The Mystery of the Rogues' Reunion - Marc Brandel [14]
“What do you think?”
“So whoever stole the cups couldn’t have smuggled them into the kitchen and hidden them there,” Pete suggested. “He would have had to take the cups out of the box and walk through the crowd at the open end of the set into the kitchen.”
“Right.” Jupe nodded. “So let’s assume I’m the thief.”
He walked around the end of the canvas flats that formed the walls of the kitchen to the open space where the camera crew had gathered during the buffet lunch.
“I’m here, and I’m surrounded by people,” he went on. “But if I slip over to that table with the box on it, I’m out of sight behind the set.” Shining his torch in front of him, he walked back to the table.
“The door into the kitchen is closed, and there’s no reason for anyone else to come back here,” he said thoughtfully. “So with any luck I’ve got plenty of time to open the box, take out the cups, and reseal the gold wrapping paper.”
He went through the motions of doing it with his hands. “So I’m standing here with five silver cups,” he continued. “I may have a sack or something to put them in. But there are
all those people just around the end of the set, so …”
“So you have to hide them somewhere around here,”
Bob finished for him. He switched on his own torch and let the beam play over the area, picking out a coil of cables, several large cans of paint, a stack of two-by-fours, and, slightly to one side, a heavy wooden chest.
Jupe stood where he was, keeping his torch on them, while the other two Investigators made straight for the wooden chest.
There was nothing in it except some carpenter’s tools. There was nothing under the two-by-fours either or in any of the empty paint cans.
Bob and Pete turned and looked at the First Investigator, He wasn’t watching them. He was standing beside one of the movable arc lights and examining the hand screw on its tall metal pole.
Jupe stiffened suddenly, looking up several feet above him at the big black box that housed the reflector.
“Give me a hand with this,” he said.
The other two Investigators hurried over to him. They loosened the screw that held the pole in its extended position, then lowered the reflector box slowly until Jupe could reach it. He found the catch and pulled open the side of the box. He reached inside.
Suddenly a hundred bolts of lightning seemed to strike at once, merging into one lasting flash.
The whole end of the sound stage where the kitchen stood was flooded with light!
Chapter 5
A Suspect Surfaces
The Three Investigators stood motionless in the glare of the arc lights. Bob and Pete were still gripping the metal pole. Jupe had his hand inside the reflector box.
“Okay,” a commanding voice said. “Just stay where you are.”
The boys stayed still as Luther Lomax, the director of The Wee Rogues, moved away from the master control switch box and walked across the sound stage towards them.
He halted a few feet away, his eyes fixed on Jupe.
There was no need for any torch now. They could all see the inside of the reflector case. They could see Jupe’s hand reaching into it. They could see the five silver cups in the space behind the reflector.
“So that’s where you hid them,” Luther Lomax said.
He had seemed old and beaten that afternoon at the lunch, but there was a tone of authority in his voice now that reminded Jupe of the way he had ordered the Wee Rogues around when he had been directing the series.
“Those cups cost the studio two thousand dollars,” Lomax went on. “And the three of you sneaked them out of their box this afternoon and hid them in that arc light when no one was looking.”
“No,” Jupiter Jones said. “I didn’t hide them here, Mr. Lomax. I just found them here. “He took the silver cups out of the space behind the reflector and handed them, one by one, to the director.
“You’ll have to think up a better