The Mystery of the Laughing Shadow - Arden William - Страница 3

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“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.

“What’s going on here!?”

A thin, stooped man with grey hair was standing behind the boys in the garden. He peered at them angrily through thick, horn-rimmed glasses.

“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.”

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