The Mystery of the Green Ghost, page 9
He wore flowing robes, like those worn by the ancient Chinese emperors. Bob had seen pictures of them in books. His face was small, thin, yellow like a badly withered pear, and he peered at them through plain gold-rimmed spectacles.
“Advance,” he said quietly. “Sit down, small ones who have caused me so much trouble.”
Bob and Chang crossed the room on rugs so thick they seemed to sink into them. Two small stools were arranged as if waiting for them. They sat down, staring in wonder at the old man.
“You may call me Mr. Won,” the ancient Chinese said to them. “I am one hundred and seven years old.”
Bob could believe that. He was certainly the oldest looking man Bob had ever seen. Yet he did not seem feeble.
Mr. Won looked at Chang. “Small cricket, the blood of my nation flows in your veins also. I speak of the old China, not of the China of today. Your family has had much to do with the old China. Your great-grandfather stole one of our princesses for a bride. Of that I do not speak. Women follow their hearts. But your great-grandfather stole something else.
Or bribed an official to steal it for him, which is the same thing. A string of pearls!”
Mr. Won showed the first sign of excitement.
“A string of priceless pearls,” he said. “For more than fifty years their whereabouts were unknown. Now they have reappeared. And I must have them.”
He leaned forward slightly. His voice became stronger. “Do you hear that, small mice? I must have the pearls! ”
By now Bob was feeling extremely nervous, for he knew perfectly well they didn’t have the pearls to give Mr. Won. He wondered how Chang felt. Sitting beside him, Chang spoke boldly.
“Oh venerable one,” he said, “we do not have the pearls. They are in the possession of another. One who is fleet of foot and stout of heart has them, and he has escaped with them to return them to my aunt. Return us to my aunt and I will try to persuade her to sell them to you, That is, if the letter she received from someone who claims to be a relative of the bride of my great-grandfather does not turn out to be true.”
“It is not true!” Mr. Won said sharply. “It was sent by another, whom I know, to confuse things, for he, too, wishes to buy the pearls. I am rich, but he is richer. He will buy them unless I get them first. Therefore – I must have them.”
Chang bowed his head.
“We are small mice,” he said, “and we are helpless. Those who captured us did not capture our friend. He has the pearls. He has courage, he will escape.”
“They bungled!” Mr. Won’s fingers drummed on the arm of his teakwood chair. “They will pay for letting him escape!”
“They almost caught him,” Chang replied. “Somehow they guessed my plan. They were waiting in silence as first I, then my friend, slipped through a narrow passage no man could travel. Then I heard a pebble roll. I swung my light, saw someone, and shouted to my friend just as Jensen and his men seized us. So my friend escaped. The passage was too narrow for Jensen or his henchmen to get through.”
“They bungled!” Mr. Won said. “When Jensen telephoned me last night to say he had the pearls and would bring them to me tonight, I warned him there must be no slip-up.
Now ––”
He paused. A silvery bell sounded somewhere. Mr. Won reached beneath the cushions of his chair and to Bob’s surprise he brought out a telephone. He placed it to his ear and listened. After a moment he put it away again.
“There has been a new development,” he said. “Let us wait.”
They waited in silence. The silence seemed to grow bigger and bigger to Bob, though he knew it was just his nerves. What was going to happen next? The day had been full of so many surprises that almost nothing could seem surprising now.
Yet what did happen, somehow, was the one thing he hadn’t expected.
The red door opened.
Dirty and mussed up and looking very pale and stubborn, Pete Crenshaw walked into the room.
Chapter 13
“I Must Have the Pearls!”
“Pete!” Bob and Chang jumped to their feet. “Are you all right?”
“I’m hungry, mostly,” Pete said. “Outside of that I’m okay, though my arm hurts where Jensen’s men twisted it trying to make me tell him where I hid the Ghost Pearls.”
“Then you did hide them?” Bob asked excitedly.
“You did not tell where. I am sure of that,” Chang added.
“You bet I didn’t,” Pete said grimly. “They were wild. If they knew –”
“Careful!” Chang said. “One listens.”
Pete was suddenly silent. For the first time he saw Mr. Won.
“You are not a small mouse,” Mr. Won said, looking at Chang. “You are a small dragon, cast in the same image as your great-grandfather.” He paused, thinking. “Would you like to be my son?” he asked, nearly bowling the boys over with surprise.
“I am rich, but I am heavy of heart for I have no male offspring. I will adopt you, you will be my son, with my wealth you will become a very powerful man.”
“I am honored, venerable one,” Chang said politely. “But in my heart I fear two things.”
“Name them,” Mr. Won requested.
“The first is that you wish me to betray my friends and obtain the Ghost Pearls for you,” said Chang.
Mr. Won nodded. “Of course,” he said. “As my son-to-be, that would be your duty.”
“The second fear,” Chang said, “is that, though you mean the words now, you would forget them when you had the pearls. However, that is of no importance, for I do not betray my friends.”
Mr. Won sighed. “If you had accepted,” he said, “I would indeed have forgotten. Now I know that I would truly adopt you as my son if you were willing. But you are not willing.
Yet, I must have the pearls. They mean life to me. And they mean life to you.”
Mr. Won reached beneath the cushions. He brought out from some secret recess a tiny bottle, a thin crystal glass and a round object which he held on his palm.
“Approach and observe,” he said.
Chang, Bob and Pete edged up close to him and stared at the thing that rested on the shrunken, shriveled, claw-like hand.
It had a curious, dead gray color and might have been a badly made marble.
It was Chang who recognized it.
“It is a Ghost Pearl,” he said.
“A foolish name for it,” Mr. Won stated. He dropped the priceless pearl into the small bottle. In the liquid inside it fizzed and bubbled until it was all gone—dissolved.
“The true name for these pearls,” Mr. Won said, as he poured the liquid from the bottle into the crystal glass, “is pearls of life.”
He drank the liquid, draining the last tiny drop from the glass. Then he replaced glass and bottle in the secret place from which they had come.
“Small dragon of the blood of Mathias Green,” he said, “and your friends. I shall tell you something only a few men know, and those who know it are either very wise, or very rich, or both. The world calls them Ghost Pearls. The world knows they are priceless. Yet why are they priceless? Not because they are beautiful – as pearls, they are ugly. They look, if I may say so, dead. Is that not true?”
Not having any idea what Mr. Won was leading up to, the boys nodded. The man continued.
“For centuries a few, a very few, have been found at one spot in the Indian Ocean.
Now, for some reason, no more can be found. Barely half a dozen strings of Ghost Pearls –
I use your name for them – exist in the world. They are treasured under guard by the richest men of the Orient. Why?
“Because” – he paused dramatically – “when swallowed as I have just swallowed the one you saw, the last one I own, they confer the priceless gift of prolonging life.”
The boys listened with popping eyes. They could see that Mr. Won believed everything he said. Mr. Won drew a deep breath.
“This was discovered hundreds of years ago in China,” he said. “The secret was kept by kings and nobles, later by wealthy businessmen such as myself. I am one hundred and seven years old because in my lifetime I have swallowed more than one hundred of the pearls of life, which the ignorant call Ghost Pearls.”
He fixed his small, dark eyes now on Chang.
“You see, small dragon, why I must have the necklace at any cost. Each pearl prolongs life for about three months. There are forty-eight pearls in the necklace. To me they mean twelve more years of life. Twelve more years!”
His voice rose. “I must have the pearls. Nothing can stop me. You small ones are but dust in my path if you interfere! Twelve years of life – and I, one hundred and seven!
Surely, small dragon, you see how important this is to me.”
Chang bit his lips.
“He means it,” he whispered to Pete and Bob. “He won’t stop at anything. I’ll try to bargain with him.”
“Bargain with me, by all means,” said Mr. Won, who obviously had keen hearing.
“That is the way of the Orient. An honorable bargain will be kept with honour on both sides.”
“Will you pay my aunt for the pearls if Pete tells you where they are?” Chang asked.
Mr. Won shook his head.
“I have already said I will pay the man Jensen. I keep my word. But” – he paused, studying Chang – “there is a matter of difficulty with the mortgage payments on your honoured aunt’s vineyard and winery.
“It is I who own those mortgages. I give my word there will be no trouble. Your aunt shall have time to pay them. Also, the ghost who has terrorized the workers will vanish, and the workers will return.”
All three boys blinked.
“Then you know whose ghost it is?” Chang cried. “How can you know that?”
Mr. Won smiled slightly.
“I have a large store of small wisdom,” he said. “Lead Jensen to the pearls and your aunt’s troubles will be over.”
“That sounds good,” Chang declared. “But how do we know we can trust you?”
Unconsciously, Pete and Bob nodded. That was the thought in their minds, too.
“I am Mr. Won,” the old man said sharply. “My word is stronger than bands of steel.”
“Ask him how we can trust Mr. Jensen!” Bob blurted out.
“Jensen would promise anything and do the opposite!” Pete chimed in.
Mr. Won raised his voice.
“Have the man Jensen sent to me,” he said.
They all waited. For a long two minutes, nothing happened. Then the red door from the elevator opened and Jensen strode in. He came insolently toward Mr. Won and the boys, his dark features set in a scowl.
“Did you make them talk?” he growled.
“You do not speak to an equal!” Mr. Won said sharply. “You are a crawling thing of the night, fit only to be stepped on. Act like one!”
All three boys saw rage show on Jensen’s face, then fear – deadly fear.
“Sorry, Mr. Won,” he said in a choked voice. “I just wondered –”
“Be silent and listen. If these boys place the necklace in your hands tonight, you will see they are unharmed. You may tie them up, if necessary, so they will need an hour or so to get loose, but not too tightly. If they give you the necklace, any harm you do them you shall receive multiplied one hundred times. If you do not heed my warning you shall enjoy the Death of a Thousand Cuts.”
Jensen swallowed several times before he could speak.
“Look,” he said, humbly now, “all of Verdant Valley will be crawling with people looking for them. So far I’ve managed to divert suspicion from Hashknife Canyon, where they left their horses. My men have reported it to be empty. But if I take them back there –”
“Perhaps you will not have to take them back there. Perhaps they can tell you where to find the necklace. I hope so. It will make things simpler.”
Mr. Won rose. Standing up in his flowing robes, he was a very small man, hardly more than five feet tall.
“Come,” he said. “They wish to talk this over among themselves. As it is a matter of life or death, they have the right to make a free decision.”
They went from the room, Mr. Won taking slow, deliberate steps, and vanished behind a crimson hanging.
Chapter 14
A Fateful Decision
“Don’t say anything you don’t want heard,” Chang whispered to the others as the two men vanished. “There may be a dozen ears listening. Let’s talk a lot, kill time. Time is on our side.”
“I’m glad something’s on our side,” Pete said gloomily. “Right now somebody else seems to have all the marbles. What I want to know is how you two got caught.”
“I flashed my light around,” Chang said, “and I got a glimpse of a man’s face. I shouted to you, Pete. Then about five of them jumped us. They had us tied up and gagged in no time.”
“Then they tried to fool you into coming after us,” Bob put in. “Lucky you were smart enough not to fall for it. Jensen was really mad when you didn’t come. He wanted someone to go through The Throat after you, but they were all big men and afraid to try.”
“What I can’t figure is how they came to be there,” Pete said.
“Jensen said he got to the top of the rise just in time to see us turn the wrong way down Hashknife Canyon,” Chang answered. “He boasted he was smarter than any kids, and guessed right away we’d try to make it home through the mines and aging caves. Somehow he knew all about the connection between the two valleys through The Throat. He went straight to the other end of it to wait for us. And he left several men in the cave in Hashknife Canyon to grab us if we came back that way.”
Chang shook his head disgustedly. “I thought I was so smart!” he said. “And I just played right into his hands.”
“It was only bad luck Jensen saw us before we were able to hide,” Pete told him.
“Anyway, now you know a lot of your workers were really working for Jensen, and that he’s a crook. That certainly explains all the accidents and damage you told us about.”
“Yes,” Chang agreed. “Jensen and his men must have caused them. But I can’t figure out why. It all started more than a year ago, when no one knew a thing about the Ghost Pearls.”
“Well, anyway, after we were tied up,” Bob said, “one of Jensen’s men came rushing in to say we’d been missed and Chang’s aunt had ordered the valley, the mines, everyplace searched for us. Jensen was fit to be tied himself. But then he had an idea.
“We had come to a section where some old wine vats were stored, big ones. He put Chang and me into two wine vats and hammered them shut. Then they just put those vats on a cart, pulled them outside, and loaded them on a truck. I guess nobody thought it strange to see two wine vats loaded on a truck.”
“It was a clever idea,” Chang admitted. “Inside the vats we were helpless. I could even hear someone ask Jensen if he had seen us, and he said no, but that he was going to look in the pass that leads north from the valley to San Francisco. He said we’d been seen riding in that direction. He said he wouldn’t come back until he’d found us. That gave him a very smart reason for being absent from the hunt, you see.”
Pete nodded. Jensen might be a crook, but he certainly wasn’t any fool.
“The truck took us several miles, I guess” – Bob took up the story again – “then stopped. The wine casks were unloaded and they let us out. We were in an awfully deserted spot.”
“It was several miles up the pass leading to San Francisco,” Chang interjected. “There was a station wagon waiting. Jensen put us into the station wagon in back, lying down with a blanket over us, and told the other men to hurry back and join the search, but to do everything to keep anybody from looking into Hashknife Canyon where we left the horses.
And he told them that if they caught you, Pete, they were to bring you and the pearls to a certain address in San Francisco.”
“Well, they caught me, but they didn’t get the pearls,” Pete said with satisfaction.
“Jensen made that station wagon fly,” Chang went on. “I guess we beat all records between Verdant Valley and San Francisco. When we got here, we drove into some kind of underground garage. Then some Chinese servants untied us, let us wash up, gave us a big meal, and that’s the whole story until we were taken to talk to Mr. Won.”
“I wish someone would give me a big meal,” Pete groaned. “And let me wash up. Look at my hands! Well, my part of the story is that I heard you yell, and knew those flashes Jensen made were fakes. The only thing I could think of was to get out the way we came. I headed back. Lucky Bob had marked the trail in. That helped.”
Bob held up his hand. Then, in the air with his finger, in such a way that their three bodies hid it, he made a “?,” the mark of The Three Investigators.
“I also marked the cask I was in,” he said, almost soundlessly. “I was able to get at my chalk. But who’ll look inside one wine cask among thousands, and if they do, what will our mark tell them?”
“Even Jupe couldn’t tell anything from that,” Pete whispered back. “But we’d better talk normally or they’ll think we are plotting something.”
Chang pretended Pete had been about to tell them something important, putting on a little act for the benefit of any unseen watchers.
“No, Pete!” he said loudly. “Don’t tell us about the pearls. Just tell us how you got caught.”
Pete told them his story. He knew Chang didn’t want him to say anything about where the pearls really were – inside the skull of the burro – so he said he’d hidden the flashlight behind a rock and crawled out, only to be grabbed.
The men who grabbed him had twisted his arm, but when he told them the flashlight was back in the mine in a section they couldn’t get to, they had blindfolded him, led him out of Hashknife Canyon to a waiting car, and driven him here to the same hiding place to which Jensen had brought the others. From their conversation he gathered that the search for all three was centering in the desert beyond Verdant Valley. Apparently the lies told by Jensen’s men had kept anyone from finding the three horses in Hashknife Canyon.
