The Mystery of the Rogues' Reunion - Marc Brandel [36]
“Because, for once, your hair wasn’t hiding your ears, that’s why,” Jupe told him. He turned to Milton Glass, who was standing beside him. “People’s faces change a lot as they grow older,” he explained. “Bloodhound’s and Footsie’s and mine have changed so much you wouldn’t recognize us as the kids who acted in those Wee Rogues comedies. Right?”
“Right,” Bloodhound agreed. Milton Glass nodded.
“But there’s one thing that never changes,” Jupe went on. “That’s the form and shape of a person’s ears. Bonehead had very unusual ears with big dangling lobes. But the person in the picture here — the person who just won that prize money — has completely different ears. He has small lobes that are attached to his face.”
The young man in the leather jacket took a threatening step forward. He tried to grab the picture out of Jupe’s hand. Bloodhound put up his arm and held him back.
“What are you trying to say?” Bonehead sputtered.
“I’m saying,” the First Investigator told him calmly, “that you were never one of the Wee Rogues. You had no right to compete in these quiz shows. And I think Mr. Glass will agree with me that you are automatically disqualified from winning the prize money. Because—” Jupe waved the photograph he was holding. “Because this picture proves beyond any doubt that, whoever you are, you cannot possibly be Bonehead!”
Chapter 13
Kidnapped!
THEY WERE ALL gathered in a big office in the network building: the impostor who had pretended to be Bonehead, Milton Glass, Luther Lomax, the Three Investigators, Bloodhound, Footsie, and a security guard from the television company.
Milton Glass was sitting behind the desk. In front of him was the photograph Jupe had taken. The fake Bonehead was lounging in a chair facing Glass. The others were grouped around him in other chairs.
“Okay,” the young man in the leather jacket said, “so I blew it. I let Baby Fatso here take a picture of me with my hair off my ears.” He glanced at Jupe. “I told you I knew you weren’t dumb. But I guess you’re even smarter than I thought you were. Big deal.” The impostor shrugged his broad shoulders. “It was worth a try. Twenty thousand bucks. That’s a lot of bread. And I almost got away with it. I’m not gonna even try to run to a bank with the cheque — you’d just stop payment.”
He reached in his pocket and took out the cheque for the prize money he had won on the quiz show. He looked at it for a moment with a glint of regret in his sharp eyes. Then he crunched it up and tossed it across the desk to Milton Glass.
“Let’s have the cup, too,” said Luther Lomax, confidence seeping back into his voice again.
The fake Bonehead regretfully took it out of his leather jacket and smacked it down on the desk.
“Who are you?” the security man asked in a flat voice. “What’s your real name?”
“What’s it to you?” The impostor shrugged again. “Who cares what my name is? I’m just like thousands of others in this town. I’m an out-of-work actor. A pretty good actor too.”
The First Investigator privately agreed with him about that. He was certainly a better actor than the real Bonehead had ever been.
Milton Glass straightened out the crumpled cheque and tucked it away in his pocket. “Who put you up to it?” he asked.
“Nobody.” The impostor’s voice was as hard and confident as ever. “Nobody put me up to it. I’d been watching The Wee Rogues on television, reading about them in the papers. I’d been at school for a while with the kid who played Bonehead in the series, and I knew he’d disappeared years ago. I figured he was probably dead. Got run over or something. He was dumb enough to get run over by a lawn mower.
“I looked enough like him except for my ears,” he went on. “And it gave me an idea. At first I was just trying to cash in on the publicity. I thought I might get a job out of it. An acting job. Then the network came up with that quiz show stunt, and I decided to go for it. Who wouldn’t? Twenty thousand smackers.”
There was