The Mystery of Monster Mountain

 
12
Another Searcher
The Three Investigators came down the stairs to find Anna in the living room, adding several new magazines to a stack on an end table. She started slightly when she heard them. “Oh,” she said. “I did not know anyone was here.”
“We were searching again,” Jupe explained with a straight face, “We thought we might have overlooked something yesterday when we tried to find the key to your safe deposit box.”
“Oh, yes. The key.” Anna’s forehead creased in a worried frown. “You did not find it today?”
“No,” said Bob. “Mrs. Havemeyer, has it occurred to you that someone might have taken it? The doors here are never locked. Anyone could have walked in here and picked it up.”
“Not when I have hidden it so well,” said Anna. “And no one will wish to take the key if he knows what it is for. Only Anna Schmid can use that key. The people at the bank know only Anna Schmid. Anyone who steals the key gains nothing. But he causes trouble for me. That is why I hid the key when I left for Lake Tahoe.”
“There goes the burglar theory,” said Pete.
“The key must be here somewhere,” said Anna. “If only I could remember where.”
Outside, gravel crunched as a car came up the drive. Then Jensen came in. He had his camera case in one hand. He nodded to Anna and boys and went upstairs.
“Interesting work Mr. Jensen does,” said Jupiter. “It must take a lot of patience to photograph animals. Does he come here often?”
“It is the first time,” said Anna. “He came only five days ago. He did not write first, so he did not have a reservation, but I had the room and I could take him.”
“Mr., Smathers is an interesting person, too,” said Jupe. “I imagine he spends a great deal of time in the mountains, communing with nature.”
“You mean talking with the animals? I wonder, do they listen? But for him it is the first time, too. He says he wants to be here because we have so dry a season. He thinks he can help his wild friends to keep out of trouble.” Cousin Anna laughed. “Such an idea. Such a strange little man. Only I wish he would eat like everyone else and I would not have to make special things for him.”
Cousin Anna went out to the kitchen and the boys heard her opening cupboards and banging pots. They drifted out the front door of the inn and down the road past the pine grove to the gasoline station, where Gabby Richardson sat drowsing in the afternoon sun. Richardson opened his eyes as the boys approached.
“Have a good hike?” he wanted to know.
“You’ve been talking to Mr. Smathers,” said Pete.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Richardson told them. “He’s been talking to me. Seems to think I’m corrupting the youth of America by telling them monster tales.” Richardson’s sleepy eyes narrowed, and suddenly he was most alert, most curious. “What did you see on the mountain this morning?”
“We’re not sure, Mr. Richardson.” said Bob. “Something big. Some animal, I think.”
Gabby Richardson looked keenly disappointed. “Bears, most likely — or a bear. You the one who fell into the earthquake fracture?”
Bob admitted that he was.
“Thought so,” said Richardson. “That sort of thing doesn’t do your clothes a bit of good. Not hurt, I see.”
“No,” Bob told him. “Just shaken up a little.”
“Got to watch your step in that wild country,” said Richardson. “You look like sensible lads. I’m sure you didn’t bother that bear any. No need for Anna Schmid to get so riled up about it. Or I guess I should say Anna Havemeyer.”
“She’s upset?” said Pete. “We just saw her and she didn’t seem upset.”
“Well, maybe she got over it by now. She stopped here for gas on her way back from Bishop, and that oddball Smathers had just been here, so I asked her if she’d talked to you after your hike. You may have noticed, I like to keep track of what goes on around here.”
“We’ve noticed.” Pete laughed.
“So she said her husband didn’t want you up on the meadow because of the bears. Marriage sure hasn’t improved that woman. She’s gotten nervous as a city dude about those critters. I remember the day she’d charge out yelling and waving a skillet at them if they so much as sniffed at her trash.”
Bob looked startled. “Is that really a good idea?” he asked. “I mean, they are wild and… ”
“So long as you don’t get too close to them, and you don’t actually hit them, it works sometimes.”
Bob looked at his watch. “It’s after four,” he said to Jupe. “I’m sure my dad will be home by now. I’ll put in the call to him.”
“Phone not working at the inn?” asked Gabby Richardson.
“It isn’t that,” Bob said quickly. “We just happened to be down this way, so I thought… ”
“Sure, sure,” said Richardson. “Well. don’t let me stop you. You go ahead and make your telephone call. Me, I’m going over to the pizza house and have a bite. I know when to mind my own business.”
The man got up and ambled slowly out of the station and up the street.
“The day that guy minds his own business, I’ll eat my tennis shoes without salt,” said Pete in a low voice.
Bob laughed and stepped into the telephone booth. After talking to his father for five minutes, he reported, “Joe Havemeyer isn’t listed in the Reno telephone book. The credit bureau in Reno hasn’t come through with a report on him yet, but Dad’s friend expects it tomorrow. Dad will call his friend tonight and ask him to check on Jensen, too, but he says we are not to go off half-cocked and make any trouble for anybody, because if we embarrass Hans and Konrad or their cousin for no good reason he will skin us alive. We are to do nothing until we hear from him — except move out of the inn.”
“Oh?” said Jupiter Jones.
“He’s afraid we’re imposing on Cousin Anna, and I guess we are. There’s no special reason she should be feeding us, is there? We’re not her relations.”
“Just when things were really getting interesting,” said Pete.
“We don’t need to move far,” Jupe pointed out. “Our tent is already pitched near the house.”
The Three Investigators returned to the inn, where they told Cousin Anna and her husband that they intended to follow their original plan and camp out. There were some protests from Joe Havemeyer, and warnings about prowling bears, but the boys promised to shout for help if they saw or heard anything menacing. Well before sunset they had moved their sleeping bags out to the tent and had set up camp in earnest.
After a dinner of frankfurters and beans cooked over an open fire, the boys sat cross-legged inside the tent. Bob took a notebook and a ball-point pen out of his pocket and began to jot down the investigators’ findings on their current case.
“So far,” he said, “we have a nature photographer who isn’t a photographer at all, and who is very interested in Cousin Anna and her money.
 “He also has a photograph of Anna and her husband, taken before he came to the inn. Yet Anna told us this is his first time here, and she doesn’t really know him.”
“And he got swatted by a bear, or a person, or a monster,” added Pete. “If he isn’t a photographer, I wonder why he bothered to take that picture of the bear at the trash cans.”
“He no doubt felt that he should behave like a photographer, since that’s what he claims to be,” decided Jupiter. “So much for Mr. Jensen. Then we have Anna’s new husband. What do we know about him?”
“He says he has a good income,” said Bob. “Owns a tranquilizer gun and goes with it to the high meadow every day. Is building a swimming pool which may not be a swimming pool at all.”
Bob looked at Jupe. “Can you think of anything else? That’s not much. Hans and Konrad are nervous about him, but he may be completely on the level.”
“He may be,” agreed Jupe.
“Then there’s Mr. Smathers,” said Pete. “He’s really some kind of a nut.”
“And not as harmless as he looks,” said Jupe. “I’m sure it was Smathers who knocked me out this morning and erased the footprint from the edge of the crevice.”