by Kin Platt
I knew I wasn’t real brilliant. Not like Herky Krakower, for instance, by a million miles. But I also knew I wasn’t real stupid either.
The reason nobody had discovered the secret yet – that is, if they hadn’t – was because they didn’t stop to figure out what kind of a man Captain Billy was.
I mentally put myself back in the cave. The first time I’d seen it with Minerva and Sinbad and copied down the mysterious writing.
Then suddenly I had the answer!
I tore up everything I had written and patted Sinbad on the head.
“Don’t go away,” I said. “I think we’ve got it.”
He made the parrot sound. Like I had to be out of my loving mind to think he’d go away.
I wrote it all out. There wasn’t any doubt now. This cipher definitely was put there by Captain Billy!
I felt very good about solving it. Captain Billy had made a real tricky puzzle that might even have fooled that great joker, Francis Bacon himself, for a while.
Captain Billy’s personality had had something to do with it. It wasn’t just the cipher itself that was so difficult. It was in knowing how to make sense out of it. So I was more intelligent than I thought.
And now I was sure the cipher in the cave must tie in with the riddle on his tombstone. Whoever solved one would get a better understanding of the other. The cipher was the big one to hurdle. Because it meant that there was a reason for that place being called Dead Man’s Cove.
And I was lucky to be alive to have another chance at it!
I showed the secret message to Sinbad. “Congratulations are in order,” I told him. “Your loyal loving master has just turned out to not be such a dope after all!”
He sniffed and looked up at me. He made a little rumble in his throat.
I nodded. “I agree. That just tells how to get out of the cave. The last time it wasn’t too easy but I made it. That means there must be another cave inside that one! How does that grab you?”
He wagged his tail and pressed harder on my knee with his head.
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll have a million dollars for Mrs. Teska yet. The big question is how do we get inside that other secret cave?”
That stumped him, too.
It was very late by now and I’d had a rough day if you recall so I decided we both better hit the sack. We got into bad together, as usual. I put my head on Sinbad’s husky shoulders, as usual. He kissed me goodnight, as usual. And in less than ten seconds we both were in dreamland. There the as usual stopped.
I thought everything that could possibly happen to me had already happened this day. It shows you never know.
I guess Captain Billy wanted to congratulate me for solving his secret cipher.
In all the old ghost stories you read, dogs are the first to suspect the supernatural. They get very nervous and start to howl whenever they feel some kind of strange spooky presence. Like a ghost, let’s say.
But you have to remember I have a very special dog. Of a very particular breed. The breed that isn’t nervous. The kind of dog that loves people.
It didn’t make the least bit of difference to Sinbad that Captain Billy was a ghost now.
So naturally Sinbad welcomed him with a happy bark!
CHAPTER 29
About Jonah Jaws
If it hadn’t been for Sinbad I might not have even known Captain Billy was standing there at the foot of our bed.
Sinbad had switched positions on me as we slept. He was using me as a pillow, his big head snuggled on my chest and under my neck. When he sensed or saw Captain Billy’s ghost he raised that big head and a good hard crack on the jaw brought me out of dreamland. Then he let out a happy woof and walked right over me to get a better look. When somebody like Sinbad walks on your chest you feel as if you fell under a steamroller.
“Come on,” I muttered. “Relax.” I tried to sit up to pull him down but he stayed up there, his big feet spread wide apart, his body rigid. His head was questing up. His ears cocked forward. His tail twitched back and forth.
Then he lowered his head and I saw Captain Billy.
I always thought ghosts were supposed to haunt their own houses. And here was Captain Billy’s appearing in mine. Mrs. Teska told me he was a strong spirit. I didn’t know how she knew but she certainly had her facts straight.
He didn’t congratulate me on solving the cipher, like I thought. Instead he said: “Jonah jaws!”
I think whoever spread those tales about how ghosts talk in hollow tones really saw and heard them. I’m qualified as an expert witness now and I agree with them.
Ghost talk’s hollow all right. And there’s a kind of an echo that goes along with it so that the sound repeats itself over and over again. It’s like the same voice is talking on three different sound tracks, each voice just a little behind and not trying too hard to catch up. And the voice surrounds you, as if coming from all sides. It’s spooky, all right.
Well, so much for the way a ghost talks. Now you probably want to know what a ghost look like. Captain Billy’s was the first I’d ever seen. So all I can tell you about is that.
First of all, even before you see him you feel him. There’s a definite chill in the air. Like somebody left the refrigerator door open. Ghosts surround themselves with a kind of icy current. Like an ice fog.
That part about being able to see right through a ghost is true all right. He was standing in the moonlight and seemed to blend right into it. I mean there weren’t any sharp clear edges to mark his dimension. I could see the corner of the room directly behind him.
He stood very tall and favored his right leg. He leaned on a cane that glittered at the top. Or maybe it was a big ring on his hand.
I suppose I should have heard his cane tapping when he came in but I didn’t hear anything or any part of him moving. He moved as quietly as a shadow.
He wore a three-cornered cocked hat and one of those greatcoats, the long ones you’ve seen in pictures of Thomas Jefferson or Washington or Franklin. His beard was long and rough and black. And curving over his thin lips and the long fierce moustache was a great hooked nose.
His eyebrows were thick, black, and shaggy and his black eyes glittered in the moonlight. It’s hard to believe you’re looking at a dead spirit when you see the eyes glittering.
Two pistols were angled inside the wide sash under his coat, their butt ends delicately carved and ornamented. He wore a long encased sword on his left side and there were lace ruffles at his wide buttoned sleeve cuffs. He didn’t wear a vest, just the blouse under the coat. He didn’t wear a collar either. Just a loosely tied kerchief.
The tails of his coat flared out and I saw he was wearing thick wrinkled worn leather boots with a very wide overhanging flap. That was the mark of the pirate, all right. Otherwise he would have been wearing silk stocking and silver buckled shoes.
I stared at the kerchief and my hair was prickly and damp. There seemed to be blood under it.
Then he spoke, for the second time, and very slowly: “Let the Jonah jaws swallow you!” The voice was very deep, rumbling in his chest almost like Sinbad’s
“Swallow you!” he said again.
His voice sounded closer. As if it were behind me. This time I got scared, and like a dope, twitched and gave an involuntary jump. That’s probably the worst thing you can do to a ghost. It’s like an insult. You can’t act afraid or you lose them.
“Inside the Jonah Jaws,” he said, and he was gone. Not through the wall or out the window. And the curtains didn’t rustle or anything. He just vanished. Like that!
I was still staring into the same corner but now I saw nothing but the furniture. Sinbad looked around curiously and whined sadly.
I grabbed him around his thick neck and yanked him back toward me. He kept looking or trying to, but I kept a tight hold. Finally he gave up and settled down with a contented sigh, his head on my chest again. It was hard to feel scared then.
“Stick around,” I told him. “You hear
d what Captain Billy said. He wants me to get swallowed up in those Jonah jaws!”
Sinbad sighed again and licked my face. In less than five seconds he was sound asleep and snoring his head off. According to him, it was nothing to worry about.
CHAPTER 30
Mr. Gideon Pickering
Tuesday started out like a good day.
The second my eyes opened I thought I had the answer to the riddle on the front of Captain Billy’s tombstone. If I was right, then all three went together: the riddle about first dogwatchers following him, the strange cipher in the cave, and the last one about Jonah jaws.
I had to try something pretty dangerous to prove it, though. I tried to tell Sinbad, but with his famous one-track mind, he kept sniffing around and couldn’t seem to get over the fact that a visitor had come to our house without petting him or getting one of his special great receptions.
“It was a ghost,” I told him. “They’re not like real people so they don’t count.”
He kept right on sniffing around, which proved to me I couldn’t have dreamed the whole thing up.
After I got him squared away for the day, I took off for school again. Mrs. Teska’s store, still closed, made me feel rotten. I didn’t have the heart to try to get back to our old footing while she was still so worried over that kum superstition. Evidently it bothered her more than those two men that I was worried about.
I hadn’t heard a peep out of them, so maybe they had gone down in the bay with their car. They were sort of a superstition of mine, even though I pooh-poohed Mrs. Teska’s. As Sheriff Landry would say, nobody cared what went on in my head. I needed evidence. Like facts.
I was a little worried, too, about what Mr. Snowden was going to say about our accidental meeting in Dead Man’s Cove. But all he said was: “Good morning,” without any big eyes or twinkle or to-do at all.
Nothing much happened in class, after that. I’d been too busy with all my mysteries to even break open a book. He was decent enough not to call on me once. I liked that.
After class I wanted to go see that Mr. Gideon Pickering, the lawyer. I tried to break away fast but some pesty kid about my size from South Junior High, named Frankie Shorten, started horsing around. I didn’t know him and I didn’t care to.
He was one of those wise-guy kids that’s always trying to start something. In class, they’re always the troublemakers. They always have something sneering to say. They like to put down anything that’s good. I guess they’ve got a pretty low IQ.
Anyway, someone had evidently showed this Frankie a judo chop, or maybe he took a correspondence course in it. Anyway, again, he felt he had to demonstrate it and I guess he thought everybody was going to fold up the second he used it.
I tried to get him to cut it out but we were outside now and a couple of the other kids were still hanging around. So he thought he’d put on a free show, I guess, at my expense and make me look silly.
He kept coming in on me, his arms raised, ready for the flailing hand motion. Then he’d dance around on his toes. Then he’d yell, “Hai!” the way the Japanese do and start a fast hand hack at me.
I blocked a few of them with my elbows. They glanced off and he wasn’t happy about that. So then he tried one on my neck.
Those aren’t fun when they land. In fact they’re dangerous. They hit the nerve in your neck and can actually paralyze you. Anybody that fools around that way is either a dope or just plain vicious. Maybe both.
I was trying not to get involved or take him too seriously because I had other things on my mind. But one blow that I was too slow or deliberate in blocking got through. It hurt. So the next time he tried it, I faced him quickly. I knocked his chop hand away with my left. Then I kept the left moving and let him have a stiff jab right on the chin. Not too hard. Just with enough force to jolt and stun him. He called me a name. So then I hit him in the stomach a lot harder with my right and he fell down holding his stomach and gasping.
I helped him get up. To show his thanks and appreciation he tried to knee me in the groin. I saw it coming in time and grabbed his foot with my left hand. Then I held it out straight and pushed hard on his chin with the heel of my right. He sat down again.
“Why don’t you forget it?” I told him. “Maybe it’s just not your day.”
He got up blazing mad and charged me, coming at me head first, to butt me. I stepped to the side and tripped him as he went past. Then, to make sure, I hit him behind the ear.
This time he stayed there and thought it over.
The other kids started to laugh. He got up and gave them all a glowering look. He started to walk away. But he turned once to warn me: “I’ll fix you for that, Forrester.”
As if I’d started it.
“Fix me now, you stupid dope,” I told him. “You don’t need to make any appointment.”
He growled something and shuffled off. Then he saw a smaller kid laughing and went after him. The smaller kid ran and he chased him. The kid looked too fast for the bully to catch up with him.
Sometimes I feel kind of sorry for these dumb bullies. They never learn. They’ve just got to keep trying to show you they’re stronger or better than you or something.
When, finally, I went for my bike, Mr. Snowden was standing there.
“I think you handled that pretty nicely,” he said.
I looked at him quickly. He meant it.
“Someone showed him a judo chop,” I said. “So now he feels he has to chop down everybody.”
“I’m glad you took care of it,” Mr. Snowden said. “I’ve had the feeling I’d like to chop down that brat myself.”
We both laughed. He shifted some books he had under his arm. The one on top had a blue cover, and it was titled: Codes and Ciphers.
I had to smile. “Good luck,” I told him.
He knew what I meant and grinned. “How about yourself?” he asked. “Is it giving you any trouble?”
I didn’t want to lie to him but even though I liked Mr. Snowden a lot, that whole cave deal was like a personal matter to me now.
So I just said: “Not anymore.”
He whistled and looked at me.
“I won’t ask you how,” he said. “In fact, I’m proud of you, but do me one favor.”
I asked him what.
“Just be careful,” he said. “I know how kids are. I was one myself.”
I couldn’t tell Mr. Snowden that sometimes you don’t have time to be careful. I said I’d try. Then I remembered he’d given me the first clue about Big Nick Murdock and I wanted to even things a little.
“They were just freshly painted yesterday,” I said.
“I know,” he said frankly. “I wonder why. Anyone interested in breaking down that cipher would certainly write it down.”
That fitted my opinion.
“Unless he changed it,” he said.
I shook my head. “No. It’s exactly the same as it was. As it was the other day, anyway,” I added.
“Well, thanks,” he said. He showed me the other book. Its title was: Hydraulics Engineering. “Care to borrow it?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t think I’d understand it much.”
He shrugged. “Well, if you change your mind.” He laughed. “It might be important for your new line of work.”
I laughed a little too. Then I remembered something else I had to be grateful for. “Thanks for the advice on that silver dollar,” I said. “Mr. Newbury offered me four hundred dollars for it.”
“That’s a very good price. Dealers usually offer only half or at the most two-thirds the value of a coin.”
“He’s a nice man,” I said. Then, “Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Snowden, but I gotta go.”
“Back to see Peter Newbury, I guess?”
Like a dope I’d forgotten the other silver dollars I wanted to find out about.
“No,” I said. “I got to see a lawyer about something.”
“Mr. Gideon Pickering is a good one,” he said.
&
nbsp; Then he waved and walked away with that nice slow easy stride ha had. I wondered how he knew. Mr. Snowden seemed to be always just one step behind me. Unless he was one step ahead.
“Mr. Pickering will see you now,” the friendly girl in the outer office said. I thanked her and walked into an office that was warm and friendly and dignified. Just like Mr. Pickering.
Bookcases with thick law books lined the walls from floor to ceiling. There was a green leather couch and two black leather chairs. The wall over the couch was paneled stained wood and held a lithograph, an old print of that famous artist, Daumier, showing a young fellow on a ladder with an armful of big thick law books. In the background you could see an elderly lawyer looking at him, as if wondering when he was going to start falling.
That’s the way I felt with Mr. Pickering.
He sat behind his big desk, tall and spare and gaunt. He motioned me to sit down in one of the big leather chairs. It had a wonderful smell, like leather does. There were a lot of papers on his desk, all neatly stacked, a lamp and a pen set and a calendar.
Sunlight flooded the room and made it cheerful. Mr. Pickering helped. He laced his long white powerful looking hands together and nodded at me. His voice was very polite and soft. You could tell he was a gentleman. He glanced down at the little white slip of paper on which the smiling girl outside had written my name.
“I trust this isn’t a question of a breach of promise suit, Mr. Forrester,” he said.
CHAPTER 31
The Third Key
I was glad Mr. Pickering had a sense of humor. He looked about as funny as a totem pole. I took out the card given me by the girl whose day I had spoiled. Mr. Pickering hardly glanced at it. He nodded and waited patiently.
“I’m trying to find out who owns Captain Billy’s castle,” I told him. “You know. Murdock.”