Роберт Артур - The Mystery of the Screaming Clock

“Bob, I think you’re right,” Jupiter said, after a pause for reflecting. “Before Aunt Mathilda calls us to dinner, let’s go into Headquarters and have another try at that message.”

“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?” Pete asked. But he got up and followed when Bob and Jupiter started towards Tunnel Two.

Five minutes later they were grouped round the desk with the first mysterious message spread out before them.

“The first line of the message says, ‘It’s quiet here even in a hurricane’ ,” Jupiter read. “If Bob’s right, the word that is meant is ‘eye’.” He wrote it down. “Now we already think that the line, ‘Just a word of advice, politelygiven’ means ‘suggestion’.” He wrote that down, too. “So if the line, ‘OldEnglish bowmen loved it’ means ‘yew’, we have our first three words like this.”

He wrote: Eye suggestion yew .

“That looks a little funny,” he added, “but it makes perfectly good sense if we change the wording a little, and get I suggest you.”

“I suggest you,” Pete exclaimed, forgetting his weariness. “That does start out like a sensible message after all. Okay, Jupe, what’s the fourth word?”

“The clue is, ‘Bigger than a raindrop; smaller than an ocean’ ” Jupiter said. “Meaning some body of water smaller than an ocean. That could be a river, a pond, a lake or a sea.”

“Sea!” exclaimed Bob. “Meaning s-e-e. That must be it. Now we come to the fifth clue, ‘I’m 26. How old are you?’ That’s tougher. What’s 26 years old?”

“The suggestion of age is an attempt to mislead us.” Jupe decided. “I’m sure that number here means something that is twenty-sixth in a series of things. The most common thing that comes to mind as being number 26 is — ”

“Let me try!” Pete spoke up. “There are 26 letters in the alphabet. Number 26 is the letter Z. Does that fit?”

“It does if we just use the sound of it,” Jupiter told him. “Z sounds like ‘the.’ And ‘the’ fits into the message. Now we just need the last clue, ‘It sitson a shelf like a well-fed elf ’ Any ideas, either of you?”

“I looked up elves at the library but I didn’t find anything,” Bob confessed.

“What sits on a shelf?” Pete asked. “Like an elf?”

“The word elf is just another word to confuse us,” Jupiter said. “Bob, you spent the whole day looking at shelves. Didn’t it occur to you what sat on them?”

“Books!” Bob yelled. “And every one of them full of words. You could say they were well-fed — with words.”

“I’m sure we have the message now,” Jupiter said. “I’ll write it out.” He did, and got:

I suggest you see the book.

“Wow, we did it!” Pete cried. “But what does it mean? What book are we supposed to see? And when we see it, what do we do with it?”

“There are two more messages to be solved,”

Jupiter said. “When we — ”

He was interrupted by Mathilda Jones’s voice.

“Boys! Dinner! Come and get it!”

“I guess that means we have to stop now,” Jupiter said reluctantly. “We’ll try again tomorrow when we’re fresh. We’ll make better progress then, anyway.”

DURING DINNER the boys discussed the meaning of the message they had just unravelled. It suggested they see a book. But what book? They had no idea.

“Could it mean the Bible?” Pete ventured. “That’s known as the Good Book by a lot of people.”

“I don’t think so,” Jupiter said, taking a second helping of dessert. “Though it might. Maybe the next message will tell us more.”

“What project are you boys working on now?” Titus Jones asked from the head of the table.

“We have some mysterious messages to decipher, Uncle Titus,” Jupiter said. “So far we’ve just made a beginning.”

“You boys and that club of yours!” Mathilda Jones exclaimed, cutting another piece of cake for Pete. “I declare it’s a good thing I give you some work to do and keep you out in the open air or you’d spend all your time working puzzles.”

As the boys had once had a puzzle-solving club, which had later become The Three Investigators, Mrs. Jones had it firmly in her mind that their chief activity was still solving puzzles. “Well, I’m not solving anything more tonight,” Jupiter said with a yawn. “You kept us out in the open air all day, Aunt Mathilda, and I’m going to bed early.”

“I’ll buy a double helping of that,” Pete agreed, and he yawned, too. “It was a great dinner, Mrs. Jones, but if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll ride home now and turn in.”

Pete and Bob both said good night and departed. After riding together for a block or two, they separated to go to their own homes.

Neither of them noticed a small delivery van which followed them slowly and when they separated, continued to follow Bob.

Jupiter meanwhile was helping his aunt clear the table. However, he yawned constantly.

“Heavens to Betsy,” his aunt exclaimed. “You must really be tired, Jupiter. You go on up to bed. Scoot, now.”

Jupiter went gladly and tumbled into bed. But as soon as he was in bed, he started wondering about the other mysterious messages.

I suggest you see the book. That was the first message. What book? Did the second message tell? He tried to remember the second message.

The harder he tried to remember, the wider awake he became. Sleep got further and further away. At last he came to a decision. He would have to try to solve the second message before he could get any sleep.

He got dressed again and went downstairs. His aunt and uncle were watching television, and they looked up in surprise.

“Mercy and goodness, Jupiter!” his aunt said. “I thought you were asleep.”

“I started thinking about something,” Jupiter said. “A — well, a sort of puzzle. I left it out in the salvage yard. I’m going to go get it and have a last look at it before I go to sleep.”

“I certainly do hope you don’t wear out your brains with all these puzzles,” Mrs. Jones sighed.

Jupiter crossed the short distance to the front entrance of the salvage yard. The gates were padlocked; however, he had his own entrance which he used when necessary. He walked along the gaily painted fence until he came to two boards painted green.

Jupiter pushed his finger against a special spot, and the two boards swung silently back, revealing a narrow entrance. This was Green Gate One, one of several secret entrances and exits to the yard known only to The Three Investigators. Jupiter squeezed through and found himself in the special workshop section.

He now proceeded to the printing press, found the piece of iron grillwork at the back, and moved it, revealing the entrance to Tunnel Two.

He scrambled through Tunnel Two, pushed up the trapdoor, and entered the office.

He had left the secret messages in a drawer of the desk. Switching on the overhead light, he got them out. The first message, the one that said Isuggest you see the book , he put off to one side. The second message, which he and Pete had obtained from Gerald Watson, he spread out in front of him. On the face of it, it was very mystifying. The six lines of the message said:

Take one lily; kill my friend Eli. Positively number one. Take abroom and swat a bee. What do you do with clothes, almost. NotMother, not Sister, not Brother; but perhaps Father. Hymns?Hams? Homes? Almost, not quite.

However, after he had read it a couple of times, Jupiter began to get some ideas. Solving the first message had shown him the right way to proceed. Each line was a clue to a word, rather like the clues in crossword puzzles.