The Mystery of the Kidnapped Whale - Marc Brandel [0]
KIDNAPPED WHALE
Marc Brandel
A Hello from Hector Sebastian
HELLO OUT THERE. This is Hector Sebastian —
I was going to say this is Hector Sebastian speaking. But I’m not speaking. I’m writing this on my new word processor. That’s a computer with a typewriter keyboard and a memory to store what I write.
I’m a mystery writer by profession. I used to be a private detective. But that seems a long time ago now, and the case you’re going to read – at least I hope you’re going to read it – has nothing, or almost nothing, to do with me.
It’s a case that involved some young friends of mine, The Three Investigators, as they call themselves. So the best thing I can do is tell you about them first.
The Three Investigators are boys who live in Rocky Beach, a small city on the coast of southern California not far from Hollywood.
Jupiter Jones is the leader of the group. He is short and he probably thinks of himself as stocky. If you wanted to be unkind, you could say he was stout. You could even say he was fat. He has a keen deductive mind and a dogged determination to get to the bottom of anything that puzzles him. He also has a lot more self-confidence than I did at his age. Some people might even find him a little too sure of himself, but I’m fond of Jupe, as his friends call him, so I’ll just say that if he often believes he’s right about something – well, he often is.
Pete Crenshaw, the Second Investigator, is the most athletic of the three. He likes baseball and swimming and he keeps in good shape, which gives him a healthy appetite. He enjoys working on the Three Investigators’ cases, but he is much more cautious than Jupe about getting into dangerous situations.
Bob Andrews, the Third Investigator, is in charge of records and research. He is intelligent and studious and sensitive to other people’s feelings. He is also a born reporter. He carries a notebook around with him all the time and writes down everything that the Investigators learn.
So, now that I’ve introduced the boys to you, I’ll leave you to find out for yourselves how they solved the mystery of the kidnapped whale.
I hope you’ll enjoy it and that you won’t find it difficult to read. Reading, after all, is much easier than writing, even with a word processor.
You can lie down while you’re reading.
And, as the King of Hearts says in Alice in Wonderland, all you have to do is to start at the beginning and go on until you come to the end, then stop.
HECTOR SEBASTIAN
Chapter 1
A Rescue
“THERE SHE BLOWS!” Bob Andrews shouted. “Look. Over there.”
He pointed excitedly out to sea. Sure enough, three or four miles offshore a huge oblong shape had surfaced for a minute. A plume of water rose from its back, spurting out like a fountain in every direction. Then the great gray whale plunged back into the ocean.
The Three Investigators – Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob – were standing on the cliffs above the beach. It was the first day of the spring school break. They had gotten up early that morning and cycled down to the ocean in the hope of seeing the gray whales pass.
Every year, in February and March, thousands of these huge creatures migrate down the Pacific coast from Alaska to Mexico. In the warm lagoons off the tip of the Mexican peninsula called Baja California, the female whales give birth to their calves.
Then the whales rest for a few weeks, recovering their strength, before beginning the five-thousand-mile journey back north to spend the summer feeding on the tiny shrimp and plankton that swarm in the Arctic waters.
“No one seems to know for sure how they get back up north,” Bob said.
Bob Andrews worked part-time in the library in Rocky Beach, the small coastal city where the Three Investigators lived, and he had spent the day before reading up on the whales.
“Why not?” Pete asked.
“No one has been able to track them,” Bob explained, glancing at his notebook. “On the way down they all stick together, and they’re easy to see. So some people think they must split up on the way back, just