4 : Red Gate Rover
BOB ANDREWS was eating his supper, in between glances
at the telephone. He had been expecting it to ring any
minute, ever since he got home from the library. He
worked there part-time, helping return books to the
shelves and doing other similar jobs.
But he was on dessert now—baked cup custard with a
nice brown crust on top—and though he was scraping the
last speck from the side of his dish, the phone still hadn’t
rung.
However, his mother, slender, brown-haired and attrac-
tive, caught his glance this time and seemed to recollect
something with a start
“My goodness!” Mrs. Andrews said. “I forgot. There
was a message for you. Your friend Jupiter Jones called.”
“He did?” Bob exclaimed. “What did he say?”
Bob had had the outlines of the case from Jupiter the
day before. They had agreed that The Three Investigators
would have a meeting that evening in Headquarters, if
Jupe wasn’t too busy. Sometimes he had to help his uncle
and aunt at The Jones Salvage Yard and could not take
any time off for investigating.
“I wrote it down.” His mother began fishing round in
her pocket among various scraps of paper. “I couldn’t
possibly remember it. Jupiter certainly does use strange
language sometimes.”
“He can’t help talking in long words,” Bob said. “He’s
read so much, the long words just come out automatically.
Besides, his Uncle Titus talks that way, too. You get used
to it.”
“Well, anyway, here’s the message.” She found a piece
of paper. “‘Red Gate Rover, come over, come over. The
bird’s on the wing and the case is the thing. The path will
be narrow so follow the arrow.’ Now honestly!”
She looked at Bob hard. “What kind of message is that,
Robert? Are you boys playing at making up codes, or
what?”
Bob was already halfway to the door, but he stopped,
because when his mother asked a question she expected
an answer.
“It’s perfectly clear English, Mom,” he said.
“Well, it doesn’t sound like clear English to me,” she
retorted.
“It’s clear English, but it sounds like a code,” he ex-
plained. “That’s so that if any outsider hears one of our
messages, he won’t understand it.”
“And I’m an outsider, am I? Your own mother?”
“Well, gosh, no, Mom,” Bob told her. “If you’re inter-
ested I’ll explain. You see, we’ve started this investigation
firm, and right now we have a case. We’re trying to find a
missing parrot.”
“Well, that sounds harmless enough,” she said, her face
clearing. “I suppose that’s what ‘The bird’s on the wing,
the case is the thing’ means?”
“That’s it. And Red Gate Rover means—”
“Oh, never mind. Run along now and don’t be too late.
I have to send out invitations to the church supper we’re
having next week.”
Bob hurried out and hopped on his bike. There was
still plenty of daylight—it was summer, and they were on
Daylight Saving. Rocky Beach was a spread-out town on
the shore of the Pacific Ocean, some miles from Holly-
wood. It had a range of big hills behind it. Bob had fallen
down one of these hills and banged up his leg so he now
had to wear a brace on it. But it would come off some
day, and on his bicycle he could make excellent time.
Sticking to the back streets, away from the heavy traffic
by the beach, he reached The Jones Salvage Yard from
the rear. It was probably the most colourful junk yard in
the country. A long, tall wooden fence surrounded it, and
on this fence local artists grateful to Mr. Jones for his
generosity had painted many colourful scenes.
Covering the whole back fence of the yard was a paint-
ing of the San Francisco fire of 1906, a dramatic scene of
burning buildings, horse-drawn fire engines dashing into
action, and people fleeing with bundles on their backs.
Bob rode up to the rear fence, making sure no one saw
him, and stopped about fifty feet from the comer. There
was a spot on the picture where a big spout of red flame
was shooting out of a building, and a little dog was sitting,
looking sadly at it because it bad been his home. They
had named the little dog Rover, and one of his eyes was a
knot in the wood.
Bob picked out the knot with his fingernails and
reached in to undo a catch. Then three boards swung up
and he could wheel his bike inside. That was Red Gate
Rover.
There were four different secret gates into the junk yard
so that The Three Investigators could, if necessary, come
and go without being seen.
Once inside, he parked the bike and got down on his
hands and knees. There were some building materials piled
there, forming what looked like a cave. On top of the pile
was an old sign with a large black arrow and the word
Office. That was their secret joke. The arrow really did
point to Headquarters.
Bob crawled under the pile of building materials and
came out in a narrow corridor with junk piled on both
sides. This passage twisted and turned until he had to get
down on his knees again and crawl under some heavy
planks that seemed merely to be lying there, but were
actually the roof of Door Four, one of the entrances into
Headquarters.
He crawled a few feet, then was able to stand up. He
knocked on a panel, three times, once, twice. The panel
opened and Bob stooped to step into Headquarters.
Headquarters was inside a banged-up thirty-foot mobile
home trailer in the junk yard, quite hidden from view by
all kinds of junk stacked all round it. Even Mr. Jones
didn’t know that they had turned the old trailer into a
modern headquarters, with a darkroom, a special lab, and
an office with typewriter, telephone, desk and tape re-
corder. All of the equipment had been rebuilt from junk
that came into the yard. Except the telephone, naturally.
They paid for that out of money they made helping around
the junk yard.
Once the boys were inside, their conferences were com-
pletely secret.
Jupiter was sitting in a swivel chair, chewing on a pen-
cil. Pete Crenshaw was doodling, drawing pictures of par-
rots over and over.
“Hello, Bob,” Jupiter said. “What kept you?”
“Mom forgot your message,” Bob told him. “Anyway,
she wouldn’t have let me leave without supper. Is this a
super-secret meeting?”
Jupiter nodded. “Because of Aunt Mathilda,” he said.
“She’s been cleaning house all day and she’s had me help-
ing her. Now she wants me to wash all the windows.
Naturally, I shall do so, but it is imperative we make some
progress in our search for Billy Shakespeare and Little
Bo-Peep. I’m trying to think of some line of investigation
for you two to start before I become a window washer.”
The speech was typical of Jupiter Jones, who had been
reading everything he could put his hands on for years. He
couldn’t seem to think in short words.
“We’re stumped,” Pete said. “Stuck. Baffled. We know
that fat man who called himself Mr. Claudius must have
stolen Billy Shakespeare and Little Bo-Peep, but we can’t
think of any way to locate him. The police might be able
to find the car, but they wouldn’t take the case seriously.
Imagine if we went to Chief Reynolds here in town and
asked for help in finding Shakespeare and Little Bo-
Peep!”
“In any case, both Mr. Fentriss and Miss Waggoner
swore us to secrecy,” Jupiter said. “Yet somehow we must
locate this Mr. Claudius or admit failure.”
“Well, I have an idea,” Bob said. “Let’s just ask people
if they’ve seen Mr. Claudius’s car. If we ask enough
people, someone is sure to have noticed it. And if we find
die car, he’s bound to be someplace near it.”
“People,” Jupiter said, “are very unobservant. Even
eye-witnesses to an occurrence contradict each other.”
“Not kids,” Bob said. “Kids are very observant of any-
thing that interests them. Every boy is interested in cars.
If we asked a few thousand boys all around Los Angeles
and Hollywood, I’ll bet we’d turn up one who remembered
the car perfectly.”
Jupiter had that look on his face which meant his men-
tal machinery was in overdrive. “Your idea is brilliant
Bob.”
“Is it?” Bob stared at him. “You really mean brilliant?”
“Ingeniously simple and therefore brilliant,” Jupiter
said. “As you state, boys of all ages are interested in cars,
especially unusual cars. We must ask boys all over town
until we find one who has seen the car. Then we’ll know
Mr. Claudius is near. But obviously we cannot ask each
boy personally.”
“Then how’ll we do it?” Pete asked blankly.
Jupiter leaned forward and looked at them.
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