The Investigators were too stunned to move.
Anguished cries rose again.
Pete snapped into action. “Someone’s in trouble in there!” He ran to the trunk of his car, where he kept — his tools.
For a moment Jupiter thought about Ty’s warning to take it easy, not to rush in. But Pete raced past, wire cutters in hand, and Bob was right behind him.
“Please help us!”
Jupiter dashed after his friends.
The investigators barreled across the street. Fresh pleas for help sounded from the Reasoner Corporation. The guys jumped up and grabbed the top of the six-foot-tall concrete block wall. Pete and Bob hauled themselves right up, and Pete immediately clipped open the barbed wire.
As Jupiter at last reached the top, a pitiful voice cried, “No! Help us!”
“It’s coming from there!” Pete shouted. He pointed at an open garage-size door in the old warehouse.
The guys jumped off the wall and raced across a lawn toward the door. Pete got there first and skidded to a halt in the doorway. Bob and Jupiter slid in next to him. The Investigators stared at the weird scene in the barren two-story room.
Two human-size brown lumps spotted with green fungus writhed across the concrete floor. Slithering with them was an inky black blob smeared with slime. “Oh Yuk!” Pete said. “Gross!” Bob agreed.
Suddenly the three things rose up on human legs that were encased in tights colored to match each costume. Alarmed, the things huddled together.
“No!” screamed one. “No, no!”
“Save us!” screeched a second.
They were the voices the guys had heard outside!
Just then a big cylinder of Hallenbeck’s Space Age Scouring Powder danced into view. It sang in a deep bass voice:
The dirtiest dirt
Is always hurt
By Hallenbeck’s Scouring Powder.
If you want your house clean,
You’ve gotta be mean
With Hallenbeck’s Scouring Powder!
As soon as it finished the song, the cylinder bent over, aimed its top, and exploded clouds of white powder onto the whimpering dirt clods.
“Out of sight,” Pete said in awe.
At that moment an enraged voice bellowed behind the Investigators. “This is a closed set! What do you think you’re doing busting into a rehearsal!”
The guys turned. A short man with a whistle dangling from his bull neck pushed them aside and strode into the warehouse. “You step out to answer a question, and look what happens!” he muttered as he picked up a wall telephone and dialed. “Security!”
As he talked into the telephone, the dirt clumps and the scouring powder encircled the Investigators.
“How’d you guys get in?” asked the first dirt clod curiously.
“We never have visitors,” explained the second.
“That’s right,” the third added. “Not since the last batch of kids broke in and stole the old Grim Speaker masks and capes out of the garbage.”
Like E.T. and Batman, the Grim Speaker was a classic character loved by millions of viewers around the world. The difference was that the Grim Speaker appeared not in entertainment movies but in commercials to save the environment.
“Wait a minute,” Jupiter said. “What do you guys have to do with the Grim Speaker?”
“Our company made him. He’s manufactured, acted, and filmed here.”
“I don’t get it,” Jupe said with a puzzled frown. “I thought Oracle Light and Magic owned the Grim Speaker. They’re in L.A.”
“That’s us!” said the first dirt clod proudly. “We moved. We’re Oracle Light and Magic!”
“You’re the famous special-effects company?” Bob cried. “You did
“Harold, put a clam on it!” a baldheaded man in a business suit warned the dirt clod. He had come in through a door at the back of the room. Now he studied the boys through the wire-rimmed eyeglasses on his severe, lined face. Jupiter had a sudden feeling he should know him.
Meanwhile the short man with the whistle ran to keep up with the one in the glasses. “Throw them out!” he said, pointing at the Investigators.
“Who are you?” the severe-faced man demanded as he closed in. “You’d better have a good reason for being here, or your next stop will be
The scouring powder leaned toward the Investigators. They backed away quickly, remembering the white spray that had erupted from its top. But the powder simply wanted to talk. “Meet Silas Ek,” it said. “Chief of security. And Cole Paciano, our director.”
Jupiter took in the situation quickly and said smoothly, “Mr. Ek. Just the man we wanted to talk to.”
In a crisis, Jupe often drew on his childhood acting experience. Now he slipped into the role of a polished diplomat, introducing the guys and describing the cries for help they’d heard.
“We rushed in to the rescue,” Jupe said, laying it on thick. “We thought we were heroes, but it seems instead we were
The Three Investigators and the costumed actors laughed.
Silas Ek didn’t. “What were you doing outside?” he growled.
“As a matter of fact, we were looking for one of your programmers,” Jupe said. “Norton Rome.”
“Nort!” the first dirt lump said. “Now that’s one wacky guy. I mean strange. He’s the one who… ”
“Harold!” Silas Ek warned.
“Oops! Sorry, Silas.” The dirt clod backed away.
Cole Paciano, who had been impatiently watching the proceedings, stuck the whistle in his mouth and blew. “Back to work!” he ordered.
As the actors scurried to the center of the room and resumed their roles, Silas Ek studied the Investigators once more. Ek’s face seemed even more severe, the lines deeper. Jupe sensed he’d hit a nerve with Norton Rome’s name, and it was making Ek change his tactics. The security chief became friendlier.
“Come with me,” he invited. “We’ll talk in my office.”
“Great!” Pete said, pleased. “Can we see some of Oracle Light and Magic? You guys are fantastic. Wait till I tell Kelly — that’s my girlfriend!” And he’d blow his dad’s mind too. Mr. Crenshaw was in special effects himself, though nothing as high-octane as Oracle.
“That’s just what we
“That’s why you operate under a false name, the Reasoner Corporation?” Jupe asked.
Ek nodded. “In L.A. we had to have guards everywhere to keep people from sneaking in and stealing souvenirs.’ We don’t want the public to know where we are now.”
“We heard about the Grim Speaker stuff,” Bob told him.
“That was the final straw,” Ek agreed.
On Jupiter’s left, rows of computers crammed an enormous glassed-in room. The sign on the door said
