The Mystery of the Rogues' Reunion - Marc Brandel [27]
Bob and Pete stared at him. What was Jupe up to? What was he talking about?
Jupe was still holding his hand out. He waited until the chauffeur shook it.
“It’s good to see you again, Flapjack,” the First Investigator said.
Chapter 10
Rendezvous in Hollywood
“WELL,” Gordon Harker said, “I guess I was luckier than most of the other Wee Rogues, except Bonehead maybe. I never used my own name as an actor and when the series folded I had no trouble at school. With my hair combed out, instead of twisted up into those awful spikes — and my natural voice, no one recognized me as Flapjack.”
He finished his coffee and Jupe poured him another cup. The other two Investigators waited eagerly for the chauffeur to continue his story.
“My parents had saved my movie earnings for me,” he went on. “I was a good student, and when I finished high school at sixteen, I was able to go on to teacher’s college and become a teacher.” He looked across the table at Jupe. “I’m still a teacher,” he said. “I like it. I like the job. I like the kids I work with. The school’s in what you might call a pretty tough neighbourhood, and they’re a rough bunch, those kids. But they don’t give me any trouble. I get along with them fine.”
He smiled wryly. “When the network started running those Wee Rogues comedies,” he said, “it scared me to death for a while. If those tough kids in my classes ever found out I was Flapjack, my life wouldn’t be worth living. Can you imagine how they’d make fun of me? ‘How come Ah gets to do all the chores around here?’” He imitated Flapjack’s singsong voice. “I couldn’t walk into the school without them kidding me, yelling stuff like that at me.”
Jupiter nodded sympathetically. He remembered those last three weeks before summer vacation, the boys and girls in his own school coming up to him in the yard. “Say ‘Pleath thtop,’ Baby Fatso. Pleath.”
“And yet,” Gordon Harker went on in a puzzled way, “I couldn’t help remembering the old days. And I was sort of fascinated, wondering what had happened to the other Wee Rogues. How they’d all made out. I’d been earning some extra money working for the Easy-Ride Limo Company for a couple of years during vacation time. I’d even had some assignments driving for the old movie studio. And when I read about the Wee Rogues’ reunion, I just couldn’t seem to stay away from it. I swapped jobs with one of the other drivers so I could be around the studio during the reunion. So I could check up on the old Rogues and see what they were all like now.”
“If you drove for the studio of ten,” Jupe said,” why did you have to ask directions to Stage Nine?’’
“Oh, it’s a huge lot,” Mr. Harker said. “And I’d never been called to that particular sound stage since I was a kid. I never really paid attention to directions when my parents drove me to shootings. I was too busy memorizing my lines and trying to stay awake.”
He stirred sugar into his coffee and then looked across at Jupe again.
“Of course, I didn’t think anyone would ever recognize me,” he said. “I never thought anyone would guess I was Flapjack. Because as far as Milton Glass and the studio could tell, Flapjack had just disappeared when the series ended. No one knew where he was or
what had become of him. They couldn’t trace him.”
He sipped his coffee and put his cup down. “I guess I just didn’t count on your being so smart,” he told Jupe.
“I wasn’t so smart.” Jupe glanced down modestly at his soda can. “It was mostly luck, and Bob seeing your answers to those questions.”
Privately, the First Investigator felt he was stretching the truth a little. He didn’t really think luck had had anything to do with it. It was his own remarkable deductive power that had identified Gordon Harker as Flapjack.
He had put all the clues together — the fact that Harker hadn’t been able to identify Mr. Trouble’s car as a Pierce-Arrow because Flapjack had never been in any of those car scenes. The fact that Mr. Harker had known the name of Edmund Frank, the actor who had played Mr. Trouble, because in a later episode Mr. Trouble hired Flapjack to