The Mystery of the Kidnapped Whale - Marc Brandel [13]
He didn’t say anything else until they were out on the street. Then he shook hands with them again and said he hoped he’d see them again soon.
The boys thanked him for the hamburgers and said they certainly hoped so too. Jupe was frowning and pinching his lower lip as he watched the tall, thin man walk away.
“Nice guy,” Pete said. “Too bad about his boat.”
“Mmmm.” Jupe didn’t seem to be listening. He was still pinching his lip a few minutes later when Pancho picked them up to drive them back to Rocky Beach.
“I guess you waste your time, huh?” Pancho said sympathetically as he turned onto the freeway.
“Waste our time? How?” Bob asked. He and Pete were sitting in the back. It was like riding on the top of a bus with Pancho and Jupe in front of them on the lower deck.
“Don’t find Captain Diego Carmel.”
“Sure we found him,” Pete said. “He bought us a hamburger.”
“Huh?” Pancho half turned in his seat, then concentrated on the road again. “Of course you don’t find him. I run into some Mexican friends at a used-car lot. They tell me all about poor Captain Carmel. His boat sunk.”
“Sure,” Bob agreed. “He told us himself –”
“Somebody maybe tell you. But not Captain Carmel.”
“Why not?” It was the first time Jupe had spoken since they left the captain. He was looking at Pancho in a quizzical way as though he half expected what the answer would be.
“Because Captain Carmel is in hospital,” Pancho told him. “Very sick. He got pneumonia, all that time in the water. Is in intensive care.”
He shrugged in sympathy.
“Poor Captain Diego Carmel. He can’t talk to anybody.”
Chapter 5
Time for a Showdown
“IF HE WASN’T CAPTAIN CARMEL,” Pete said, “why did he pretend to be?”
The Three Investigators were back at Headquarters, sitting in the office.
“And who was he really?” Bob asked.
Jupe didn’t answer. He was leaning back in the swivel chair behind the desk, and his round face was all puckered up with concentration.
“I hate to say this,” he admitted after a moment. “But I’m an absolute idiot, a first-class, credulous, stupid, illogical jerk.”
Bob wanted to ask why, but he couldn’t think of any way of putting the question without sounding as though he agreed with him. He waited for Jupe to explain himself.
“Because I didn’t listen to my brain,” Jupe went on. “I didn’t believe my own eyes. When I looked at that man who met us outside Captain Carmel’s office, I was sure he wasn’t a charter-boat captain. He didn’t dress like a charter-boat captain. He didn’t have the hands or the build of a charter-boat captain. And did you notice his right eye?”
“You mean that sort of heavy crease underneath it?” Bob asked. “Yes, I did notice that. I thought at first – You remember that Englishman we met last year?”
Jupe nodded. “The one who wore a monocle. That’s what I thought too at first. Then I thought he might be a jeweler or a watchmaker. Then when he was so friendly and he bought us a hamburger, I just stopped thinking about it altogether. I sat there like a half-witted owl, listening to him –”
His cheeks were pink as he thought about it. He seemed to be blushing with shame at the memory.
“And I believed him. I lapped it all up. I –”
“We all did.” Bob wished Jupe would stop blaming himself. So, okay, they had been taken in. But thanks to Pancho, at least they now knew it. The thing to do was to go on from there. “The point is not that the guy lied to us. But –”
“But what?” Pete prompted him.
“But that a lot of the things he told us were true. He told us Captain Carmel lost his boat in a storm. And we know that’s true because of Pancho’s Mexican friends. He told us Oscar Slater’s address. His right address. And then at the end –”
Bob didn’t have Jupe’s deductive powers but he had a good memory. “At the end he said Mr. Slater was very interested in training whales and had a house with a big swimming pool in it’s back.”
“And that’s certainly true,” Pete agreed.