The Mystery of the Invisible Dog - M. V. Carey [7]
They did not encounter the unpleasant Mrs. Bortz when they went into Mr.
Prentice’s building, but they did not find the old gentleman at home, either. They found a note on his door, instead.
“My three young friends,” read the note. “I am at 329 Lucan Court. The house is directly behind this building. Cross the alley and come around to the front door. I will be expecting you.”
Jupe stuffed the note into his pocket. “That’s the place that was broken into,” he said.
“What are you boys doing up there?”
The boys looked down from the balcony and saw that Mrs. Bortz had come out of her apartment. She wore a dressing gown and her red hair was tousled.
“Isn’t Mr. Prentice at home?” she asked.
“Apparently not,” said Jupiter.
“Where could he be at this hour?” she said.
The boys didn’t answer her. Instead they went down the stairs, through the courtyard, and out through the back entrance of the building — a little passageway that led past a laundry and a storeroom and up a few steps to an alley. They saw dustbins and garages and the backs of the buildings which faced the next street.
As Fenton Prentice had reported, 329 Lucan Court was directly behind Prentice’s apartment house. It was a square, one-storey frame residence. When Pete rang the front doorbell, the door was opened by Charles Niedland, the grey-haired man who had been talking to Prentice the night before. He looked haggard.
“Come in.” He stepped back and swung the door wide.
The Three Investigators entered a place that was partly a home and partly a studio. A skylight had been cut into the living room ceiling. The room had no carpets and very little furniture. There were drawing tables and an easel. Photographs and sketches were tacked all over the walls, and books were piled everywhere. There was also a tiny television set, a sophisticated-looking stereophonic sound system, and a huge collection of records.
Fenton Prentice sat on a daybed with his chin in his hands. He seemed tired but calm.
“Good morning, boys,” he said. “Perhaps you would like to solve another puzzle. As it turns out, I was the one who was robbed last night.”
“Now, Fenton,” said Charles Niedland. “I’m sure that was only an accident. No doubt the police scared the burglar off before he could take anything besides the Carpathian Hound.”
Niedland turned to the boys. “Mr. Prentice tells me that you have a knack for detection. I think, in this case, there is nothing unusual to detect. The burglar got in through the kitchen window. He used a glass cutter to make a hole in the windowpane and reached in and opened the latch. Very ordinary.”
“But he took only the Carpathian Hound,” insisted Prentice.
“The police didn’t think that was odd,” countered Charles Niedland. “They said the television set wouldn’t be worth a darn, anyway. It’s only a nine-inch screen. And the stereo had my brother’s social security number etched on the underside of the turntable and on the speakers. That would make it very difficult to sell. Nothing else here is valuable. My brother lived very simply.”
“A great artist,” said Mr. Prentice. “He lived for his art.”
“What’s a Carpathian Hound?” asked Pete.
Charles Niedland smiled. “A dog. A dog that probably never existed except in the minds of a few superstitious people. My brother was a romantic, and he liked to depict romantic subjects in his work.
“There’s a legend that two centuries ago, a village in the Carpathian Mountains was haunted by a demon dog. I believe the Carpathian Mountain villagers are noted for being superstitious.”
Jupiter nodded knowingly. “The area is also known as Transylvania. The vampire Dracula is supposed to have lived there.”
“Yes,” said Charles Niedland, “but the demon dog wasn’t a vampire, or a werewolf, either. The people in the village believed he was the ghost of a nobleman — a man who was an avid hunter, and who bred a pack of savage hunting dogs. They were said