Mr Prentice appeared behind the boys and said, “I’d like a word with you, Mrs Bortz.”
The sound of his voice seemed to bring the manager back to her senses. She turned to Prentice and screeched, “Do you know what these horrid boys called me?”
“Yes, and they’re quite right!” answered Prentice. “However, this need not become the concern of everyone in the building.” He took a step towards the manager’s apartment. “We’ll discuss this in private.”
“I . . . I’m busy,” said the woman. “I . . . I have a great deal to do, as you know.”
“Of course you do, Mrs Bortz,” said Mr Prentice. “What were you planning just now? An inspection of the dustbins in the alley? An invasion of someone else’s apartment? Come, Mrs Bortz. We will go inside and have a chat. Or would you like me to call my lawyer?”
Mrs Bortz gasped, but she went into her apartment.
Mr Prentice smiled at the Three Investigators. “I think I shall handle this myself,” he told them, “but I would appreciate it if you would wait.”
He followed Mrs Bortz into the apartment and closed the door behind him.
Jupe, Pete, and Bob remained in the courtyard, silent for a few minutes. They could hear Mrs Bortz’s voice, high and angry, but they couldn’t hear what she was saying. At intervals she was silent, and the boys could imagine Mr Fenton Prentice, soft-spoken but sure, and possibly threatening.
“He’s a nice old guy,” said Pete, “but I bet he can be tough on anybody who steps on his toes.”
A door across the pool cracked open, and Sonny Elmquist came out, blinking in the sunshine. He wore a pair of tattered denims, a shirt with several buttons missing, and no shoes. He yawned.
“Good morning,” said Jupiter.
Elmquist blinked and rubbed his eyes. The boys could see that he hadn’t washed his face or combed his hair.
“Um!” he said. He almost stumbled when he walked away from his open door. He seemed to have some trouble deciding whether he would sit down in one of the chairs near the boys, or whether he would simply stand and stare limply into the swimming pool.
He finally did neither. He sat on the flagstone decking, crossed his legs, and tucked his feet up over his thighs. Jupiter recognized the posture; it was the lotus position used by students of yoga.
“Good morning,” said Jupiter again.
The young man turned his pale face to Jupe and stared at him for a second. His eyes were of no particular colour. The whites were bloodshot, as if he had not slept enough.
“It’s still morning?” he said.
Jupe looked at his watch. “In fact, it isn’t. It’s after one.”
Sonny Elmquist yawned again.
“Mr Prentice tells me that you work at the all-night market over on Vermont,” said Jupe.
Elmquist became a little more alert. He smiled. “Midnight to morning,” he said. “It’s a rough shift sometimes, but they pay extra if you’re willing to keep those hours. And when we’re not busy, I can study.”
“You’re going to school?” asked Jupiter.
Sonny Elmquist waved a hand, as if schools were a complete waste of time. “Finished that long ago,” he told the boys. “My old man wanted me to go to college, be a dentist just like him. Couldn’t see it. Stand around on your feet all day poking at people’s molars, getting a crick in your back. What for? It’s all an illusion, anyway.”
“An illusion?” said Pete.
“Yeah. Everything’s an illusion. The whole world. We’re all like a bunch of sleepers having a bad dream. Me, I’m going to wake up!”
“What are you studying?” said Jupe.
“Meditation,” said Elmquist. “That’s the way to reach the Ultimate Consciousness.” He unfolded his legs and stood up, obviously pleased to have an audience.
“I’m saving my money,” he said. “I want to go to India to find a guru. The best teachers are there. So I work nights, because I get more per hour. Pretty soon I’ll have enough to get to India and stay three or four years, or however long it takes to know . . . to really know everything. Oh, not that I want to know all about science or anything like that, because that’s useless. I want to know how to not want anything. That’s the only worthwhile thing, don’t you think?”
Bob said doubtfully, “Well, yes, I suppose if you don’t want anything . . . if you have everything you want . . .”
“No, no. You don’t understand!” exclaimed Elmquist.
“I’m not sure I want to!” muttered Pete.
“It’s very simple. Desire, wanting things, that’s where all our troubles begin. Like old Prentice, all he does is worry about his possessions–his collection. In his next life he’ll probably be a . . . a pack rat!”
“Hey, now!” exclaimed Pete. “He’s a nice old man.”
Sonny Elmquist shook his head. “I don’t mean he’d steal or hurt anybody to get things, only he cares so much about what he has and he always wants more. He’ll never understand that he’s just chasing after something that’s not real. Do you know he has a mandala and doesn’t even know how to use it? He just hangs it on his wall as if it were another painting.”
“What’s a mandala?” asked Pete.
Elmquist darted into his apartment and was back in a moment with a little book. “I’d love to have one,” he said eagerly. “It’s a kind of diagram of the cosmos. If you meditate on it, all the illusory things of life fade away and you become one with the universe.” He opened the book and showed a colourful drawing composed of overlapping triangles which were surrounded by a circle. The circle, in its turn, was edged about by a square.
“I don’t remember seeing anything like that in Mr Prentice’s apartment,” said Pete.
“His is more complicated,” explained Elmquist. “His is from Tibet, and it shows some of the old deities that used to be worshipped there.”
Elmquist closed the little book. “I’m going to have my own mandala one day,” he said. “It will be designed for me by a guru. Now I just use the television.”
“Huh?” said Bob.
“The television,” repeated Elmquist. “It helps me get detached. I mean, I come home after spending all night checking people out at the market and making sure my register tallies, and I’m really fenced in. So I turn on the TV, but I don’t turn on the sound, see? Then I stare at a place in the middle of the screen, or maybe in one corner of the screen. I don’t even try to notice what’s happening–I just look at the patterns of colour. Pretty soon I’m really away from the market, from everything. I’m not even here.”
“You’re asleep,” accused Bob.
Elmquist looked slightly abashed. “That’s . . . that’s the trouble with meditation,” he admitted. “Sometimes I get so peaceful that I do fall asleep and dream, only . . .”
He stopped talking. Mr Prentice had come out of Mrs Bortz’s apartment and stood at the foot of the stairs, looking towards the Three Investigators.
“I’m sorry,” said Jupiter to Elmquist. “We have to go.”
“Well, drop around any time I’m home,” said Elmquist eagerly. “If I’m not meditating, you know. I’ll be glad to tell you more about the mandala, and the . . . the trip I’m going to take.”
The boys thanked him and went to Prentice.
When they were inside Prentice’s apartment, the old gentleman sat down on one of his big low chairs.
“Mrs Bortz had a key to this apartment, didn’t she?” prompted Jupe.
“Yes, she did,” admitted Prentice. “You were right when you said at the very beginning that there had to be a second key. That wretched woman! I have a special clause in my lease stipulating that my apartment is never to be entered by the manager. I may contact the Martin Company, which owns this building.”
“How did she get the key?” asked Bob.
“Very easily. When I was in Europe two months ago, she called a locksmith who often works for her. He wouldn’t question her authority. She told him she had lost the key for this lock, and that she had to get into the apartment to check for a leak in a pipe. He removed the lock and had a key made for her, then replaced the lock.”
“A curious woman,” said Jupiter.
“Curious to the point of mania,” agreed Fenton Prentice. “Well, that solves the mystery of who has been poking through my desk and snooping into my papers. Naturally, I took the key from her. I am most grateful to you young men.”
Mr Prentice smiled shyly at the boys and added, “You know, I’m quite relieved to learn that Mrs Bortz was my intruder. I mean, that a real human being was coming in here. I think I must have imagined that shadowy presence. Really, it’s too ridiculous! I was so upset at the idea of someone invading my home, I must have been a little out of my mind! Mrs O’Reilly’s ghost stories probably gave me ideas.” He shook his head, as if amazed at his own folly.