18 : Hide and Seek in the Fog
THE FOG WRAPPED cold, clammy arms round them as
Lester dug into the pile of rocks. He worked with the
energy of a dog digging for a bone. He tossed behind him
small rocks, bits of tile, a length of pipe, a broken tree
branch and assorted pebbles, some of which hit Adams,
who objected loudly.
“Watch it, watch it!” Adams said.
“A little less energy, a little more thoroughness.
Lester,” Mr. Huganay said, standing by and watching.
Pete and Jupiter, still held in Adams’s vice-like grip,
were forced to watch also, bitter with the knowledge they
had come so close to the treasure only to be overtaken at
the very end by the clever European art thief.
“Don’t feel so badly, boys,” Huganay said, seeming to
read their thoughts. “I have, after all, outwitted the
guards at the Louvre, in Paris, and at the British Museum
in London. As it is, you very nearly outsmarted me. That
stratagem of sending off your conspicuous old car to be
followed while two of you came here by truck was most
ingenious.”
He chuckled and relighted his cigar, which had gone
out in the dampness. The fog wrapped round him like a
cloak and the flame of his lighter gave his face a sinister,
satanic look.
“I was having you watched, of course. My man phoned
to report the Rolls-Royce was leaving with all three of
you and he would follow. Twenty minutes later he tele-
phoned to say he had passed the car, and only one of you
was in it. He had lost you. I knew then that you were
opponents worthy of me, and that I had best act rapidly.”
He puffed smoke. Lester was still burrowing into the
pile of stones.
“I had, of course, solved the first part of John Silver’s
ingenious message,” Huganay told the two boys. “But I
had not located this dismal old graveyard. Forced to think
fast, I telephoned the Tourist Bureau. They keep lists of
all such spots for the benefit of tourists, and they were
able to tell me where there was a graveyard with the ad-
dress of 222 B Baker Street I came swiftly, and just in
time, too.”
Another stone tossed back by Lester hit Adams. The
smaller man growled an oath.
Huganay called to the big man. “Move a bit to one
side, Lester. Silver was ill. He’d never have bothered to
dig so deeply into a pile of rocks.”
Lester obeyed, and a moment later he wrenched some-
thing from under a rock and handed it to Huganay.
“Got it!” he said. “There’s your box, Mr. Huganay!”
“Ah!” Huganay said. He took the flat metal box, about
fourteen inches wide by twice as long. The lid was secured
by a small but stout padlock. “Just the right size,” he
commented. “Good work, Lester.”
“That’s the box Carlos said Mr. Silver used to keep
under his mattress,” Jupiter whispered gloomily to Pete.
Meanwhile, the art thief was busy. From his pocket he
took a powerful pair of clippers. One pressure cut the
metal. The lock came off, and the Frenchman prepared to
open the box.
“One glimpse only, in this miserable weather,” he said.
“A fine old painting such as this must not get damp.”
He opened the lid and gave a cry of rage. Lester
crowded close beside him to see what had angered him so.
Even Adams tried to see, shoving the boys ahead of him.
“There’s just a piece of paper here,” Huganay said,
breathing heavily. “It says, ‘Sorry, my dear fellow, but
you didn’t study your clues well enough.’”
“Okay, Jupe!” Pete whispered as the boys felt Adams’s
The pursuers loomed through the mist—dangerously near.
grip relax slightly. They jerked away together. Pete, who
was being held by Adams’s left hand, broke free. Jupiter
could not
Pete tumbled backwards to the ground and Adams
turned towards him, jerking Jupiter round painfully. Pete
felt his hand touch something long and hard and he
grasped it. He leaped to his feet and swung the length of
pipe his hand had touched. It crashed against Adams’s
shoulder, who with a howl of pain released Jupiter.
Still holding his weapon, Pete grabbed Jupiter’s arm
and pulled him along as he dived into the thickest part of
the fog, where he could just make out a clump of euca-
lyptus trees. In an instant they were behind the trees.
“They’ll be after us in a second,” Pete whispered into
Jupiter’s ear. “The truck is that way.”
He pointed. Jupiter just shook his head. To him, in the
fog, all directions now looked alike.
“How do you know?” he asked.
“I just know,” Pete said. Jupiter believed him. When it
came to finding directions or following trails. Pete was an
acknowledged expert. Even at night he could keep a direc-
tion by some kind of inner sense, where Jupiter, even by
daytime, could easily get lost.
“Now listen,” Pete said rapidly. “There are clumps of
eucalyptus trees all the way to the wall where we entered.
Duck from one clump to the other.”
“I’ll get lost,” Jupiter said glumly.
“I’ll go first,” Pete told him. “I’d stay with you but
those three are coming this way and I have to lead them
on a false trail. You just keep hunting for trees. When you
find one, look for our secret symbol chalked on it and an
arrow pointing the right direction. Then you’ll know you’re
okay. Go that way first!”
He propelled his stocky partner into the fog with a
shove. Then he started off in another direction, shouting
loudly for the men to hear. “Come on, Jupe, stick with
me. We have to go this way.”
The voices of the three men, which had been moving
towards the boys, changed direction as they followed the
sound of Pete’s voice. Jupiter stumbled forward, barking
his shins on many low monuments, until he found himself
in another clump of trees. Here he paused and listened.
There was a dim light round him. It was almost like
being under water. It was impossible to see more than a
few feet now and the fog was rolling by in waves, heavy
and grey. He looked up. Above him the visibility was
slightly greater. Forty feet away was a vague mass that
might be treetops. He stumbled in that direction.
Now the voices of the men were scattered behind him.
one going this way, another that. It was obvious they were
lost. As for Pete, there was no telling where he might be.
Jupiter reached the trees he had seen and peered
closely at them. On a smooth section of bark on one he
saw a question mark drawn in blue chalk, with an arrow
underneath it pointing off to the left.
The question mark was the symbol of The Three
Investigators. Each of the three boys carried a different
coloured piece of chalk to use in placing the mark when
he desired to leave a wordless message for the others.
Pleased at himself for thinking up this device, Jupiter
moved cautiously in the direction shown by the arrow.
He came to another clump of trees, another question
mark and another arrow. Anyway, Pete was still moving
forward. Behind him, Jupiter heard a cry of pain as one
of the men apparently fell over something. Their voices
were steadily becoming farther away.
Still the fog thickened. Everything was distorted, as in
a bad dream. The branches of trees became arms with
claws reaching for him. Ordinary monuments turned into
squat creatures barring his path. Tall shafts were towering
monsters looming over him.
The stocky boy found himself breathing hard when he
finally saw the low outline of the wall in front of him.
Then a shape towered up on the other side of the wall.
It reached for him, and this time it was alive. Jupiter
jerked back.
“It’s just me—Pete!” the figure whispered. “Come on,
grab my hand and let’s hurry.”
Humbly—and Jupiter Jones was not often humble, it
must be confessed—he let his partner help him over the
wall and through the dense fog until they reached the
truck, the headlights making cones of yellow in the mist.
“You hokay, kids?” Konrad demanded as they climbed
into the front seat of the truck.
“Just get us back home, Konrad,” Jupiter gasped.
“Drive inland and find a route out of the fog.”
“You bet.” Konrad started the truck and with great
caution drove them eastward until the coastal fog thinned
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