“He did something peculiar with the stamps on the envelope. He put on two stamps, a two and a four. And he put a one-cent stamp, green, the colour of money, under the four. We were positive he meant —”
“Bob, wait!” Jupiter called out.
Bob blinked. “What’s the matter, First?” he asked.
“Say that again. The final words you just said.”
“Why, all I said was that he put a one-cent stamp under the four and —”
“That’s it!” Jupiter cried. “That’s the clue!”
“What’s the clue?” Pete put in. He and Bob and Zelda stared in puzzlement at Jupiter, whose face had suddenly become pink with excitement.
“Miss Zelda,” Jupiter said, turning to the Gypsy woman, “Spike Neely had a slight speech defect. Chief Reynolds told us so. He had trouble pronouncing the letter L in some words.”
“I believe that is true, boy,” Zelda answered. “But what —”
“And his sister said Spike pronounced ‘flower’ as ‘fower’. How would he pronounce ‘floor’?”
“He’d pronounce it ‘four’,” Zelda said after a moment. “Are you trying to tell me —”
“He put the money under the
“Only we got carried away with the idea that he meant under the wallpaper, because Mrs. Miller told us Spike had papered the downstairs during his stay!” Jupiter added excitedly. “Actually, I should have realized that pasting money under wallpaper is a bad idea — you’d never get it off again without ruining it. You’d have to scrape it off and that would be the end of it. But safe and sound under the floor somewhere —”
“Lonzo!” Zelda ordered. “Get the tools from the other car. We are going inside — you and I and the boys.”
A moment later they were crowding into the house, ignoring the three bound prisoners on the living room floor. Consulting hastily, they agreed that the living room floor was unlikely. Jupiter suggested that the right spot would either be under the floor in the guest room, where Spike had stayed, or under the floor in the little attic storage space.
They tried the attic first.
Ten minutes later Lonzo ripped up a board in one corner — and Pete gave a shout.
There, in the beam of the flashlight, lay bundle after bundle of greenbacks, neatly stacked between the joists of the first-floor ceiling!
“Under the four,” Pete said, blinking. “Under the
“I should have thought of it sooner,” Jupiter said. “Even if I didn’t remember Spike Neely’s speech defect, I should have realized that ‘four’ and ‘floor’ sound alike. And considering that pasting money under wallpaper would ruin it, I —”
“Never mind, boy!” Zelda said. “You did a fine job. Gulliver himself did not suspect the truth. Now the money is found. The criminals are captured. The Frog has jumped high and saved himself from the hungry fish in the pond.” She chuckled slightly.
Jupiter looked as if he were suspecting a great deal that previously had been a mystery.
“You sent us that warning, Miss Zelda?” he asked.
The old Gypsy woman nodded.
“Indeed I did, boy. My Gypsies were keeping watch over you, but I wanted you to do your utmost to find the money — which you have. Now we must go. We will call the police, and the affair will be ended. You wait here for the police. They will take charge of the money and those crooks downstairs. The police will want to question us also, but they will not be able to find us. Not yet, at least.”
“Wait, Zelda!” Jupiter said as the Gypsy woman and Lonzo turned to go. “Before you leave, I wish you would tell me something. About the trunk — how did it get back to us? And about the talking skull, Socrates — did he really talk or —”
“Later, later,” the woman said. “In two weeks visit me at the old address. We will then have returned. Your questions will be answered.”
“But at least tell us about Gulliver,” Jupiter urged. “Where is he?”
“I thought he was dead,” Pete put in.
“I did not say so,” Zelda replied. “I said he had vanished from the world of men. Now, perhaps he may return from the world where he has been. For two weeks — farewell.”
With that, she and Lonzo hurried down the stairs and The Three Investigators heard the Gypsies’ cars roar away into the night. The three looked at each other, and Bob gave a sigh of relief.
“Wow!” he said. “We did it, Jupe! We found the missing money!”
“With some help from Zelda,” Jupiter said. “I’m certainly looking forward to seeing her again. I have a hunch she can give me some very interesting answers!”
Alfred Hitchcock, the noted motion-picture producer, sat behind the desk in his office and leafed through the many pages of notes regarding the mystery of the talking skull, which had been prepared by Bob Andrews. Then he glanced across to where The Three Investigators, in their best clothes, sat in a row and waited for him to speak.
“Excellently done, lads,” Alfred Hitchcock rumbled. “Jupiter, my boy, you did well to locate the missing money, after the authorities failed for so long.”
But Jupiter’s round features looked glum.
“No, sir,” he sighed. “I should have solved the secret sooner. First, I thought that one stamp being under the other meant the money was pasted under some wallpaper. I should have known better and looked for the other meaning. Then, if it hadn’t been for some luck —”
“Luck helps those who are alert,” Mr. Hitchcock said. “As I have reminded you before. You can’t expect to get the right answer the very first thing every time — no investigator manages that. In my opinion you did very well.”
“Thank you, sir.” Jupiter brightened. “Anyway, we did find the missing money.”
“And none too soon, either,” the director remarked. “Two days later the house would have been bulldozed to the ground and the money might easily have been lost forever in the wreckage. Tell me, did you collect the reward?”
Jupiter sighed. Pete sighed. Bob sighed.
“No, sir,” Bob said. “There wasn’t really any reward — that was just a story Smooth Simpson made up, along with all the rest he told us. But we did get a very nice letter from the bank president, and Chief Reynolds said he wished we were old enough to be on his force as detectives.”
“Ah, well, money is not the only reward for a job well done,” commented Mr. Hitchcock. “Now, I have a question or two. I believe these notes make clear how Spike Neely hid the money in the first place, and how he managed to get a very secret message out of the prison hospital to his friend, Gulliver— so secret, of course, that no one could solve it until it fell into your hands.
“But my first question, and one your notes do not answer, is what became of Gulliver. What was his fate?”
The boys grinned. They had been expecting Mr. Hitchcock to ask, and Jupiter was prepared with the answer.
“When he got the letter from Spike Neely,” Jupiter said, “Gulliver suspected Spike was trying to send him a message, because in prison Spike had said he would tell the secret to Gulliver if anything ever happened to him.
