“Well, I’m not,” Pete said. “Any trunk that has a talking skull in it can stay gone, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t want any part of it. How can a skull talk, anyway?”
“That’s part of the mystery,” Jupiter answered “But there’s no use thinking about it because — Oh, here comes Uncle Titus back now.”
The big truck drove into the yard, loaded with more junk for the salvage yard. Jupiter’s uncle hopped out and walked over.
“Hard at work, I see,” he said to them and winked.
“Good thing Mathilda isn’t here. She’d find something for you to do. But you all look pretty thoughtful. Thinking about something important?”
“The truth is, we’re thinking about that trunk that disappeared last night,” Jupiter told him. “We’ve just learned something interesting about it.”
“Oh, that trunk.” Titus Jones chuckled. “It hasn’t showed up again, then?”
“Why, no, it hasn’t,” Jupiter said. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever see it again.”
“Now I wouldn’t say that,” Titus Jones told him.
“Magician’s trunk, wasn’t it? Well, then, maybe we can make it come back by using magic on it.”
The boys all stared at him.
“What do you mean, Uncle Titus?” Jupiter asked. “What kind of magic could bring it back?”
“Maybe this kind.” Titus Jones looked mysterious. He snapped his fingers three times, turned round with his eyes closed, and chanted, “Abracadabra, a trunk we lack. Now it’s time that trunk comes back.
“There,” he finished, “that’s a magic spell. And if that doesn’t work, maybe we can get the trunk back just by using logic.”
“Logic?” Jupiter was thoroughly puzzled now. His uncle was a merry type of man who enjoyed jokes. It looked as if he was having some kind of joke with them now, but Jupiter couldn’t be sure.
“You like riddles and mysteries, Jupiter,” Titus Jones said. “You like to solve them by being logical. Now think about what happened last night. Describe it to us.”
“Well…,” said Jupiter, still trying to puzzle out what his uncle was leading up to, “we all came towards the yard. Two men ran out and jumped in a car and drove away. The trunk was gone.”
“So they stole it, eh?” his uncle asked.
“They must have,” Jupiter said. “They picked the lock of the gate and — wait a minute!” he cried. His round face turned a little pink, with both excitement and chagrin. “They were still in the salvage yard, apparently looking for the trunk, when we went after them. They ran to their car and drove off. But they didn’t have the trunk when they ran off. So how could they have stolen it? If they’d already had it in their car, they wouldn’t have hung around. And since they didn’t carry it with them, they must not have been the thieves. There’s only one conclusion. The trunk was already stolen before those two men got here!”
Mr. Jones chuckled. “Jupiter,” he said, “you’re smart. But sometimes it does a person good to find out he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is. There’s another conclusion you’ve missed. Maybe the trunk wasn’t stolen. Maybe those two men just couldn’t find it.”
“But I left it beside the office,” Jupiter said. “Right out in plain sight. Maybe I should have locked it inside the office, but I didn’t think it was valuable enough for that.”
“And after you went in to get washed up for supper, and Hans and I were locking up,” Titus Jones said, “I said to myself, ‘That’s a magician’s trunk, and wouldn’t it be a surprise for Jupiter if it disappeared magically! He could have some good exercise hunting for it. So I played a little joke on you, Jupiter. I hid the trunk. Then when we surprised those would-be thieves, I thought I’d just leave it hidden until morning in case they tried again. I was going to tell you about it. But then I decided to see if you could figure things out for yourself. Stimulate your thinking machinery a little.”
“You hid it?” Bob burst out. “Where, Mr. Jones?” And Pete echoed, “Where?”
“Where would a good place to hide a trunk so it wouldn’t be noticed?” Mr. Jones asked. But already Jupiter was looking all around them, at the piles of timber and old machinery and other objects that crowded the yard. The trunk could have been hidden under almost anything. But Jupiter’s gaze came to rest on something over against the wall. There was a six-foot-wide roof extending from the top of the wall into the yard, and under this roof were kept the more valuable items in the salvage yard, where they would be protected from the occasional southern California rain.
In one spot half-a-dozen old trunks were lined up. They were all sturdy and in good repair. And they were all large.
“The perfect place to hide a small trunk would be in a big trunk!” Jupiter burst out. “Is that what you did, Uncle Titus?”
“You could always look and see,” his uncle suggested.
Jupiter started towards the trunks. But Pete ran ahead and flung open the first trunk. It was empty. Jupiter opened the next one. It, too, was empty. So were the third and the fourth.
By the time they got to the fifth trunk, Bob had joined them. And as the lid went up, they all stared.
Inside the big trunk, just fitting neatly, was the mystery trunk of The Great Gulliver.
“Now let’s see if any of these keys Uncle Titus gave us will open the trunk,” Jupiter said.
The three boys were back in Jupiter’s workshop, hidden from the front of the salvage yard by piles of second-hand material. They had swiftly taken the auction trunk from its hiding place back to where they could work on it unseen.
Some customers wandered around in the front part of the salvage yard, looking for various odds and ends. Mathilda Jones was on hand to deal with them. Titus had told Jupiter he could have some time off with Bob and Pete, until Titus came back with the load of goods he was going to pick up.
As Jupiter worked on the lock, he was still feeling annoyed with himself for not suspecting that the trunk had been in the yard all along. Uncle Titus had played an embarrassing joke on him, but a good one. He should have known better than to jump to conclusions the night before. He should have at least realized the truth by morning, he reflected. He had let surface appearances deceive him completely.
“I made a mistake last night in not analysing the facts thoroughly,” he said. “It teaches you more than you’d learn from doing a thing right the first time. Uncle Titus taught me a good lesson.”
Bob and Pete smiled and nodded.
“What about Mr. Maximilian?” Bob asked. “We promised to let him know if the trunk reappeared.”
“We promised to let him know before we sold it to anyone else,” Jupiter said. “We aren’t planning on selling it, at least not now.”
“I vote to sell it,” Pete said. “After all, Maximilian offered us a pretty nice profit.”
But the idea of owning a talking skull had gripped Jupiter’s imagination.
“We can think about selling it later,” he said. “I want to find out if Socrates will really talk.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Pete said with a sigh.
Jupe continued trying the keys. Finally one made the old lock turn. After unbuckling the two long leather straps that held the lid down, Jupiter lifted the lid.
They, all peered in. A length of red silk cloth covered the inside of the trunk. Beneath the cloth was the top tray of the trunk, where a number of small objects were packed, some of them wrapped in different-coloured silk cloths. There was a collapsible birdcage, a small crystal ball with a stand, many small red balls, several packs of playing cards, and some metal cups that fitted snugly into one another. There was not, however, a skull or any bundle big enough to contain one.
“Some of Gulliver’s magic tricks,” Jupiter stated. “If there’s anything important, it’ll be underneath, I guess.”
He and Pete lifted out the top tray and set it to one side. Underneath there seemed to be mostly clothing. It was not ordinary clothing, however, for as they lifted it out, piece by piece, they saw that it consisted of several silk jackets, a long golden robe, a turban, and other Oriental-looking clothing.
It was Bob who spotted what they were looking for.
“There it is!” he said. “There at the side. Under that purple cloth. Something round. I bet it’s the skull.”
“I think you’re right, Records,” Jupiter agreed.