The Mystery of the Kidnapped Whale - Marc Brandel [28]
“In there,” the giant told him. He pronounced it “they–er.”
He pushed Jupe toward an open door at the end of the room. He shoved him through it, then slammed and locked the door on him.
Jupe was in the dark again. Groping around, he soon discovered he was in a very small place, obviously a closet.
“Hullo.”
He could hear the man’s voice from the room beyond. He must be talking on the phone. Jupe leaned against the door, listening.
“Hullo,” he heard the man say again. “I’d like to speak to Miss Constance Carmel.”
There was a brief silence, then the man’s voice went on.
“I thought you’d like to know, Miss Carmel, that your young friend, Jupiter Jones, is by way of being my prisoner.”
There was another pause.
“Yes, to put it bluntly, Miss Carmel, I have kidnapped him.”
Another pause.
“I’m not asking for any ransom money. I just wanted you to know that if you do not return that little way–ull to the ocean at once and give up your plans to continue the search for your father’s boat –”
This time the pause was very brief.
“Then you will never see your young friend Mr. Jones again. Not alive, any–way–er.”
Jupe heard the man hang up.
The Three Investigators had found themselves in a number of difficult – even dangerous situations in the course of solving their many cases. They had been menaced by sharks. They had been bound hand and foot in the cellar of a haunted house. But this seemed to Jupe the worst spot he had ever been in. Because he knew the man in the next room meant it.
Jupe had announced to Bob and Pete that there were three possible suspects who might have disconnected the brakes on Constance’s pickup truck. Oscar Slater and Paul Donner were two of them. The third suspect Jupiter had had in mind was the mysterious caller who had offered them a hundred dollars to free Fluke.
“To find that lost way–ull and return it to the ocean.”
What he was really hiring them to do was to make sure Oscar Slater couldn’t use Fluke to find Captain Carmel’s boat. He didn’t want that wreck found. He didn’t want whatever was on board to be recovered.
And if he had been prepared to kill Constance and the Investigators once – what was to stop him from carrying out his threat against Jupiter now?
Jupe knelt by the door and pulled out his Swiss knife. If he could force the lock …”
The man was certainly big, enormous. But he was also fat. Not stocky the way Jupe was. He was covered in flab. Jupe had felt the softness of his arms and chest.
If Jupe could take him by surprise …”
He slipped the blade of his knife into the lock.
He worked as silently as he could. He could hear the man walking up and down on the wooden floor of the next room. He tried to time every movement of the blade to the creak of the floorboards.
And then, all at once, there was no longer any need for cautious silence. Jupe heard a rending crack. It sounded like wood splintering. Had the man fallen through the floor?
He snapped back the bolt of the lock and threw open the door.
At the same instant, as he rushed into the room, the front door splintered and burst open.
In the sudden light it seemed to Jupe that the room was full of hurtling bodies. Pete was diving through the air in a flying tackle. The big man was falling backward. Bob was racing forward from the open doorway.
A moment later the Three Investigators had coordinated their movements and were acting together like a well-trained team. Before the huge man in the Windbreaker could struggle to his feet, Jupe and Pete were out the door, across the porch, and on the sidewalk. Bob was close behind them.
“Ramble and scramble!” Jupe shouted.
It was a prearranged signal they had used several times before. It meant the Investigators should all take off in different directions.
“Your bike’s right there,” Bob yelled to Jupe as he jumped onto his own bike and Pete vaulted onto his.
By the time Jupe’s kidnapper reached the porch, the three boys were almost out of sight, pedaling furiously away, rambling and scrambling off into the darkness.
Chapter 12
The Two Poles
“WE WERE