Марк Брендел - The Mystery of the Kidnapped Whale

They didn’t have to wait long before Bob reappeared and the police car picked them up. Fifteen minutes later they were all being shown into Chief Reynolds’ office.

Jupe couldn’t blame the chief for staring at them as they entered. The Investigators had picked up their sweaters and sneakers from their bikes, and Pete had brought Constance a terry-cloth robe from the boat, but they were a strange, bedraggled-looking crew. They must have looked as though they had all just walked in out of the ocean.

“Now what’s this about, Jupe?” Chief Reynolds asked as soon as he had found them all chairs.

The chief had known Jupe for years. There were times when he thought the Three Investigators went too far on their own in working on their cases. They were only kids, and the chief didn’t approve of the way they sometimes stuck their necks out. But he had respect for Jupe’s brains. There had even been times when the First Investigator’s ideas had helped the chief solve one of his own police cases.

Jupe looked at Slater. “This is Mr. Oscar Slater,” he explained. “I think it would be best if he tells you his whole story himself.”

“Go ahead, Mr. Slater.”

Slater stood up. He pulled out his wet billfold and showed Chief Reynolds his ID. Then, while the chief had one of his men check it out, Slater started his story.

He told the chief quite frankly about his smuggling trip to Mexico with Diego Carmel. He told him about the storm, the wreck of the boat, the way they had salvaged the metal case from the cabin.

“My young friend, Jupiter Jones here,” Slater went on, “thought it would be a good idea if we opened the case in your office. That way there wouldn’t be any arguments later about how much of what’s in it belongs to me and how much belongs to Miss Carmel’s father. And, I must say, I thought that was a pretty good idea, too, Chief.”

He took a key out of his pocket and handed it to Chief Reynolds.

“If you’ll just bring the box over, Constance,” he suggested.

Jupe couldn’t help admiring the way Slater was handling it. He was behaving like an honest citizen who only wanted to see justice done. He watched Constance set the box on the chief’s desk.

He watched the chief put the key into the lock and open the metal case.

He saw the surprise on Constance’s face. Even Chief Reynolds seemed a little startled for a moment. Jupe stood up and, with Bob and Pete beside him, walked over to the desk.

Bob and Pete both looked as though a sudden bright light had been flashed into their eyes.

The First Investigator felt no surprise at all.

Inside the box were thousands of crisp new ten-dollar bills.

They were arranged in neat stacks held together with rubber bands. Figuring five hundred bills would be about an inch thick, Jupe calculated that there must have been close to a million dollars in the box.

“So there it is, Chief,” Slater explained smoothly. “The proceeds of my trip to La Paz. Part of that money —”

He broke off as the phone rang on the chief’s desk. Chief Reynolds answered it and listened in silence for a few seconds.

“Go ahead, Mr. Slater,” Chief Reynolds said, replacing the phone. “Your ID checks out clean. No record. No warrants out for you anywhere. You were saying part of this money —”

“Yes, Chief. Part of it is what Captain Carmel and I received for those pocket calculators we sold in La Paz. The rest of it is mine. The proceeds of the sale of some private property — several acres of land and a small hotel I happened to own down there. Now if Miss Carmel will just tell me how much of it she wants to claim as her father’s share in those calculators, I guess we can get this whole business over with.”

Chief Reynolds nodded thoughtfully. “Just as long as you keep things straight with the tax people, Mr. Slater,” he said. “I can’t see there’s anything wrong with your suggestion.” He looked at Constance. “How much do you claim as your father’s share, Miss Carmel?”

Constance smiled. “I don’t know. I just want to pay his hospital bills,” she said. She glanced at Slater. “Ten thousand dollars is fine with me.”

“Ten thousand dollars it is.” Slater leaned forward to pick up the box. “If you’ll come to the bank with me tomorrow morning, Constance, I’ll give you a cashier’s check for the whole amount.”

He had his hand on the box now. He was closing the lid. Another moment and he would be out of the office with the money.

Jupe pushed his way forward.

“Chief Reynolds.” The First Investigator was pinching his lower lip. “I don’t want to interfere. But do you mind if I make just one small suggestion?”

“What is it, Jupe?” Chief Reynolds was handing the key to Slater so he could lock the box before he took it away with him.

“If you’d just look at the serial numbers on those bills.”

“The serial numbers, Jupe?”

“I think you’ll find a lot of them are the same.”

Jupe let go of his lip and, opening the box, took out two stacks of the crisp new ten-dollar bills.

“And if you call in a Treasury expert, Chief,” he went on, “I think you’ll find that all of this money is counterfeit!”

“The police soon picked up Paul Donner,” Jupe said. “He was trying to get away to Mexico in that battered old limousine of his and it broke down near San Diego. When the police took him in, he made a full confession.”

The Three Investigators were sitting around the patio table in Hector Sebastian’s enormous living room. They had come to give him a full report on the case of the kidnapped whale, as Bob called it in the notes he had made.

Mr. Sebastian was leaning back in his rocking chair while he listened attentively to their story and asked an occasional question.

“Paul Donner confessed he had printed the counterfeit money?” he inquired.

Bob nodded gloomily. Even though it was Paul Donner who had disconnected the brakes on Constance’s pickup truck, and had tried in every way he could to stop them from salvaging that metal case from the wreck, he felt a little sorry for the tall, thin man.

“Oscar Slater forced him to print it,” he explained. “He blackmailed him into it.”

“Blackmailed him? How?”

Hector Sebastian glanced in the direction of the kitchen, where Hoang Van Don was preparing lunch for them. He surreptitiously slipped a bag of candy from his pocket and offered it around to the Three Investigators.

“I know it’s weak-minded of me,” he admitted, popping a jelly bean into his mouth. “But I can’t help it. I get so hungry.”

“Is Don still feeding you brown rice, Mr. Sebastian?” Pete asked sympathetically.

“It’s worse than that now, Pete, I’m afraid,” the mystery writer told him. “It’s… well, you’ll see for yourself what it is. Sorry, Bob. Go on. Oscar Slater blackmailed Paul Donner into forging those ten-dollar bills. How?”

“They had worked together in Europe,” Bob went on. “Paul Donner was a highly skilled engraver and he did the forging and the printing. Slater handled the distribution end. He had an organized ring passing counterfeit bills all over the continent.”

“Until the police caught up with him?” Hector Sebastian asked.

“They never did catch up with Oscar Slater,” Jupe told him. “He slipped away without a trace and with most of the profits. But the French police did get after Paul Donner. They had a warrant for his arrest. They would have sent him to jail for years. But he just managed to evade them and escape to Mexico.”

“He had made up his mind to go straight,” Bob put in. “No more counterfeiting. And he was going straight, running a small printing business in La Paz until —” Bob shrugged. “Well, until Oscar Slater happened to run into him there.”