearer is a Volunteer Junior Assistant Deputy co-operating with the police force of Rocky Beach. Any assistance given him will be appreciated.

(Signed) Samuel Reynolds

Chief of Police.

“My, that certainly does look impressive,” Mrs. Miller said. “But why are you calling on me?”

“We hope you can help us,” Jupiter said frankly. “We’re in a little trouble and we need some information. It has to do with your brother, Spike Neely. It’s quite a long story, but if you’d let us come in I could explain better.”

Mrs. Miller hesitated, then held the door open.

“All right,” she said. “You look like respectable boys. I hoped I’d heard the last of Spike, but I’ll try to help you.”

A few moments later they were seated on the sofa in her living room. Jupiter was explaining as well as he could the curious set of events that had begun with his buying an old trunk at auction. He left out any reference to Socrates, however, as a talking skull would be hard for anyone else to take.

“So you see,” he finished, “someone apparently thinks there was a clue in Gulliver’s trunk to where the money is hidden. Because we had the trunk for a time, they may think we found the clue and know where the money is. They might — well, they might try to make us tell them, and we can’t. You can see what a problem it is.”

“Goodness, yes,” the woman said. “But I don’t see how I can help you. I never knew anything about the money, as I told the police at the time. Why, I never dreamed that my brother was a criminal until the police came looking for him.”

“If you could tell us what you told the police at the time,” Jupiter suggested, “we might spot some clue.”

“Well, I’ll try. It was six years ago, you know, but I can remember quite clearly. Frank — that was Spike’s real name — and I hadn’t seen much of each other since he left home when he was eighteen. Once in a long while he’d come to see me and my husband, for a few days, but he never said anything about what he was doing.

“I realize now that he was probably hiding out after committing a robbery, but at the time I just thought he was restless and liked to travel. When I asked him what his work was, he said he was a salesman. But, whenever he was staying with us, he used to help my husband out.

“My husband had a one-man home-repair business. He was a very good workman. If you needed your house painted, he could paint it. If it needed wall-papering, he’d do that, too. Or lay a new floor. Or install a bathroom. He could do anything around the house and he made good money.

“As I said, when Spike visited us, he helped on whatever job my husband might have at the time. But this time he didn’t seem to want to go out of the house. He seemed nervous. His speech defect was worse than usual. You know that’s how he was finally caught — he had trouble pronouncing the letter L in words. For instance, if he said ‘flower,’ it came out ‘f’ower’.

“Anyway, I know now that he was hiding out after the bank robbery in San Francisco. So for almost a week Spike stayed home by himself — I had a job then, too.

“He did make himself useful. He painted and papered the downstairs rooms. You know how it is — a busy workman like my husband neglects his own home to do the outside jobs.

“But then my husband got sick. He was working on a big redecorating job for some restaurant and got too sick to finish. He asked Spike to take over for him, and Spike could hardly refuse. But I remember he dressed in baggy overalls and wore dark glasses every time he left the house.

“It took Spike several days to finish the job, and all that time my husband got worse. We were just going to move him to a hospital when he unexpectedly died.”

Mrs. Miller sniffed and dabbed at her eyes a moment. “I certainly thought Frank would stay with me then, to help me, but he didn’t. He left even before the funeral. He said he had to leave in a hurry and he just packed up and went. I was very surprised. Later, I figured it out.”

“You did?” Jupiter asked. “What was his reason?”

“It was the death notice in the newspaper for my husband. You know death notices always mention the next of kin, and in my husband’s notice I said that he was survived by me, his wife, and a brother-in-law, Frank Neely, living at the same address. I think Frank was afraid someone would see it and know where to find him, so he hurried off.

“The next I heard of him was when the police came to question me after he was captured in Chicago. But I couldn’t tell them anything. As I say, I never knew Frank was a bank robber.”

“When your brother left, did he say anything about coming back or seeing you again?” Jupiter asked.

“I don’t remember anything… Yes, I do, too. It’s just come back to me, now that you mention it. He said, ‘Sis, you’re not going to sell this house or anything, are you? You’ll be staying right here so I’ll always know where to find you?’ ”

“And what did you answer, Mrs. Miller?”

“I said no, I wasn’t going to sell the house. I’d be right where I was any time he came to town.”

“Then I think I know where he hid the money!” Jupiter announced triumphantly. “You say he was alone here a lot while both you and your husband were out working. Then there’s one logical place for him to have hidden the money — right here in this house!”

Both Bob and Pete looked at Jupe in amazement.

“But Chief Reynolds said the police searched the house and didn’t find anything,” Bob reminded him.

“Because somehow Spike Neely was too clever,” Jupiter said. “He hid the money so well that an ordinary search couldn’t find it. Fifty thousand dollars in large bills wouldn’t make a very big package. He could have tucked it away in the attic, under the eaves, or somewhere like that. He planned to come visiting you again, Mrs. Miller, when the coast was clear, and get the money back. Only he got sent to jail and died there.”

“He did ask Mrs. Miller if she was going to stay here!” Bob said excitedly. “That shows he planned to come back.”

“And he had several days in which to think of a hiding place no one would suspect,” Pete put in, showing some excitement himself. “It would have to be tricky, to fool the police, but I’ll bet you can find it, Jupe!”

“Would you be willing to let us just look around a little, Mrs. Miller?” Jupiter asked hopefully. “Just to see if we can spot any likely place?”

Mrs. Miller shook her head.

“It does seem possible, the way you reason it out,” she said, “but you couldn’t ever find the money in this house.” She shook her head again. “You see, this isn’t the house I was living in at the time. I moved four years ago. I didn’t think I ever would, but someone made me such a good offer I couldn’t say no. So I sold and moved here.”