The Mystery of the Rogues' Reunion - Marc Brandel [38]
“Sure.”
The chauffeur turned on the ignition and manoeuvered the big limousine to the back of the car park where it wouldn’t be noticed. From there Harker could still see the whale-shaped nose of the foreign car.
“Are we going to tail Milton Glass now?” he asked in his helpful way.
Jupe nodded absently. He was deep in thought, leaning back in his seat. Bob could see that he intended to remain like that. Silent and mystifying.
“No, you don’t,” the records man of the team said. “I know you enjoy clamming up like this. But you’re not going to get away with it this time. You’d better explain to us what happened up in that office.”
“Yeah,” Pete agreed. “What’s going on?”
“Okay.” Jupe sighed, but he was secretly rather pleased that his two friends were insisting on hearing his opinion of the case. It would help him to get it all organized in his own mind. He held up his finger.
“Number one,” he said, raising his voice so that Gordon Harker could hear him too. He felt a deep debt of gratitude to the former Flapjack and wanted him to feel he was a trusted member of their investigative team. “When was the last time we saw Peggy?”
“On Hollywood Boulevard last night,” Bob reminded him. “When Milton Glass picked her up in his car.”
“With Bonehead,” Jupe added. “Then this morning Bonehead called me. He was imitating Milton Glass’s voice, and he warned me I’d better not win that quiz or Peggy would have an accident. What do you infer from that?”
“That he was holding her somewhere,” Bob suggested. “I mean, holding her prisoner. But it couldn’t be in his apartment at the Magnolia Arms, could it? There are too many other people living there too. She’d manage to attract their attention somehow.”
“Right,” Jupe told him.
“But now that she’s won the quiz,” Pete objected, “and Bonehead’s been exposed as a fraud, why should she be in danger any longer? Don’t you think he’ll just let her go?”
“No, I don’t,” the First Investigator explained. “Because no matter what he said in that office, Bonehead hasn’t been working alone. Someone did put him up to pretending to be one of the Wee Rogues. Because someone had to coach him every step of the way. Tell him every detail of our lives as child actors. Tell him, for instance, that we used to get paid on Fridays in cash, in a brown envelope fastened with a red string. Bonehead could never have found out facts like that by himself. He could never have found out that Mr. Trouble’s convertible was a Fierce-Arrow ‘29. Someone had to tell him all those things.”
“So he had an accomplice,” Bob put in.
“Yes,” the First Investigator told him. “And that accomplice helped him kidnap Peggy. And now they can’t let her go. Because she knows who that accomplice is. And because kidnapping is a much more serious charge than fraud. You can go to jail for life for kidnapping someone.”
“Milton Glass,” Bob said. “Ever since he refused to press charges against Bonehead, I’ve been sure that Milton Glass was in on the whole thing from the beginning.”
“Right, Jupe?” Pete asked. “Peggy’s locked up somewhere in Milton Glass’s house?”
The First Investigator didn’t answer. He was leaning forward in his seat, watching the man who was walking towards the big yellow car. Jupe watched him get into the car and start to ease out of the car park.
“No,” he said. “Milton Glass is just a publicity hack, trying to protect the studio and the network. He didn’t realize Bonehead was an impostor. That’s the guy who coached the fake Bonehead, who was able to feed him the right answers before each quiz because he knew every foot of the film. That’s the guy who helped him kidnap Peggy.”
“Who?” Bob and Pete leaned forward too, trying to catch a glimpse of the driver of the yellow car as it paused on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard. Gordon Harker drove the limousine smoothly forward behind it. “Luther Lomax,” the First Investigator said.
Chapter 14
The Ruined Mansion
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