The Secret of the Crooked Cat Read online

  THE MYSTERY

  OF

  THE CROOKED CAT

  William Arden

  A WORD FROM ALFRED HITCHCOCK

  WELCOME, mystery lovers! It is my pleasure once again to introduce the trio of lads who call themselves The Three Investigators. “We Investigate Anything” is their motto—and so they do, whether invited to or not. That is why, presumably, they started snooping about an accident-prone carnival, poking their noses into other people’s mysterious business, ferreting out the secret of a stuffed cat, eavesdropping—

  But I am wrong to denigrate their youthful enthusiasm. They are good lads, if a trifle over-curious. In case you are meeting them for the first time, I should tell you that Jupiter Jones, the overweight leader of The Three Investigators, is known for his remarkable brain power. Pete Crenshaw is tall and muscular and excels at athletics. Bob Andrews, the smallest of the three, attends to research and keeps records for the group, but has the courage of a lion when danger threatens.

  All three make their home in Rocky Beach, a small municipality in California a few miles from Hollywood, Their Headquarters is a mobile home trailer in The Jones Salvage Yard, a super junkyard owned by Jupiter’s aunt and uncle.

  If The Three Investigators had stopped to think that the mysterious crooked cat was leading them into their thirteenth case, they might have been less nosey. Bad luck attended them throughout—but I will say no more I am sure you are anxious to dispense with this preview and proceed to the main feature.

  ALFRED HITCHCOCK

  Chapter 1

  Carnival

  ON AN AFTERNOON in early September, Jupiter Jones and Pete Crenshaw were busily working in Jupiter’s workshop in The Jones Salvage Yard. To be honest, Jupiter was working while Pete watched, and it was Pete who first saw Uncle Titus Jones staggering up to them carrying two big wooden tubs.

  “Boys,” Uncle Titus announced as he plunked down the two tubs in front of them,

  “I have a job for you. I want these tubs painted in red, white and blue stripes!”

  Pete gaped at the tubs. “Stripes on washtubs?”

  “You mean right this minute, Uncle Titus?” Jupiter asked.

  The stocky boy looked glumly at the array of tiny electronic parts on his workbench.

  “Jupe’s building a new thingumajig for The Three Investigators,” Pete explained to Uncle Titus.

  “A new invention, eh?” Uncle Titus said, momentarily distracted from his washtubs.

  “What is it, Pete?”

  “Who knows? Gosh, you know Jupiter,” Pete exclaimed. “I’m just the helper. Who tells me anything?”

  Jupiter, the First Investigator of the boys’ junior detective firm, liked to keep his inventions secret until he was sure that they would work. He hated to fail. He also hated to stop one of his projects before it was finished.

  “Couldn’t we paint the tubs later, Uncle Titus?” he now asked unhappily.

  “No, they must be ready for tonight. Of course, if you boys are so busy, I could ask Hans or Konrad to paint them.” Uncle Titus was referring to the big Bavarian brothers who helped in the yard. His eyes twinkled suddenly. “But then they’d deliver the tubs, too. That would be only fair.”

  Jupiter became alert. “Is there something special about who bought the tubs, Uncle Titus?”

  “I know,” Pete said. “It’s a patriotic laundry!”

  “Or holiday boats for midgets!” Jupiter chimed in.

  Uncle Titus grinned. “What would you say if I said they were seats for a lion?”

  “Oh, sure,” Pete said with a laugh. “Every lion needs a red, white and blue easy chair.”

  Jupiter stopped laughing. A sudden light dawned in his eyes. “Of course! Turned upside down and painted, those tubs would be perfect as seats for a lion in a circus!”

  “Wow! A circus!” Pete exclaimed. “Maybe they’d show us round if we deliver the tubs.”

  Uncle Titus chuckled at the effect of his news. “Well now, boys, it’s not a real circus, just a carnival. But it does have performing shows as well as rides and games. It opened here in Rocky Beach last night. The lion trainer lost the pedestals for his trained lion in a fire or something. When he couldn’t find any pedestals in town, he phoned us, and I thought of the tubs!”

  Uncle Titus beamed happily. He always boasted that The Jones Salvage Yard had almost everything in its piles of junk, and nothing pleased him more than to have some seemingly useless item prove valuable to someone.

  “A carnival,” Jupiter pronounced, “is a most unique and fascinating organization with ancient origins.”

  “I guess you mean it’s fun, Jupe,” Pete said with a groan. The Second Investigator didn’t always understand Jupiter’s way of speaking. “Carson’s Colossal Carnival! I remember now. I saw it being set up on that big piece of ground on the waterfront next to the old amusement park they closed down.”

  “Maybe we could go behind the scenes,” Jupiter said.

  “Then what are we waiting for, Jupe?” Pete cried. “I’ll get the paint, you get the spray guns.”

  The boys went to work with a will, and half an hour later the tubs were painted.

  While they were drying, Jupiter and Pete went into their secret Headquarters to see how much money they had to spend at the carnival.

  Headquarters was an old mobile home trailer, completely hidden behind mounds of junk in a remote corner of the yard. The boys could only enter by secret passages through the junk. By now everyone else had forgotten the trailer was there.

  When the tubs were ready, Pete cycled to the Rocky Beach Public Library to tell Bob Andrews about the carnival. Bob, the Records and Research man of The Three Investigators, worked part-time at the library during the summer. Bob was as much excited by the plans as Pete and Jupiter, and rushed home as soon as he was off duty. All three boys hurried through their dinners. By seven-thirty they were on their way, with the painted tubs balanced precariously on two of their bicycles.

  While they were still some streets away, they could see the sagging towers and crumbling old roller coaster of the abandoned amusement park next to the carnival. The carnival itself was pitched on vacant ground beside the ocean. It wasn’t yet open. Tents and wooden booths lined both sides of two wide pathways inside a temporary fence.

  Lights blazed in the early twilight, and the music of the carousel played to entice the crowd. The empty Ferris wheel was already turning. Two clowns cavorted along one of the paths. Everyone was warming up for the opening.

  The boys located the lion trainer’s tent, emblazoned with a gaudy red banner that proclaimed: The Great Ivan and Rajah—The World’s Greatest Performing Lion!! As they entered, a tall man in a bright blue uniform and gleaming black boots hurried towards them, his fierce moustache bristling.

  “So, the tubs! Perfect! Give them to me!”

  “The Jones Salvage Yard has what you want,” Jupiter said, announcing Uncle Titus’s slogan for the yard.

  The Great Ivan laughed. “That sounds like one of our barkers, young man.”

  “What’s a barker, sir?” Pete asked.

  “Well, son, suppose you try to guess,” The Great Ivan said.

  “I’ll bet Jupe knows,” Bob declared.

  Both Bob and Pete had learned that Jupiter usually knew a little about everything, and the stocky leader of the trio wasn’t bashful about telling what he knew.

  “A barker,” Jupiter now pronounced, “is a man who stands outside a circus or carnival sideshow and tells people how exciting it is inside. You could say it was an ancient form of advertising.”

  “Very good, young man,” The Great Ivan said. “Sometimes we call them ‘spielers’

  or ‘pitchm
en’, and sometimes they lie, but not the good ones. My barker, for instance, doesn’t tell people that Rajah is a ferocious lion, he just tells them some of what Rajah can do. Did you ever see a lion on a trapeze?”

  “Wow! Can Rajah ride on a trapeze?” Pete exclaimed.

  “He can,” The Great Ivan boasted. “First show in an hour, boys. Come as my guests. Perhaps you can touch Rajah even.”

  “We’ll be here, sir!” Bob promised eagerly. Outside, the carnival had just opened, and the barkers were announcing the attractions to the few early arrivals. The boys rode on the Ferris wheel and tried the carousel twice. They tried for the brass ring, but only Pete got one. They watched the antics of one small, fat clown for a time, then went towards the game booths where prizes could be won for dart throwing, ring tossing and rifle shooting.

  “The games must be faked, fellows,” Bob observed after he had watched for a time.

  “They look too easy.”

  “No,” Jupiter explained, “it’s simply that they’re much more difficult than they seem. A matter of mathematics and physics, Records. The odds—”

  The rest of Jupiter’s explanation was drowned out by a sudden shouting in front of them.

  “You’re a cheat! Give me that prize!”

  Ahead of them was a tall, older man in a slouch hat. He had a thick, bushy moustache and wore dark glasses, even though it was almost dark. He was shouting at the blond boy who operated the shooting gallery. Suddenly he grabbed a stuffed animal from the boy’s hands and ran straight towards The Three Investigators.

  The blond boy shouted, “Stop him! Thief! Guards!”

  Chapter 2

  Stop Thief!

  “LOOK OUT!” Pete cried.

  His warning came too late. The running man, looking behind him for pursuit, ran full tilt into Jupiter. They both fell in a tangle of arms and legs,

  “Ooooooff!” Jupiter grunted.

  Two carnival guards ran up as the few

  early visitors scattered.

  “You! Stay right there!” one of the

  guards shouted to the moustached thief in

  dark glasses.

  The thief leaped up first, stuck his stolen

  prize under his one arm, and grabbed

  Jupiter. A wicked knife gleaming in his free

  hand.

  “Don’t come near me,” he rasped

  menacingly, and awkwardly began to drag

  Jupiter towards the exit from the carnival.

  Bob and Pete could only watch in

  horror. The two carnival guards tried to

  circle round behind. The thief saw them.

  He was momentarily distracted, and Jupiter

  seized the chance to try to break loose and

  run. With an oath, the thief whirled back to

  face Jupiter. Off balance, the stuffed animal

  still held awkwardly under his arm, he

  stumbled and his hand holding the knife,

  struck Jupiter’s shoulder. The knife flew

  from his grasp.

  In a flash the thief saw that he could not retrieve his knife in time. He released Jupiter, pushed him sprawling towards the guards, and ran off through the exit with the stolen prize.

  Jupiter staggered up again, crying out, “After him!”

  The boys raced after the fleeing thief, followed by the two carnival guards. The moustached man ran towards the ocean and disappeared behind a jutting corner of the high wooden fence that surrounded the abandoned amusement park. The guards caught up with the boys.

  “All right, boys,” a guard said. “We’ll deal with him.”

  “It’s a dead end round that corner,” Pete panted. “The fence goes down to the water. He’s trapped!”

  “Stay here then,” the second guard ordered the boys.

  The two guards, their pistols out, went cautiously round the corner of the fence. The boys waited. There was a long silence after the two guards had vanished Jupiter became impatient.

  “Something must be wrong,” the First Investigator said. “Come on, fellows.”

  Cautiously, Jupiter led them round the corner of the high fence. They stopped in their tracks. The two guards stood there alone. The moustached old thief was gone!

  “No one was here,” one guard said.

  Stunned, the boys looked round the small grassy area. The high fence was on the right, the deep water of the ocean on the left. At the far end the fence made a sharp angle all the way down to the ocean. A spiked iron extension of the fence reached out over the water. There was no way out except the way they had come in!

  “You boys must have made a mistake,” the second guard said.

  “Maybe he swam away,” Bob suggested.

  “No time, son. We’d have seen him in the water,” the first guard said. “He must have fooled you.”

  “No, I saw him run right in here,” Jupiter insisted stubbornly.

  Pete had been staring all round. Now the tall Second Investigator exclaimed,

  “Look!”

  He bent and picked up a large object from the shadows. It was the stuffed animal the moustached man had stolen. Pete held it up triumphantly.

  “He was here, all right,” Pete declared.

  “He must have dropped it getting out of here,” Bob said. His face was puzzled as he looked all round the small, closed-in-area. “But how did he get out?”

  “There must be some way through that fence,” the first guard said.

  “A hole or a door,” said the second guard.

  “Maybe a tunnel under the fence,” Pete suggested.

  They all examined the fence for the entire length of the hidden area and found nothing.

  “No,” Jupiter observed. “This part of the fence seems to be in good repair, and there isn’t any way under it, either.”

  “Then he must have had wings!” one guard declared. “That’s the only way out of here except past us as we came in.”

  “That fence is twelve feet high or more,” the other guard said, “and there’s nothing to get hold of. No one could climb over it.”

  Jupiter was thoughtful as they all stared up at the fence. “If he didn’t swim, or dig, or fly, logically there is only one possibility—he went over the fence.’

  “That’s crazy,” a guard insisted.

  “Gosh, First,” Pete said, “how could anyone climb that fence without help? There’s nothing to stand on.”

  Bob said, “He couldn’t have climbed it, Jupe.”

  “No, it wouldn’t seem so,” Jupiter said, “but there just isn’t any other logical explanation, so he must have. When everything else is ruled out, what is left must be true, even if it looks impossible.”

  “Well, however he did it, he’s gone,” one guard said. “We’d better get back to our posts. We’ll take that prize back to the shooting gallery.”

  The guard reached his hand out for the stuffed animal Pete was still holding. Jupiter, who was continuing to stare upward at the solid fence, now turned to the guard.

  “We’d like to return the prize, if that’s all right with you,” the First Investigator said.

  “We were about to attempt to win a prize at the shooting gallery anyway.”

  “Okay,” the guard agreed. “You take it back. That’ll save us some time. We’ll have to report that thief to the police.”

  After the guards had left, while the boys were walking back to the carnival, Pete said,

  “I didn’t know we were going to try the shooting gallery, First.”

  “Perhaps we weren’t,” Jupiter acknowledged, “but I’m Interested to know just why that man attacked the boy at the gallery and stole this prize.”

  He pointed at the stuffed animal in Pete’s hands, and the boys really looked at it for the first time. Pete’s eyes almost popped in excitement as he examined the prize he held.

  “Wow! It’s a beauty, isn’t it?”

  It was a stuffed cat almost three feet long, striped red and black. Its legs w
ere all twisted, and the body was crooked like a Z. Its mouth was open showing sharp, white teeth, and one ear drooped sharply down. There was only one wild red eye, and a jewelled red collar. It was the wildest, most crooked-looking cat they had ever seen.

  “It certainly is striking,” Jupiter agreed. “But I wonder why that man wanted it so much?”

  “Maybe he collects stuffed animals,” Bob suggested. “My Dad says collectors’ do anything to get what they want!”

  “He collects stuffed cats?” Peter scoffed. “From a carnival? That’s crazy, Records.

  How much could it be worth?”

  “Well,” Jupiter considered, “it does sound foolish, but collectors are strange people sometimes. There are rich men who buy stolen paintings even though they have to hide them. It’s what they call an obsession, and collectors with obsessions commit desperate acts. But I don’t think our thief is really a collector. More likely he’s one of those people who can’t bear to lose at anything. Or perhaps he became violent because he felt he’d won and been cheated.”

  “I guess even we might get mad if we’d been cheated,” Pete agreed, “but we wouldn’t get violent about it.”

  They reached the shooting gallery, and the blond boy behind the counter greeted them eagerly.

  “You got my cat back! Did they catch that old man?”

  “He got away,” Pete said, “but he dropped the cat.”

  Pete handed the crooked cat to the boy.

  “I hope the police catch him,” the boy said angrily. “He only knocked down three of the five ducks! A real bad loser. Gosh, you fellows really chased him.” The boy grinned.

  “I’m Andy Carson. I work this booth. Are you fellows with it?”

  Bob blinked. “Are we what, Andy?”

  “He means,” the always ready Jupiter explained, “are we carnival people, from some other carnival. No, Andy, we live in Rocky Beach. I’m Jupiter Jones, and they’re Bob Andrews and Pete Crenshaw.”

  “Glad to meet you, fellows,” Andy said, and added proudly, “I’m with it. A full operator, not just a punk or roughneck.”

  “Huh?” Pete said.

  “A ‘punk’,” Jupiter interpreted for the others, “is an apprentice member of the carnival, and a ‘roughneck’ is an annual workman. Andy means he’s just like a proper adult performer in the carnival. That’s pretty unusual isn’t it, Andy?”