“You have an address, Records?” Jupiter asked without looking up from his work.
“The number was an answering service,” Bob said. “They told me to go to 47 San Roque Way. That’s only about ten blocks from here, Jupe.”
“Good. We should be in plenty of time since the ad only came out in the evening paper. He probably used the answering service because he didn’t have an address when he placed that ad.”
Half an hour later, Jupiter sat back in satisfaction and buckled a red-dyed collar round the stuffed cat’s neck.
“There! One red-and-black, one-eyed, red-collared crooked cat. The wire twists the legs just right, I believe.”
“It still doesn’t look like Andy’s cats,” Bob decided.
“But good enough for our purposes,” Jupiter declared. “Now let’s go and sell a crooked cat!”
Fifteen minutes later Bob, Andy and Jupiter crouched in a grove of palm trees not far from 47 San Roque Way. It was a small stucco house set far back from the street, with a faded sign on it that showed it had once been the combination home-office of a watchmaker. It seemed deserted in the gloomy late afternoon, with no curtains at the windows and no lights inside.
The street was not deserted. A horde of boys and girls milled around with stuffed cats in their arms. The cats were of every possible description. The prospective sellers were eager, but it was clear that the door of the house was locked.
“Most of those cats are all wrong,” Bob pointed out. “Can’t those kids read right?”
“They all hope the buyer will make an exception for them,” Jupiter said. “They all want twenty-five dollars for cats worth maybe ten dollars.”
“Everyone wants something for nothing,” Andy said. “All carnival people know that.”
At that moment a small blue car stopped in the alley behind the stucco house. Someone got out and hurried round to the front of the house. He was too far away and moved too quickly for the boys to get a real look at him. The man unlocked the front door of the small house, and the horde of eager cat-sellers began to pour inside after him. Andy shifted with excitement where the boys crouched hidden among the palms.
“What do we do, Jupiter?” he asked quickly.
“First, Andy, do you recognize that blue car?” Andy peered hard towards the distant car.
“No, Jupe, I don’t think I ever saw it before. Most carnival people have bigger cars than that to pull their trailers.”
“Very well,” Jupiter nodded. “You and I will stay here and watch. One of us can sneak round in a few minutes and examine that car. We must be careful, though, not to be seen. I don’t think the thief can be aware that anyone is after him yet. Anyway, if I’m right about him being a carnival member, he would recognize you, Andy.”
“What do I do?” Bob asked. “As if I didn’t know.”
“Yes, Records,” Jupiter instructed, “you will go in and try to sell our stuffed cat. He’ll refuse to buy, if my deductions are correct, but you’ll see who he is and perhaps find out just what is so valuable about the crooked cats.”
“Okay, First,” Bob said, and remounted his bike.
Carrying the fake crooked cat, Bob pedalled up to the long front path of the stucco house. He rode on to the door and dismounted. Then he joined the stream of boys and girls still pouring into the house.
Inside, he found himself in a bare living room mobbed with the eager sellers. The only furniture was some straight chairs and a single long table. At a chair behind the table, almost hidden by the crowd of boys and girls, the man was taking the cats one by one and examining them.
“No, I’m sorry, boys, those three won’t do at all,” the man said in a hoarse voice to two older boys. “You see, I must have only a certain kind of cat. No, that one won’t do, either. I’m sorry. My ad made it very clear that I want specific stuffed cats.”
Then the man’s arm reached out quickly to take a crooked cat that looked exactly like the cat that Pete had won and then lost at the carnival. Bob stared. On the man’s left forearm was a large tattoo of a sailing ship, clear and unmistakable!
“Good, that’s just what I need, son,” the tattooed man said as he gave the owner twenty-five dollars.
But Bob wasn’t listening. He was thinking that if the man was a member of the carnival, Andy should know the tattoo! He didn’t see how Andy could have missed such a mark, and if — he was looking straight into the swarthy face of the tattooed man. The man’s eyes flickered, and he pointed at Bob. “You in the red sweater. Can I see your cat?” Bob walked up to the table, trying not to show how scared he was, but the man only reached out and took the cat. He glanced at the fake cat, then smiled up at Bob.
“Well, it’s been repaired, but it’s a good job. My kids at the home will like it. Here’s your money, son.”
Stunned, Bob took the twenty-five dollars without really knowing what was happening. He found himself staring at the tattooed man, but, fortunately, the man immediately returned to looking at other cats. Recovering himself, Bob backed away from the table.
As he did, he saw the pile of stuffed cats on the floor behind the table. One was his own, and one wasn’t any more like the cat Pete had lost than his was. But the other two were identical to Pete’s prize.
The stream of kids was thinning now, and Bob hesitated. He was torn between leaving before he attracted attention and staying to see if he could learn more about crooked cats. He decided to risk staying a little longer.
“I need cats to match a giant cat the children’s home has as a kind of mascot,” the tattooed man explained to some disappointed boys. “It was made in Germany a long time ago. We want similar cats to give to all our kids as Christmas presents.”
“Gee,” a boy who had just failed said, “maybe I know who has one like you want, mister. My friend Billy Mota won a cat at the carnival.”
“Did he?” the tattooed man said. “Unfortunately, I suppose he didn’t see my ad, and I only have today.”
“He lives near me, 39 Chelham Place,” the boy blurted out.
“I won’t have time, son,” the tattooed man said. For an instant, Bob was certain that the swarthy man’s dark eyes had flickered towards him. But he could not be sure that it hadn’t been his imagination. The crowd in the room had dwindled to a very few boys, and Bob realized that soon he would be too obviously hanging round after selling his cat.
Quietly, as the tattooed man was eagerly buying one more cat that looked exactly like the one Pete had lost, Bob slipped through the door. On his bike he rode back to the grove of palms. Jupiter and Andy greeted him anxiously.
“You were in there a long time,” Andy said.
“I was trying to see if I could learn what was valuable about those cats, but I couldn’t,” Bob explained. “But I did see the man, Andy, he’s pretty tall and swarthy, and he’s got a tattoo of a sailing ship on his left arm! Have you ever seen a man like that at the carnival?”
“A tattooed sailing ship?” Andy frowned. “No, Bob, never. Some of the roughnecks are tattooed, but not like that. I don’t know anyone who sounds like that man.”
Jupiter was thoughtful. “He probably keeps the tattoo hidden at the carnival, and the way he looked to you, Bob, is maybe another disguise. Andy searched his car, but found no clues at all. We took the licence number, though.”
“I have something more important, Jupe,” Bob said. “He bought our cat!”
Jupiter was incredulous. “He bought it? The fake?”
Bob displayed the twenty-five dollars. “He bought five cats, all told. Three of them looked like Andy’s cats, but ours and one other didn’t. What’s he doing, Jupe?”
“Did he recognize you, do you think?” Jupiter asked.
“How could he? I never saw him before.”
“Unless he was that old thief last night,” Jupiter pointed out. “If he did recognize you, he might have bought wrong cats to fool us.”
“You said he only got three like mine?” Andy asked.
“That’s all, but some boy told him about another kid who won a cat at your carnival. He got the address of the other kid, and so did I:
“He’s gone to get that last crooked cat, First!” Bob guessed.
“Maybe we can catch up with him,” Andy said.
“On bicycles?” Bob pointed out. “Chelham Place is over five miles from here, Andy, near your carnival.” The boys all looked at each other in despair.
“He’ll get the last crooked cat,” Bob moaned. “And we can’t stop him.”
“I guess we can’t,” Jupiter agreed. He got up from under the hibiscus bushes and looked glumly at the small house. Then his eyes lighted up. “Or maybe we can! Fellows, look at those wires! The house has a telephone!” Without waiting for an answer, the First Investigator ran to the front door. It was locked.
“The windows!” Andy cried.
The carnival boy tried a living-room window. It was open! He pushed it up and the three boys tumbled inside.
“Find the telephone,” Jupiter urged. “Look everywhere!”
“There, Jupiter,” Andy pointed. “On the floor in that corner.“ Jupiter grabbed the receiver, lifted it to his ear, and listened. His face fell. “It’s not working.”
“Now what do we do?” Bob asked.
“I don’t know, Records,” Jupiter said glumly. “Perhaps if we rode over there as fast as we could we’d still be in time, if — ” he added lamely, “if no one was home when the tattooed man got there.”
“He’d just break in, Jupe,” Bob said.
Andy said, “There must be a public telephone somewhere near here, Jupiter!”
Jupiter groaned. “Of course, I should have — ”
The stocky First Investigator never finished what he was going to say. Outside the house, coming slowly closer, the boys all heard soft, careful footsteps. They froze in fright as they listened to the ominous steps. Bob crouched low and crept silently to a front window. He looked out, ducked and hurried back.
“The tattooed man! He’s coming back”
“The window,” Andy whispered urgently.
“No time, fellows,” Bob said, scared. “Quick, then, the other room!” Jupiter decided, hurriedly.
They fell over each other in their haste to get to the rear room. Andy reached it first, with Bob and Jupiter sprawling in behind him. It was a small, completely bare room, with shutters over the window that made it pitch dark. They quickly closed the door and stood behind it, holding their breath.
Outside in the living-room the outer door opened and closed.
There was a long silence.
Suddenly, a rasping voice laughed just outside the back room door. A low, nasty laugh.
“So, some smart lads, eh? Well, we’ll have to see that you don’t get too smart for your own good, boys.”
The three boys looked at each other in dismay. There was another laugh from outside the door.
“Thought I didn’t see you at the window, did you? Well, you’ll have to be a lot smarter than you are to fool me. I saw you, all right. A fine trio of fools you are. Didn’t even hear me park up the street. Well, you’ll have time to think about your foolishness, eh?”
There was the sound of a key turning in the lock in the door of the back room, and a heavy sliding noise as something solid dropped across the door— a metal bar.
“There, that should hold you,” the hoarse voice said. “But take a warning, smart boys. When you get out, stay away from me!”
There was no laugh this time. The boys heard footsteps going away and the slamming of the front door. A heavy silence descended over the small house.
“The window,” Jupiter said, undaunted. He felt his way in the dark to the window, pushed it up, reached to open the outside shutters and stopped.
“The window’s barred,” he cried. “This must have been a storeroom for the watchmaker who lived here!”
“Open the shutters and yell,” Bob said. They all yelled out into the grey, darkening sky. No one came. The small house was far from the street, and the houses across the back alley were some distance away on the next street After some minutes, Andy sat down on the floor and noticed something in the grey light from the window that they’d missed before. “Look! There’s a back door!”
Jupe rushed over to it. The back door was double-locked and solid.
“We’re stuck, fellows, and that tattooed man is sure to get the last crooked cat now!” Andy moaned. “We’re finished.”
“Perhaps not!” Jupiter said suddenly. “You forgot my new signal. Pete will see the red light, and the directional-signal will lead him to us.”
The stocky First Investigator took out the tiny instrument he had built and bent close over it.
“Help,” he said into it “Help.” The small instrument began to hum very low.
“It lights only on the receiving instrument,” Jupiter explained.