Jupe looked around at boxes and crates and trunks that stood on the cement floor. Through an opening in the back wall he saw another flight of stairs leading out of the cellar, directly to the outside. It was the old-fashioned kind of cellar entrance, with a hinged sheet of plywood over the stairwell serving as both a roof and a door.
Then Jupe’s eye was caught by an enclosure in one corner of the basement, reaching from floor to ceiling. It was made of heavy metal mesh, and it had a sturdy metal door secured with a padlock. Curious, Jupe crossed the room, peered through the mesh, and saw the stocks of rifles standing on a rack against the wall. There were boxes of ammunition on the floor, and there were explosives, too. A second gun rack on the far wall held shotguns and handguns.
“Quite an arsenal,” said Jupe. “Was that in the basement in Wisconsin, too?”
Mrs Barron shook her head, and her face was sad. “It’s new,” she said. “Charles had it put in about six months ago. He . . . he felt that the time would come when we would have to protect ourselves.”
“I see,” said Jupe.
He turned away from the guns and began to open the trunks that stood around. They were all empty, and so were the boxes and the crates.
“Nothing,” he said at last.
“No,” said Mrs Barron. “We don’t really use the basement much.”
The two went up the stairs to the kitchen, and then Mrs Barron led the way up the back stairs to the second floor.
There were servants’ rooms near the stairway, but they were unused and empty. In the other rooms were huge antique beds with rich brocade spreads. Jupe saw bureaus topped with marble and mirrors that reached to the ceiling. Mrs Barron went into her room and opened closet doors and bureau drawers.
“There’s nothing, really–not even trinkets. I don’t wear much jewellery here at the ranch,” she said. “I just keep a string of pearls and my engagement ring, and everything else is in the safe deposit box.”
“Is there an attic?” said Jupe. “And what about pictures? Are any of the pictures here in the house valuable? And what about papers? Does Mr Barron have any documents that could be the bait for some swindler?”
Mrs Barron smiled. “Our pictures are family portraits, but they’re not valuable. Except to Charles, of course. About papers, I wouldn’t really know. I don’t understand much about finance and business. Charles keeps everything in his office.”
Mrs Barron went out past the front stairs and Jupe followed her. A small room in the southeast corner of the house was even stiffer and more old-fashioned than the ones Jupe had already seen. It was furnished as an office, with a roll-top desk, a leather-covered armchair, an oak swivel chair, and several oak filing cabinets. There was a fireplace in this room, and over the mantle there was a steel engraving of a factory building.
“That’s a picture of Barron International,” said Mrs Barron, gesturing towards the engraving. “The factory that made the first Barron fortune. I don’t come in here often, but . . .”
Mrs Barron stopped. From the driveway outside someone was calling her name. She went to the side window and threw up the sash.
“Mrs Barron!” cried a woman who stood in the driveway below. “Please, can you come quick! Nilda Ramirez fell from a tree and her arm is bleeding.”
“Be right there!” called Mrs Barron.
She closed the window again. “You get on with the search,” she told Jupe. “I’m sure you don’t need me hovering at your elbow. I’ll get the first-aid kit and go to see about the little Ramirez girl. Don’t be too long. Charles will be back from his ride soon.”
“I’ll hurry,” Jupe promised.
Mrs Barron went out, and Jupe heard her rummaging in the big bathroom that opened off the front hall. Then she went downstairs and out. Jupe stood at the side window while she went up the lane with the woman who had come to get her. He then looked out the front window, across the lawn to the citrus groves and the other end of the lane. No one was in sight.
Jupe turned away from the window and crossed to the fireplace. He lifted the engraving of Barron International away from the wall, and he smiled.
“Finally!” he said aloud.
There was a safe under the picture. It was an old-fashioned safe and it did not have a combination lock. Instead it could be opened with a key.
Jupe guessed that Mrs Barron was not aware that the safe was there. He wondered if Barron had found it in some antique store and had had it installed in the house after the place was moved to California. He tugged at the handle. The safe was securely locked, as he had expected. The roll top of the desk was locked, too, and so were the filing cabinets.
Jupe sat down in the armchair and imagined that he was Charles Barron. What would he lock in a safe? And would he carry the key to the safe with him when he went riding? Or would he leave it in the house? Or would he have a second key?
Jupe brightened when this idea occurred to him. Charles Barron was thorough. Surely there was a second key hidden in the house.
Jupe took heart and began to search. He knelt and felt the undersides of the chairs and the desk. He groped along the tops of the two windows and the door. He peered behind the files. At last he lifted the edge of the rug and saw a floorboard that was shorter than the others, and a different colour. He pulled at the edge of this board with his fingernails, and the board lifted up. Underneath was a compartment with the keys.
“Not really so clever, Mr Barron,” Jupe murmured. He took the keys–three of them on a ring–and opened the safe.
There were velvet boxes in the safe–jewel boxes. Jupe opened them one after another and gazed in awe at emeralds and diamonds and rubies. There were necklaces and rings and watches and stick pins and bracelets. Most of the pieces were old-fashioned in design. Jupe guessed that they had originally belonged to Mr Barron’s mother.
So Mrs Barron’s jewels were not in a safe deposit box as she believed. Did anyone else–besides Charles Barron–know that? The jewels were certainly worth stealing. But were they worth an elaborate hoax? Jupe thought not. He wondered why the jewels had been moved to the house. Then he realized that this was only one more sign of Barron’s distrust of his own world. A safe deposit box could only be as safe as the bank it was in, and Charles Barron did not believe in banks. He believed in land and gold.
Jupe locked the safe and turned to the roll-top desk.
The second key on the ring opened the desk. The first object Jupe saw when he rolled the top of the desk back was the metal clamp that had been found on the meadow that morning. Jupe turned it over in his hands, then put it aside. He sat down in the swivel chair and began to go through the chequebooks that were heaped in the desk.
There were chequebooks from a number of banks in several cities–the Prairie Bank of Milwaukee, the Desert Trust Company of Salt Lake City, the Riverside Trust Company of New York, and the Central Illinois National Bank of Springfield. Jupe flipped through the stubs in each of the books and saw that the last cheque written on each account was for the entire balance. Barron had closed out all but one of his accounts. The one that remained open was with the Santa Barbara Merchants Trust. The last entry in the cheque register for this account showed that Charles Barron had more than ten thousand dollars on deposit.
Jupe leaned back in his chair and began to read through the list of cheques, and he almost whistled aloud in astonishment. Millions of dollars had been deposited in the Santa Barbara institution in the past two years, and huge cheques had been written on the account. Some of the money had gone to pay for equipment for the ranch. There were cheques to a feed company and cheques to several oil companies and cheques to auto dealers for trucks and to garages for repairs. There were cheques to engineering companies for irrigation equipment and to cement companies for sand and gravel and cement. Barron had spent enormous amounts to equip his ranch.
But in addition, huge sums had gone to firms with names that Jupiter did not know. A company called Peterson, Benson, and Hopwith had received money from Barron on more than ten occasions, and the amounts varied from fifty thousand dollars to more than two hundred thousand. Numbers of cheques had been written to the Pacific Stamp Exchange, for sums that were stunning.