“No, sir,” Jupiter agreed. “It was a spooky radio show, wasn’t it?”
“The spookiest,” Gerald Watson said. “Used to open with a scream — Bert Clock did the screaming — and then went on to all kinds of weird mysteries. Bert and Rex King wrote it. I believe Bert suggested the plots and Rex wrote them. He was very good at puzzles and clues and so on. Well, well, that’s ancient history.
“What are you here for, anyway, boys? Not selling magazine subscriptions, I hope?”
“We’ve come for a message that Mr. Clock sent you,” Jupiter said. “He left another message saying to ask you for it.”
“Oh, the message!” Mr. Watson quickly brightened up. “Yes, yes, of course. Out of the blue it came — haven’t heard from Bert Clock in years, except for Christmas cards. Come in, come in. I’m sure I can dig up that message for you.”
He led them into the house, into a neat and tidy room whose main feature was a big tape recorder and a shelf that held box after box of recorded tapes. From a desk drawer he drew an envelope. It had been opened. “Here you are,” Mr. Gerald Watson said. “I opened it — curiosity got too strong for me. But I couldn’t understand a word of it.”
Jupiter took out the message and he and Pete examined it. It said:
“Well, Bob,” he said, “I’m sorry to see you here. What Officer Zebert tells me sounds rather serious. Driving recklessly over the mountains, could have killed both of you and maybe other people, too.”
“Excuse me, Chief,” Bob said. “We weren’t driving recklessly. We were being chased by another car. It had just caught us when Officer Zebert came up, and the other driver got away.”
“Being chased, eh?” The officer smiled knowingly.
“You should have seen them going round those curves, Chief! Then they were racing side by side down Mountain Road. If anyone else had come along then, they would have all been killed.”
“Now why should another car chase you?” Chief Reynolds asked. “Anyone could guess you wouldn’t be carrying much money with you.”
“We’re on a case,” Bob said. “We’re investigating a mysterious clock.”
“A mysterious clock!” It was Officer Zebert who spoke. “Did you ever hear such a crazy story, Chief?”
“It’s true,” Bob insisted doggedly. “We investigated a green ghost once, Chief. You remember that time. You even asked us — that is, Jupiter Jones and Pete Crenshaw and me — to help you find out what it was.”
He was referring to a mystery which Chief Reynolds at the time had frankly admitted had him totally baffled. Now the chief nodded.
“That’s true,” he said. “Where is this clock and what’s so mysterious about it?”
“It’s in the car out back,” Bob said. “If we could bring it in, we could show you why it’s so queer.”
“Right!” the chief said. “Zebert, go bring the clock here.”
“It’s in a zipper bag on the front seat,” Bob said, as the officer departed. “You know I want to believe you, Bob,” the chief said as they waited. “But we’ve had so much speeding and reckless driving by teenagers that we have to do something about it — Here comes Officer Zebert. Did you find the clock, Zebert?”
The officer shook his head.
“Nothing there,” he said. “The front seat’s empty. No clock, No bag. Nothing — ”
Bob and Harry stared at each other.
“Golly!” Bob exclaimed. “The clock’s been stolen!”
He went to the corner, where a length of thin stovepipe came down from the roof. From this Jupiter had fashioned a periscope which he called the See-All. Junk was piled as high as the roof around the trailer, hiding it from the outside world, and it was necessary to use the See-All to see over it.
Pete took a quick look and reported that Harry’s car had just driven into the yard. A few moments later a code rap came on the trapdoor which opened into Tunnel Two. Pete lifted the trapdoor and Bob and Harry, looking rather tired, climbed into the office.
“Did you get the message?” asked Jupiter.
“We got a message, yes,” Bob said. “But we can’t understand it.”
“May I see it?” Jupiter requested. “And do you have the clock?”
“Well, no, I don’t have it.” Bob looked unhappy.
Jupiter glanced at him sharply. “You’ve lost the clock?”
“It was stolen!” Harry blurted out. “While the car was parked at the police station.”
“What were you doing at the police station?” Pete asked. “Did you run into something too big to handle?”
“We were arrested for speeding,” Harry reported. “You see, coming over the hills someone started chasing us — ”
Between them he and Bob told the story of their adventure. Bob finished up by saying, “Chief Reynolds finally let us go. He said he didn’t know what we were mixing into, but if it was something important enough to be chased for, we’d better turn it over to the police.”
“I don’t think the police would really be interested in what we know so far,” Jupiter said. “They would be inclined to call it some kind of joke. We ran into a little trouble, too.”
He and Pete told of their encounter with Carlos and the little man, who, Jupiter now said, looked like a jockey or an ex-jockey.
“So you see,” he said, “someone’s interested in the clock and the messages. The clock was probably stolen by the same man who chased you two. When he saw the officer taking you to police headquarters, he followed and took the clock from the car.”