Jupe held up the ransom note. “The police should be told about this,” he said. “Have you called them?”
“I have not, and you’d better not tell them either. The guy says not to, and I can’t take the risk. Even if Dad isn’t Father of the Year, I don’t want anything to happen to him. Besides, I’ll be flat broke and out of here if anything does happen. He has a clause in his will that if he dies or disappears and there’s anything suspicious about it, I don’t inherit a penny. Even if I’m never accused of any crime, I’ve had it!”
“Oh,” said Jupe.
“Don’t act so shocked,” said Marilyn. “Dad just likes to stack the odds in his favor. Doesn’t everyone? Now, come on. Let’s get busy.”
She turned away and started up the stairs. The boys followed, astounded by what she had told them.
A vacuum cleaner sat in the upper hall. Marilyn had tried to get rid of the feathers from the torn pillow, but bits of white still clung to every surface. The boys ignored this and soon were working their way methodically through the bookcases in Jeremy Pilcher’s bedroom. They found books on birds and books on philosophy, chemistry texts and science fiction. There were dictionaries and books on gemstones and a set of Dickens in flaking leather bindings.
“Here’s something,” said Jupe. He held up a dusty paperback copy of a book titled
. It was a mystery by S. S. Van Dine.
Marilyn took it and flipped through the yellowing pages. “Somehow I don’t think anybody would commit a crime to get their hands on this,” she said. “We can try it on the kidnapper, but let’s keep looking.”
Bob sneezed and went on taking books from the dusty shelves, glancing at them, then putting them back. “Your dad reads a lot, doesn’t he?” he said.
“Not really,” Marilyn admitted. “He just buys books. He says he’ll read them someday when he has more time. Meanwhile, he buys more and more, and he puts them on the shelves and there they stay. He likes owning them. It makes him feel like he knows what’s in them, and once he buys a book he never gives it away. He never gives anything away.”
She turned to the big bureau. “Now let’s see what’s in here,” she murmured, and she opened one of the drawers. There were socks and a muffler and a jumble of papers. She took the papers out and shuffled through them. “Newspaper clippings,” she said. “A prescription that never got filled. Some travel brochures.”
She threw the papers down on the bureau. “It would help to know what we’re looking for,” she said. “I can’t believe it’s that old murder mystery.”
“How about this one?” Bob held up a book titled
“Unlikely, but hold it out,” said Jupe.
“Maybe it’s a rare first edition,” said Marilyn. “Or something not even published — a manuscript. Some notes on scientific experiments? Or the logbook of somebody with terrible secrets in his past, like the commandant of a concentration camp? Something like that.”
“We’ll check everything,” said Jupe.
The boys finished searching the room’s bookcases and started to take cartons and folders down from the old collector’s closet shelves. They found canceled checks tied up into packets. They found old telephone bills and postcards from far-off places like Gibraltar and Cairo. None of the postcards had been written on and mailed. Evidently they were just souvenirs.
“Dad went to sea when he was younger,” Marilyn explained. “Before he became… well, I guess a captain of industry is what you’d call him. On Wall Street they call him a pirate. Maybe he is. You can’t start from nothing, the way he did, and wind up owning a shipping line and some department stores and a paper mill and two or three banks without being sharper than the next guy.” Or maybe crookeder, thought Jupe. The telephone rang suddenly. Marilyn jumped. When she answered it, she said nothing for a moment, then cried, “I’m trying! Listen, I have something called
, and a book by a guy named Jim Bishop and —”
She stopped and frowned, then said, “But I’m not trying to string you along. Listen, I don’t know what I’m looking for and… and… wait! Listen!”
She stopped, held the phone out, and glared at it.
“The kidnapper?” said Jupe.
“Yes. He thinks I’m making fun of him. He doesn’t want any old murder story. He wants the bishop’s book, and he hung up without telling me any more about it.”
“Could you tell anything from the voice?” asked Bob.
She shook her head. “Hoarse,” she said. “Either the guy has a cold or he was talking through a handkerchief to disguise his voice. He has an accent of some kind, but that could be a put-on.”
She turned away to continue her search of the bureau. By the time she opened the last drawer and the boys had taken down the last box from the closet shelves, they were all weary. And Marilyn was hungry.
“I didn’t have dinner and there’s not much in the refrigerator,” she said. “Dad picked up the tab for the food for this party, so you can bet he made Burnside figure it really close. Want to share a pizza?”
“Great,” said Bob. “No anchovies though, huh?”
“Extra cheese,” requested Jupiter. “And a diet cola.”
“Okay. One of you guys want to come with me and help carry?”
Bob went with Marilyn, and Jupe stayed behind to continue the search. He started to go to the next bedroom, but on his way he saw the door to the attic. He had been up there that afternoon, when he and his friends were looking for Pilcher. It was not as jumbled as the unused bedrooms on the second floor. Also, it wouldn’t be used as much as the bedrooms. It would be an ideal place to stash a treasure.
Jupe opened the door, flipped the light switch at the foot of the stairs, and started up.
There were trunks shoved back in the corners. There were also boxes and bookcases, but not an overwhelming number of them. Jupe went to the first set of shelves and pulled out a slim volume. It was titled
. It was dated 1917.
He was putting the book back on the shelf when he heard the house door close down below.
“Bob?” he called. “That you?”
There was no answer. Jupe turned from the shelf and listened, suddenly aware that it couldn’t be Bob and Marilyn. Not yet. They hadn’t had time to get the pizza.
But someone had come into the old collector’s house.
Jupe did not call out again. He did not stir. The attic door was open, and he could hear footsteps. Someone was coming up to the second floor.
Clothing rustled. Now the intruder was at the foot of the attic stairs. Jupe heard rasping breathing.
Who was it? And did he know Jupe was there? Had he heard Jupe call out when the front door opened?
A switch clicked. The attic light went out.
The sudden darkness was so intense that it pressed in on Jupe. He felt smothered.
The prowler was coming up the attic stairs!
Jupe stepped away from the bookcase. Hide! He had to hide! He would get back in a corner, out of the way.
The footsteps were at the top of the stairs now. Jupe began to duck behind a bookcase, but he was caught suddenly in a beam of brightness. The intruder had a flashlight!
Jupe tried to dodge away, but the light followed him. The intruder came on across the attic. Jupe could see nothing but the blinding stab of light. He couldn’t escape! He couldn’t hide!
He lunged toward the flashlight and struck out at it. There was a surprised gasp and a grunt of pain as one of Jupe’s elbows landed on the prowler’s arm. The light clattered to the floor and bounced away. Glass shattered and the attic went dark.
Now they were even. And now it began — a perilous groping in the dark as the intruder tried to get his hands on Jupe. Jupe retreated, stumbling backward, feeling his way through total blackness.
There was a touch on Jupe’s shoulder, and Jupe threw himself to the side. But the assailant followed, clutching, trying to seize Jupe’s arm.
Jupe doubled his fists and struck out, but he missed. Then there was a shove. Jupe stumbled and went down.
Downstairs, the house door banged open.
“Jupe?” It was Bob calling. “Come and get it!”
A voice muttered something Jupe did not understand. The attacker floundered through the blackness to the attic stairs and thundered down and away.
Jupe scrambled up and made for the stairs. He almost fell as he raced down after the intruder. When he reached the second floor he heard his quarry on the back stairs.
Bob called again. “Hey, what’s up? Jupe?”
Jupe dashed down to the kitchen just in time to hear the back door slam. By the time he got the door open again, the stranger had crossed the yard and disappeared down the alley.
“Couldn’t your fiance and his mother come over?” asked Jupe.
“They could — if they hadn’t called earlier to say there was a family emergency and they were flying home to Boston tonight.” Marilyn snorted. “I bet the emergency was getting away from the Pilchers.”
“Bob and I could stay here for the night,” Jupe suggested.
The young woman blinked, and for a second she seemed to struggle with herself, as if she didn’t want to appear pleased at the idea. But finally she said, “Well, sure! I’m your client, so why shouldn’t you be bodyguards? Will your folks let you stay?”
“Probably,” said Jupe. “They’re pretty good about things like this.”
Jupe was right. He and Bob telephoned their homes and had little trouble getting permission to spend the night at the Pilcher house so that Marilyn wouldn’t be alone. After they phoned, Bob reheated the pizza he and Marilyn had brought. They ate, then renewed their search for the bishop’s book. They turned out the shelves in the cluttered rooms on the second floor and found more books and more papers and more relics of the days when Pilcher was a seaman voyaging to far-off lands.
“Your dad must have been kind of adventurous when he was younger,” said Bob when he came upon an ivory elephant that Marilyn told him was from India. “He must have had a ball, going to sea and everything.”
“He could afford to be adventurous then,” said Marilyn gloomily. “When he was younger he didn’t have anything to lose, so he just went where he wanted. But then he somehow got enough together to buy the Comet Steamship Line. It wasn’t much — just a couple of rusty freighters that sailed out of Houston to ports in the Caribbean. They were tramp steamers that went wherever they were needed. Dad was smart, and he made enough with those two old scows to have a third ship built. That one made even more money. Then Dad bought a little bank up in Visalia, and he did some deals on the stock market.
“Mom says it was after he got into the stock market that he really got excited about making money. She says it was like watching someone turn into a compulsive gambler. I–I don’t think Mom understands him.”
“And you do?” said Bob.
She shrugged. “I think I do, as much as anybody. I just wish he wasn’t such a hoarder. Not that he’s that way in business. In business you’ve got to know when to let go. That’s one of the things Dad taught me. You have to be sharp, because if you’re not, the turkeys will get you down.
“I was about five when he and Mom got the divorce. Most of the time I live with my mom when I’m not in school. Lately, though, I’ve been spending more time with Dad. I wouldn’t want him to forget he has a daughter.
It was late when they finished searching the rooms on the second floor. Marilyn said good night and disappeared into her bedroom. Bob and Jupe decided to take turns keeping watch in the upper hall. They were close enough to Marilyn to hear her if something frightened her during the night. Also, they could see both the front and back stairs. No one could creep up on them and surprise them.
Bob took the first shift. He got an armchair from one of the bedrooms and settled himself with a cola in his hand.
Jupe took a blanket from the linen closet and stretched out on a bed in one of the unused rooms, thinking he probably wouldn’t sleep a wink after the excitement of the day. The next thing he knew, Bob was shaking him. “It’s three A.M.,” said Bob. “I’m beat. Your turn to watch.”
Jupe crawled out from under the blanket. Bob crawled in. “Mmmm!” said Bob. “Thanks for warming it up for me.”
“You aren’t welcome,” said Jupe grumpily. He went out to the post in the hall, feeling chilled and depressed, and sat down in the chair. He decided that three A.M. had to be the lowest hour of the day. Compared with three A.M., midnight was cheery.
How long would it be before daybreak, he wondered.
As this thought came, something moved over his head. He looked up, not breathing, listening.
Nothing! Dead silence. The dreary old house was getting on his nerves. He was imagining things.
But then it came again. It was a mere whisper of movement, as if someone walked across the attic floor on bare feet — someone small and light.
But no one could be up there!
Jupe stood up and went slowly, silently, to the attic door. Slowly, silently, he turned the doorknob and eased the door open.
He looked up into total darkness, and he smelled the chill dead smell of the unused space above.
Someone was there. Someone was at the top of the stairs. He couldn’t see anything, but he could hear the faintest rustle of clothing, the sigh as a breath was expelled. And he knew that the unseen one could look down over the stair rail and watch him.
For a second Jupe bitterly regretted not turning out the hall light before he opened the door. If the stalker in the darkness had a weapon, Jupe would make a first-rate target.
Was it the intruder who had attacked him earlier? If it was, why had he come back? And how had he gotten inside? What was he doing in the attic?
Jupe stepped back and eased the attic door shut.
“What is it?” whispered someone close behind Jupe.
Jupe jumped as though he had been shot.
“Hey, it’s only me.”
Bob was there looking tousled, his shoes off. He gestured toward the ceiling. “Somebody’s walking around up there,” he said. He still spoke in a whisper.
“You heard it too?”
A board creaked above them. The intruder had left the stairwell. He was going toward the front of the house.
“You fell asleep,” Jupe accused his pal. “That guy came in and walked right past you, and you were sound asleep and didn’t see him!”