“I guess that’s Socrates, all right,” Bob said.
“There’s something under it,” Jupiter said. Handing Socrates to Bob, he delved down into the trunk. He came up with a disk two inches thick and about six inches across, apparently made of ivory. Strange symbols were cut into the edge of it.
“This looks like a stand for Socrates to sit on,” Jupiter said. “It has depressions that would be just right to hold him.”
He put the ivory disk on a nearby table and Bob placed the skull on it. Socrates sat there with what seemed to be a grin while they all stared at him.
“He certainly looks as if he might say something.” Pete commented. “But if he does, I’m going to find business someplace else.”
“Probably only Gulliver could make him speak,” Jupiter suggested. “My theory is that he has some kind of mechanism inside.”
He picked Socrates up and peered at him closely.
“Not a sign,” Jupiter muttered. “If there was anything inside him I’m sure I could spot it. There would be some evidence, and there isn’t—nothing at all. It’s very baffling.”
He put Socrates back on his ivory stand.
“Socrates, if you can really talk, say something,” he ordered.
His only answer was silence.
“Well, he doesn’t seem to be in a talking mood,” Jupiter said at last. “Let’s see what else is in the trunk.”
He and Bob and Pete began pulling out more Oriental costumes. Then they found a magician’s wand, and several short, curved swords. They were examining these, their backs to Socrates, when a muffled sneeze sounded behind them.
They whirled around. No one was there. No one, that is, but the skull.
Socrates had sneezed!
The boys looked at each other with round eyes.
“He sneezed!” Pete said. “That’s the next thing to talking. If a skull can sneeze it can probably recite the Gettysburg Address!”
“Hmmm.” Jupiter scowled. “You’re sure it wasn’t you who sneezed, Bob?”
“It wasn’t any of us,” Bob said. “I distinctly heard the sneeze behind us.”
“Peculiar,” Jupiter muttered. “If it was some trick of The Great Gulliver’s that made the skull talk or make sounds, I could understand it. But Gulliver isn’t here. He may be dead. I just don’t see how a skull could sneeze all by itself. Let’s examine it again.”
He picked up the skull and turned it over and over in his hands, studying it intently. He even held it up to the sunshine to get a better light. But there was absolutely no sign that Socrates had been tampered with in any way.
“No wires or anything,” Jupiter said. “This is really quite mysterious.”
“I’ll buy a double helping of that!” Pete exclaimed.
“But why should a skull sneeze?” Bob demanded. “There’s no reason for it to.”
“I don’t know why, and I don’t know how,” Jupiter said. “But it should make a very nice mystery for us to investigate. It’s the kind of mystery that Alfred Hitchcock would be willing to introduce for us, I bet.”
He was speaking of the famous motion-picture producer who had steered them to several of their most mystifying cases and who took a keen interest in their work.
“Now wait a minute!” Pete cried. “Last night two men tried to steal this trunk. Today we open it and find a sneezing skull in it. The next thing you know —”
He was interrupted by Mathilda Jones’s powerful voice.
“Jupiter! Boys! I know you’re back there! Come a-running. There’s work to be done!”
“Oh, oh!” Bob said. “Your aunt wants us.”
“And that’s her ‘don’t-make-me-wait’ voice,” Pete added as Mathilda Jones’s voice came again, calling to Jupiter. “We’d better get out front.”
“Yes, indeed,” Jupiter said hastily. He put Socrates back in the trunk and locked it and then they all trotted to the front section of the salvage yard. Mrs. Jones was waiting, her hands on her hips.
“There you are!” she said. “It’s about time. Your Uncle Titus and Hans and Konrad have unloaded all that stuff he brought, and I’d like you boys to sort it out and stack it.”
The three boys looked at the pile of second-hand goods in front of the office and signed. It would take a long time to put it all away neatly, but one thing Mrs. Jones insisted on was neatness. The Jones Salvage Yard was a junkyard, but a very high class and unusual one, and she would tolerate no unnecessary untidiness.
The boys set to work, pausing only for the lunch that Mrs. Jones brought out to them. Just when they seemed almost finished, Titus Jones arrived with another truckload of furniture and odds and ends he had bought from an apartment house going out of business.
So they were busy all afternoon, and though Jupiter itched to get back to the trunk and its strange contents, he had no chance. Finally Bob and Pete had to start for home. Pete agreed to meet Jupe back at the yard the next morning. Bob would come by later, as he had to work at his part-time job in the local library in the morning.
Jupiter ate a hearty dinner and then was too drowsy to think much about the mystery of the trunk of the missing magician and the supposedly talking skull. However, it did occur to him that if thieves had tried to steal the trunk once, they might try again.
He went out and let himself into the salvage yard, and got Socrates and his ivory stand from the trunk. Putting everything else back in, he locked the trunk and hid it behind the printing press with some old canvas over it. It should be safe there, he decided, but he was determined to take no chance with Socrates. He took the skull back to the house with him.
As he entered the living room with Socrates, his aunt glanced up and gave a slight scream.
“Stars and comets, Jupiter!” she exclaimed. “What is that awful thing you’re carrying?”
“It’s just Socrates,” Jupiter told her. “He’s supposed to be able to talk.”
“Be able to talk, eh?” Titus Jones looked up from his newspaper and chuckled. “What does he say, my boy? He has a rather intelligent appearance.”
“He hasn’t said anything yet,” Jupiter admitted. “I’m hoping he will, though. But I don’t really expect him to.”
“Well, he’d better not talk to me or I’ll give him a piece of my mind!” Mathilda Jones said. “The idea! Get him out of my sight, Jupiter. I don’t want to look at him.”
Jupiter took Socrates up to his bedroom and set him on his ivory base on the bureau. Then he went back downstairs to watch television.
By the time he went to bed he had decided that Socrates couldn’t possibly talk. The answer must be that The Great Gulliver, his owner, had been a very gifted ventriloquist.
He had almost fallen asleep when a soft whistle roused him. It came again, and it sounded as if it were right in the room with him.
Suddenly wide awake, Jupiter sat upright in bed.
“Who’s that? Is that you, Uncle Titus?” he asked, thinking for a moment that his uncle might be playing another joke.