“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.
Jupe lifted out the round object and Bob whisked off the purple wrappings. There in Jupiter’s hands sat a skull, gleaming white, that seemed to look up at him out of empty eye sockets. It was not a scary skull — somehow it even seemed friendly. It reminded the boys of the complete skeleton in the biology department at school, which everyone called Mr. Bones. They were quite used to Mr. Bones, so they weren’t nervous now about the magician’s skull.
“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
“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.”
