“Maybe we can catch up with him,” Andy said.
“On bicycles?” Bob pointed out. “Chelham Place is over five miles from here, Andy, near your carnival.” The boys all looked at each other in despair.
“He’ll get the last crooked cat,” Bob moaned. “And we can’t stop him.”
“I guess we can’t,” Jupiter agreed. He got up from under the hibiscus bushes and looked glumly at the small house. Then his eyes lighted up. “Or maybe we can! Fellows, look at those wires! The house has a telephone!” Without waiting for an answer, the First Investigator ran to the front door. It was locked.
“The windows!” Andy cried.
The carnival boy tried a living-room window. It was open! He pushed it up and the three boys tumbled inside.
“Find the telephone,” Jupiter urged. “Look everywhere!”
“There, Jupiter,” Andy pointed. “On the floor in that corner.“ Jupiter grabbed the receiver, lifted it to his ear, and listened. His face fell. “It’s not working.”
“Now what do we do?” Bob asked.
“I don’t know, Records,” Jupiter said glumly. “Perhaps if we rode over there as fast as we could we’d still be in time, if — ” he added lamely, “if no one was home when the tattooed man got there.”
“He’d just break in, Jupe,” Bob said.
Andy said, “There must be a public telephone somewhere near here, Jupiter!”
Jupiter groaned. “Of course, I should have — ”
The stocky First Investigator never finished what he was going to say. Outside the house, coming slowly closer, the boys all heard soft, careful footsteps. They froze in fright as they listened to the ominous steps. Bob crouched low and crept silently to a front window. He looked out, ducked and hurried back.
“The tattooed man! He’s coming back”
“The window,” Andy whispered urgently.
“No time, fellows,” Bob said, scared. “Quick, then, the other room!” Jupiter decided, hurriedly.
They fell over each other in their haste to get to the rear room. Andy reached it first, with Bob and Jupiter sprawling in behind him. It was a small, completely bare room, with shutters over the window that made it pitch dark. They quickly closed the door and stood behind it, holding their breath.
Outside in the living-room the outer door opened and closed.
There was a long silence.
Suddenly, a rasping voice laughed just outside the back room door. A low, nasty laugh.
“So, some smart lads, eh? Well, we’ll have to see that you don’t get too smart for your own good, boys.”
The three boys looked at each other in dismay. There was another laugh from outside the door.
“Thought I didn’t see you at the window, did you? Well, you’ll have to be a lot smarter than you are to fool me. I saw you, all right. A fine trio of fools you are. Didn’t even hear me park up the street. Well, you’ll have time to think about your foolishness, eh?”
There was the sound of a key turning in the lock in the door of the back room, and a heavy sliding noise as something solid dropped across the door— a metal bar.
“There, that should hold you,” the hoarse voice said. “But take a warning, smart boys. When you get out, stay away from me!”
There was no laugh this time. The boys heard footsteps going away and the slamming of the front door. A heavy silence descended over the small house.
“The window,” Jupiter said, undaunted. He felt his way in the dark to the window, pushed it up, reached to open the outside shutters and stopped.
“The window’s barred,” he cried. “This must have been a storeroom for the watchmaker who lived here!”
“Open the shutters and yell,” Bob said. They all yelled out into the grey, darkening sky. No one came. The small house was far from the street, and the houses across the back alley were some distance away on the next street After some minutes, Andy sat down on the floor and noticed something in the grey light from the window that they’d missed before. “Look! There’s a back door!”
Jupe rushed over to it. The back door was double-locked and solid.
“We’re stuck, fellows, and that tattooed man is sure to get the last crooked cat now!” Andy moaned. “We’re finished.”
“Perhaps not!” Jupiter said suddenly. “You forgot my new signal. Pete will see the red light, and the directional-signal will lead him to us.”
The stocky First Investigator took out the tiny instrument he had built and bent close over it.
“Help,” he said into it “Help.” The small instrument began to hum very low.
“It lights only on the receiving instrument,” Jupiter explained.
They all watched the humming signal and wondered if Pete would see the call for help.
Where Pete sat up in the beams of the old roller coaster, the sharp wind from the mountains made him shiver. He could barely see the exits from the carnival in the early dusk of the gloomy day.
None of the people he had seen leave had come back, and the carnival would open in not much more than an hour. Where were the carnival people he had watched leave, and where were Jupiter, Bob and Andy? Andy was supposed to be in his booth before the carnival opened, and it wasn’t like Jupiter or Bob to stay away so long without at least trying to send a message. Pete was worried. Sometimes, Jupiter’s tendency to keep his plans secret so that he could astound them all, annoyed Pete. It was, he knew, only the First Investigator’s love of the dramatic, but it had got the boys into tight corners before. He hated to leave his post, but he was uneasy now.
He climbed down from the roller coaster and hurried through the dilapidated amusement park. The enormous, laughing mouth of the Fun House seemed to leer at him as he passed it and went on to slip back through the hole in the fence.
At the carnival the Ferris wheel gondolas were being uncovered. The carousel was already playing its gay music. Andy Carson was not at his booth. Pete chewed on his lower lip. Where were they? He suspected that Jupiter had taken them to the man who wanted to buy crooked cats, but where was that? Some sixth sense told Pete that something was wrong.
If they came back to the carnival, they would expect to find him at his post. They would, perhaps, want his report at once. If he left his post and went looking for them, he could miss them, and they could return to the carnival to find him gone. On the other hand, if they needed help, he — Pete remembered the new directional-and-emergency signal!
He dug into his pocket and brought out the tiny instrument. He stared at it eagerly. But it was silent. The red emergency light was dark.
In the locked storeroom of the small house, Andy looked up at Jupiter from the floor.
“How far does that signal reach, Jupe?”
“Three miles,” Jupiter said, and suddenly groaned again. “Of course, the carnival is almost five miles from here! Pete won’t get our signal!”
They all looked at each other.
“Someone’ll hear us yelling, fellows,” Bob said, trying to make his voice optimistic.
“Of course they will,” Jupiter said firmly. “But in the meantime, we can try to find a way out ourselves. The experts say there’s no such thing as a room you can’t get out of somehow. There’s always a flaw in a room. Come on, let’s find it.”