The Mystery of the Whispering Mummy

  THE MYSTERY

  OF

  THE WHISPERING MUMMY

  Robert Arthur

  INTRODUCTION

  THE FOLLOWING WORDS are solely for the benefit of those of you who have come in late. If you are already familiar with The Three Investigators, you may skip this brief commercial and proceed directly to the entertainment portion of the programme.

  Fortunately, this is a book so you can accomplish this matter merely by turning a page or two. If this were television, you would have to sit through the whole thing.

  To fill you in on what has happened in the past, The Three Investigators is a firm of youthful detectives formed by three enterprising lads: Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews.

  Jupiter, by his own admission, is the brains of the outfit. Bob takes notes on all cases and does research. Pete, strong and agile, is invaluable as Jupiter’s assistant on active missions.

  The boys live in Rocky Beach, a small city on the shore of the Pacific Ocean some miles from Hollywood. Here in Southern California, distances are so great that an automobile is a vital necessity. None of the boys is quite old enough to drive, but their car problem was solved when Jupiter won the use of an automobile, complete with chauffeur, in a contest.

  The car, a gold-plated Rolls-Royce, is theirs for thirty days only, and they are putting it to good use.

  Headquarters for The Three Investigators is a converted mobile home trailer situated in The Jones Salvage Yard, which is run by Jupiter’s uncle and aunt, Titus and Mathilda Jones. The trailer has a small office in it, a lab, a dark room, and equipment which the boys rebuilt from junk that came into the salvage yard. It can be entered by certain secret passages that only youthful individuals can negotiate.

  You now know all you need to be on your own. I deplore the modern trend towards coddling youth. Therefore you are now urged to read the book for yourself to learn the remainder.

  ALFRED HITCHCOCK

  Chapter 1

  An Exciting Letter

  “SAVE ME!” Save me!” cried a strange, high-pitched voice in great terror. “Please save me!”

  The Three Investigators – Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews – heard the cry but ignored it and continued working. Their speaker was their mascot, the trained mynah bird, Blackboard, whom they had acquired in a previous case. It picked up words and phrases with astounding ease and delighted in trying them out.

  “Jupiter!” Mrs. Mathilda Jones, Jupiter’s aunt, glanced at Blackboard’s cage which was hung from a length of board inside The Jones Salvage Yard. “You’ve been letting that bird watch too much television. It’s talking like somebody in one of those mystery programmes.”

  “Yes, Aunt Mathilda,” Jupiter said. He puffed as he picked up an old front door.

  “Where shall I put this?”

  “With the other doors,” his aunt told him. “You boys! Stop lounging about! We have a lot of work to do and time is going fast.”

  Time wasn’t going fast enough to suit The Three Investigators. Under Mrs. Mathilda Jones’s direction, they were engaged in an investigation they would have preferred to skip –

  they were investigating how much work three boys could do on a hot day. Mrs. Jones, a large woman, really ran the Jones Salvage Yard. Jupiter’s Uncle Titus merely did the buying for it and was away on buying trips most of the time. This was a day when Aunt Mathilda was having one of her frequent clean-up impulses. When that happened, Jupiter and any of his friends who might be handy were pressed into service.

  As the three boys worked, moving batches of building material and generally tidying things up, they itched to get back into Headquarters – their hidden mobile home trailer –

  and to work on some new mystery. Their recent successes had given them confidence in their ability as investigators – perhaps too much confidence.

  But no relief came their way until the postman turned into the main gate, driving his small three-wheeled vehicle. He dropped a bundle of letters into the antique iron mail basket which was screwed to the front of the salvage yard office and went on his way.

  “Mercy!” Mathilda Jones exclaimed. “I forgot all about the registered letter your Uncle Titus wanted posted, Jupiter.”

  She fished into a capacious pocket and brought out a slightly rumpled envelope. She smoothed out the wrinkles and handed the letter to Jupiter.

  “Ride down to the post office right away and register it, Jupiter,” she said. “Here’s some money. Try to get it into the morning mail.”

  “I’ll get it there, Aunt Mathilda,” the stocky boy promised. “Pete and Bob will take over for me while I’m gone. They’ve been complaining that what they need is a good workout.”

  While Bob and Pete spluttered with indignation, Jupiter hopped on his bike and shot through the gate towards town. Mrs. Jones chuckled.

  “All right, boys,” she said, “I’ll give you the rest of the morning off. You can have a meeting or build something or do whatever it is you do back there behind all that junk.”

  She gestured towards the various piles of salvage material which artfully concealed Jupiter’s outdoor workshop and – although she did not realise it – Headquarters. Then she started for the office.

  “I’d better look over the mail right now,” she said. “There might be something for Jupiter in it. He’s been sending away for samples of a lot of awfully strange things lately.”

  Glad to be finished with the heavy work, the boys followed her. Mrs. Jones scooped up the mail and began to leaf through it.

  “A card from an auction house,” she said. “A bill. A cheque for that old steam boiler.

  Hmmm.” She tucked a letter under her arm and went on. “Another bill. A postcard from my sister Susan. An advertisement to come and live in Florida.” That made her chuckle again. Then she looked at another letter, said “Hmmm” once more, and tucked that under her arm, too.

  She went on with the mail. There were a couple of letters for Titus Jones, probably inquiries about special articles. The Jones Salvage Yard was widely known as the place to go when you needed something that was odd, unusual, or hard to find. Among other things, Titus Jones had an old pipe organ for sale. Sometimes, in the evening, he would go into the yard and play “Asleep in the Deep” on it. Hans and Konrad, the big Bavarian brothers who did the heavy work and drove the Joneses’ two trucks, would gather round him and sing the words in a very melancholy manner.

  When she had finished looking over the mail, Mrs. Jones shook her head.

  “No,” she said, “nothing for Jupiter.”

  She turned to go into the office, then turned back. By the twinkle in her eyes the boys could see she was teasing them.

  “However,” she said, “there are two letters here addressed to The Three Investigators.

  That’s your new club, isn’t it?”

  Some time before, when they were all interested in solving puzzles and contests, the boys had formed a puzzle club. It was because of this interest, in fact, that Jupiter had entered a contest sponsored by the local Rent-‘n-Ride Auto Rental Company and had won the use of an antique Rolls-Royce, complete with chauffeur, for thirty days.

  Having a car available, the boys had immediately set up the firm of The Three Investigators to tackle any real-life puzzles that they could find. However, Mrs. Jones, who was a little absent-minded about anything not connected with her business, still thought of their enterprise as a club. No amount of explaining could shake the notion from her head, so the boys ceased to try.

  Now, with restrained excitement, Pete took the letters she handed him. Mrs. Jones went into the salvage yard office. The two boys made a bee-line for Headquarters.


  “We won’t even look to see who they’re from until we get into Headquarters,” Pete said.

  “This may be official business.”

  “Right,” Bob agreed. “Now I can start our correspondence file. It’s all set up, but up to now we haven’t had any mail.”

  They threaded their way between piles of junk until they came to Jupiter’s workshop. It was equipped with a drill press, a lathe, a band saw, a small printing press, and other useful items. All these things had come into the yard as junk and Jupiter and the others had put them back into working condition.

  A high board fence surrounded the yard, and a roof six feet wide on the inner side not only protected the better merchandise but also protected the workshop. There were large plastic covers to be used during the brief rainy seasons.

  A large section of corrugated pipe – the kind used for culverts – seemed to block the passage behind the workshop. However, when the boys moved a piece of old iron grating that was hidden by the printing press, the mouth of the pipe was uncovered. The boys crawled into it. They replaced the grating, then, on hands and knees, went forward about forty feet. The pipe, after disappearing partly underground and partly beneath some useless-looking iron beams, opened at the other end, directly under the concealed mobile home trailer which the boys had converted into Headquarters. When Mr. Jones found he couldn’t sell the old trailer, he had told Jupiter and his friends that they could use it.

  A trap-door opened upwards. They scrambled through this and were inside, in a tiny office fitted up with a desk that had been damaged in a fire, several chairs, a typewriter, a filing cabinet, and a telephone. On the desk there was an old-fashioned table radio. Jupiter had connected a microphone to its loudspeaker that enabled the boys to listen to any phone conversation together. The remainder of the trailer had been converted into a tiny darkroom, a miniature lab, and a washroom.

  Because it was dark inside – the trailer was surrounded by piles of junk outside – Pete switched on the light that hung over the desk. Then the boys plopped themselves down and stared at the letters.

  “Hey!” Pete yelped with excitement. “This one comes from the office of Alfred Hitchcock! Let’s open it first!”

  Bob looked excited. Alfred Hitchcock writing to them? It had to be about a case, because Mr. Hitchcock had promised them that if any mystery came to his attention, that seemed to need their talents, he would let them know.

  “Let’s save that for last,” he said. “It’s probably the most interesting one. Anyway, don’t you think we should wait for Jupe before we open these?”

  “After the way he tried to pull a fast one on us just now?” Pete said indignantly. “And tried to get Mrs. Jones to work us to a frazzle? Besides, you’re in charge of records and research and that certainly includes mail, doesn’t it?”

  The argument was good enough for Bob. He began to slit open the less important letter.

  But as he did so, he noted several things about the envelope and an idea occurred to him.

  “Before we read this letter,” he said, “let’s see if we can deduce anything from it. Jupe said we should practice deduction whenever we had a chance.”

  “What can you tell from a letter without even reading it?” Pete demanded sceptically.

  But Bob was already studying the envelope, both back and front. It was light Lilac. He smelled it; it had a lilac scent. Then he glanced at the folded sheet of paper inside. It, too, looked and smelled like lilac. At the top of the note-paper was an engraved picture of two playful kittens.

  “Mmm,” Bob said, and put his fingers to his forehead as if thinking deeply. “Yes, it’s coming to me. The writer of this letter is a lady of—oh, about fifty, I guess. She is little and plump, and dyes her hair, and probably talks a lot. Also she’s crazy about cats. She’s good-hearted but a little careless sometimes. Usually she’s cheerful but when she wrote this letter she was feeling very upset about something.”

  Pete’s eyes popped.

  “Gleeps!” he said. “You can deduce all that from the envelope and the paper, without even reading the letter?”

  “Sure.” Bob was nonchalant about it. “I forgot to add that she also has a good deal of money and is probably active in charity work.”

  Pete took the envelope and the letter and examined them, scowling. But presently a look of understanding crossed his face.

  “Those kittens on her letterhead tell us she probably likes cats,” he said. “The fact that she put the postage stamp on slantwise and tore it a little getting it out of the stamp-book, indicates that she’s a little careless. Her letter starts with the lines slanting upwards across the page, which is often the sign of a cheerful person. At the end of the letter, though, the lines begin to slant downwards, showing she was getting very upset and unhappy about something.”

  “That’s it.” Bob said. “Deduction is simple when you put your mind to it.”

  “And when you have Jupe to give you some lessons,” Pete added. “But what I want to know is how you can tell her age and size and that she talks a lot and has money and is active in charity and dyes her hair. You’d have to be Sherlock Holmes to be able to tell all that.”

  “Well,” Bob told him, grinning, “the return address is in a part of Santa Monica where the houses are very expensive. Women who live there are usually rich, and they are active in charity because, my mother says, they don’t have enough housework to do to keep themselves busy.”

  “Okay,” Pete challenged. “Now what about her age and size and the fact that she talks too much and dyes her hair?”

  “Well,” Bob answered, “she uses lilac-coloured paper with a lilac scent and green ink.

  It’s mostly older women who go in for that sort of thing. But to be honest with you, I have an Aunt Hilda who uses exactly that kind of paper. She’s fifty and small and talkative and dyes her hair, so I figure this” – he studied the paper to get the name on the signature –

  “this Mrs. Banfry is probably the same kind of person.”

  Pete laughed.

  “You did a good job even if you did throw that last part in as a guess,” he said. “Now let’s see what she says.” He scanned the letter.

  “ ‘ Dear Three Investigators,’ ” Pete began reading. “ ‘ My very dear friend, Miss Waggoner, in Hollywood, has told me how you found her missing parrot, Little Bo-Peep –’ ”

  At this point Bob nimbly pulled the paper from between Pete’s fingers. Obviously Mrs.

  Banfry had heard about their previous exciting case The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot.

  “I’m in charge of records,” Bob reminded Pete. Having a brace on his leg as a result of a fall on a local hill when he was small, Bob was slightly handicapped in the more active exploits of the team. Accordingly, his job was to keep all the records, do research, and make full notes on all the cases.

  “Letters,” Bob added, “are in my department, at least when Jupe isn’t here. So I’ll read this one.”

  Pete muttered, but gave in. Bob settled back and read the handwritten letter swiftly.

  The facts were very simple. Mrs. Banfry had an Abyssinian cat, named Sphinx, that she treasured greatly. Sphinx had been missing for a week. The police couldn’t find the cat, and Mrs. Banfry had put ads in the local papers without result. Now, would The Three Investigators, who had done such a fine job finding the parrot for her friend, Miss Waggoner, be good enough to help her darling cat? She would be truly obliged. It was signed, “Yours most sincerely, Mrs. Mildred Banfry.”

  “A missing cat,” Pete said thoughtfully. “Well, it’s a case, anyhow. Sounds like a nice, quiet case, easy on the nerves. I’ll give her a ring and say we’ll take it.”

  “Wait.” Bob stopped him as he reached for the telephone. “Let’s see what Mr.

  Hitchcock has to say.”

  “That’s right,” Pete agreed. Bob was already slitting open the long envelope. He drew out a sheet of expensive-looking bond stationery, which had the name of Alfr
ed Hitchcock engraved at the top, and started to read it aloud.

  However, after the first sentence he stopped reading aloud and his eyes raced on, devouring the facts contained in the letter. When he had finished, he looked at Pete with wide eyes.

  “Wow!” he said. “Read it. You’ll never believe it if I tell you. You’ll say I’m making it up.”

  Curious, Pete took the letter and started to read. When he had finished, he looked across at Bob, goggle-eyed.

  “Gleeps!” he whispered. And then he asked a question that anyone who had not read the letter would have thought a rather unusual one. “How can a 3,000-year-old mummy whisper?” he asked.

  Chapter 2

  The Mummy Whispers

  BEHIND THE FACTS contained in the letter that Alfred Hitchcock had written, lay certain events of a more peculiar and eerie quality than anything in which The Three Investigators had previously been involved.

  Some ten or twelve miles from Rocky Beach and The Jones Salvage Yard, a small canyon pierced the hills outside Hollywood. It was a canyon on whose steep sides were nestled a few large and expensive houses, surrounded by trees and bushes. One of these was an old, Spanish-style mansion, one wing of which had been turned into a private museum by the owner, Professor Robert Yarborough, a noted Egyptologist.

  A row of tall French windows reaching down to the floor faced a tiled terrace. The windows were closed, making the room oddly hot and oppressive in the late afternoon sunshine. Near the windows stood several statues that had been taken from old tombs in Egypt, One statue, made of wood, was a representation of the ancient Egyptian god, Anubis. It had a human body with the head of a jackal. The shadow of the jackal head fell across the floor, forming a dark, inky blot of a rather unnerving shape.

  Other relics taken from the tombs of ancient Egypt crowded the room. Metal masks that seemed to smile with secret knowledge hung on the walls. Clay tablets, gold jewellery, and ancient scarabs – images of sacred beetles, carved from green jade by workmen long-dead –

  brooded in glass cases.