11 : Seven Flying Clues
THE TRUCK MADE rapid speed towards the steep and bar-
ren hills beyond Hollywood.
“I tried to warn you boys,” the woman said, at one
point. “But you wouldn’t take my warning.”
Then Bob realised where he had heard her voice before
—over the telephone, when she had advised him and
Jupiter to stay out of Mr. Claudius’s way.
Finally, when they were well out into the hills, Pete got
up his nerve to speak.
“May I ask a question, Mr. Claudius? How did you get
rid of Fitch and the car?”
“Easily, my boy.” The fat man chuckled. “I went to the
Rent-’n-Ride Auto Agency to secure a car that wouldn’t
be recognised as easily as my Ranger. There I discovered
the amazing Rolls-Royce you boys had been riding round
in. I also learned about the mobile phone in the car.
“To-day we followed you here, and while you were in
the house I went to a comer store and called the mobile
phone. I told Fitch I was calling from inside the house. I
said you boys were staying to lunch and he wouldn’t be
needed before afternoon. So off he went.”
“Claude,” the woman, apparently his wife, started to
say, “don’t you think——”
“No, I don’t!” the fat man snapped. “Watch your driv-
ing. Have you been looking in the rear-view mirror?”
“Yes. At first I thought I saw a small car following us,
but we’ve lost it.”
“Good. Watch this turn.”
The truck slowed, made a sharp turn, and they were in
a long, hollow spot in the hills. A house had been built
there, with a two-car garage beside it The woman drove
in and stopped.
“Out, my lively lads, out,” said Mr. Claudius. “But
don’t hurry.”
Bob and Pete got out slowly while Mr. Claudius fol-
lowed. The other half of the garage was occupied by the
black Ranger sports car Mr. Claudius had been driving
the first time Pete had seen him.
Mr. Claudius led them inside the house, into a big liv-
ing room that was rather meagrely furnished. At one end
four cages holding yellow-headed parrots stood on a big
table. The parrots seemed listless and dejected. None of
them made a sound—not even when Mrs. Claudius added
the cage with Robin Hood to the group.
Bob and Pete sat down on a large couch, and Mr.
Claudius sat opposite them, testing the point of the knife
with his finger.
“Now, my sly and sneaky scalawags,” he said, “I intend
to learn a few things. I have five of the seven parrots that
John Silver trained. I shall get the others. Oh yes, I shall.
But at the moment I wish to know, how did Huganay
come to hire you and how much does he know?”
“Huganay?” Pete blinked. Bob looked blank.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know him,” Mr. Claudius
said impatiently. “Huganay, the Frenchman, one of the
most dangerous art thieves in all Europe. I’m positive he’s
on my trail.”
Bob started to shake his head, but Pete spoke up.
“This Mr. Huganay,” he asked. “Is he about medium
height, with dark hair, a French accent, a little mous-
tache?”
“That’s him!” Mr. Claudius said. “So you do know
him!”
“We don’t actually know him,” Pete answered. Then
he described the encounter in Mr. Fentriss’s driveway,
when the Rolls-Royce had just missed being rammed, and
told how the man driving the other car had seemed so
interested in the parrot Billy Shakespeare, and how anx-
ious he had been to avoid the police.
“Yes,” Mr. Claudius said, “Huganay would be anxious
to avoid the police. But I don’t understand. If you are not
working for Huganay, why are you interested in these
parrots?”
As Peter explained how The Three Investigators had
come to meet Mr. Fentriss and promised to help him
recover Billy Shakespeare, all the menace seemed to drain
out of Mr. Claudius. He took off his glasses and wiped
them. A very bewildered fat man started to talk quietly.
“I was so sure you were working for Huganay!” he
said, shaking his head. “The other day when I drove back
to my apartment house, I saw Huganay on the corner,
watching me. Then, when I entered our apartment, I was
certain it had been searched. And I was right!”
He looked at his wife.
“You told me I was imagining it! But Huganay really
was on my trail. He had been in my apartment reading my
notes!”
“Yes.” The woman sighed. “Huganay is after us,
there’s no doubt. But I’m sure he doesn’t know about this
place.”
“No,” Mr. Claudius agreed. “Fortunately,” he told the
boys, “I had already rented this cottage as a place to bring
the parrots. I left the Ranger here and rented an old
sedan, one Huganay couldn’t recognise so easily. He
knows that I love Rangers. Then, the very next day, I
heard that you boys were trying to discover the where-
abouts of my car. I learned about it from the manager of
the building, whose son had asked his father where my
Ranger automobile was. His father told him not to pry
into the affairs of tenants, so I was safe there.”
“I questioned the boy so I could get your number, then
I phoned to warn you,” Mrs. Claudius said. “My husband
was very upset and I was afraid of what might happen if
he encountered you again.”
“Yes,” the fat man sighed. “I have such a terrible tem-
per when I get upset. I can’t control it. I threaten people.
And having Huganay on my trail, such a clever and dan-
gerous man”—he passed his hand across his brow—“I’ve
been almost distracted,” he said. “And when I ran into
you again at Mr. Sanchez’s home, I was certain you were
working with Huganay.”
He seemed to become aware of the deadly-looking blade
he held in his hand and he put it down.
“I guess I don’t need that,” he said. “But now I don’t
know what to do. I just don’t. There are so many prob-
lems—so many problems——”
His voice trailed off. He gave a deep sigh. Now his wife
spoke.
“Claude,” she said, “the time has come to act sensibly.
These are clever boys who are not trying to do you any
harm. I suggest you apologise to them. You might even
ask them to help you. It seems to me they’ve shown a
good deal of intelligence in this matter. They found Mr.
Sanchez and they found that parrot when you couldn’t.”
“Yes, you’re right.” Mr. Claudius dabbed at his face
with a large handkerchief. “Boys, may I offer my humble
apologies? The trouble with me is my temper. I get so
upset when things go wrong, and this matter means so
much to me, so very much. I should stay calm. I have a
stomach condition that requires me to keep calm. But I
just can’t!”
Pete and Bob exchanged glances, Bob spoke for both
of them.
“We accept your apology, Mr. Claudius,” he said. “But
what about Mr. Fentriss and Miss Waggoner? You stole
their parrots, and you tied up Mr. Fentriss and—well,
that’s breaking several laws.”
Mr. Claudius mopped his face again.
“I shall try to make it up to them,” he said. “I shall try
very hard, and they will decide whether or not to forgive
me. But first I have to explain why I did these things. You
see, I stole those parrots because I had to have them. I
simply had to! They are vital clues to the priceless
treasure which John Silver hid before he died!”
Suddenly Bob understood. Jupiter had been about to
tell them his theory the day before. Now Bob could guess
what that theory was.
“Mr. Claudius,” he asked, “are all seven birds talking
clues? Is the speech each one makes a separate clue, and
in order to find the treasure do you have to put them all
together and figure out what they mean?”
“Yes,” Mr. Claudius told them. “John Silver was play-
ing a joke on me, you see. The most fantastic jest of his
life. Leaving seven talking birds with cryptic messages for
me to solve in order to uncover the treasure he hid! No
one else would ever have thought of such a thing. But it
was like him, it was just like him. That was how his bril-
liant but erratic mind worked.”
“Claude,” his wife interrupted, “the boys will under-
stand much better if you begin at the beginning. While
you do so, I will make some sandwiches. I’m sure we’re
all hungry.”
Bob and Pete suddenly realised that they were very
hungry. But they were also excited by the knowledge that
at last they were going to learn what was behind the
mystery of the talking birds.
“You knew Mr. Silver in England?” Bob asked.
“About two years ago,” Mr. Claudius said, “I em-
ployed John Silver in my business of buying and selling
rare objects of art. This was in London. Silver was a
highly educated but eccentric man. He could never hold a
job long because of his strange sense of humour. At last
he was reduced to earning a living by selling jokes,
puzzles, and riddles to the newspapers and magazines.
“Then he came to me for a job. He had a wide know-
ledge of both art and literature. I hired him to attend
auctions and buy objects that might be valuable.
“One day he brought back a picture. It was a very
ordinary picture of two yellow-headed parrots on a branch
and he had paid a lot of money for it. Well, as you know,
I am excitable. I lost my temper. I called him a fool, and
I discharged him.
“John Silver—that was not his real name, but the one
be used as a puzzle-maker—told me he was sure the par-
rots were painted on top of an older and much more
valuable painting. He said he would prove it. Perhaps you
have heard of one picture being painted over another,
sometimes in order to hide the first picture?”
Pete hadn’t, but Bob nodded.
“Well,” Mr. Claudius continued, “that’s what had been
done. John Silver cleaned off the picture of the parrots. In
a few days he returned to show me an absolutely lovely
little picture of a young shepherdess tending a baby lamb.
“It was obviously by one of the great masters of paint-
ing. I knew at once it could not be worth less than one
hundred thousand dollars, small as it was.”
“Golly!” Pete exclaimed. “That’s a lot of money for a
painting. I can get them at the store for a dollar ninety-
eight with frame.”
“Those are just printed copies,” Bob told him. “The
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City paid more
than two million dollars once for a picture by the Dutch
painter Rembrandt.”
“Whiskers!” Pete said in awe. “Two million dollars for
a painting?”
“Now we come to the unfortunate part of the story,”
Mr. Claudius told them. He was interrupted by the arrival
of his wife with a tray of sandwiches, two glasses of milk,
and two cups of coffee. They all helped themselves, then
the man resumed his story.
“John Silver said that because I had discharged him the
picture now belonged to him. I told him that he had
bought it with my money while in my employ, so it be-
longed to me. He offered to share it with me, half and
half.”
“That sounds fair,” Pete said. “After all, he found it.”
“It was fair,” Mrs. Claudius said firmly. “But Claude
does fly off the handle when anyone opposes him.”
“Yes,” the fat man said mournfully. “I threatened John
Silver with arrest. He left with the beautiful picture. I
went to the police and swore out a warrant. He fled. Later
I learned he had smuggled himself and the picture out of
the country on a freighter. The picture, the beautiful shep-
herdess, was gone.”
“You had only yourself to blame,” Mrs. Claudius told
him.
“Well, boys, I warned art dealers everywhere to be on
the lookout for Silver and the painting. But of course, they
never turned up. He was, it seems, hiding here in
California.”
“Yes, sir,” Bob agreed. “He was staying with Mr.
Sanchez. He was quite ill. He had a flat metal box, and he
told Mr. Sanchez that in it he had a piece off the end of
the rainbow with a pot of gold at the end of it, but he
couldn’t risk trying to sell it.”
“An excellent description,” Mr. Claudius said. “For the
picture is as beautiful as if painted with the colours of
the rainbow. Well, eventually I received a letter from John.
It told me that receipt of the letter meant he was no longer
alive, but that he had put the picture in a safe place. Find-
ing it he informed me, would mean solving a riddle. It
was his last joke, a joke at my expense, and it had given
him considerable pleasure to think it up.
“In his letter he explained that he had trained six
yellow-headed parrots and a mynah bird, each to repeat a
message. I was to come to America and pay a Mr. San-
chez a thousand dollars for the birds. Then I must make
them speak and solve the riddle of their messages before I
could find my lost shepherdess. The idea had come to
him, he said, because the original picture over which we
quarrelled depicted two yellow-headed parrots.”
“I guess it was his way of punishing you for the way
yon treated him,” Pete suggested.
“Exactly. But still, no great harm might have been done
except for bad luck. As you know, I did not come, and
Mr. Sanchez finally sold the parrots. You see, I was away
in Japan on a buying trip, and the letter waited weeks for
me at my London shop. When I read it I became very
excited and rushed here to California at once. I must have
said something in public that came to the ears of Huganay,
the art thief, to make him follow me.”
He glanced at his wife, and she nodded.
“Huganay can smell an opportunity,” she said grimly.
“Yes, he’s here on our trail and he won’t stop at any-
thing.”
“But that isn’t the worst problem,” Mr. Claudius said,
biting his lip. “After I found that Mr. Sanchez had sold
the parrots, I was almost insane with frustration. Being
illiterate, he had no records of whom he had sold them to.
But he did show me the general neighbourhood on the
map, and I started going from door to door, asking if
anyone had recently bought a parrot from a Mexican ped-
lar. I managed to find the two named Sherlock Holmes
and Captain Kidd.
“The owners agreed to sell them because after the
Mexican pedlar parted with them, the parrots had sulked
and refused to speak a word.
“I kept looking for the others, always in desperate fear
someone would find my beautiful painting before I could
discover where John Silver had hidden it. Then, the other
day, calling at the home of Mr. Fentriss, I saw a yellow-
headed parrot through the window. There was no answer
to my ring, I was afraid that the owner this time might
not sell, and so, rashly and impulsively, I broke in and
stole the parrot.
“But he wouldn’t talk for me! He wouldn’t say a word!
I conceived a plan. I returned to see Mr. Fentriss and
pretended to be from the police. He not only told me Billy
Shakespeare’s message, but told me where to find Little
Bo-Peep, and informed me that when the Mexican pedlar,
Mr. Sanchez, had left him, he still had Blackbeard.
“Naturally I was tremendously excited, and I gave my-
self away. Mr. Fentriss became suspicious. At that moment
I saw two boys coming up the path. I dared not be caught.
I tied up Mr. Fentriss and gagged him—but loosely, so
that he could soon escape. Then I intercepted you boys
and sent you away. As soon as you had left, I made my
escape.
“I immediately went to get Bo-Peep, before Mr. Fen-
triss could warn Miss Waggoner. The house was empty. I
had to steal Bo-Peep, too—I had no choice. I was just
leaving through the grove of trees when I saw two boys
returning with Miss Waggoner.”
“That was me and Jupiter Jones,” Pete said accusingly.
“Then it must have been you who chucked that piece of
tile at us?”
“Yes, yes.” Mr. Claudius passed his hand over his fore-
head. “Please forgive me. I wasn’t trying to hurt you, only
to frighten you.”
“That sort of thing just makes Jupiter more deter-
mined,” Pete said.
“Of course. But let me finish. I went to see Mr.
Sanchez again as soon as I could. In the meantime I had
become aware that Huganay was somewhere near so I hid
the Ranger and hired the old sedan.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt Mr. Sanchez when you arrived,
though it may have seemed that way. He was coughing
badly and I was trying to help him sit up and ease the
spasm. But when you boys entered and attacked me, I had
to flee. By now I was sure you were somehow working for
Huganay. What else could I think? He was the only other
person who could possibly know about the painting.
“I realised I must remain hidden. So next I rented the
old truck. In it I could ride around unseen, while my wife
drove. I redoubled my efforts to find the birds still missing.
This morning, as we drove through that part of Holly-
wood, we saw your Rolls-Royce and trailed it. It’s a very
noticeable car.”
“Yes, I guess it is,” Bob said ruefully. “No one could
miss it.”
“We parked and watched. We saw your encounter with
that tall, thin boy who apparently had obtained Scarface.”
“Skinny Norris!” Pete said disgustedly. “He horned in
because he’s jealous of Jupe and is always trying to get
ahead of him.”
“He drove away with Scarface in a blue car. Imagine
my desperation! I wanted to follow him. I also wanted to
follow you. In the end I followed you and let him go. I felt
we didn’t need him because as he passed our parked truck,
the parrot croaked out its message. What did it say, my
dear?”
Mrs. Claudius referred to a paper in her pocket
“It said, ‘I never give a sucker an even break,’” she
reported.
“An old slang phrase, and most baffling as a clue,” Mr.
Claudius commented. “But anyway, I followed you, sent
away your car by a stratagem—and, well, here we are.
And it’s all been for nothing—nothing.”
“What do you mean, for nothing?” Bob asked.
“I have five of the seven birds,” Mr. Claudius said.
“And so far I know only the messages Mr. Silver taught
Billy Shakespeare and Scarface. The rest won’t talk for
me. They won’t speak. They won’t say a thing! And they
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