“Yes, he would,” Jupiter said grimly. “Pete, I want you to identify the island of cypresses tonight. We’ll all meet tomorrow morning at Professor Shay’s boat!”
After dinner, Jupiter helped Uncle Titus and Aunt Mathilda decorate the Christmas tree. At ten o’clock the telephone rang.
It was Pete. “It’s Cabrillo Island, Jupe. The old Cabrillo family owned it in 1872. It’s got cypresses all over it. It’s only a mile offshore, about two miles north of our harbour.”
“Good work, Second!” Jupiter said.
He hung up and went upstairs to his room. Before switching on the light, he walked over to the front window to look at the Christmas lights of Rocky Beach. Many of the houses on the other side of the salvage yard were colourfully lit.
He was about to turn away when a faint flash of light caught his eye. He stared in its direction, and saw another flash, and another. Jupiter looked puzzled. There were no houses where the flash came from. As the flashes of light continued, he suddenly realised their source — the salvage yard, just where Headquarters was hidden!
The flashes were coming from inside Headquarters—through the skylight in the trailer’s roof!
Quickly Jupiter slipped downstairs and across the street to the salvage yard. The front gate was properly locked. He turned and ran to the corner where his workshop was. Here was another secret entrance to the yard — two loose boards in a section of green-painted fence.
Cautiously Jupe climbed through Green Gate One into his workshop. He saw that the flashes of light had stopped. No one was near Tunnel Two. He crept round some piles of junk to check Easy Three.
The old wooden door of Easy Three was broken open, and beyond it the trailer door stood ajar!
Inside the trailer Jupiter saw Angus Gunn’s journal on the desk where he had left it. It was open to the last entry. He knew then what had caused the flashes — someone had broken into Headquarters and photographed the journal!
Jupiter wedged the Easy Three door back into place and walked slowly home. Now someone else knew Angus Gunn’s last course!
“I’ve been thinking all night, fellows,” Cluny said, “and I’m sure the ‘load’ in old Angus’s boat was the treasure! I know we’ll find it today!”
“I do feel optimistic, Cluny,” Jupiter agreed. “It would —”
Professor Shay’s station wagon drove up and screeched to a stop. The pink-faced little professor jumped out and ran up to the boys.
“Sorry I’m late, boys, but there was trouble at the Historical Society this morning. Someone broke in and tried to steal the Argyll Queen file! A man with a black beard!”
“Java Jim!” Pete and Bob cried together.
Professor Shay nodded. “Sounds like him to me.
“But why?” Cluny wondered. “Everyone knows all about the Argyll Queen’s story.”
“Unless everyone overlooked something,” Jupiter said. He told them about the intruder who had photographed the second journal the night before.
“Then Java Jim has the journal now!” Professor Shay cried. “He may be ahead of us, on the island already!” He looked out at the sea through the mist. “But can we sail in this weather, boys?”
Pete nodded. “Visibility’s over a mile offshore — the fog doesn’t thicken until farther out. It’s like that most of the time round here. And your boat’s big and sturdy.”
“Then let’s hurry, boys!” Professor Shay said.
They piled on to the broad, 25-foot sailing-boat, and Professor Shay started the auxiliary engine. Soon they had left the harbour. Pete took the helm and set a course north. Professor Shay and the three other boys huddled in the cabin. Even their heavy sweaters weren’t enough protection against the December morning chill.
“Cabrillo Island didn’t have a name until 1890. Then it was named after its owners,” Pete explained. “It’s a really small island, abandoned now. There’s a good cove on the near side.”
There was little wind, so Pete continued to use auxiliary. The others remained below until Pete said, “There it is, fellows!”
The small, high island loomed up a mile ahead in the mist. As they came closer, they could see the cypresses on it, and a tall chimney that jutted up behind one of the island’s two hills. It was a bleak and rocky place, ghostly in the mist. A solid bank of fog lay beyond it, out at sea.
Pete steered into a sheltered cove on the mainland side, and they tied up to a rotting old pier. They all scrambled out and stood on the shore looking at the barren, rocky land. Here and there grew stunted old cypresses with sparse foliage. The trees had been twisted into grotesque shapes by the winds.
“Gosh,” Bob said in sudden dismay, “if old Angus did bury the treasure here, how do we find it after a hundred years? It could be anywhere!”
“No, Records, I considered that all last night,” Jupiter said. “I’m convinced that Angus wouldn’t have buried the treasure. First, he knew that the Captain of the Argyll Queen was after him, and newly dug dirt is easy for anyone to see. Second, he wanted Laura to find it, and even a few months could obliterate all traces of something buried.
“No,” the stout leader of the trio went on, “I think he would have hidden it somewhere, but marked it with a clear sign that Laura would recognise. A sign that would last a long time, because he couldn’t be sure how long Laura might take to find it!”
Cluny had an idea. “Could Angus have built something here for Laura? Maybe bought some land on the island as a surprise?”
“Yes, I’ve thought of that,” Jupiter said. “We’ll look for something built of timber, or something identified with the Gunns.”
“The letter says to follow his course and read what his days built,” Bob said. “That’s the general direction. Then it talks about the phantom and a mirror. Those could be the signs!”
“Exactly!” Jupiter said. “But the journal says Angus made some proposal to the squire of this island — maybe for permission to hide something here! So we’ll look at the house with the chimney up there first. There could be records in the house.”
They climbed up the saddle between the two small hills, and reached a sheltered hollow near the top. The chimney stood tall in the hollow-but nothing else! The chimney, a massive stone fireplace, and a stone hearth, surrounded by bare, rocky ground.
“The house is gone,” Pete moaned. “There goes our chance of finding a mirror or records, Jupe.”
“Look!” Bob pointed.
Fresh dirt outlined a big, flat slab in the centre of the stone hearth. The slab had evidently been pried up, then dropped back into place.
“Someone’s been here ahead of us,” Professor Shay cried. “Not long ago from the look of that dirt!”
They looked uneasily round at the bleak hills and twisted cypresses. Nothing moved but streamers of mist.
“Let’s see what’s under that slab,” Bob said.
He and Pete moved the heavy stone slab away. Everyone looked down into an empty hole.
“Nothing in the hole,” Pete declared, “and I don’t think there ever was — at least recently.
The dirt’s dry and loose, with no marks in it, fellows.”
“But someone thought there might be,” Jupiter said. “See, he scraped dirt from the hearth until he found the slab.”
“There wasn’t another boat in the cove,” Pete said, “but there’s a small beach round a point just beyond the cove.”
“We’ll spread out and find him!” Professor Shay decided. “But be careful. I’ll be in the centre. If you see anyone, yell, and run to me.”
“Look for anything that might be a sign, too,” Jupiter added. “Maybe a cave, a pile of rocks, or something carved in rock.”
Everyone nodded nervously. Facing north, they spread out in a line towards each side of the tiny island. As they moved forward through the thickening mist, they began to lose sight of each other. Cluny, on the far left, could see only Pete through the mist.
Cluny was moving up the steepest edge of the westernmost hill. The sea and thicker fog lay to his left. A tendril of thick fog drifted round him until he couldn’t even see Pete. Nervous, looking hard for the stranger and listening for any sound, Cluny missed his footing and fell. He slid down the slope in a hail of loose stones.
“Oooof!” he grunted, and scrambled up — and saw it!
Through the drifting fog, a ghostly figure stared down at Cluny from an incline! A twisted black shape with a hump on its back and an evil, pointed face with a hooked nose and one enormous eye!
“It’s the phantom!” Cluny screamed. “Help!” The phantom moved towards Cluny, reaching its long, misshapen arms out to grab him!
Pete came pounding up through the fog. “What is it!”
“The phantom!” Cluny pointed. “There!”
Pete gulped and shrank back from the grotesque figure. The phantom’s single eye moved, followed him.
Then Professor Shay arrived, and Jupiter and Bob came panting up. As they stared at the ghostly shape, the fog suddenly thinned. Bob cried:
“It’s a tree!”
“One of the cypresses, twisted by the wind!” Professor Shay added.
The hunchbacked phantom was only a twisted, stunted tree trunk with branches bent out like arms. The “head” was a gnarled stump at the top with a hole in it. Fog drifting behind the hole gave the effect of a moving eye.
“Phew!” Cluny said with relief. “It sure looked like the phantom!”
Suddenly Jupiter exclaimed, “Fellows! It is the phantom! Don’t you see? It must be old Angus’s sign!”
“The sign?” Pete asked.
“You really think so, Jupe?” Bob cried.
Professor Shay narrowed his eyes behind his rimless glasses. “By Caesar, I think Jupiter must be right! Search round the tree, boys, for a hiding place! The treasure could be here!”
“I’ll look on the left!” Cluny said.
“I’ll take the right!” Bob joined in.
Professor Shay said, “You climb up above, Jupiter. I’ll look round the base of the rise!”
Pete was left standing alone as the others swarmed round the grotesque little tree. He looked to the right, and then to the left. He looked behind him, and then up the rise.
“Fellows,” Pete said slowly.
They didn’t hear him, or ignored him. They were poking at the thin dirt round the tree and turning over every rock they could find. Professor Shay was probing a crevice with a long stick.
“Fellows,” Pete said again, “I don’t think you’re going to find anything.”
Jupiter stopped scraping the dirt. “What? Why, Second?”
Pete shook his head. “I don’t think old Angus would have used that tree for his phantom sign, guys.”
“What are you talking about, Peter?” Professor Shay snapped. “Why don’t you help us?”
“Look over there.” Pete pointed to the right.
“Up on the slope — it looks to me like two more phantoms!”
Two ghostly shapes loomed in the mist.
“And there.” Pete motioned behind him. “Three more phantoms!”
As the rising wind blew away the thicker mist, more and more of the twisted trees appeared. Everyone stopped digging and looked at them. Professor Shay groaned and threw his stick away.
“They’re all cypresses! Seen from the right angle, almost every one of them would look like some kind of phantom!”
Jupiter nodded sadly. “Pete’s right. There are too many phantom trees for old Angus to have picked one as a sign. Or else —”
“Or else what, Jupe?” Pete asked.
“Or else Angus made a mistake and did pick one to mark the treasure,” Jupiter said. “It would take months and months to dig round all the cypresses! We might never find it!”
“I’m afraid,” Professor Shay said, “we’re beaten, boys.”
“Only if old Angus did hide the treasure on the island,” Jupiter said. “But —”
The stocky boy was interrupted by a sudden shower of pebbles and rocks that rolled down the slope. He looked up. The mist was almost gone now, and he could see another phantom shape standing on the crest of the hill.
“Just another cypress!” Cluny laughed.
“But,” Jupiter said, “a tree can’t make stones roll unless —”
“Unless it can move!” Pete said.
“It is moving!” Professor Shay cried. “That’s no phantom tree, that’s a man up there! You! Stop!”
The figure on the crest vanished. A sound of running carried from the other side of the hill.
“Quick, boys!” Professor Shay shouted. “Stop him!”
He ran up the slope with the boys behind him. From the top he could see a distant figure running hard, headed off to the right as if to circle round to the cove.
“He must have a boat,” the professor said, panting. “Cut him off!”
They turned and raced back down the hill towards the cove. Pete and Cluny soon outstripped the others and reached the cove in minutes. But the fleeing man was nowhere in sight!
“Over there!” Jupe shouted from the higher ground behind them. “To your left!”
The running figure was just disappearing over a ridge to the north of the cove. Pete and Cluny ran in pursuit. Bob and Professor Shay turned off towards the ridge. Jupiter slowly puffed along far behind them.
Bob and Professor Shay reached the ridge first, with Pete and Cluny close behind. A small, narrow beach lay before them at the foot of the ridge. The fleeing man was already in his motorboat. As he headed the boat away from the island, he looked back for a moment, and the pursuers saw his face.
“It’s the man in the green VW!” Bob cried.
Professor Shay stared out at the thin young man with the black moustache and wild black hair.
“Why,” the professor said, “it’s young Stebbins! Stop, you young villain!”
The motorboat moved farther away from the island.
“The young rascal!” Professor Shay roared. “Quick, to my boat!”
They ran again to the cove. On the way they met Jupiter, still puffing towards the little beach! The portly leader of the Investigators looked at them hopelessly as they raced past him going the opposite way.
“Oh, no!” he groaned, and turned to pant after them again.
The lines were untied, the engine was started, and Pete was ready at the helm when Jupiter finally arrived and collapsed in the boat. Pete steered for the open water. The motorboat was only a few hundred yards ahead.
“Full speed, Peter! Catch him!” Professor Shay urged, and shook his fist towards the motorboat. “Stebbins, you thief!”
Still panting, Jupiter sat up. “You know him, Professor? The young man in the VW? Who is he?”
“My former assistant, young Stebbins,” Professor Shay raged. “He was a graduate student over at Ruxton University, a poor young man, and I tried to help him. But he stole from me! He tried to sell valuable historical items from the Society’s museum. I had to fire him, and he was sent to prison for a year!”
The motorboat was much farther ahead now, almost a half a mile.
“We’ll never catch him,” Pete said. “We’re too slow.”
Professor Shay glared towards the now distant motorboat.
“You wondered how Java Jim knew so much about the treasure and the Gunns, Jupiter,” he said. “There’s your answer! I recall now that Stebbins was very interested in the Argyll Queen and old Angus Gunn! He must have escaped, or been paroled. Now he’s up to his old tricks. He’s probably working with your Java Jim, by Caesar! He’s a most dangerous young criminal!”
“Stebbins must have been the one who photographed the journal at Headquarters last night,” Bob decided.