The Mystery of the Rogues' Reunion - Marc Brandel [13]
“Yeah,” Pete agreed. “I see what you mean.”
Bob was polishing his glasses. He nodded admiringly. It did all seem to make sense now.
“However,” Jupe continued after a moment, “the theft of those loving cups seems to have changed things a little.”
“You mean we’ve got a case to investigate now,” Bob said. “Is that what you mean, Jupe?”
He knew that once Jupe was presented with a puzzle, any puzzle, nothing could distract him until he had solved it. Bob felt a little the same way himself, and Pete did too. After all, they did call themselves The Three Investigators, and no genuine investigator would ever turn his back on a case. If something had been stolen, it was an investigator’s job to find out who had taken it.
“Got any ideas, Jupe?” Pete enquired.
The First Investigator didn’t answer. He was reaching for the phone. Referring to a business card, he dialled a number.
“Hello,” he said. “Easy-Ride Limos? Jupiter Jones here. One of your drivers has been assigned to me for the Wee Rogues quiz shows. His name is Gordon Harker. Could I speak to him, please?”
There was silence before the chauffeur was put on the line.
“Hello, Mr. Harker,” Jupe said. “I’m sorry to bother you again. But I just got a call from the studio and they want me to go back there… Yes, right away… Okay, thank you. We’ll be waiting at the gate.”
“We’re going out to the studio again?” Pete took his feet down and stood up. “But how are we going to get in, Jupe? I mean, they’re not expecting us. They didn’t really call you, did they?”
“No, I’m afraid that was stretching the truth a little.” Jupe reached in his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. “But they’ll let us in because I’ve got the studio pass. I took it off the windscreen of the limousine when it dropped us back here. I was afraid the chauffeur, Gordon Harker, might want to use it.”
He didn’t explain himself any further than that for the moment. And when Bob and Pete tried to question him during the drive to the studio, he shook his head quickly, signalling them to keep quiet.
**
At the studio gates, Jupe showed his pass to the guard who waved them on at once without any questions. The limousine moved down the street of famous buildings, deserted now, and stopped in front of the door of Stage Nine. Gordon opened the rear door for the boys.
“We’ll probably only be a few minutes, half an hour at the most,” Jupe told the chauffeur.
“Okay.” Gordon Marker slid back into the driver’s seat. “I’ll be just down the street here when you need me.”
Jupe waited until the car had pulled away before walking to the small padded door. He knew it wouldn’t be padlocked. The sound stages were always kept open, he remembered from his days as a child actor, so that the night shift of studio workers, which came on at 8 P.M., could take down a set or put up a new one for the next day’s shooting.
Inside, the huge sound stage was in almost complete darkness. Only a few dim bulbs in wire cages dangled from the gantry, the high metal balcony that ran around the top of the vast building.
Jupe slipped a torch from his pocket and shone it ahead of him as he made his way over the tangle of electrical cables that littered the floor.
Bob and Pete followed him to the kitchen set at the far end. The First Investigator paused there, shining his torch around the walls.
“Now, let’s see,” Jupiter Jones said so softly that he might have been talking to himself. “The buffet table was here. And then right after lunch they carried it out that way and set up the swivel chairs for the talk show. And all that time the golden box with the loving cups in it must have been just outside the set…”
He walked to the door in the set. It was through that door that the young blonde woman had entered when it was time for Milton Glass to make the presentation.
Jupe opened the door and walked through it, followed by his friends. “It was probably sitting there…” Jupe’s torch picked out a sturdy table a few feet away from him. “But that door was never opened while we were in the kitchen until the box was brought in.