The Mystery of the Scar-faced Beggar - M. V. Carey [4]
“You bet!” said Bob.
The boys all had their bicycles with them. In a few minutes they were on Pacific Coast Highway pedalling north towards Malibu. In less than half an hour they had passed the main shopping area of the famous beach community.
Cypress Canyon Drive was a narrow road that turned and twisted for a couple of hundred metres as it climbed up from the Coast Highway, then ran roughly parallel to the highway but some distance inland from it. As the boys rode along the drive they could hear cars and trucks on the highway, and they could glimpse the ocean between the trees that lined the drive on the left. On the right, the coast range sloped up and away, with the sky clear and blue beyond the tops of the mountains.
“I don’t think anybody really lives here,” said Bob, after they had gone some distance along the rutted, muddy road. “I don’t see a single house. Do you suppose the address on that driver’s licence is a phony?”
“The plot thickens,” said Pete. “Why would a blind man have a driver’s licence?
And if that is the beggar’s licence, why would it have a fake address?”
The drive dipped into a hollow where a small stream of water ran across. Then it climbed again. On the far side of the rise the boys stopped. There was a gully in their path which might have been dry in summer, but which was now a torrent of brown water. And beside the road on the left, almost at the edge of the muddy wash, there was a shabby, barnlike old building with dormer windows in the second story. Neon tubing ran along its eaves. A sign across one end proclaimed that it was Charlie’s Place.
“A restaurant?” said Bob.
Jupe took the wallet out of his pocket and looked again at the driver’s licence.
“Number 2287,” he said. “That’s the number on that new mailbox out in front.”
The boys heard a car on the road behind them. They moved aside, and a red sports car came splashing slowly through the little stream they had already forded. A thin man with greying hair and a lined, somewhat sad face passed without seeming to notice the boys. He turned into the muddy yard that was the parking lot of Charlie’s Place, stopped his car, got slowly out, and took a cane from the floor of the vehicle.
Then he went slowly up sagging steps into the ramshackle building, letting a dilapidated screen door slam behind him as he disappeared.
“He’s got a limp!” exclaimed Pete. “Hey, Bob, didn’t you say that the beggar limped when he ran off last night?”
“Well, he limped after he got hit by the car. Who wouldn’t limp?”
“Could that man be the beggar?” said Jupe. “Is he at all like the beggar?”
Bob shrugged. “He’s about the same size, and I guess he’s about the same age, but there must be a million guys like that.”
“Very well,” said Jupe. Suddenly he was brisk and businesslike. “I’m going in there.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Pete. “Go in and buy a hamburger?”
“I may,” said Jupe. “Or I may simply ask for directions. But one way or another, I’ll find out who that man is. Bob, you had better keep out of sight. If that man was outside the bank in Santa Monica last night, he might recognize you—and he might get nasty.”
“I’ll wait with Bob,” said Pete. “I’m allergic to guys who might get nasty.”
“Chicken!” Bob taunted.
“I’m only ambitious,” said Pete. “My ambition is to live until I am very, very old.”
Jupe chuckled. Leaving his friends standing beside the road, he pushed his bicycle into the parking area of Charlie’s Place. He leaned the bike against the wall of the building and went up the steps. He crossed the little porch, put his hand on the screen door, and pulled. The door opened.
Jupe stepped out of the sunlight into a place that was dim. He saw polished hardwood floors and dark wood panelling. Straight ahead through