Роберт Артур - The Mystery of the Talking Skull

There was more to the story, but Mr. Grant, having read that much, whistled softly.

“Maple Street!” he said. “That’s where you said Mrs. Miller’s house was moved to four years ago, Jupiter.”

“That’s what the apartment house superintendent told me,” Jupiter answered.

“And now most of Maple Street is going to be demolished,” Mr. Grant said. “That changes things. That means the house is empty. It means we have no time for delay. Why, Three-Finger and the others could be there now. They may have already been there and found the money!”

“How could that be, Mr. Grant?” Pete asked.

“They followed you boys yesterday,” Mr. Grant said. “They must have followed you to Mrs. Miller’s present home and deduced you were getting information from her. Then they undoubtedly followed you to the apartment house. They could easily have seen Jupiter go in to question the superintendent, and could have learned what the superintendent told him. They may have deduced that you think the money is in the house. They could be looking for it now!”

“Gosh, that’s right!” Bob exclaimed. “Maybe we’re too late!”

“Ordinarily I’d call on the police for help,” Mr. Grant said. “But time is short and I think the only thing to do is to make a bee-line for Maple Street and try to locate the house, and see if we can rescue the money immediately. No time to get in touch with the police. You boys can come with me — in fact, I need you, because you have an idea of what Mrs. Miller’s former house looks like and I don’t.”

“That’s fine, Mr. Grant,” Jupiter said. “But how will we go?”

“I have a car parked around the corner. We’ll go in that. You can leave your bikes here and we’ll pick them up later.”

Wasting no time, Pete and Bob locked their bicycles. Jupiter had walked, after slipping out of the salvage yard through Red Gate Rover. Mr. Grant led them to his car, a black station wagon, and a moment later they were off. Mr. Grant headed for Hollywood by a back route over the hills.

“You’re sure the money is hidden under the wall-paper?” he asked Jupiter as they sped along.

“I’m almost positive,” Jupiter said. “Mrs. Miller told us that while Spike Neely was staying with her, he did some papering and painting. He could have pasted the bills up and put wallpaper over them then.

“Then, when he was in the hospital, he sneaked the address of the house into his letter. But he couldn’t think of any way to tell Gulliver about the hiding place except by pasting one stamp under the other.”

“Paper under paper,” Mr. Grant nodded. “It figures. If we locate the money, we’ll have to get some equipment to steam the wallpaper off. Luckily, this is Saturday and some of the stores are open late. But first we have to find it — and find it first!”

He kept the station wagon moving at high speed until they reached a built-up district, then he slowed down.

“Now let’s see that city map in the glove compartment,” he told Jupiter. He came to a stop as Jupiter found the map and gave it to him. He studied the map for a moment.

“Good,” he said. “We can go straight ahead until we come to Houston Avenue, then cut across on it to Maple Street. You said the five-hundred block?”

“Either that or the six-hundred block, the superintendent thought,” Jupiter told him.

“We’ll find it,” Mr. Grant said grimly. “Lucky we still have some daylight left.”

The daylight was fading fast, however, by the time they came to Houston Avenue. Mr. Grant turned left, and they proceeded for some thirty or forty blocks until they reached Maple Street.

Even though no street signs were still up, they had no trouble telling that it was the right street. Their way was almost blocked by a mass of wreckage. The houses on one corner were already down, mere heaps of rubble waiting to be carted away. Down the blocks to their left they could see that the houses were already gone. Two huge cranes with clam buckets, which could chew up the wooden houses with their diesel-powered jaws, were parked in an open space, together with several bulldozers. A building that once had been a restaurant stood forlornly on the corner beside them as they stopped to survey the scene. Already the cranes had taken a couple of bites out of the front. It looked as if it had been bombed.

“Wow!” Pete voiced their thoughts. “It sure is a mess. Do you think we’re in time, Mr. Grant?”

“Just barely,” the investigator said grimly. “If I have it figured right, the five — and six-hundred blocks are a couple of streets up to right. Let’s see.”

He eased the car around the rubble and turned right. In a moment they were going past houses that had not yet been torn down, but stood silent, and dark, with no sign of life in them.

Only a few hundred feet away was the busy city, but here on Maple Street was an eerie quality of desertion. The people had all gone. In a few months a concrete freeway would run through here, carrying thousands of cars. But now they had the street to themselves, except for a skinny cat that ran across the road.

“The nine-hundred block,” Mr. Grant said with satisfaction. “We’ll be in the six-hundred block in no time. Keep a sharp eye out for the house.”

They drove slowly along, past the silent houses. Here and there a door swung open, as if to say it no longer mattered whether doors were shut or not.

“Six-hundred block,” Mr. Grant announced tensely. “See anything?”

“There it is!” Pete almost shouted, pointing to a neat bungalow halfway down the block.

“There’s another one that looks almost like it,” Jupiter put in, pointing to the other side of the street. “Both have round windows up in the attic storage space.”

“Two of them, eh?” Mr. Grant frowned. “And you don’t know which is the right one?”

“Mrs. Miller just said it was a one-storey bungalow with brown shingles and a round window in the attic.”

“It’s a common type of house here,” Mr. Grant muttered. “Let’s keep going. We’ll survey the next block.”

In the next block they spotted another brown-shingled bungalow, standing between two stuccoed homes. This one also had a round upper window. Mr. Grant brought the car to a halt. “Three possibilities,” he said. “That makes it harder. But we seem to be here first. I don’t see any cars parked on this street, nor any sign that Three-Finger and the others have beaten us to it. We’ll park on a side street so we won’t be conspicuous, and then we’ll just have to investigate three houses until we find the right one.”

It was almost dark as they approached the first of the brown-shingled bungalows. Mr. Grant cast a quick look up and down the block. No one was in sight on silent, deserted Maple Street.

He tried the door. It wouldn’t open.

“Locked,” he said. “But as it’s going to be torn down, we don’t have to be careful how we get in.”

He took a small crowbar he had carried from the car and inserted the thin end between the front door and the door jamb. As he pressed, wood splintered and the door sprang open.

He entered, with The Three Investigators at his heels. Inside it was quite dark. Mr. Grant flashed a light on a wall. They were in a dusty room with a few papers littering the floor. It was apparently the living room.

“We might as well start here,” he said. “Though I’d expect the hiding place to be in a back room or maybe the hall. Got a knife, Jupiter?”

Jupiter brought out his prized Swiss knife and opened the big blade. He made a cut in the flowered wallpaper on the nearest wall. Mr. Grant eased the edge of a putty knife into the cut and turned back a strip of the paper. Underneath was only plaster.