The Mystery of the Laughing Shadow

“Where are we running?” Jupiter was panting.
“Right there,” Bob said.
Jupiter stared as Bob ran straight at the wall of dusty green trees and brushwood. “Where? I don’t see… ”
Bob vanished into the heavy brush before Jupiter could finish his question. The First Investigator plunged after the smaller boy — and suddenly found himself running in empty space!
He fell and landed with a thump at the bottom of a narrow gully totally hidden on all sides by the trees and the brushwood. Panting and bruised, Jupiter sat up, dusted himself off gingerly, and glared at his chum.
“You could have warned me,” he complained.
“There wasn’t time. I fell into this gully once when I was chasing a bull snake. They won’t find us in here.”
“Maybe,” said Jupiter, unconvinced.
“Shhhhhhhh!” Bob hissed.
The boys crouched down in the gully and crawled silently to the bank. Bob peered through a thin gap in the brush. The two pursuers were standing not fifty feet away! They were talking, pointing all around and arguing. Jupiter slumped down to the bottom of the gully.
“They know we’re around here somewhere!”
“What do we do?”
“We keep quiet,” the First Investigator pronounced.
They lay silent, listening. The two pursuers were walking and talking somewhere out beyond the dense brush. The boys could hear clearly, but they had no idea what the two dark men were saying — except that it sounded harsh and menacing.
Helpless, the boys could do nothing but wait. The voices came closer. There was the rustle and crash of bushes being searched.
Jupiter whispered, “I’m afraid it’s only a matter of time until they find us. They seem to know that we didn’t run beyond this point.”
“This gully is pretty well hidden. They might miss it.”
“Or they might stumble right into it. Is there any way we can get out of here unseen?”
Bob thought a moment “There’s a big ravine to the left that leads right back down to the road near the Vegetarian League house. Only we’d have to cross about fifty feet of open space from the end of this gully to get there.”
“Fifty feet of open space?” Jupiter’s brow was furrowed with concentration. “Then we have to have a diversion. Something to distract those men from seeing us cross that open space. If we could just get them down in here while we run for that ravine.”
“If we were ventriloquists,” Bob suggested, “we could throw our voices back here. Then, while they were coming down here after us, we could get to the ravine.”
“Bob, that’s it!” Jupiter seemed excited.
“What do you mean that’s it? We’re not ventriloquists. We can’t throw our voices anywhere.”
“Yes, we can! By electronics.” Jupiter picked up his walkie-talkie. “We’ll leave one walkie-talkie here, turned up full volume, with the receiving button held down. Then we’ll go down to the end of the gully closest to that ravine, and —
“And talk into the walkie-talkie so they’ll hear us and think we’re down here!”
“Exactly,” Jupiter said. “They’ll, hear us, come to get us, and while they’re out of sight down here we’ll run to the ravine. By the time they find the walkie-talkie, they won’t know where to look for us.”
Quickly, Jupiter laid his walkie-talkie behind a bush at the bottom of the gully and placed a stone on the receiving button. He picked up Bob’s walkie-talkie, and the two boys crawled silently along the bottom of the gully until Bob nodded that they were as far as they could go.
“You see that big tree across the open space?” Bob whispered. “That’s where the ravine is.”
“Here goes,” Jupiter whispered back. He squatted down and spoke into the walkie-talkie. “Bob! I hear them coming!”
Bob spoke into the speaker. “They won’t find us down here! We’re safe!”
Jupiter listened and heard Bob’s voice, faint but clear, farther back in the gully where they had been hiding. He spoke once more into the walkie-talkie, while Bob peered through the brush to see what was happening.
“They hear it,” Bob whispered. “They’re going into the bushes.”
“Now, Bob!” Jupiter hissed.
They jumped from the gully and ran full speed towards the big tree and the ravine. When they reached the tree, they looked back. The two dark men were nowhere in sight. The boys plunged down into the ravine and scrambled along the bottom towards the road far below.
Breathing hard, they came out into the street a half-block from the Vegetarian League house. The two men were still nowhere in sight.
“We better tell Mr. Harris that the dark men are back,” said Jupiter.
They hastened round the corner to the front door. Jupiter rang the bell. They waited, but there was no answer. Bob began knocking. There was still no sound inside the house. He tried the door, but it was locked. Meanwhile Jupiter was peering in the window beside the door.
“He must have gone out to the estate,” Bob said.
“I guess so,” Jupiter agreed. “We’d better get out of here — fast!”
Without any further discussion they ran to their bicycles and pedalled away at top speed. They didn’t slow down until they were back at the salvage yard.
 
11
Jupiter Has a Suspicion
Aunt Mathilda spied Bob and Jupiter the moment they rode into the salvage yard.
“There you are!.. Jupiter Jones, are you ready to go to the Sandow Estate?”
“Yes, Aunt Mathilda,” Jupiter said, “but we want to get something from my workshop first.”
“You make it short, young man. Konrad and your uncle will be ready in two minutes.”
The boys hurried to the workshop and through Tunnel Two into the hidden headquarters trailer. Pete was still at his post beside the telephone. He started talking at once.
“Why did you break off? I was trying to tell you something important. Two kids called in. They spotted the dark men’s car over on Las Palmas Street, and later they called back to report that the men were chasing two boys!”
“We know,” Bob said ruefully.
“They were chasing us,” Jupiter added. He explained how the dark men had appeared just as Pete was trying to talk to them, and described the chase in the hills.
“Wow!” Pete exclaimed. “You were sure lucky.”
“Jupe was just too smart for them,” Bob said. But Jupiter was not waiting for compliments, he was too busy planning. “If those men are still hanging around the Vegetarian League house, they must want something. I think they might attack Mr. Harris again. If he’s out with Miss Sandow, I’ll see him when I go out there with Uncle Titus, and I can tell him what happened to Bob and me. But in case he should go back to the League before I see him, I think you fellows ought to go over to the house and wait for him.”
“Gosh, First, I have to get home for lunch,” Pete said.
“Me, too,” Bob agreed.
“All right, but get over there again as soon as you can. Maybe you can spot those two men and keep an eye on them.”
“But, Jupe, we just got away from them!” Bob protested.
Jupiter wasn’t bothered by that fact. “I’m convinced that that pair are after something important. I think they can lead us to the Chumash Hoard. Just be careful, and don’t let them see you.”
“That you don’t have to tell us,” Pete said.
“Do you think they’re Yaquali, First?” Bob asked.
Jupiter nodded. “They must be, Pete. Somehow they must have learned about the Chumash Hoard, maybe through some old Indian writings or legends. It’s possible that they understand old Magnus Verde’s message.”
“I wish we did.” Pete sighed.
“So do I,” Jupiter admitted. “It must be the clue to where the Hoard is — ‘in the eye of the sky where no one can find it.’ We’ve got to puzzle it out.”
“But, Jupe, if they’ve figured out what Magnus Verde was saying, what are they still looking for?”
“I just don’t know,” Jupiter said, biting his lip.