The Mystery of the Screaming Clock

  THE MYSTERY

  OF

  THE SCREAMING CLOCK

  Robert Arthur

  Introduction

  Hello! It’s a pleasure to have you join me for another adventure with that incredible detective team called The Three Investigators. This time an unusual screaming clock leads them into a tangle of clues, mystery, and excitement.

  I guess you’ve already met The Three Investigators and know that they are Jupiter Jones, Bob Andrews, and Pete Crenshaw, all of Rocky Beach, California, a small Pacific Coast town not far from Hollywood. Just in case my guess was wrong and this is the first time you’re meeting my young friends, let me tell you that they have a secret Headquarters hidden from sight in The Jones Salvage Yard. The junkyard is owned by Jupiter’s aunt and uncle, Mathilda and Titus Jones. The boys do odd jobs for them to earn extra money when they’re not busy with a case.

  So much for the introductions. On with the mystery. The clock is about to scream!

  Alfred Hitchcock

  Chapter 1

  The Clock Screams

  THE CLOCK SCREAMED.

  It was the scream of a woman in mortal terror. It started at a low pitch, then went higher and higher until it hurt Jupiter’s ears. A shiver ran down his back. It was the most terrifying sound he had ever heard.

  And yet it was just an old-fashioned electric alarm clock. Jupiter had merely plugged it in to see if it would run. The next thing he knew it was screaming at him.

  Jupiter grabbed the clock’s electric cord and pulled it out of the socket. The scream stopped.

  Jupiter let out his breath with a gasp of relief. The sound of a clock screaming like a woman had been rather unnerving.

  Running feet sounded behind him. Bob Andrews and Pete Crenshaw, who had been working in the front part of The Jones Salvage Yard, skidded to a stop beside him.

  “Wow, what was that?” Bob asked.

  “Are you hurt, Jupe?” Pete peered at him anxiously.

  Jupiter shook his head.

  “Listen,” he said. “I want you to hear something rather unusual.”

  He plugged in the clock again, and once more the terrifying scream filled the air.

  He pulled out the plug and the scream stopped instantly.

  “Wow!” Pete said. “A clock that screams, and he calls it rather unusual!”

  “I wonder what he’d say if it grew wings and flew away?” Bob grinned. “Maybe then he’d say it was quite unusual. As far as I’m concerned a screaming clock is almost the most unusual thing I’ve ever bumped into.”

  Jupiter ignored their friendly sarcasm. He was turning the clock over in his hands, studying it. Then he said, in a tone of satisfaction, “Ah!”

  “Ah, what?” Pete demanded.

  “The alarm lever is at On,” Jupiter told them. “I’ll shut it off and plug the clock in again.”

  He did this and the clock began to purr softly. It made no other sound.

  “Now let’s see what happens.” Jupiter flipped the alarm lever to On.”

  Instantly the clock screamed again. Jupiter quickly switched it off.

  “Well,” he said, “we’ve solved the first part of the mystery. The clock screams instead of ringing an alarm.”

  “What mystery?” Pete demanded. “What mystery have we solved the first part of?”

  “Jupe means a screaming clock is certainly a mystery,” Bob said. “And he’s solved why it screams.”

  “Not why,” Jupiter corrected him. “Just when. The clock screams when the alarm is set. Why it does is a much better mystery. I have a feeling it will be an interesting one to investigate.”

  “What do you mean, investigate?” Pete asked. “How can you investigate a clock?

  Ask it questions? Give it the third degree?”

  “A clock that screams when it should ring an alarm is certainly mysterious,”

  Jupiter answered. “And the motto of The Three Investigators is—”

  “We investigate anything!” Bob and Pete answered together.

  “All right,” Pete went on. “So it’s a mystery. I still want to know how you can investigate it.”

  “By finding out why it was made to scream. There must be a reason for it,” Jupiter told him. “We haven’t any other mystery on hand right now, so I propose we get some good practice by investigating this screaming clock.”

  “Oh no!” Pete groaned. “We have to draw the line somewhere.”

  But Bob looked interested. “How would you start, Jupe?” he asked.

  Jupiter reached for his tool kit, which was in a drawer of a nearby workbench. The boys were in Jupe’s workshop section of The Jones Salvage Yard, owned and run by his uncle and aunt, Titus and Mathilda Jones. Here, hidden from the eyes of curious adults by piles of junk, they could work undisturbed.

  To one side of them was the big pile of miscellaneous salvage material—steel beams, lumber, crates, an old playground slide—which they had carefully arranged to hide the small mobile home trailer that was Headquarters for The Three Investigators.

  They could get into it only through certain secret entrances too small for an adult. At the moment, however, they had no need to go inside.

  Jupiter took out a screwdriver and began to remove the back of the clock. He slipped it down along the electric wire so that he could peer inside. For the second time he said, “Ah!” He pointed with the screwdriver to something that had apparently been added to the interior of the clock. It was a disk about as large as a silver dollar, but thicker.

  “I believe this is the mechanism that produces the scream,” he said. “Someone very clever at mechanics has installed it in place of the regular alarm bell.”

  “But why?” Bob asked.

  “That’s the mystery. To start investigating it, first we have to learn who did the work.”

  “I don’t see how we can do that,” Pete protested.

  “You’re not thinking like an investigator,” Jupiter said. “Now put your mind to it.

  Tell me how you would begin with this mystery.”

  “Well—first I suppose I’d try to find out where the clock came from.”

  “Correct. And how would you go about that?”

  “Well, the clock came into the salvage yard as junk,” Pete said. “So I guess your Uncle Titus bought it. Maybe he remembers where he got it.”

  “Mr. Jones buys an awful lot of things,” Bob said doubtfully. “He doesn’t always keep track of where he got them.”

  “True,” agreed Jupiter. “But Pete is right. The first thing to do is ask Uncle Titus if he knows where the clock came from. He gave it to me just half an hour ago in a box of odds and ends. Now let’s see what else is in the box.”

  A cardboard carton sat on his workbench. Jupiter reached in and pulled out a stuffed owl with most of the feathers falling out. Underneath it was a clothes brush, badly worn. Then came a broken gooseneck lamp, a vase with a chip in it, a pair of book ends made to look like horses’ heads, and several other knickknacks, most of them broken and all equally valuable—or useless, whichever way you chose to look at it.

  “It looks to me,” Jupiter remarked, “as if someone cleaned out a lot of old stuff, put it in a box and threw it away. Then some trash man rescued it and sold the box to Uncle Titus. Uncle Titus will buy almost anything if the price is right. He counts on our ability to fix things so they can be sold again.”

  “I wouldn’t give you a dollar for the lot,” Pete said. “Except the clock. It seems like a good clock. Except for that scream when the alarm is turned on. Imagine waking up with that scream ringing in your ears!”

  “Hmm.” Jupiter looked thoughtful. “Suppose you wanted to frighten someone badly
. Perhaps even scare them to death. So you slipped this clock into their bedroom in place of their regular clock, and the next morning when the alarm went off a fatal heart attack followed. That would certainly be a clever murder plot.”

  “Wow!” Bob said. “You think that’s what happened?”

  “I haven’t any idea,” Jupiter answered. “I just suggested it as a possibility. Now let’s go ask Uncle Titus if he knows where the clock came from.”

  He led the way from the workshop area to the little cabin in the front of the salvage yard which served as an office. Hans and Konrad, the two husky Bavarian yard helpers, were busy stacking usable building material in neat piles. Titus Jones, a small man with an enormous mustache and bright, twinkling eyes, was inspecting some used furniture.

  “Well, boys?” Mr. Jones said as they approached. “Any time you want to make some spending money I’ve got a batch of furniture here that can use fixing up and painting.”

  “We’ll get to it soon, Uncle Titus,” Jupiter promised. “Right now we’re interested in this clock. It was in that box of odds and ends you gave me to look over. Can you tell us where the box came from?”

  “Hmm.” Titus Jones thought deeply. “Got it from somebody. Didn’t pay for it.

  Fellow threw it in with this furniture I bought. He’s a trash collector, up Hollywood way. Goes around salvaging stuff people put out for collection. Sells whatever has any value. Lots of people throw away good used stuff, you know.”

  “Do you know his name, Uncle Titus?”

  “Just his first name. Tom. That’s all. Expect him to drop in this morning with another load. You could ask him then.”

  At that moment an old pickup truck pulled into the yard, and a whiskery man wearing over-alls hopped out.

  “For the love of Mike, here he is now,” said Mr. Jones. “Good morning, Tom.”

  “Morning, Titus,” he said. “Got some furniture for you. Real good stuff. Almost new.”

  “You mean it isn’t old enough to be antique yet.” Titus Jones chuckled. “Give you ten dollars for the lot without looking at it.”

  “Taken,” Tom said promptly. “Want me to unload it here?”

  “Over behind the office. First, Jupiter here wants to ask you something.”

  “Sure thing. Shoot, boy.”

  “We’re trying to trace a boxful of things you gave Uncle Titus,” Jupiter said. “It had this clock in it, for one thing. We thought you might remember.”

  “Clock?” Tom chuckled. “I pick up a dozen clocks a week. Throw most of them away. Can’t remember a clock.”

  “The box also had a stuffed owl in it,” Bob spoke up. “Maybe you remember the owl.”

  “Owl? Owl? That rings a bell. Remember picking up a box with a stuffed owl in it.

  Don’t pick up many stuffed owls. I remember that one, all right. It was in back of some house in—now just give me a minute, it’ll come to me. It was in …”

  Tom shook his head.

  “Sorry, boy. It was at least two weeks ago. Had it in my garage ever since. I plain can’t remember where I picked up that box of stuff.”

  Chapter 2

  Jupiter Finds a Clue

  “Well, that was one investigation that stopped even before it got started,” Pete remarked. “Since we can’t trace the clock, we can’t possibly find out—What are you doing, Jupe?”

  They were back in the workshop and Jupiter was turning over in his hands the empty cardboard box which had held the screaming clock.

  “Sometimes a box will have an address on it,” he said. “The address it was delivered to.”

  “It looks like just a grocery carton to me,” Bob said.

  “You’re right. There’s no address on the box.”

  “Then as I said,” Pete continued, “this is one investigation—What are you doing, Bob?”

  Bob was picking up a rectangular piece of paper that had fluttered beneath the printing press.

  “This fell out of the box,” he told Jupiter. “It has some writing on it.”

  “Probably just a grocery list,” Pete said. But he crowded closer to Bob. There were only a few words, written in ink, and Jupe read them aloud.

  Dear Rex:

  Ask Imogene.

  Ask Gerald.

  Ask Martha.

  Then act! The result will surprise even you.

  “Good grief!” Bob exclaimed. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Ask Gerald!” Pete groaned. “Ask Imogene! Ask Martha! Who are these characters and what are we supposed to ask them? And why?”

  “I would guess this is all part of the mystery of the clock,” Jupiter said.

  “Why do you say that?” Bob asked. “It’s just a slip of paper that was in the box.

  How do we know it has any connection with the clock?”

  “I think it has,” Jupiter told them. “Observe the paper. It has been trimmed with scissors to a certain size—about two inches wide by four inches long. Now look at the back. What do you see?”

  “Looks like some dried glue,” Bob said.

  “Exactly. This slip of paper has been glued to something. Now let’s look at the clock. On the bottom there’s a space just large enough for the paper. When I put the two together the paper fits perfectly. I run my finger over the bottom of the clock, and I feel something rough. I deduce that it is also dried glue. So the answer is simple.

  This piece of paper was originally glued to the bottom of the screaming clock, and it fell off when the clock was rattling around in the box.”

  “But why would anybody glue a crazy message like that to the bottom of a clock?”

  Pete wanted to know. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “A mystery wouldn’t be a mystery if it wasn’t mysterious,” Jupiter told him.

  “I’ll buy that,” Pete remarked. “Well, now we’ve doubled the mystery, and we’re back where we started from. We still can’t trace the clock and — What are you doing now, Jupe?”

  “I’m scratching the dried glue off the bottom of the clock. There seems to be something under it. It’s engraving, but it’s too small to read and there is glue in the letters. Let’s move into Headquarters and get a magnifying glass.”

  He stepped behind the printing press, moved aside a metal grating that just seemed to be leaning there, and uncovered the entrance to a large corrugated pipe.

  One after another, they crawled through the pipe, which was about thirty feet long and padded with old rugs so they wouldn’t bang their knees. This was Tunnel Two. It ran partly underground and brought them directly beneath the mobile home trailer which was Headquarters.

  Jupiter pushed up a trap door. They all scrambled into the tiny office of Headquarters, which had been fitted up some time ago with a desk, a small filing cabinet, a typewriter, a tape recorder and a telephone. Jupe flipped on the overhead light and took a large magnifying glass from the desk drawer. He studied the base of the electric alarm clock, nodded, and held it out to Bob.

  Bob peered through the glass and saw, engraved into the metal base of the clock, a name in very tiny letters — A. Felix.

  “What does it mean?” he asked.

  “I’ll tell you in a minute, I think,” Jupiter said. “Pete, hand me the telephone book. The classified section.”

  He took the phone book containing the classified advertising and began to turn the pages. Then he gave an exclamation of triumph.

  “Look!” he said.

  Under the heading CLOCKMAKERS there was an advertisement. It said: A. Felix —

  Clockmaker — Unusual Jobs Our Specialty. This was followed by a Hollywood address and a telephone number.

  “Clockmakers,” Jupiter informed them, “often engrave a code number on a watch or clock they fix. That helps them identify it if it comes in again. Or they sometimes even engrave their name on a job they’re very proud of. I think we have found out who fixed the clock so it would scream. That’s the first step in our investigation.

  “The nex
t step is to go ask Mr. Felix who hired him to do the job.”

  Chapter 3

  On The Trail

  The shop of A. Felix — Clockmaker turned out to be a narrow store on a side street off Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood’s famous main thoroughfare.

  “You may park here, Worthington,” said Jupiter to the English chauffeur who had just driven them from Rocky Beach. Jupiter had won the use of Worthington and a superb antique Rolls-Royce some time before, as a result of winning a contest conducted by the Rent-’n-Ride Auto Agency. The time during which he could use the car had recently expired, however, and the boys had been afraid they could not continue as investigators without this means of covering the vast distances of southern California. But because of the generosity of August August, a boy for whom they had located a valuable inheritance, they again had use of the fabulous car and chauffeur.

  “Very good, Master Jupiter,” replied the dignified Englishman. He parked the car, and the three boys got out.

  They peered into a dusty, narrow shop window with the name A. Felix —

  Clockmaker lettered on it in peeling gold paint. The window was full of clocks, large and small, new and antique, plain ones and clocks ornately decorated with birds and flowers. As they watched, a door in a tall wooden clock opened and a toy bugler marched out, lifted his bugle, and blew several times to indicate the hour.

  “That’s pretty neat,” Pete observed.

  “I’d rather be bugled at than screamed at.”

  “Let’s go in and see if Mr. Felix can

  tell us anything,” Jupiter said.

  As they entered the shop they were

  confused by a loud buzz, as of millions of

  bees. Then they realized it was the sound

  of many clocks, maybe a hundred or more,

  all ticking away together.

  A tiny man in a leather apron came

  toward them down an aisle crowded with

  clocks. He had bushy white eyebrows and

  sparkling black eyes.

  “Are you looking for something special

  in a clock?” Mr. Felix asked cheerfully.

  “Or perhaps it’s just a broken watch you