Whatever the jaunty fisherman had come for, Jupiter Jones decided, it had little or nothing to do with fish.
Jupiter quickly inspected the bathroom–which contained only shaving gear and clean towels–and was on his way to the door when he heard brisk footsteps on the verandah outside. A key rattled in the lock of room 113.
Jupe looked around wildly, decided that he would not be able to squeeze himself under the bed, and dodged into the wardrobe. He took shelter behind one of Mr Farrier’s clean jackets and held his breath.
Jupe heard Farrier come into the room. The man was humming a tuneless hum. He crossed to the bed, stopped there for a moment or two, and then went on into the bathroom. The bathroom door closed and Jupiter heard water running in the basin.
Jupiter slipped out of the closet and sped on his toes towards the door. He had it open in a second. The water continued noisily running in the bathroom Jupiter backed out on to the verandah, pulling the door closed as he went. The instant before it shut completely, he saw that Mr Farrier had dropped something on the bed.
The supposedly jolly fisherman had a gun!
15
Jupe Has a Plan
PETE had finished mowing the lawn and was mixing a lemonade when the telephone rang.
“Pete?” said Jupiter Jones. “Can you come to Headquarters right after supper?”
“I can if it isn’t going to be another all-night thing,” said Pete. “Mum’s not going to go for that twice in a row.
“It won’t be an all-night thing,” promised Jupiter. “I have some new and interesting information which may help our client. I have left a message for Bob. Perhaps, when he returns from the library, he will also have helpful information for us.”
“That we can use,” said Pete.
Jupiter’s hopes were well-founded. When Bob appeared at Headquarters that evening, he was almost staggering under the weight of two large books which had pieces of paper tucked in to mark various pages.
“A Lapathian dictionary,” said Bob brightly. “Lapathian-English, that is. You wouldn’t believe how hard they are to come by. We had to arrange a special loan from the big library in Los Angeles. My father picked the books up on his way home from work. The second one is a complete history of Lapathia.”
“Great!” exclaimed Pete.
“Have you been able to decipher the document we found at The Potter’s?” asked Jupe.
“Most of it. The rest we can guess,” said Bob. “Thank heavens Lapathian isn’t like Russian. They use a regular alphabet. If I had to translate from some other kind of writing, I think I’d just go shoot myself.”
“What is the document?” Jupiter asked.
Bob took the folded parchment from between the pages of the dictionary and put it down on the desk. Next to it he put a piece of paper on which he had worked out, in pencil and with many erasures and crossings out, the message of the parchment.
“It goes kind of like this,” said Bob. ” ‘Know all men that on this day, the 25th of August of the year 1920, Alexis Kerenov, having attained his majority and having sworn fealty to his monarch, is named Duke of Malenbad and to his care and conscience are entrusted the crown and sceptre of Lapathia, he to guard them with his body against all enemies for the peace of the monarch.’ ”
Bob looked up. “That’s about it,” he said. “There’s the seal with the eagle, and there’s a signature, but you can’t read it. People are sloppy about signatures.”
“And the more important they are,” said Jupiter, “the sloppier they tend to get. Could it be Azimov?”
Bob shrugged. “It could be anything,” he said. “It probably is Azimov, or some variation, because the Kerenov family turned out to be big wheels in Lapathia. Boris Kerenov didn’t just fade away and disappear. He hung around and was ever so helpful.” Bob opened the second book he had brought to a place which he had previously marked with paper. “This book’s indexed,” he said happily, “so we don’t have to wade all the way through. Boris Kerenov, who made the crown for old Duke Federic, then advised Federic when Federic decided to be king. He helped Federic lay out the streets round the castle at Madanhoff, and he superintended things when the castle itself was enlarged. He figured that kings need sceptres, so he designed and made the sceptre of the Azimovs. Federic was duly grateful and named him Duke of Malenbad. Malenbad, by one of those interesting coincidences, happened to be the duchy which had formerly been ruled by Ivan the Bold.”
“Wait a second,” interrupted Pete. “Let’s keep track of the cast here. Ivan the Bold. Wasn’t he the guy who stood up to Duke Federic and wouldn’t swear the oath of loyalty? And he got very dead as a result.”
“And his head was stuck up on the castle at Madanhoff. He’s the one. Kerenov got Ivan’s ruby for the imperial crown, and he got Ivan’s estates for his very own, and he got himself named a duke and also keeper of the royal jewels–which makes sense since he made them–and he got very, very rich and the Kerenovs stayed that way from that day on. This book is full of Kerenovs. All the first sons of the first sons became Dukes of Malenbad, and also keepers of the crown and sceptre.”
Bob turned to another part of the book. “The Kerenovs are almost more interesting than the Azimovs,” he said. “They lived for a while in old Ivan’s castle at Malenbad, but along about 300 years ago they abandoned the castle and moved to the capital at Madanhoff, and you’re going to love the reason why.”
“Why are we going to love it?” asked Jupiter.
“It’s so pat, I can’t believe it,” said Bob. “It seems there was a bit of trouble at Malenbad. One of the Kerenov daughters–her name was Olga–was accused of practising witchcraft.”
“Wasn’t that tricky?” asked Pete. “I mean, wouldn’t it be kind of dangerous to accuse the duke’s daughter of being a witch?”
“Not as tricky as you might think,” said Bob. “It was one of those hysteria things, much like the epidemic of supposed witchcraft at Salem, and everybody was accusing everybody. The girl had had the bad fortune to fall out with her father because she wanted to marry the local innkeeper, and he did not approve. Besides, he was accused himself. He was worried about his own skin, and he had to call on the then-ruling Azimov to come to his defence. So the girl was burned at the stake.”
“Oh, wow!” said Pete.
“Burned?” Jupiter came to rigid attention. “And then the Kerenovs left their castle at Malenbad?”
“Yes. You see, after she was burned, the girl–or I guess you could say her ghost–kept coming back to the castle and tramping around and leaving . . .”
“Flaming footprints!” cried Jupiter.
“Right!” said Bob. “So the castle was deserted, and is now a ruin, and the Kerenovs stayed on in the capital until that revolution we know about in 1925, when they disappeared. There isn’t another mention of them in the en tire book.”
The Three Investigators sat in silence for a moment, digesting this information.
“I will hazard a guess–a very well-informed guess, thanks to Bob–at what Mr Alexander Potter’s real name is,” said Jupiter at last.
“If you guess that it’s Alexis Kerenov, I’m with you,” said Bob.
“But Tom said it was a long name,” protested Pete. “It had lots of c’s and z’s in it.”
“No doubt he was not using his real name when he met Tom’s grandmother,” surmised Jupiter. “And remember her description of him?”
“He smelled like wet clay?” said Pete.
“Yes. And he was extremely nervous and had three locks on every door. To this day he is a great believer in locks. The Potter is a man with a secret, and he is also a man trying to send a message.”
“What?” asked Bob.
Jupiter quickly recounted his adventure of the afternoon. He told of the search of the jolly fisherman’s room, and of the gun, and also of the newspapers with identical advertisements in the classified columns. “A New York paper, a Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune,” he said. “All published on the same date–April 21. All begging Nicholas to write to Alexis at a post office box in Rocky Beach.”
“Nicholas?” echoed Bob.
“Your index got a Nicholas we can use?” asked Pete.
“Nicholas was the name of the oldest son of William IV of Lapathia,” said Bob. He turned several more pages in his book and shoved the volume around so that the other two boys could see the last photograph ever taken of the royal family of Lapathia. There was His Majesty, William IV, his extravagant wife, and four sons, ranging from a tall young man who stood directly behind His Majesty to a boy who was about ten. “The one right behind the king is Grand Duke Nicholas,” said Bob.