The Mystery of the Coughing Dragon

“Oh?” Jupiter wheeled round in his chair, his eyes sparkling with interest. “What?”

Pete gestured to the telephone on their desk. “Just pick up that telephone and call Mr. Allen. Tell him we’ve decided not to find his missing dog for him. Tell him we nearly disappeared ourselves. Tell him we’re willing to forget the whole thing.”

Jupiter ignored the suggestion.

“Our first problem,” he stated, “is to determine who those skin divers were, and what they were doing in the cave.

Pete shook his head. “Why bother with those two tough characters? We were in there, too, and I don’t even know what we were doing in there.”

“Looking for clues of Mr. Allen’s dragon,” Jupiter replied. “And tracks or traces of his Irish setter, Red Rover.”

“Well, we didn’t find much,” Pete declared. “Except that pit. Bob found that for us.”

“We found that passage behind the boards,” Jupiter said. “It may be a secret tunnel in the cave. Or it could be one of the secret hiding places used by the rum-runners or smugglers in the old days.”

“I don’t see what that’s got to do with us,” Pete answered stubbornly. “It wasn’t hiding Mr. Allen’s dog.”

Jupiter frowned. “As investigators, we have to return and examine that cave more thoroughly. Don’t you realize that?”

Pete nodded reluctantly. “Sure. All I’m wondering about is how those skin divers didn’t fall into the pit Bob found? Doesn’t that prove they know their way around in there?”

“Maybe, but they did have a torch,” Jupiter said. “As to how or why they disappeared, perhaps when we return with torches, we’ll discover — ”

The telephone rang, for the second time that day. They stared at it.

It rang again. “Well, answer it,” Pete said.

“I will.” Jupiter picked it up. “Hello?” he said into the phone. “Hello?”

He held the telephone close to the microphone so that Pete could hear what was said, too. They heard a rasping sound.

“Hello!” Jupe said again. There was no answer.

“Maybe it’s a wrong number,” Pete said.

“I — don’t think so,” Jupiter said. “Listen!”

They heard the strange rasping sound again. The sound was like that of somebody trying to breathe, gasping for air with great difficulty.

The curious breathing sounds changed to a voice that seemed to be strangling, as if the speaker had only a few moments of life left.

“Keep — ” the strangling voice said. Then, as if it were the most tremendous effort imaginable, the voice continued.

“Away,” it said. “Keep… away.”

Then it became a heavy breathing sound again. “Keep away from what?” Jupiter asked the telephone.

“My… cave,” the voice said. There was another long gasping sound and then silence.

“Why?” Jupiter asked. “Say, who is this?”

The voice sounded hollow now. “Dead… men,” it said slowly, “tell… no… tales!”

There was a long trembling gasp, and then silence. Jupiter hung up. For a moment, he and Pete sat staring at the phone. Then Pete hopped up.

“I just remembered we’re having dinner early tonight,” he said. “I’d better get on home.”

Jupiter jumped up. “I’ll leave, too. Aunt Mathilda might want me to clean up the yard a little.” Quickly both boys bolted from the trailer.

They hadn’t had any trouble understanding what the ghostly voice had told them. It was a very simple message.

Keep away from my cave!

Dead men tell no tales!

Old Mr. Allen had told them about a dragon entering a cave.

He hadn’t mentioned a dead man — or a ghost!

10 The Death of Seaside

Meanwhile, Bob had showered and changed his clothes. By the time he reached the Rocky Beach Public Library, where he had a part-time job, he felt more cheerful.

As he walked in, Miss Bennett, the librarian, looked up and smiled.

“Oh, Bob,” she said, “I’m really glad to see you today. It’s been one of those busy days. So many visitors, and now, of course, so many books to put back on the shelves. Could you get right to it?”

“Sure,” Bob replied.

He picked up the sizable stack of returnable books and put them away one by one. Then he turned to the reading-room tables. A lot of books had been left out, and he gathered them up. The title of the one on top was Legends of California. He flipped the pages idly and saw one chapter entitled “Seaside: Dream of a City That Died”.

“Hmmm,” Bob said to himself. “That might be interesting.”

He put it aside thoughtfully. This was a lucky find. Anxious to return to the book when he had finished his duties at the library, Bob attacked the stacks of books lying about with record speed.

When he had finished putting them all back on the shelves, Miss Bennett asked him to mend some books with torn bindings. He took them into the back storage room and secured the covers with plastic tape. In a little while, he had done everything that had to be done.

He returned to Miss Bennett’s desk.

“Everything’s in order, Miss Bennett. I have some research to do now, if there isn’t anything else you need me to do — ”

Miss Bennett shook her head, and Bob hurried to the reading table with the book of Californian legends. He didn’t know very much about Seaside at all, he realized. Neither Jupiter nor Pete knew much about it either. Certainly none of them had ever heard a word about the town dying!

Quickly he opened the book to the chapter about Seaside. It started with these words:

There are cities which are plagued by ill fortune, just as people.Seaside’s dreams of becoming a key resort community went up in smoke fifty years ago.

The bright and bustling city its planners had visualized and gambled their fortunes on, was never to be. The elaborate canal sand waterways, constructed to remind visitors of Venice, have crumbled and been replaced with factories. The once elegant hotel shave been boarded up or bulldozed to make way for motorway construction going north and south.

Perhaps Seaside’s most bitter disappointment was the failure of its underground railway, the first on West Coast. Investors,as well as the public, were cool about plans for a rapid transport system linking the coastal part of seaside with the business section and other nearby communities. As a result, the underground network was never completed, and its few miles of tunnel remain boarded up and forgotten, a ghostly secret and costly reminder of the city that died before it had a chance to grow up.

“Wow!” Bob said to himself. The town of Seaside meant more to him now. It was more than fifty years since it had died—the book he was reading was several years old. If he hadn’t found it by accident, he probably never would have known the story of the place they had visited.

He wrote down some of the main facts about Seaside and put the book away. Then he sat thinking. He had a great deal to tell Jupiter, but he decided to wait until after dinner. It was almost that time now and he was hungry.

He said goodbye to Miss Bennett and cycled home. His mother was preparing dinner, and his father was