11

Ramble and Scramble!

Jupe did what he was told.

He walked down the path away from the bandstand. It wasn’t the path he had come along, and he wished he could draw another? on a tree as he passed. But he couldn’t even get the chalk out of his pocket. The man was still gripping Jupe’s right arm, forcing it up between his shoulder blades as he marched Jupe ahead of him.

They reached a street at the edge of the park. Still holding Jupe by the wrist, the man opened the trunk of the battered limousine standing there.

“Get in,” he said.

Jupe glanced quickly up and down the street. There was no one in sight. No one he could call to for help.

With a quick wriggle he managed to get his arm free. But it was still impossible to break away altogether. The man’s huge, soft chest was pressed tight against his back, forcing him forward. Another second and Jupe would lose his balance. He would be tipped headfirst into the open trunk of the car.

“Ahhh,” Jupe moaned softly. He let his legs go limp. He slipped weakly to the ground as though he had suddenly fainted. He lay there, face down on the street. As he had sagged to his knees he had slipped the chalk out of his pocket. He had it in his right hand now.

For as long as it took Jupe to reach under the car and draw a? on the road surface there, the big man seemed to be deciding what to do next. He evidently hadn’t expected the First Investigator to faint on him.

Then Jupe felt a hand grabbing at his hair, taking a firm hold of it. He was pulled to his feet. He was forced forward over the open trunk of the car again. This time he did lose his balance. He toppled into the trunk.

The door of the trunk was slammed shut on him.

He heard the engine turn over and catch. He felt the car move slowly forward.

It was pitch-dark in the narrow space, dark and smelly with the stench of gasoline and motor oil. Jupe groped around. It was obvious from the smell that the old limousine was an oil guzzler. It probably used up a quart of oil every ten miles. People with cars like that usually carried a spare quart.

His reaching fingers soon found what he was looking for. Working by touch, he pulled out his prized Swiss Army knife and punched a hole in the can.

The metal floor of the trunk was so old that it was rusted almost through in places. Working with the saw blade of the knife, Jupe soon cut a thin slit through the metal.

Drop by drop he poured the oil out of the can through the slit he had made. It wasn’t as good as being able to draw more?’s. But at least he was leaving a trail behind him.

The car was traveling very slowly. Luckily for Jupe it didn’t travel far. He had only half emptied the oil can when he felt the old limousine lurch to a stop.

The trunk was opened. The big man reached in and grabbed Jupe by his hair again.

“Get out,” he said.

Jupe had to obey him. He scrambled out as fast as he could. He hated having his hair pulled.

As he staggered to his feet, he saw that the car was parked in the driveway of a dilapidated wooden house. The man still had him by the hair. He was half pushing, half pulling him toward the house. The porch creaked and groaned as Jupe crossed it. The man took a key from his pocket and opened the front door.

“Get in.” A final tug at his hair and Jupe found himself stumbling forward into a dark room. The door closed behind him. The lights went on.

Jupe could see at once why the huge man standing over him had seemed to have no face when he looked at him by the bandstand. He was wearing a nylon stocking pulled down over it. It made a blur of his eyes and nose and mouth.

If Jupe had ever seen this man before, he wouldn’t know it. He wouldn’t recognize him if he ever saw him again.

The man looked even bigger and burlier in the light. It might be fat, not muscle, under the Windbreaker he was wearing, but he had the chest and arms of a giant.

Jupe glanced quickly around the room. A few wooden chairs, a rickety table with a phone on it, tattered curtains over the windows. No newspapers or magazines. No pictures on the walls. Jupe figured that the man hadn’t been living there long.

“In there,” the giant told him. He pronounced it “they-er.”

He pushed Jupe toward an open door at the end of the room. He shoved him through it, then slammed and locked the door on him.

Jupe was in the dark again. Groping around, he soon discovered he was in a very small place, obviously a closet.

“Hullo.”

He could hear the man’s voice from the room beyond. He must be talking on the phone. Jupe leaned against the door, listening.

“Hullo,” he heard the man say again. “I’d like to speak to Miss Constance Carmel.”

There was a brief silence, then the man’s voice went on.

“I thought you’d like to know, Miss Carmel, that your young friend, Jupiter Jones, is by way of being my prisoner.”

There was another pause.

“Yes, to put it bluntly, Miss Carmel, I have kidnapped him.”

Another pause.

“I’m not asking for any ransom money. I just wanted you to know that if you do not return that little way-ull to the ocean at once and give up your plans to continue the search for your father’s boat —”

This time the pause was very brief.

“Then you will never see your young friend Mr. Jones again. Not alive, any-way-er.”

Jupe heard the man hang up.

The Three Investigators had found themselves in a number of difficult — even dangerous — situations in the course of solving their many cases. They had been menaced by sharks. They had been bound hand and foot in the cellar of a haunted house. But this seemed to Jupe the worst spot he had ever been in. Because he knew the man in the next room meant it.

Jupe had announced to Bob and Pete that there were three possible suspects who might have disconnected the brakes on Constance’s pickup truck. Oscar Slater and Paul Donner were two of them. The third suspect Jupiter had had in mind was the mysterious caller who had offered them a hundred dollars to free Fluke.

“To find that lost way-ull and return it to the ocean.”

What he was really hiring them to do was to make sure Oscar Slater couldn’t use Fluke to find Captain Carmel’s boat. He didn’t want that wreck found. He didn’t want whatever was on board to be recovered.

And if he had been prepared to kill Constance and the Investigators once — what was to stop him from carrying out his threat against Jupiter now?

Jupe knelt by the door and pulled out his Swiss knife. If he could force the lock…

The man was certainly big, enormous. But he was also fat. Not stocky the way Jupe was. He was covered in flab. Jupe had felt the softness of his arms and chest.

If Jupe could take him by surprise…

He slipped the blade of his knife into the lock.

He worked as silently as he could. He could hear the man walking up and down on the wooden floor of the next room. He tried to time every movement of the blade to the creak of the floorboards.

And then, all at once, there was no longer any need for cautious silence. Jupe heard a rending crack. It sounded like wood splintering. Had the man fallen through the floor?

He snapped back the bolt of the lock and threw open the door.

At the same instant, as he rushed into the room, the front door splintered and burst open.

In the sudden light it seemed to Jupe that the room was full of hurtling bodies. Pete was diving through the air in a flying tackle. The big man was falling backward. Bob was racing forward from the open doorway.

A moment later the Three Investigators had coordinated their movements and were acting together like a well-trained team. Before the huge man in the Windbreaker could struggle to his feet, Jupe and Pete were out the door, across the porch, and on the sidewalk. Bob was close behind them.

“Ramble and scramble!” Jupe shouted.

It was a prearranged signal they had used several times before. It meant the Investigators should all take off in different directions.

“Your bike’s right there,” Bob yelled to Jupe as he jumped onto his own bike and Pete vaulted onto his.

By the time Jupe’s kidnapper reached the porch, the three boys were almost out of sight, pedaling furiously away, rambling and scrambling off into the darkness.