“Ventriloquism?” Jupiter asked. “Gulliver actually did the talking without moving his lips?”
“Well, maybe. But it would talk when Gulliver was sitting across the room from it, and sometimes even when he was out of the room. Even other magicians couldn’t figure out how it was done. But eventually it got him into trouble with the police.”
“How did that happen?” Bob asked. “Well, Gulliver wasn’t doing very well as a magician so he turned to fortune-telling, which is illegal. He didn’t call it fortune-telling — he called himself an adviser. But he dressed up in Oriental robes and sat in a little room decorated with mystic symbols. For a fee, superstitious people could come and ask the skull questions. He even named the skull after an ancient Greek wise man — Socrates.”
“And the skull answered the questions?” Bob asked.
“So it was said. Supposedly it gave some good advice, too, to people with problems. But Gulliver went too far. Socrates began giving advice on the stock market and things like that, and some people lost money and complained to the police. Gulliver was charged with illegal fortune-telling and sent to jail.
“He was in jail about a year. When he got out, he gave up magic and fortune-telling and got a job as a clerk. Then one day — pouf! Like that he disappeared. There were rumours that some very tough individuals were interested in him — no one knows why. Perhaps they had some criminal scheme they wanted to involve him and Socrates in, and he disappeared to get away from them.”
“But he didn’t take his trunk with him.” Jupiter pinched his lower lip, which always stimulated his mental machinery. “That makes it seem that either something happened to him, or he vanished on the spur of the moment.”
“Good thinking,” Fred said. “Perhaps he was in an accident and never identified.”
“I’ll bet that’s why Maximilian wanted the trunk,” Pete put in. “He wanted to get that skull and learn the secret for his own magic act. Maybe he really used to be Gulliver’s friend, but he thought that if Gulliver was gone he might as well have Gulliver’s tricks for himself.”
“Maximilian?” Fred Brown asked, and Jupiter explained about the visit earlier from the tall, thin magician.
“If he tried to buy the trunk, he certainly wasn’t behind its theft,” Fred said. “I wonder if the thieves thought they could put Socrates to work for them. Well, I don’t suppose it matters. I was hoping to get a good story with a picture of you boys with the skull, and maybe you, Jupiter, dressed up in Gulliver’s robes. But that’s impossible, so I’d better be going. Nice to have seen you again.”
Fred Brown drove away. Jupiter looked unhappy.
“It certainly would have been an interesting mystery to investigate,” he said. “I’m sorry the trunk is gone.”
“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.
