The Mystery of the Green Ghost, page 6
“Something like that,” he said. “And as it turned out, we did. The whole thing was mighty peculiar, if you ask me.”
“You didn’t know the first two men?” Jupiter inquired.
“I thought I might have seen one of them,” Mr. Davis told him. “The other was a stranger to me, but I judged he lived in the development someplace. We have lots of neighbours we don’t know here. Most of us have only been here a year or so.”
“How many of you were there when you reached the house?” Jupiter asked.
“Six,” Mr. Davis told him. “Although somebody else said there were seven, I know there were only six of us when we started up the driveway. Of course, somebody could have followed us out of curiosity. After we heard the scream and then started to look inside, nobody thought much about counting. And it was mighty dark. After we left, we split up.
My friend and I and our two neighbors decided we’d better notify the police. I don’t know what happened to the others. I guess they just didn’t want any publicity.”
At that moment a small wire-haired terrier came dashing across the yard and leaped around Mr. Davis’s legs, yapping a happy welcome.
“Down, boy, down!” the man laughed, and patted the dog, which subsided onto the lawn, where he stretched out, panting, and watched his master.
Jupiter remembered, from Bob’s account, that one of the men at the Green mansion had had a dog. He ventured a question.
“Sure,” Mr. Davis told him. “I had Domino here with me. I always take him for an evening walk, so I took him along.”
Jupiter stared at the dog. The dog met his eye. His mouth open, panting, the dog seemed to be laughing at him as if it knew something Jupiter didn’t. Jupiter scowled. Again an idea was trying to come to him, and couldn’t quite make it.
He ventured a few more questions, but Mr. Davis could tell him nothing new, so Jupiter thanked him and remounted his bicycle.
He rode home, slowly now, thinking furiously. When he got back to the salvage yard, the big main gates were shut. The sun was setting – he had spent longer in his quest for information than he had realized.
Jupiter found Konrad comfortably smoking a pipe in his little cottage.
“Hey, Jupe,” Konrad said as Jupiter entered. “You look like you’re thinking so hard you’re gonna explode pretty soon.”
“Konrad,” Jupiter said, hardly noticing the remark, “last night you heard me yell.”
“Sure did,” Konrad agreed. “Sounded like a stuck pig, Jupe. I hope you don’t mind if I say it.”
“I was trying to sound as hurt as I could,” Jupiter told him. “But you wouldn’t have heard me if my window and your window hadn’t been open, would you?”
“I don’t think so. What’re you getting at?”
Jupiter’s face turned pink with sudden excitement. The scream that everyone had heard
– and the dog! The dog that had seemed to be able to tell him something. Suddenly he remembered that in a Sherlock Holmes story there had been a dog that had told Sherlock Holmes a lot, too! By not doing a thing!
He turned and hurried back to the cottage where he lived. All of a sudden ideas were tumbling in his mind and taking form.
The policeman at the Green mansion hadn’t been able to hear him yell, not when he was inside with the door shut. But outside – yes, he’d heard him clearly! That was very significant!
Once inside the house, Jupiter got out the tape recorder and prepared to play the scream again, and along with it the bits of conversation Bob had recorded. He played it all through once, then sat very still for several minutes. He recalled exactly what Bob had told him the previous night. It all fitted! It had to fit!
The scream – the fact that no one was sure whether six or seven men had been in the house – even the dog! Now he knew what the dog might have told him if it could speak.
There were a lot of other things he still didn’t know, but he knew that much, he felt sure.
It was dark in the room, but he didn’t bother to turn on the light as he grabbed up the telephone and put through a person-to-person call for Bob Andrews in Verdant Valley.
After a long delay, it was Miss Green herself who answered the phone.
“Is this Bob’s friend, Jupiter Jones?” she asked, and her voice seemed to tremble.
“Yes, Miss Green,” Jupiter answered. “I wanted to talk to Bob. I believe I have some ideas and ––”
But her voice stopped him.
“Bob isn’t here,” she said, sounding very distracted. “Neither is his friend Pete. My great-nephew Chang is missing, too. All three of them have just—just disappeared!”
Chapter 8
Runaway!
The morning after his telephone call to Jupiter – the same morning Jupiter was so busy at the salvage yard – Bob, together with Pete and Chang, was exploring Verdant Valley on horseback. None of the three boys had any notion of the dangerous and exciting events that were ahead of them that day.
They weren’t planning anything more exciting at the moment than a look at, the caves which the 3-V Winery used as aging cellars in which to store the wine made from the grapes grown in Verdant Valley. These caves, as Chang explained, were really old mines, most of them dug into the high ridge to the west of the valley long before.
Mostly, the boys’ plan was to stay away from the house for the day. They couldn’t very well investigate the theft of the Ghost Pearls, because if Sheriff Bixby was correct, and city thieves had taken them, thieves and pearls both were probably back in San Francisco by now.
But the big house was swarming with reporters, brought there by the news of the appearance of the ghost and the theft of the pearls. And Miss Lydia Green, whom they had seen only briefly, looking very haggard and worn, had asked them not to give the reporters the chance to guess that Pete and Bob were the boys who had seen the first ghostly manifestation at the empty house in Rocky Beach. She was afraid this would just make the reporters write bigger and more sensational stories, speculating about the ghost and why the boys had come. As she said, the stories were going to do enough damage anyway.
So Bob, Pete and Chang had eaten breakfast in the kitchen and had quietly slipped away to the stables, where they had saddled three horses. Chang did most of the work, for Bob and Pete had only had limited experience with horses while visiting dude ranches.
Now, flashlights clipped to their belts for use later in exploring the wine caves – or mines – they rode slowly through the cultivated fields, between the bushy grape vines, where purple grapes were ripening fast in the hot sun.
Chang was visibly gloomy.
“There should be at least a hundred pickers in the fields now,” he told them. “And several trucks carrying the grapes they picked to the pressing houses. But look. You can hardly see a dozen people picking. And only one truck. The others have all left for fear of the ghost. If this keeps up, Aunt Lydia and the vineyard will be ruined. She’ll never be able to pay off the notes, and they will be due very soon.”
Bob and Pete couldn’t think of anything to say to cheer him up, but Pete tried.
“Our partner, Jupiter Jones, is working on the mystery of the ghost right this minute, back in Rocky Beach,” he said. “Jupe is pretty brainy. If he can solve the mystery and quiet down the ghost somehow, maybe the pickers will come back.”
“Only if it happens very soon,” Chang said. “Otherwise the pickers will go elsewhere.
This morning old Li told me that I am the one causing such ill-fortune to Verdant Valley.
She said I brought bad luck with me when I came from Hong Kong a year and a half ago and that I should go back.”
“That’s silly,” Bob said promptly. “How could you bring bad luck?”
Chang shook his head. “I do not know. But it is true that since I have been here, there have been many misfortunes. Batches of wine have spoiled, casks have leaked and machinery has broken down time and time again. Nothing has gone right.”
“I don’t see how anybody can blame you for that!” Pete declared.
“Perhaps it is true, though,” Chang said. “Perhaps if I were to go back to Hong Kong, the ghost would go with me and fortune would smile again on Verdant Valley. If I could be sure that was the case, I would go tomorrow. Not for anything would I bring trouble and misfortune to my honoured great-aunt!”
Chang seemed so gloomy, Bob decided it was time to change the subject.
“You call Miss Green your aunt, and Mr. Carlson your uncle,” he said. “I haven’t been able to figure out the actual relationship. Old Mathias Green was your grandfather “
“My great-grandfather,” Chang said. “Miss Green is really my great-aunt, but I call her aunt by courtesy. Uncle Harold is a distant cousin of hers. I don’t know the exact relationship, but I call him uncle also, by courtesy. We three are the only members of this branch of the family.”
Pete looked ahead, down the long, narrow valley, walled on both sides by steep mountain ridges. As far as he could see, grape vines grew.
“So this place is really all yours, Chang?” he asked with interest. “I mean, as the only direct descendant of old Mathias.”
“Oh, no, no,” the other boy said. “It belongs to Aunt Lydia. Her mother started it and Aunt Lydia has worked all her life to build it up.
“She wants to deed it to me, but I will not permit it. So she is leaving it to me in her will. I have decided that then I will give half of it to Uncle Harold. After all, he has worked hard as Aunt Lydia’s business manager to make the vineyard and the winery prosper. Only
–” he looked gloomy again “– if the vineyard and the winery are lost because there is no money to pay off the loans, none of us will have anything.”
A jeep came down the dirt road toward them. They pulled to a stop to let it pass. Chang was riding a big black colt named Ebony, full of life and spirit, which he had to hold in tightly. Pete was riding a young mare, Nellie, who was a bit nervous, and he, too, had to keep her under tight control. Bob was on an older mare, called Rockingchair, because of her easy motion and placid disposition.
The jeep stopped. Mr. Jensen leaned out.
“Hi, Chang,” he said. “I suppose you see how few pickers we have this morning?”
The boy nodded.
“Those varmints last night did their work well,” Jensen continued. “Every time they told about the ghost they claimed to see, they made it bigger and uglier, until at last it was breathing smoke and flames. They scared the daylights out of the other pickers. I’ve sent out word for help, but I’m afraid we won’t get it.”
He shook his head:
“I’m on the way up to report to Miss Green,” he said. “It doesn’t look good.”
The jeep roared off. The boys started their horses walking again and with an effort Chang threw off his gloomy mood.
“What can’t be helped, can’t be helped,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do, so let’s try to enjoy ourselves.”
They rode the length of the valley, stopping now and then, while Chang showed the other pressing houses. Sometime after noon they began to get hot and hungry. They had sandwiches and canteens with them, and feed for the horses in their saddle bags.
“I know where we can be cool and comfortable,” Chang told them. He led them past an old building, the old grape-pressing house, now only used at rush periods. They rode a few hundred yards farther, and they were in the shadow of the western ridge of the valley wall.
Around an outcropping of rock they found a small, shaded space where they dismounted, tied up their horses and gave them the grain they had brought.
Then Chang led them around the other side of the rocky outcropping and they found themselves outside a heavy door set into the rock wall of the ridge.
“This is one of the entrances to the aging caves, or mines, I told you about,” Chang said. He pulled the door open with an effort. Beyond it was a shaft of darkness that ran straight into the ridge. “We’ll explore this after we eat.”
He reached for a switch inside the door and clicked it, but nothing happened.
“Darn,” he said. “I forgot. The dynamos aren’t on. We have to make our own electricity here, and the dynamos for different sections are only turned on when there’s work being done inside. Oh well, we can use our flashlights.”
He unbuckled his own light and shone it forward. Pete and Bob saw a long corridor, rock walled, with timbers overhead supporting the roof. On each side of the corridor was a long row of large casks, bigger than water barrels, lying on their sides. Down the middle of the corridor ran two narrow rails, and a small flatcar stood a few feet away.
“The casks can be put on that flatcar and rolled down here to the entrance,” Chang explained. “If we want to ship a whole cask, we just load it onto a truck that backs up to the entrance. That way the heavy casks are pretty easy to handle.
“Well, suppose we sit here inside the door and eat, and take it easy for a while.”
Pete and Bob were delighted to flop down beside him with their backs against the stone, and start in on the lunch. It was cool inside, though the heat of the afternoon was only a few feet away.
As they ate, they could look out at the valley. The old pressing house was in their line of vision, but no one, looking in their direction, could see them inside the cave.
They finished eating and talked for awhile, enjoying the coolness. Chang was telling them about his life in Hong Kong, where he had always been surrounded by people, in contrast to the quiet life in Verdant Valley, when the boys saw several old cars pull up outside the pressing house a few hundred yards away.
Half a dozen men, all of them big and powerful looking, got out and stood in a little group. They seemed to be waiting for something.
Chang broke off what he was saying, and frowned.
“I wonder why they aren’t busy picking?” he asked aloud. “Today we need every hand available.”
A moment later, Mr. Jensen’s jeep drove up and they saw the burly man get out. He went inside the old pressing house. The men followed him and the door shut.
“I suppose Mr. Jensen is going to work on the machinery,” Chang murmured. “Since the pressing house isn’t being used today. Well, it’s his business, I don’t like him very well, but I have to admit he knows how to handle the workers, even though he does get rather rough with them at times.”
He leaned on an elbow and turned to Bob and Pete.
“Want to explore the aging tunnels now?” he asked.
They agreed and unsnapped the flashlights from their belts. Pete stood up and as he did so, slipped. His hand shot out to steady himself. The flashlight seemed to zip from between his fingers and fell on the rock with a tinkle of broken glass. When he picked it up, the lens and bulb were both broken.
“Darn!” Pete said, disgusted with himself. “Now I haven’t got a flashlight.”
“We could get by with just two,” Chang said, “but –” He was gazing at the jeep parked outside the pressing house.
“I have it,” he said. “Borrow Mr. Jensen’s. The one he loaned me last night. He carries it in the toolbox with the other gear during the day. We’ll get it back to him long before dark. I’ll ride over and get it.”
But Pete insisted that as he had broken his flashlight, it was up to him to do the chore of getting the replacement. Chang wrote out a note, to leave in the toolbox, telling Mr. Jensen that they had borrowed the flashlight and would return it later.
“When he’s busy he hates to be interrupted,” he said. “Besides, the flashlight actually belongs to Aunt Lydia, so he won’t mind our using it for a while.”
Pete got on his horse and started trotting across the field toward the pressing house. In a couple of minutes he reined up beside the parked jeep. His horse, having rested, was feeling frisky, and he had to hold the reins tightly to keep it from bolting away.
With one hand, he flipped open the toolbox of the jeep and saw inside a jumble of tools.
The flashlight was not in sight. Then he saw it, tucked well down into a corner. He pulled it out and slipped it inside his belt. It was an old-fashioned flashlight, with a large, black fiber barrel, and had no ring that he could use to hang it to his belt clip.
He dropped the note Chang had given him into the toolbox and left the box open so Mr. Jensen would be sure to see it. Then, with some difficulty, he remounted and started trotting back to where Bob and Chang waited.
He had covered a hundred yards when he heard a voice shouting behind him. Pete looked back. Mr. Jensen was standing beside his jeep shouting at him. Pete held up the flashlight, then pointed to the jeep, to indicate that the note explained everything, and kept on trotting.
A moment later the man leaped into the jeep, while the other men who had been in the building with him crowded outside to watch, and raced the sturdy vehicle across the field, between the grapevines, after Pete.
Obviously, he wanted Pete to stop.
Wondering at the man’s excitement, Pete reined
in his horse, which danced a little.
“Steady, girl, steady!” he said soothingly.
But the horse, eyeing the approaching jeep,
still side-stepped nervously.
The jeep roared up and stopped. Mr. Jensen
practically catapulted out of it and ran toward Pete.
“You young thief!” he roared. “I’ll tan your
hide! I’ll teach you to –”
The rest of what he had to say was lost.
As he came closer, the nervous horse under
Pete gave a great leap. Then, before Pete could get himself set, it bolted.
At a dead run it started tearing down the
vineyard, angling toward the mountain slope,
and Pete could do nothing to stop it.
Knees pressed tightly against the horse and
unashamedly clutching the pommel of the
Western type saddle, Pete hung on for dear life.
Chapter 9
A Desperate Flight
The mare thundered along between the rows of grapevines, heading straight for the rocky ridge of the western wall of the valley. Pete, unable to do anything but hang on, saw that there was a trail slanting up the slope, narrow but not too steep.
