13
The Deadly Trunk
HAROLD THOMAS lived in a small apartment house not far from Beefy’s building. There was a little park directly across the street, and Pete settled himself on a bench there, tried to ignore the children playing under the trees, and watched.
It was almost an hour before a plain dark sedan parked in front of Thomas’s building. The man in the seersucker blazer got out of the car and went into the apartment house.
Pete didn’t move, but his heart beat a little faster.
The investigator from the arson squad wasn’t in the apartment more than fifteen minutes. Pete saw him come out and get into his sedan and drive away. Still Pete waited.
Half an hour after the detective had left, Harold Thomas came out and glanced up and down the street. He hesitated, looked back at the apartment, then turned south towards Wilshire and strode briskly away.
When Thomas was half a block from the apartment, Pete began to follow him, walking on the opposite side of the street. He tailed Thomas south, across Wilshire, and soon reached a dismal little area where small industrial buildings were clustered together. There were a few apartments, but these were shabby little places with peeling paint and torn screens.
Harold Thomas stopped in front of one of these run-down houses and looked up and down the street. Pete ducked out of sight behind a parked car.
After a moment, Thomas crossed the street and went in through the open gate of a car wrecking yard. He stopped briefly at a shed which stood beside the gate, then went on. Through the fence that enclosed the yard, Pete saw him threading his way past heaps of rusting car bodies and rows of mechanical parts.
Pete frowned, wondering if he should attempt to follow Thomas. Then he decided that if Jupiter had been in his place, he would keep tailing the prim accountant. If there was someone in the shed at the entrance to the yard, Pete would make up a story in grand style–just as Jupiter would. He would say that he was looking for the transmission from a 1947 Studebaker Champion.
But the shed at the gate was empty. Pete went on into the yard, moving carefully and quietly around the stripped-down car bodies and the piles of rusting used parts.
Suddenly Pete stopped still where he was. He had heard a car door open.
The tall boy listened intently. There was a tinny clanking–the sound of pieces of metal hitting together. It came from off to his left. It seemed to be just on the other side of a pile of bumpers.
Pete crept forward and peered around the bumpers. He held his breath. Harold Thomas was not five feet away. He stood next to a grey van that was parked in a clear area in the very centre of the yard. The rear doors of the van were open, and inside the vehicle were piles and piles of film cans. Pete had seen cans of motion picture film many times when he visited his father at the studio where Mr Crenshaw worked. Now Pete stared at the cans, trying to read the labels on their rims. He made out “Cleopatra–Reel I” on one label. Another was marked “Salem Story–III.” The wrecking yard seemed suddenly still. There was only the roar of blood in Pete’s own ears and the beating of Pete’s own heart.
Then Harold Thomas slammed the doors of the van. He walked to the front of the vehicle, climbed behind the wheel, and started the engine. A moment later the van was rolling up the rutted dirt drive that led to the gate.
Pete stayed where he was for a second, stunned by what he had seen. The film cans! It seemed impossible–unbelievable–but it had to be true. Those had to be the films that had been stolen from the laboratory next to Amigos Press. And Harold Thomas had them!
Pete forced himself to move. He ran, not worrying now about caution. At the gate of the salvage yard he was in time to see the van heading north. He tried to read the licence plate, but he couldn’t. Whether by accident or not, the plate was too dusty.
Pete ran to the door of the shack near the gate. He saw a desk and a couple of battered chairs–and a telephone. He took Beefy’s telephone number out of his wallet with shaking fingers, and dialled.
The telephone at the other end rang once, twice.
Outside the shed, someone was walking on the hard earth that had been packed down by the passage of hundreds of cars and trucks. Pete did not look around. If the owners of the yard objected to his using the telephone, he would simply say that he had to call the police.
Beefy answered at the other end of the telephone.
“Beefy, listen,” said Pete quickly. “This is Pete and I’m at a car salvage yard on Thornwall, two blocks south of Wilshire. Tell Jupe and Bob that I just saw . . .”
A shadow fell across the desk, and Pete started to turn towards the door of the shed. But something crashed into the back of his neck. Then the light was gone and the telephone clattered to the floor, and Pete was falling . . . falling . . . falling!
Pete didn’t know how long he was unconscious, but when he came to his senses he was in a close, dusty place–a place that smelled of grease and old rubber. It was hot–terribly hot–and it was dark. Pete tried to move, to turn over or stretch out, but he couldn’t. There was no room for him to straighten himself. His neck hurt, and there was something hard pressing down on his shoulder. His hands touched metal surfaces that were rough, as if they had been eaten away by rust and time. Pete realized that he was probably still in the wrecking yard. He was locked in the trunk of some old car, and the sun was beating down on it, turning it into an oven.
Pete tried to shout, but his throat had gone dry with heat and fear. He closed his mouth and tried to swallow. There was silence outside in the yard. No one was there. No one would come to help him. He felt a surge of panic. No one would ever come!
14
The Mysterious Second Man
BEEFY’S CAR ROARED DOWN the street, then screeched to a stop at the entrance of the wrecking yard. Bob and Jupe tumbled out and darted into the office.
Bob looked wildly around the empty shack. “Where is he?” he said. “This has got to be the place. It’s the only wrecking yard near here.”
Beefy stumbled through the doorway. “There’s a man coming,” he reported. “He looks as if he might work here.”
The boys went to the door. A man with thick, curly black hair was striding up the drive, coming from some far corner of the yard. He wore overalls that were stained with grease. “Anything I can do for you folks?” he said cheerfully when he saw Beefy and the boys at the office.
“We’re looking for a friend,” Jupe told him. “He said he’d meet us here. Have you seen a boy about our age? A tall boy who’s muscular and rugged-looking?”
“Sorry,” said the man. “Haven’t seen anyone like that today.”
“But he must have been here!” said Jupiter. “Are you sure you didn’t see him?” In spite of himself, Jupe’s voice went up. It was rough now with fear and anxiety.
“I haven’t seen anybody,” insisted the man. “Now look, kid, I’m sorry if you missed your friend, but this is a wrecking yard, not a hangout for kids. And I can’t be at this gate non-stop. Hey! Hey, where do you think you’re going?”
“Pete’s here!” declared Jupe. He had darted past the salvage man and stood in the drive staring at the yard–at mounds of heaped-up car parts, bumpers and doors and engine blocks and rims–and at mountains of balding tyres. “He saw something. It was something important, and he called. And somebody got to him before he could give us the message. He’s here. I know it!”
Bob started suddenly and touched Jupe’s shoulder. “The trunk of one of these wrecks,” he said. “If I had to get rid of somebody quickly, that’s where I’d put him!”
The man scowled at the two boys. “You kids are crazy!” he said, but there was an edge of doubt in his voice. “Nobody’d put your friend in one of those cars. Hey, you’re kidding me, aren’t you?”
“Pete!” Jupe shouted. “Pete! Where are you?”
There was no answer.
“You’re not kidding, are you?” said the man, after a second. He stared about at the acres of rusting, ruined cars. “There must be about a hundred cars here that still have their trunk lids,” he said. “It could take all day to find the right one.”