The Mystery Of The Talking Skull Part 12

"That's it!" Jupiter cried. "That's the clue!"

"What's the clue?" Pete put in. He and Bob and Zelda stared in puzzlement at Jupiter, whose face had suddenly become pink with excitement.

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"Miss Zelda," Jupiter said, turning to the Gypsy woman, "Spike Neely had a slight speech defect. Chief Reynolds told us so. He had trouble p.r.o.nouncing the letter L in some words."

"I believe that is true, boy," Zelda answered. "But what-"

"And his sister said Spike p.r.o.nounced 'flower' as 'f'ower.' How would he p.r.o.nounce 'floor'?"

"He'd p.r.o.nounce it 'four,'" Zelda said after a moment. "Are you trying to tell me-"

"He put the money under the floor floor," Bob yelped. "He was sure Gulliver would remember his speech trouble and understand. Even if he didn't, 'four' and 'floor' sound enough alike to give the idea if you're looking for something tricky."

"Only we got carried away with the idea that he meant under the wallpaper, because Mrs. Miller told us Spike had papered the downstairs during his stay," Jupiter added excitedly. "Actually, I should have realized that pasting paper money under wallpaper is a bad idea - you'd never get it off again without ruining it. You'd have to sc.r.a.pe it off and that would be the end of it. But safe and sound under the floor somewhere-"

"Lonzo!" Zelda ordered. "Get the tools from the other car. We are going inside- you and I and the boys."

A moment later they were crowding into the house, ignoring the three bound prisoners on the living-room floor. Consulting hastily, they agreed that the living-room floor was unlikely. Jupiter suggested that the right spot would either be under the floor in the guest room, where Spike had stayed, or under the floor in the little attic storage s.p.a.ce.

They tried the attic first.

Ten minutes later Lonzo ripped up a board in one corner-and Pete gave a shout!

There, in the beam of the flashlight, lay bundle after bundle of greenbacks, neatly stacked between the joists of the first-floor ceiling!

"Under the four," Pete said, blinking.

"Under the four four. What a smooth way to send a clue when you knew a lot of people were going to inspect your letter like hawks, looking for something. Jupe, you're the most!"

"I should have thought of it sooner,"

Jupiter said. "Even if I didn't remember Spike Neely's speech defect, I should have realized that 'four' and 'floor' sound alike.

And considering that pasting money under wallpaper would ruin it, I-"

"Never mind, boy!" Zelda said. "You did a fine job. Gulliver himself did not suspect the truth. Now the money is found. The criminals are captured. The frog has jumped high and saved himself from the hungry fish in the pond."

She chuckled slightly. Jupiter looked as if he were suspecting a great deal that previously had been a mystery.

"You sent us that warning, Miss Zelda?" he asked.

The old Gypsy woman nodded.

"Indeed I did, boy. My Gypsies were keeping watch over you, but I wanted you to do your utmost to find the money-which you have. Now we must go. We will call the police, and the affair will be ended. You wait here for the police. They will take charge of the money and those crooks downstairs. The police will want to question us also, but they will not be able to find us. Not yet, at least."

"Wait, Zelda!" Jupiter said as the Gypsy woman and Lonzo turned to go. "Before you leave, I wish you would tell me something. About the trunk how did it get back to us? And about the talking skull, Socrates-did he really talk or-"

"Later, later," the woman said. "In two weeks visit me at the old address. We will then have returned. Your questions will be answered."

"But at least tell us about Gulliver," Jupiter urged. "Where is he?"

"I thought he was dead," Pete put in.

"I did not say so," Zelda replied. "I said he had vanished from the world of men.

Now, perhaps he may return from the world where he has been. For two weeks - farewell."

With that, she and Lonzo hurried down the stairs and The Three Investigators heard the Gypsies' cars roar away into the night. The three looked at each other, and Bob gave a sigh of relief.

"Wow!" he said. "We did it, Jupe! We found the missing money!"

"With some help from Zelda," Jupiter said. "I'm certainly looking forward to seeing her again. I have a hunch she can give me some very interesting answers!"

Chapter 18.

Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k Asks Some Questions ALFRED HITCHc.o.c.k, THE NOTED motion-picture producer, sat behind the desk in his office and leafed through the many pages of notes regarding the mystery of the talking skull, which had been prepared by Bob Andrews. Then he glanced across to where The Three Investigators, in their best clothes, sat in a row and waited for him to speak.

"Excellently done, lads," Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k rumbled. "Jupiter, my boy, you did well to locate the missing money, after the authorities failed for so long."

But Jupiter's round features looked glum.

"No, sir," he sighed. "I should have unraveled the secret sooner. First I thought that one stamp being under the other meant the money was pasted under some wallpaper. I should have known better and looked for the other meaning. Then, if it hadn't been for some luck ..."

"Luck helps people who are alert," Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k said. "As I have reminded you before. You can't expect to get the right answer the very first thing every time - no investigator manages that. In my opinion you did very well."

"Thank you, sir." Jupiter brightened. "Anyway, we did find the missing money."

"And none too soon, either," the director remarked. "Two days later the house would have been bulldozed to the ground and the money might easily have been lost forever. Tell me, did you collect the reward?"

Jupiter sighed. Pete sighed. Bob sighed.

"No, sir, we didn't," Bob said. "There wasn't really any reward-that was just a story Smooth Simpson made up, along with all the rest he told us. But we did get a very nice letter from the bank president, and Chief Reynolds said he wished we were old enough to be on his force as detectives."

"Ah, well, money is not the only reward for a job well done," commented Mr.

Hitchc.o.c.k. "Now, I have a question or two. I believe these notes make clear how Spike Neely hid the money in the first place, and how he managed to get a secret message out of the hospital prison to his friend Gulliver - so secret, of course, that no one could solve it until it fell into your hands.

"But my first question, and one your notes do not answer, is what became of Gulliver. What was his fate?"

The boys grinned. They had been expecting Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k to ask this, and Jupiter was prepared with an answer.

"When he got the letter from Spike Neely," Jupiter said, "Gulliver suspected Spike was trying to send him a message, because in prison Spike had said he would tell the secret to Gulliver if anything ever happened to him. However, Gulliver couldn't decipher the letter. So he hid it in his trunk.

"Then one day as he was coming back to his hotel, the clerk told him some men had been asking for him. He recognized the description of Three-Finger Munger and he became very frightened. He knew that Three-Finger might easily kidnap him and torture him to find out where the money was, and of course Gulliver didn't know. If he had known, he'd have directed the authorities to it. In any case, he wasn't sure whether the police would believe his story.

"So, without even going up to his room, Gulliver just vanished. He left everything.

His trunk was put into storage when he didn't return, and eventually sold at public auction. To me."

"Then Gulliver didn't die?" Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k asked. "But the Gypsy, Zelda, told you he had vanished from the world of men."

"Which is what he did," Jupiter said, smiling again. "He wanted to be sure Three-Finger Munger and his pals couldn't possibly find him. So he dressed up as a woman and put on a wig. He became a woman in appearance and in that way vanished from the world of men."

"Of course!" Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k exclaimed. "I should have guessed that's what the words meant. Now - a thought is coming to me. Let me see if I, too, can deduce correctly. I deduce that the Gypsy woman, Zelda, was really The Great Gulliver!"

Pete chuckled. So did Bob. Jupiter nodded his head.

"That's right, sir," he said. "The Gypsies were old friends of Gulliver's. In fact, his mother had been a Gypsy. They let him live with them. And, of course, Gypsies are very clannish, so they never betrayed his secret."

Now Alfred Hitchc.o.c.k chuckled too.

"Well," he said. "One mystery solved. Obviously Gulliver, who used to be plump, dieted himself thin and knew that no one would ever dream that a thin Gypsy woman was really a missing fat magician. What are his plans now?"

"He'll stop being Zelda soon and become himself again," Jupiter said. "As soon as Three-Finger Munger and his friends are safely in prison. But he's not going to become a magician again. The Gypsies have come to depend on him to handle their business affairs and he's going to stay with them."

"There's another thing," said Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k, looking back over Bob's notes. "When you bought the trunk, Jupiter, a little old lady came rushing in, very excited, and wanted to buy it but was too late. By any chance was that ... "

"Yes," said Jupiter. "That was Gulliver, wearing a different wig and dressed as an elderly lady. He kept track of such sales and managed to learn that his trunk was going to be auctioned off. But he had the time wrong and was too late.

"He would have tried harder to buy it from me, but that reporter appeared with a camera, and Gulliver was afraid of attracting attention. The story in the newspaper told him who we were and how to find us."

"It also told Three-Finger Munger and his pals," Pete put in darkly.

"Yes," Jupiter agreed. "First Three-Finger Munger's men tried to steal the trunk.

Later on they did steal it, by following Maximilian the Mystic and running his car off the road. But they didn't keep it long.

"You see, Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k, as Zelda said, the Gypsies were keeping an eye on us.

When she-I mean Gulliver-learned we had actually solved some difficult mysteries, he got the idea that we might solve the secret of where the money was hidden. We would lead the police to it, and then he could reappear.

"That's why he had me come down to meet him, as Zelda, and talked in a mysterious way to get me interested. Then the Gypsies spotted Three-Finger and his pals, and when they stole the trunk from Maximilian, a carful of Gypsies was right behind them. The Gypsies followed the thieves to their hideout, jumped on them, and got the trunk away before the crooks knew what hit them.

"Then Zelda-that is, Gulliver-sent the trunk back to me, still hoping I'd manage to solve the mystery. In fact, he knew I almost had to in order to get rid of Three-Finger and the others. So he had the Gypsies keep a close eye on us, so they could help us if we needed them.

"That Sat.u.r.day night when Smooth Simpson tricked us into helping him find Mrs.

Miller's lost house, the Gypsies were watching Three-Finger. They didn't know about Smooth Simpson. When Three-Finger and his gang started out, they followed. When Three-Finger made us prisoners, they sent for reinforcements and were-in time to rescue us and grab the Three-Finger gang.

"Then-well, you know how we finally found the money."

Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k nodded. He scratched his head a moment and looked out the window. "There's just one thing that still bothers me. Did Socrates, the talking skull, really talk? And if he did, how? What was the secret? It wasn't really something supernatural, was it?"

"No, sir," Jupiter said. "I mean, the explanation isn't supernatural. Everything a magician does is really a trick, of course, and Socrates was a trick too. Gulliver is a good ventriloquist. In the beginning he used ventriloquism to make Socrates talk.

"Then, when people began to suspect Gulliver, he figured out a way to make Socrates talk from a distance. He bought a tiny sending and receiving radio device, you know they can make them very small now ...

"And installed it in the skull?" Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k said. "But Jupe, I can hardly believe that you examined the skull and missed it."

"That's just it," Jupiter explained. "I did explore Socrates carefully. That's where Gulliver was clever. He put the device inside the ivory base base, where it couldn't be seen."

"Ah!," the director said. "Inside the base where it wouldn't be seen or suspected. A clever touch."

"The transmitter inside the base was voice-operated," Jupiter said. "That means that after we had taken Socrates out of the trunk and put him on the base, anything we said would be broadcast. The range was about five hundred feet.

"Gulliver, disguised as a woman-not a Gypsy woman-was hanging around the salvage yard after he learned where the trunk had gone. He had a little speaker in his ear, hidden by his wig, and a microphone in an ornamental pin on his dress. He could hear us talking. He didn't intend to speak to us then, but he unexpectedly sneezed. That's how we heard Socrates seem to sneeze.

"Then that night when I kept Socrates in my room, Gulliver was hiding nearby. He saw my lights go out and took a chance on speaking to me through Socrates. That was when he gave me the mysterious message to go down and see Zelda.

"The next day, when Aunt Mathilda was cleaning my room and telling Socrates what she thought of him, Gulliver was listening and couldn't resist saying boo to her."

"So that mystery is explained," commented Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k. "It was really The Great Gulliver at all times. Indeed, a case of science rather than superst.i.tion."

"Yes, sir," Jupiter nodded. "And as we usually had Socrates nearby where we were talking about the case, Gulliver could listen in on our progress and plans. That way he knew pretty much everything we were doing. That made it a lot easier for him to keep an eye on us and come to our rescue in the end."

"All in all, a most interesting case," the director said. "Well, I will be glad to introduce it for you, as I have your others. Have you any idea what you'll work on next?"

"Not yet," Jupiter said as they all rose. "But we're keeping our eyes open. We'll be in touch with you, Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k."

They filed out of the living room, and Mr. Hitchc.o.c.k smiled to himself. A talking skull! What would they come up with next!

THE END.