14 A Startling Discovery

JUPITER sat tied tightly to the chair and pondered. In stories, when someone was tied up there was always a convenient way to get loose. You could find an old knife and saw the ropes against the blade to cut them. Or there was a piece of broken glass that could be used the same way. There was always something.

But he had nothing. Oh, there was his knife, all right. It was lying on the window-sill. But he couldn’t reach it. If he could have reached it, he couldn’t have got it open. If he could have got it open, he couldn’t have sawed the ropes against the blade because his arms were tied separately to the arms of the chair.

Jupiter sat and thought, trying to figure out some way to get loose. He wasn’t exactly afraid of starving to death, because someone would come eventually, but it might take a long time.

Underneath him he heard bumps and thumps. Pete and Gus were flinging themselves against the bolted door, trying to break loose. Presently he heard their voices.

“Hey, Jupe, Jupe! Can you hear me?”

“Very clearly, Second,” Jupiter answered loudly. “What success?”

“None. This door is solid. All we’ve done is bruise our shoulders, Say, it’s awful dark down here.”

“Have patience, Second. I’m trying to think of some way to escape.”

“Okay, First. But think fast! I think there are rats down here.”

Jupiter bit his lip to help his thinking processes. He wriggled impatiently in his chair. It creaked and groaned as he shifted his weight around.

Outside the kitchen window he could see time passing. It was as if he watched a clock. The tall, thin peak on the west side of the canyon threw a shadow across the lawn, and he could almost see that shadow grow longer and longer as the sun moved down in the west.

He moved some more, testing his bonds. They were tight, but the chair creaked and groaned again.

Then an electric light bulb seemed to go off in Jupiter’s brain. Once he had sat on a creaky old chair and it had collapsed under his weight. If he could make this chair collapse —

He began to fling his body back and forth as violently as he could. The back of the chair moved. The arms wobbled. But they refused to break apart. Deliberately he threw himself sideways. He fell over with a thump on the floor. A leg of the chair splintered — the one his right leg was tied too.

He kicked hard and the leg of the chair slid out of the ropes, leaving them loose around his own leg. He had one leg free! Now he used this leg to lift himself up and slam the back of the chair to the floor again. He rolled over and put his full weight on the loose arms of the chair. They groaned, and the left arm pulled loose from the back. He jerked again and the whole chair arm came free.

Now he could reach over to move the right arm back and forth. As he struggled with the chair, thumping and bumping on the floor, Pete’s alarmed voice came up from the cellar.

“Jupe! What’s wrong? Are you in a fight or something?”

“I am fighting an enraged chair,” Jupe puffed back. “And I think I’m winning. Give me another couple of minutes.”

He strained, pushed, kicked. Now the chair was almost apart. Back, seat, arms, legs — all separated from each other. Most of the chair parts were still tied to him, but they were loose. He could crawl to the window, get his knife now, get it open. He could move his right arm enough to saw the ropes that tied the pieces of chair to his other arm. In a minute more he was able to stand up and kick himself free from the ropes and the broken chair.

With a feeling of triumph he stretched his aching muscles.

“It’s all right, Second!” he called out. “I’m coming now.”

Stairs from the kitchen led down to the cellar. He unbolted the wooden door. Pete and Gus blinked up at him in the light that came down the stairs.

“Gosh!” Pete said fervently as they came up. “I’m glad to see you, Jupe. How’d you get loose?”

“It was merely a case of mind over matter,” Jupiter said, somewhat loftily. “Now we’d better get away from here. I don’t expect Joe and his friend to come back yet, but they might. In any case, we want to get back to the salvage yard. Bob recovered the bust of Octavian — ”

“He did? Terrific!” Pete exclaimed.

“That’s very good news!” Gus chimed in.

“But the Black Moustache gang got it away again,” Jupiter finished. “I’ll tell you all about it as we ride home.”

They scrambled out of the house and found their bikes. In a moment they were pedalling back towards Rocky Beach. As they rode, Jupiter told them all that had happened while they were locked in the cellar, ending with how Bob had apparently recovered Octavian, and how the Black Moustaches had taken it from him.

“Golly, to have it right in our hands and lose it again,” Pete mourned. “That bust is jinxed!”

“I hope it isn’t the bad luck that follows The Fiery Eye,” Gus suggested soberly.

“If it is, it ought to hit the Black Moustaches, not us,” Jupiter said. “What I’m wondering about is the one they called Hugo. He sounded healthy, yet if Three-Dots used that sword blade on him, he shouldn’t be. Healthy, I mean.”

“It’s a puzzle,” Pete agreed. “But what bothers me is how we’re ever going to get our hands on Octavian again. Gus, I’m afraid your inheritance is gone.”

Glumly they rode along through increasing traffic. It took quite a long time to get back to The Jones Salvage Yard. The sun was setting and they had remembered they hadn’t eaten lunch and were ravenously hungry by the time they rode through the yard’s main gate.

No one was in sight except Bob, Hans and Konrad. The two big yard helpers were busy in a far corner stacking lumber. The small truck was parked beside the office, waiting to be put away. Bob was listlessly painting some iron garden furniture from which he had rubbed the rust.

“Bob looks really discouraged,” Pete said as they approached. “He feels pretty bad about losing Octavian.”

“We all feel badly,” Jupiter told him. “Let’s try to cheer things up a bit. Let me do the talking to Bob.”

As they approached, Bob looked up and tried to smile.

“Hi,” he said. “I’ve been wondering where you were.”

“We’ve been out to Gus’s great-uncle’s house,” Jupiter told him as they put their bikes into a rack. “But we didn’t find The Fiery Eye. Any developments at this end?”

“Well — ” Bob began and hesitated, hating to tell them what had happened.

“Don’t tell me,” Jupiter said. “Let me try to deduce. Look me in the eye, Bob. That’s it. Don’t blink. Let me try to see in your eyes what it is you don’t want to talk about.”

Pete and Gus watched with amusement as Jupiter stared solemnly into Bob’s eyes, then put his fingers to his forehead as if thinking deeply.

“It’s coming to me,” he said. “I’m getting the picture. There was a phone call — yes, a phone call from one of our ghosts. Octavian had been located. You went to get him — you and Hans in the smaller truck. You went to — let me see — yes, you went to Hollywood. Am I correct so far?”

“That’s what happened!” Bob exclaimed, his eyes popping. He had known Jupiter to make some amazing deductions in the past, but this beat anything he had ever done before. “Then — ”

“No, don’t interrupt,” Jupe said. “I’m getting more pictures. You went into a house. Hans went with you. He carried a bust — to trade, I believe, if necessary. Then Hans came out again, carrying two busts. You had recovered the bust of Octavian. Hans carried Octavian to the truck and put him in a box and wrapped it up well. He went back to get you. You both emerged, got in the truck and drove off. When you got back here, you found that the box which held Octavian had mysteriously vanished, evaporated into thin air. Am I correct?”

“That’s just how it happened!” Bob stared at him open-mouthed. “The box just disappeared. It couldn’t have fallen off or anything — the tail-gate of the truck was up. I don’t know — ”

At that moment Hans approached, carrying a bust under his arm. “This statue from the truck, Bob,” he said “what you want I do with it? Got to put the truck away for the night.”

“Just put it on the bench,” Bob replied. “It’s Francis Bacon. I took it along to give the lady in case she wanted to trade for Octavian. But she took money instead.”

Hans set the bust on the bench and walked away. It was facing backwards and Pete, who knew Mrs. Jones liked things neat, walked over to turn it round.

“Jupe,” Bob asked, “how did you know? About our getting Octavian back and — ”

He was interrupted by Pete’s shout. “Come here!” he said. “Come here and tell me if I’m seeing right.”

They followed his pointing finger, and read the word inscribed in the base of the bust. Octavian.

“Octavian!” Gus exclaimed. “The Black Moustache gang didn’t get him after all!”

“Hans packed the wrong bust!” Bob burst out. “That’s what happened. He had two under his arms and when he got out to the truck, he put one down and packed the other — the wrong one. I didn’t bother to look at this one because I was so depressed at losing Octavian — and I had him all along!”

Automatically they all looked behind them, as if Three-Dots or the Black Moustache gang might be coming in the gate at that moment. But all was quiet.

Even Jupiter was slightly flabbergasted by the new development, but he recovered quickly.

“Come on!” he said. “We’ll take Octavian back to the workshop and open him up. Then we’ll hide The Fiery Eye where no one can find it. We’re taking no more chances!”

Pete, as the strongest of the four, carried the bust back to the workshop section and set it on the ground. Jupiter found a chisel and hammer.

“Look,” he said, feeling the top of the bust. “Someone has bored a hole in here, put something in, and refilled it with plaster. The mark is faint, but clear. I’m sure we have The Fiery Eye at last.”

“Less talk and more action!” Pete burst out. “Just give it a whack and let’s see.”

Jupiter set the edge of the chisel against the top of the bust and hit it with the hammer. On the second blow the bust split in two, and a small round wooden box which had been embedded inside fell to the ground. Pete pounced on it and handed it to Jupiter.

“Open it, Jupe!” he urged. “Let’s see this ruby that’s been hidden for fifty years...Well, what are you waiting for? Afraid of the bad luck curse?”

“No,” the First Investigator said slowly. “But the box doesn’t feel heavy enough. However — ”

He twisted the top off the round box. They all peered in. There was no flaming red stone inside. Just a curled-up slip of paper. Very slowly Jupiter took it out and spread it open. On it were just seven words. They said:

Delve deeper. Time is of the essence.