The Mystery of the Singing Serpent - M. V. Carey [9]
“Jupe?” Pete knelt on the bricks.
“I’m all right.” Jupe got up slowly. “Did you see who that was?”
“Chunky guy,” said Bob. “Not too tall. Had a bushy moustache. Maybe a walrus moustache.”
Allie regarded them with some respect. “You don’t miss much. How could you tell in the dark?”
“There is a moon,” Jupiter pointed out. “And investigators must have quick powers of observation,” he added pompously. “For instance, have you noticed that the singing has stopped?”
A light came on in the kitchen, and the boys slid into the shadows beside the garage.
The kitchen door opened. “Who’s out there?” called Pat Osborne.
“It’s only me, Aunt Pat,” said Allie. “I was checking on Queenie.”
“You do fuss about that horse,” said Miss Osborne. “Come in, right away.” The kitchen door closed.
From the front of the house came the sound of a car starting.
“The party’s breaking up,” whispered Bob.
“Come back in the morning,” said Allie softly.
“We will,” promised Jupe, and Allie’s sneakered feet whispered off across the bricks to the house.
“Let’s scram,” said Pete. “And if I never hear that sound again, it will be okay with me!”
Chapter 5
The Mysterious Fellowship
THE NEXT MORNING, The Three Investigators leaned on the fence and watched Allie Jamison’s Appaloosa browse in its private meadow. “Some people don’t have it that good,”
remarked Pete.
“Most people don’t eat grass,” said a voice behind them.
The boys turned to see Allie, clad in her usual faded jeans, but wearing a freshly ironed shirt. If she had been frightened the night before, she had recovered. The look she sent them was challenging. “Well?” she said. “Any bright ideas?”
Jupiter Jones glanced at the Jamison house. “Did anything happen after we left last night?”
“Nope,” said Allie. “No crazy singing. No mysterious intruders with moustaches.
Nothing.” Allie climbed up to straddle the fence. “What about that man who was hiding in the garage? What do you think he was up to?”
Bob smiled at her and shook his head. “We don’t know a thing about him, and without any facts, we can only guess. He might be an ordinary sneak thief looking for a way to get into the house, or he might be a tramp looking for a place to bed down for the night.”
“Or he might have something to do with that weird sound,” suggested Jupiter Jones.
“Hugo Ariel spoke of the voice of the serpent coming across the miles.”
“But serpents don’t sing,” said Allie. “They hiss.”
“You never heard the noise before Ariel came to the house,” reasoned Jupe, “so Ariel must be responsible for it in some way. Yet last night, when the singing began, he was sitting in your dining room in plain view and he wasn’t making a move. In fact, he seemed to be in some sort of trance. He couldn’t be the singer. The noise must be produced in some other fashion.”
“How about a tape recording?” put in Pete. “They’re doing terrific things with sound now. If Ariel’s using taped sound, the man in the garage could be an accomplice. He could have planted the equipment near the dining room. He could have been waiting until the session was over, planning to get it back, only we scared him off.”
“That’s possible,” said Jupe, “but we’d better not leap to any conclusions. Ariel may have no connection with the moustached intruder. He wouldn’t really need an accomplice if he was using tape.”
Allie hunched her shoulders. “So we’re back where we started, and Ariel continues to get free room and board here. I don’t care much for some of Aunt Pat’s other friends, either.”
“The other guests last night?” said Jupe. “That man Noxworth looked like an odd character.”
“You might say that. How can he possibly run a delicatessen? He ought to be exterminated by the Board of Health!”
“He is slovenly,” said Jupiter in his precise way. “Yet from what Ariel said last night, he and your aunt are members of the same fellowship, whatever it may be. And last night the guests were all united in wishing