Марк Брендел - The Mystery of the Kidnapped Whale

Pete, who could run faster than the other two, was the first to reach the pool. He stopped abruptly, his back stiffening with dismay, as he stared down into it.

Jupiter and Bob joined him. They were dismayed, too, when they saw what Pete was staring at.

The improvised pool was still there in the dry sand. And it was still full of water. But that was all there was in it.

The little whale had vanished!

“Maybe it managed to flip itself onto the beach,” Pete said, “and worked its way back into the ocean somehow.”

He didn’t sound as if he believed his theory himself.

“I hope so,” Bob said. But there was no hope in his voice. The whale would have had to travel a long way before it reached water deep enough to swim in.

Jupe didn’t say anything. He had moved away from the pool and was pacing in circles, staring down at the sand.

“One truck,” he said thoughtfully, returning to the others. “With a four-wheel drive. It came down from the road and across the beach. Then it backed up to the pool. It stayed there long enough to sink several inches into the soft sand. Someone had to put boards under the front wheels to get it moving again. Then it drove back to the road.”

Jupe showed his friends the crisscrossing tracks on the beach, the sharp dents left by the boards. They could see he was right. The whole thing even seemed obvious to them now. But then Jupe’s deductions often did seem obvious once he had explained them to you.

“Maybe someone reported the stranded whale,” Pete suggested after a moment. “And they sent some men down to rescue it.”

“Good reasoning,” Jupe told him approvingly. When he said that, it usually meant he had just been thinking the same thing himself. “Now, if someone saw a whale swimming around in a homemade pool on the beach, who would they call, I wonder?”

He did not wait for an answer. He was already walking back to their bicycles. Pete and Bob rolled up the tarpaulin and followed him.

“Ocean World.” Jupiter answered his own question a half hour later. “That’s who they’d probably call.”

The Three Investigators were sitting in their Headquarters in the junkyard.

Headquarters was a thirty-foot mobile home trailer that Titus Jones had bought a long time ago and had never been able to sell. Gradually great heaps of junk had been carefully piled up around it, until by now it was completely hidden from the rest of the yard, and the boys had their own secret ways of entering it.

Inside, the trailer was equipped with a laboratory, a photographic darkroom, and an office containing a desk, an old filing cabinet, and a private phone which the boys paid for with the money they earned working in the salvage yard.

“Ocean World,” Jupe repeated. He was sitting in the swivel chair behind the desk, looking through the western area phone directory. He found the number and dialed it.

A loudspeaker was attached to the phone so that all three boys could hear the ringing tone and then a man’s voice answering.

“Thank you for calling Ocean World,” the voice said. “Ocean World is located off the Pacific Coast Highway, just north of Topanga Canyon.” It was obviously a taped message.

Jupe listened impatiently as the man went on to tell them the price of admission and the times of the various shows that the open-air aquarium put on for the public. It wasn’t until nearly the end of the message that Jupe showed any interest.

“Ocean World is open from ten to six, Tuesday through Sunday,” the man said. “Every day except Monday you —”

Jupe hung up.

“Just our luck,” Pete said. “We call on the one day of the week the place is closed.”

Jupiter nodded absently. His round face was puckered with concentration, and he was pinching his lower lip again.

“So what do we do now?” Bob asked. “Try again tomorrow?”

“It’s only a few miles down the coast road,” Jupe said. “Why don’t we cycle there tomorrow and pay the place a personal visit?”

At ten o’clock the next morning the Three Investigators padlocked their bicycles in the Ocean World parking lot and bought their tickets at the gate. For a while they wandered along the paths of the vast aquarium, pausing to watch the sea lions and penguins playing in their big open pools. Then Bob saw a sign outside a white painted building, ADMINISTRATION, the sign said.

Jupe knocked on the door.

“Come in,” a polite voice told them, and the Three Investigators stepped into the office.

A young woman was standing behind the desk. She was wearing a twopiece swimsuit and her body was tanned a deep, even brown. Her hair, cut rather short, was dark and feathery like an Indian’s. Taller than any of the Three Investigators, she had wide, strong shoulders and narrow hips that made her look streamlined in a supple way, as though, like a fish, she would be more at home in the water than on dry land.

“Hi. I’m Constance Carmel,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

“We wanted to report a stranded whale,” Jupe told her. “At least it was stranded until we made a pool for it… ”

He went on to explain everything that had happened at the cove the day before, ending with their discovery that the whale they had rescued had vanished.

Constance Carmel listened without interrupting.

“All this happened yesterday?” she asked.

Bob nodded.

“I wasn’t here yesterday.” She had turned away from the boys and was taking a diving mask out of a locker. “We only work a skeleton staff on Mondays.” She was silent for a moment, pulling at the strap of the mask, before she faced them again. “But if any stranded whale had been rescued and brought here to Ocean World, I would have been told about it first thing this morning.”

“So none was?” Bob asked in a disappointed voice.

She shook her head, still pulling at the rubber strap. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t tell you anything about it. I can’t help you, I’m afraid.”

“Well, thanks anyway,” Pete said.

“I’m sorry,” Constance Carmel repeated. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a show to do.”

“If you do hear anything… ” Jupe took a card from his pocket and handed it to her.

It was one of their professional Investigators’ cards, which Jupiter had printed himself on the old press in the salvage yard. It said:

Under that was their private phone number at Headquarters.

People usually asked what the three question marks were for. Jupe would then explain that they stood for mysteries unsolved and riddles unanswered.

Constance Carmel didn’t ask anything. She put the card on the desk without even looking at it.

The Three Investigators turned and filed toward the door. Pete was just opening it when she walked toward them.

“You really care about that pilot or gray whale or whatever it was, don’t you?” she asked.

Bob told her they did.

“Then don’t worry,” she reassured them. “I’m sure it’s okay. I mean, I’m sure someone rescued it.”

Outside the gates of Ocean World, the Three Investigators unchained their bicycles and wheeled them between the parked cars toward the road.

Bob and Pete were feeling rather gloomy at the failure of their mission, but Jupiter didn’t look the least bit discouraged. He was smiling in the eager, excited way he had when he thought the Three Investigators were on to an interesting new case.

“Okay, Jupe. Let’s have it,” Pete told him. “What are you grinning about?”