The Mystery of the Rogues' Reunion - Marc Brandel [20]
The kitchen set was flooded with light.
Step Two. Phone.
It was only a few metres away from him, fastened to the wall. Jupe walked over to it and held the receiver to his ear. The phone was dead.
Chapter 7
Trapped
Listening to the dead-silent receiver, the First Investigator wasn’t discouraged. He hadn’t really expected the phone to work. Whoever had locked him into the sound stage to keep him away from the quiz show would have had to make sure he couldn’t phone for help.
Step Three. Fix it. If possible.
It was easy enough to find where the line had been cut, close to the floor. But whoever had cut it had done a thorough job. The wire hadn’t simply been snipped through. A whole long section of it had been lifted out.
The carpenter’s toolbox was still on the floor behind the kitchen set. There was a good strong pair of pliers in it. Finding a length of wire on a sound stage was no problem. Jupe took what he needed from a small, standing spotlight.
Working as fast as he could, he reconnected the two loose ends of the phone line. His heart was thumping as he lifted the receiver to his ear again. There was a faint but frightening possibility that the phone line had been cut outside the sound stage too.
Jupe listened to one of the sweetest sounds he had ever heard: the dial tone.
Jupe realized he could call the studio switchboard and ask them to send someone to let him out with a duplicate key. But it was easy to foresee all the questions and explanations he would have to go through if he did that. He decided this was a situation better kept between himself and the other two Investigators.
Pete had just come home from the beach. He answered the phone on the second ring. Jupe explained where he was and, as briefly as possible, what had happened.
“Call Gordon Harker and ask him to drive you down here right away,” he went on. “I’ll try to cut through the padding at the bottom of the door so I can slip the key out to you.”
Pete didn’t waste a second after Jupe had hung up. He called the limo company and spoke to Gordon Harker. Within thirty minutes the chauffeur drew up outside Pete’s house. Pete and Bob, who had ridden over on his bicycle in answer to Pete’s urgent call, scrambled into the back of the car.
There was nothing the two Investigators could do now except sit back and try to relax as the limousine threaded its way quickly through the Saturday traffic towards Hollywood. At last it turned on to Vine Street. The studio gates came in sight.
Gordon Harker swung the car to a stop as the guard walked out of his booth and approached the limo. “Let me see your pass, please,” he said. The two Investigators looked at each other. Both their faces were blank with dismay. They didn’t have the studio pass. Jupiter had it.
The First Investigator gave a final tap to the chisel. Putting down his tools, he lifted away the thin sliver of wood he had cut from the bottom of the door and set it beside the strips of padding he had already hacked away. He lay down on the floor, keeping his eyes as close to the ground as he could.
It was okay. Step Four had been accomplished. He could see a thin line of light under the door now. As soon as Pete arrived, Jupe would be able to slip the key out to him.
Jupe looked at his watch. Seventeen minutes to two. What was keeping Pete? He should have been here by now. Had he had trouble getting through to the chauffeur? Or had something else held him up?
With a sense of unease, Jupiter Jones remembered his own puzzled suspicion of Gordon Harker.
The limousine was still stalled at the gate.
“We had a pass, but we left it at home,” Pete told the guard. “Don’t you remember us? We were here yesterday for the Wee Rogues’ reunion. We’ve come to pick up our friend, Jupiter Jones.”
The guard shook his head stolidly. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said. “There’s no list of visitors for today. And I can’t let you in without a pass.”
“B—but …” Bob stammered helplessly. “But we’ve —”
He never got any further than that. Gordon Harker had opened the back door of the car.