“That is indeed correct,” Mr. Hitchcock agreed, “but at the moment I am more interested in your laughing shadow. You say that it was tall, humpbacked, and had an oddly small head that seemed to jerk in a strange manner, and laughed wildly?”
“Yes, sir,” Bob confirmed.
“You were close to this shadow, yet each of you describes the laugh quite differently. What do you make of that, young Jones?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Jupiter admitted, baffled.
“Nor do I, at the moment,” said Mr. Hitchcock. “Now what of this message you say dropped out of the statuette?”
Jupiter handed the piece of paper to the famous director. Mr. Hitchcock studied it closely. “Written in blood all right, by thunder! Recently, too, I should deduce from its legibility, which means that it has not been inside the amulet for long.”
“Do you recognize the language, sir?” Bob asked.
“Unfortunately, no. It is not a language I have ever seen before. In fact, it doesn’t even resemble any writing I have seen.”
“Gosh,” Pete said, “Jupiter was sure you’d know, sir.”
“What do we do now?” Bob asked, crestfallen.
“Luckily, I believe I can help despite my ignorance of this language,” Mr. Hitchcock declared, smiling. “I will send you boys to a friend of mine. He’s a professor at the University of Southern California, and an expert on American Indian languages. He served as an adviser for our film. He lives right in Rocky Beach. My secretary will give you his address, and I shall expect to hear what progress you make.”
The three boys thanked the director and stopped at his secretary’s desk on the way out in order to get the professor’s address. His name was Wilton J. Meeker, and he lived only a few blocks from The Jones Salvage Yard.
* * *
Jupiter instructed Worthington to take them to the professor’s house and then return the Rolls-Royce to the agency. They could easily walk home.
Professor Meeker’s small, white house was set back from the street. A white picket fence enclosed the thick tropical-like vegetation that surrounded the house. The boys opened the white, slatted gate and started up the brick path towards the front door. When they were half-way up the path, a man suddenly emerged from the thick garden vegetation directly in front of them.
“Fellows!” Bob gave a warning cry.
The man was short and very broad in the shoulders with a dark skin the colour of deep-brown leather. His strong teeth gleamed white, and his eyes were black and wild. He was dressed all in white: a loose white shirt of some heavy, rough material knotted at his waist, a pair of narrow white trousers of the same rough material, and a broad white hat. His bare lower legs were brown and heavily muscled.
He held a long, wicked-looking knife!
The boys stood paralysed on the walk as the man advanced on them with a trotting shuffle, his black eyes fierce. He waved the menacing knife and shouted at them in some strange, harsh language. Before they could make a sound or run, he was upon them.
His broad, dark hand reached out and snatched the tiny gold amulet from Jupiter’s grasp. Then he turned quickly and ran into the bushes.
Stunned, the boys were unable to cry out or move for a long moment. Then Pete recovered:
“He got the amulet!”
Heedless of danger, Pete plunged into the thick bushes in pursuit. Bob and Jupiter followed close behind. They all reached the far edge of the garden just in time to see the dark man jump into a battered old car. There was a second man in the car, and it roared away the instant the man with the amulet jumped in.
“He got away!” Pete cried.
“With our statuette!” Bob wailed.
The boys looked at each other in helpless frustration. The amulet was gone! Then an angry voice spoke behind them.
“A man stole our amulet!” Pete blurted out.
“He had a knife!” Bob declared.
“Your amulet?” The man looked puzzled. “Ah! Then you must be the boys Alfred Hitchcock telephoned about. The Three Investigators.”
“We are, Professor,” Jupiter confirmed proudly.
“And you have a problem for me? Some language you can’t identify,” Professor Meeker went on.
“We did have,” Bob said glumly, “but that dark man stole the statuette. It’s gone.”
“Correction,” Jupiter announced. “We still have a problem for Professor Meeker. The amulet is gone, but not the message. I took the logical precaution of carrying it separately.”
Triumphantly, Jupiter handed the slip of paper to the professor.
“Amazing!” the professor cried, his eyes gleaming with excitement behind his thick glasses. “Come inside where I can study this properly.”
Without another glance at the boys, Professor Meeker trotted to the house. He was so absorbed in the strange message he was holding in his hands that he almost ran into a tree. Once inside the small house, the professor waved the boys to chairs in his book-lined study and sat down at his desk to study the message.
“Yes, yes, there’s no doubt about it. Absolutely amazing!” Although the professor was muttering aloud, he really seemed to be talking to himself. It was as if he had forgotten that the boys were there. “In blood, too. And fresh, quite recent. Fantastic!”
Jupiter cleared his throat. “Uh, Professor Meeker, sir, do you know what language it is?”
“Eh?” Professor Meeker looked up. “Oh, yes, yes, of course. It’s Yaquali. No doubt at all. It’s the Yaquali language. A fabulous people, the Yaquali. Few Indian tribes ever wrote, you know. No alphabets or vocabulary texts. But the Yaquali learned the Spanish alphabet, and Spanish missionaries compiled a dictionary for them so that they could read and write their own language.”
“Are the Yaquali a local tribe like the Chumash?” Pete asked.
“Local? Like the Chumash?” Professor Meeker cried, blinking at Pete as if the Second Investigator was completely crazy. “Good heavens, no! The Chumash were quite a backward tribe. They never wrote their own language. Yaquali is entirely different from Chumash — as different as English and Chinese. The Yaquali aren’t local at all.”
“But they are American Indians?” Bob queried.
“Of course, although not from the United States,” the professor said, and stared happily at the slip of paper again. “It’s simply unbelievable to see a message written in Yaquali here in Rocky Beach. The Yaquali people rarely leave their mountains. They hate civilization.”
“Er, what mountains, sir?” Jupiter asked. “Where do the Yaquali live?”
“Where?… Why, in Mexico, of course,” Professor Meeker said as if surprised that everyone didn’t know. Then he smiled. “Ah, forgive me, boys. Of course you wouldn’t know about the Yaquali. They’re quite obscure, mainly because they shun contact with other men and the modern world.”
“Well, sir,” Jupiter observed, “Mexico isn’t far from here. I don’t see why it should be so surprising for one of them to come to Rocky Beach.”
“In the first place, young man, the Yaquali hate to leave their homes, as I said. In the second place, they live in the most remote and rugged part of the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico. It is an isolated and terribly dry area called the Devil’s Garden. They have a long record of shunning civilization. In fact, they became so hard to locate, and so skilful at climbing where no other men could climb, that they were often called the Devils of the Cliffs.”
“Devils?” Pete shivered. “Were they so dangerous, sir?”
“Very dangerous if they were attacked. But, under normal circumstances, they are a peaceful people who wish only to be left alone. That is why they learned to climb so well, so that they could live up on their inaccessible mountains.”
“Then how would a message from one of them get here?” Bob asked dubiously.
Professor Meeker rubbed at his lean jaw. “Well, I suppose it isn’t so improbable. Although they are still quite remote, the Mexican government has been working with them over the last few years. Time and the needs of the modern world may have caught up with the Yaquali. They are an intelligent people, and they have long been in demand for their climbing skill.”
“You think some of them may have come here to work?” Jupiter asked.
“It’s possible, although I haven’t heard of any of them being anywhere in the United States. And I can’t really imagine what they would be doing in Rocky Beach. You did say that you found the message here in Rocky Beach, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir, in a secret compartment in the amulet.”
“Ah, yes, the Yaquali are fond of amulets.”
“But Mr. Hitchcock thought the amulet was the work of the local Chumash tribe,” Bob explained. “He said it was like one you used in the television show.”
“Chumash, eh. Well, that seems odd. I fail to see any connection between the extinct Chumash and the Yaquali. It’s unlikely that Chumash work would have ever reached the Yaquali in Mexico. And you say that it was this amulet that the dark man stole from you?”
“Yes, sir,” Pete said.
“It was solid gold, too,” Bob added.
Professor Meeker stared at the boys. “Gold? A Chumash amulet? That’s quite impossible, boys.”
“Oh, no, sir,” Jupiter declared firmly. “I examined it closely. I am certain it was gold.”
“You must be mistaken, young man.”
Jupiter shook his head. “I really know gold, sir.”
“Mr. Hitchcock said it was solid gold, too, Professor Meeker,” Bob stated.
The professor seemed stunned. His mouth dropped open, then snapped shut. He rubbed his jaw and stared hard at the boys, his eyes narrowed in thought. Then, slowly, he leaned forward.
“If it was truly gold, my young friends, you may have stumbled on to something of the utmost importance,” the professor said carefully, pausing in order to give emphasis to his words. “You may have found a clue to a mystery that is almost two hundred years old.”
Jupiter’s eyes opened wide. “A two-hundred-year-old mystery?”
“Yes, my boy, the mystery of the Chumash Hoard!”
“What is it, sir? The Chumash Hoard?” Bob asked.
“Between 1790 and about 1820,” the professor explained, “there was a renegade band of very dangerous Chumash in the mountains. Although there were a few of them, they were deadly when defending themselves and expert at hiding. The Spanish were unable to control them, so they tried to bribe them with gold to leave the settlers alone. The band soon learned the value of gold, and when the Spanish didn’t give them as much as they wanted they stole more anywhere they could find it.
“By the time they were finally beaten and their last leader, Magnus Verde, mortally wounded and captured, they were reputed to have amassed a great hoard of gold articles — jewellery and bullion. Magnus Verde refused to tell where the Hoard was hidden. All he said before he died was that no man would ever find it. The rest of the renegades vanished and were never seen again. Since then many, many men have looked for the treasure without any success. I have always thought that it was thrown into some impenetrable place — perhaps the ocean — to keep the white men from ever finding it.”
Jupiter’s eyes seemed to be looking far away. “I think it would have been hard for them to throw away the gold after fighting so hard to get it.”
“You may be right,” the professor said. “And if you have actually seen a Chumash amulet made of gold, there is good reason for thinking the Chumash Hoard does still exist somewhere. What an exciting discovery!”
“Perhaps the message says something about the Hoard,” Jupiter said eagerly.
“Message?” Professor Meeker blinked again. Then he looked down at the slip of paper. “Goodness me, I forgot all about it. Of course! It may tell us.”
The professor frowned as he studied the message. “Primitive languages are often hard to translate exactly because the writers think in a primitive manner. But as nearly as I can make out, it says: ‘Words smoke. Sing death song. Brothers help.’ I’m afraid that’s all.”
“But it is a call for help?” Jupiter asked.
“I would say so,” the professor agreed and stared at the message with a puzzled expression. “But I can’t understand what a Yaquali message would be doing in a Chumash amulet. It’s really a mystery.”
“A mystery we hope to solve, sir,” Jupiter pronounced somewhat pompously.
“Of course, my boy.” The professor smiled. “And when you do, I shall be most grateful if you will allow me to examine the Chumash Hoard.”
Professor Meeker insisted on seeing the boys as far as the gate, peering in all directions in the sunny morning to be sure that the dark man had not returned. As soon as they were by themselves again, Bob and Pete crowded around Jupiter.
“Gosh, Jupe!” Bob exclaimed. “Do you think someone has found the Chumash Hoard?”
“And someone else is trying to steal it?” Pete added.
“Maybe the amulet is a clue to where the treasure is, and someone is trying to steal it to find the Hoard!”
“Maybe it’s a gang of Indians robbing Miss Sandow!” Pete’s imagination began to run wild.
“That dark man sure looked like some kind of Indian.”
“That laughing shadow could have been a wild Indian!”
Jupiter, his round and deceptively innocent face deep in concentration while his companions chattered, suddenly stopped short. “Speculation won’t get us anywhere now,” the First Investigator declared decisively. “We must go to the Sandow Estate and see what we can find out.”
“Under cover, Jupe?” Pete said. “You mean we should snoop around?”
“No, we must get into the house and talk to Miss Sandow herself. She might know something vital or have seen something. The problem is — how do we get into her house’?”
As they neared the salvage yard they decided that the best way was to have Bob’s dad phone Miss Sandow and ask if they could visit the estate as part of a research project on Spanish land grants for their California history class. Hans or Konrad, the stolid Bavarian helpers of Uncle Titus Jones, could drive them.
“Most adults will help boys if they think it’s for some school work,” Jupiter observed.
Bob agreed, but Pete was looking ahead to the entrance to the salvage yard.
“Look,” Pete hissed, “there’s Skinny Norris!”
Sure enough, their old enemy — a tall, skinny boy with a long nose — was leaning against the entrance with his back to them. E. Skinner Norris, Skinny to the boys, hated the Investigators, and spent a good deal of time trying to prove he was smarter than Jupiter. He always failed, but since he had a large allowance and could drive a car because his father was a legal resident of another state where Skinny could get a driver’s licence, he was in a position to be annoying to the boys.
“Now what’s he doing here?” Bob wanted to know.
“I don’t expect he’s come to help us,” Jupiter observed wryly. “Come on, fellows, we’ll go in through Red Gate Rover.”
They turned and walked quickly towards the rear of the salvage yard. Out of Skinny’s sight, they hurried past the back fence, which was painted with a dramatic scene of the San Francisco fire of 1906. Fifty feet from the corner, a little dog sat in the painting near a red spout of flame. They had named the dog Rover, and one of his eyes was a knot in the wood. They carefully pulled it out and reached in to release a catch. Three boards in the fence swung up, and they slipped inside the yard.