17 : The Stones beyond the Bones
THE SMALLER TRUCK from The Jones Salvage Yard
jounced down the bumpy dirt street. Konrad was driving,
and Pete and Jupiter sat beside him, staring out
After the two boys had left the Rolls and entered the
salvage yard, they had slipped into the truck. Mr. Jones
had already promised Jupiter he could have the use of it,
with Konrad, for the evening. Konrad had rumbled out of
the yard with it as if on an ordinary errand, while the boys
crouched down unseen. Not until they had gone ten miles
down the coast did they sit up.
“Nobody followed us, Jupe,” Konrad said. “And it
looks like we found the town you wanted. Not much of a
town, huh?”
It had taken them over an hour to arrive in Merita
Valley. As Konrad said, it wasn’t much of a town. The
tiny business section was already behind, them. Now they
were bumping down Baker Street, which had almost no
houses on it. Opposite them was a long stone wall. Behind
the wall were hundreds of stone crosses and monuments.
They had reached the Merita Valley graveyard.
Pete pointed. There in the wall was an opening, and an
old wooden sign attached to the wall read: 222 B Baker
Street.
“Aren’t you going to stop?” Pete asked. Jupiter shook
his head.
“Turn right at the next street, Konrad, please,” he said.
“Hokay, Jupe,” Konrad agreed.
The graveyard was a large one, and appeared very old.
As they came to the corner of the wall, they saw the
tumbled-down ruins of a church, built of stone and adobe.
It looked deserted and neglected.
Konrad turned the truck, and they kept on for several
hundred yards more. Finally, they left the graveyard be-
hind them and came to a large clump of eucalyptus trees
beside the road, their branches hanging low, their leaves
giving off a pungent, oily smell.
“Park under the trees, please,” Jupiter directed. Kon-
rad did so. The boys slid out of the truck.
“We may be gone quite a while, Konrad,” Jupiter said.
“Just wait for us.”
“Hokay,” the big man said. He turned on a small radio
and got out a newspaper. “I got no hurry.”
“Now what, Jupe?” Pete asked as the stockily built
First Investigator led them back across an open field,
angling towards the stone wall round the graveyard.
“We don’t want to be seen entering the cemetery.”
Jupiter said. “Our intentions are perfectly respectable, but
we don’t want any curiosity seekers hampering our hunt.”
They came to the wall and climbed over it
“I don’t think I’d mind a little company,” Pete said as
they started down an untended path. Many monuments,
small and large, some of them leaning badly and in sad
disrepair, crowded close together on either side.
“You’re very good at judging direction, Pete,” Jupiter
said. “Remember our route so we can find our way back
to the truck if the hunt takes us until dark, will you?
Unfortunately, we came in such a hurry I didn’t bring a
torch.”
“Until dark?” Pete gave a slight yelp. “Anyway, we’re
not going to have until dark,” he concluded as a wisp of
vapour brushed across their path. “Look at that! There’s
a fog rolling in from the ocean to-night.”
Jupiter looked towards the west, where the Pacific
Ocean lay. It was certainly true that light streamers of fog
were slowly rolling towards them. In Southern California
fog frequently comes in from the ocean and blankets the
areas near the coast, sometimes reducing visibility to
almost zero.
“I hadn’t counted on a fog,” Jupiter said, scowling.
“That’s even worse than darkness. Let’s hope we can un-
ravel Mr. Silver’s message swiftly. Anyway, there’s the
side entrance, the one marked 222 B Baker Street.”
Jupiter put on more speed. They passed between two
large monuments and came out at an intersection just in-
side the entrance. Several paths led into the large, old
graveyard in different directions.
“What do we do now?” Pete asked nervously, as Jupiter
took a paper from his pocket.
“We have arrived at 222 B Baker Street,” Jupiter said,
peering at the paper. “Part 4 of the message says, ‘I shot
an arrow as a test, a hundred paces shot it west.’ Now, the
entrance here faces to the north. Therefore——”
“Therefore what?” Pete demanded. Jupiter was turning
around in the centre of the intersection of the paths.
“A hundred paces would be equal to a hundred yards,”
he said. “I’m sure Mr. Silver means for us to go one
hundred yards west, and the natural place to start from
would be here, where the different paths intersect just
inside the gate. So let’s pace off one hundred yards. You
do it, your legs are longer.”
Pete began to stride towards the west, which took them
on a path parallel to one wall of the old cemetery, about
forty feet in. He made his paces as long as he could. After
counting one hundred, he stopped.
“All right,” he said. “Now what?”
“Now we come to Part 5 of the message, which says,
‘You know my methods, Watson. Three sevens lead to
thirteen.’”
“So far it’s been easy. But that certainly doesn’t make
any sense,” Pete said.
Nothing in sight gave Jupiter any inspiration. Then a
thought struck him.
“Pete,” he asked, “are you sure your paces were a yard
long?”
“Well—I think so. I stretched all I could.”
“Still, let us measure. It always pays to make certain.
Take two steps and mark the beginning and end.”
Pete did so. His partner took from his pocket a small
piece of plastic. This was a calendar for the next three
years and along one edge was an inch rule four inches
long. With this he measured Pete’s paces.
“You’ve been pacing thirty-inch yards,” he announced.
“We’re fifty feet short of a hundred yards. Take twenty
more paces west.”
Pete paced westward twenty more steps. This brought
them to within sight of the rear wall of the cemetery. But,
though there were many commemorative stones around
them, he saw nothing that inspired any bright ideas.
Jupiter, however, gave a muffled shout.
“Look!” he said and pointed to three old headstones in
a small plot opposite them. The headstones said that
Josiah Severn, Patience Severn and Tommy Severn had
all died of yellow fever on the same day in 1888, and were
here resting in peace.
“Severn!” Pete shouted, as realisation struck him. “I
told you the message sounded like ‘Three Severns lead to
thirteen’!”
“Here are three Severns,” Jupiter admitted. “But how
can they lead to thirteen?”
“Follow the line of the headstones!” Pete said breath-
lessly. “See if that leads to anything. And golly, we’d
better hurry. The fog is coming in fast!”
The fog was swirling all round them now. Visibility was
diminishing swiftly. Without wasting time, Pete hurried
over to crouch down beside the nearest of the simple
markers. The other two stones leaned slightly. Looking
directly over the top of all three, he drew a line with his
eye that ended at a tall stone marker about fifty feet away.
“The line ends at that stone, Jupe,” he said. “See what
it says.”
Jupiter was already hurrying towards the stone, being
careful to step round the old graves out of respect for
those who rested there. Pete dashed after him. They
reached the tall stone together. It was blank. But when
they moved round it, they stopped simultaneously. For
the inscription on the other side read:
Here Lie
13 Nameless Travellers
Struck Down
by Indians
June 17, 1876
“Thirteen!” Pete breathed. “Three Severns led us to
thirteen all right. Quick, Jupe, what’s the rest of the
message?”
“Part 6 says, ‘Look under the stones beyond the bones
for the box that has no locks,’” Jupiter told him.
“But what stones?” Pete asked. “This whole place is
full of stones.”
“The message says ‘beyond the bones.’” Jupiter re-
torted. “So it can’t mean any of the monuments. Golly,
this fog is getting bad. But look, over there, straight be-
yond this monument and against the wall. There’s a pile
of stones where a section of the wall has fallen down and
has never been repaired. Those are certainly stones be-
yond the bones. And they’re the only such stones in sight
If we look under them——”
Pete hardly waited for him to finish. He was already
galloping towards the collapsed section of wall where
hundreds of stones, large and small, lay in a heap. As
soon as he reached it, he began grabbing stones, moving
them, and looking beneath them.
“Come on, Jupe, give me a hand,” he gasped. “We
haven’t got much time. This fog is going to be a zinger.”
Jupiter joined him and both boys started lifting stones
from the centre putting them into a new pile farther from
the wall, and going back for more. They were burrowing
deeper and deeper into the heap of stones when they
heard a voice with a French accent behind them.
“I do like to see boys who don’t mind working,” the
voice said.
They looked up from where they were working,
crouched over the pile of stones. Out of the swirling fog
came the debonair Mr. Huganay, followed by his two
henchmen, Adams and the big bruiser, Lester.
“However,” the art thief said, smiling down at them, “I
think it is now time for us to take over. Men—grab
them!”
Pete and Jupiter, coming to the same decision at the
same moment, both bolted to get past the three men. Un-
fortunately, they had no time to co-ordinate their effort.
Pete bumped his partner and both sprawled on the ground.
With almost no effort Adams grabbed each by a wrist,
twisted each boy’s wrist behind his back and forced them
to their feet.
“Good!” The Frenchman smiled at them. “Hold them
there, Adams. You, Lester, dig into those stones until we
find the pretty shepherdess. Then our hunt will be over
and you will have earned the bonus I promised you for
assisting me.”
The big, ugly man went to work with a will, tossing
rocks from the pile as if they were pebbles.
Helpless and seething with rage and disappointment
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