The wall still seemed to be rushing toward Jupe… except that — and it was all happening so fast that every impression was like the flash of a strobe light — except that it seemed to be slanting to the left now.
Instead of looming straight ahead through the windshield, the wall was turning away. It was out of sight for an instant, blocked by the window post, then was suddenly there again only a few inches from the side window.
The engine was grinding, screaming in protest. Bob and Jupe gripped their seats, hanging on with all their strength to keep from being flung sideways against Constance.
She was still holding the wheel hard over to the right. The tires squealed like police sirens as they skidded across the macadam. The stone wall seemed to reach out, trying to tear off the door, the whole side of the truck.
Constance straightened the wheel.
The truck lurched on for another ten yards. It skidded slowly to a shuddering stop. The engine stalled.
No one said anything for at least a minute. Constance lowered her head, resting it on the steering wheel. She was breathing deeply, taking long controlled breaths the way she did after a dive.
“Okay,” she said. Her voice was a little hoarse but quite steady. “Let’s all pile out and see what the damage is. We’ll have to get out your side, Bob. My door’s jammed.”
For a moment, after he had climbed down onto the road, Bob had to hang on to the side of the truck to stay on his feet. His legs wouldn’t support him. He didn’t seem to have any feeling in them.
Then he remembered Pete.
He stumbled to the tailgate and lowered it.
Pete was lying face down on the metal floor. His arms and legs were stretched out like a starfish. He wasn’t moving.
“Hey, Jupe,” Bob yelled. “Come here.”
Bob climbed into the back of the truck and Jupe followed him. They both knelt beside Pete. Bob gently lifted his friend’s wrist and felt for his pulse.
Pete stirred slightly at his touch. He opened his eyes.
“Hurry up and tell me,” he whispered urgently. “Am I alive or dead?”
“You seem to be alive.” Bob couldn’t help laughing with relief. “Your pulse is fine and your sense of humor’s undamaged.”
“Sense of humor, my foot.” Pete rolled over and sat up, feeling his arms and legs for any broken bones. He didn’t find any. “What in thunder and lightning was going on? You all go crazy up front, or were you just practicing for the stock-car races?”
Jupe shook his head. It must have been worse for Pete, he realized, being flung around in the open back of the truck without any idea of what was going on.
“My guess is that someone disconnected the brakes,” he said.
“On purpose?” Pete was on his feet now.
“Let’s go and find out,” Bob suggested.
It didn’t take them long to discover that Jupe’s guess was right. Constance had the hood open by the time they joined her, and they could all see at once that the connecting rods of the foot pedal and the hand brake had been neatly cut with a hacksaw.
“Somebody could have done it while the truck was parked outside Slater’s house,” Jupe told Constance. “They had plenty of time.”
“Somebody?” Constance demanded. “Who?”
But that was a question the First Investigator couldn’t answer yet. It was a question that needed a lot of careful, deductive thought.
For the next couple of hours, while Constance called her friends with the tow truck, while they waited for them, while she dropped the Three Investigators off at the salvage yard before going on to San Pedro, Jupe did his best to give it that kind of thought.
But it wasn’t until he was leaning back in the old swivel chair behind his desk at Headquarters that he felt he could really put his brain into action and concentrate the way he needed to.
“Somebody.” Jupe was thinking aloud so Bob and Pete could follow his deductions and help him if they had any suggestions. “Somebody doesn’t want us to find the wreck of Captain Carmel’s boat. They were prepared to try and kill us this afternoon — or cause us a serious accident anyway — to stop Constance, to stop all of us from going ahead with our plan to train Fluke to search for the boat.”
He was silent for a moment, pinching his lip.
“Now,” he went on. “There seem to be three possible suspects. Three that we know about, anyway.
“One.” He held up a pudgy finger. “Oscar Slater. But Slater seems to have everything to gain by finding that wreck. Not only that, but everything he’s done — kidnapping Fluke, persuading Constance to train him — everything seems to show he wants us to succeed.”
Jupe paused again.
“So let’s go on to number two.” A second pudgy finger joined the first one. “Paul Donner. What do we know about him? When we met him in San Pedro, he knew our names. He knew we were the Three Investigators. How did he know that?”
No one answered.
“Paul Donner told us a lot of lies, pretending to be Constance’s father,” Jupe went on. “But he also told us some things that were true. He told us Captain Carmel was taking Oscar Slater on a fishing trip to Mexico when his boat sank. No, wait a minute.” Jupe searched his memory. “He said that he was bringing Oscar Slater back from a fishing trip to Baja California when the boat went down.”
Bob and Pete knew Jupe was right. He was always right when it came to remembering exactly what someone had said.
Jupe sat there for a moment without moving, then he picked up the phone and dialed.
“Hullo.” Constance’s voice answered over the loudspeaker.
“It’s Jupe.”
“Hullo, Jupe. You okay? You sound sort of worried.”
“I’m not worried,” Jupe told her. “I’m just puzzled.”
“You’re puzzled.”
“There are a couple of questions,” Jupe said, “you might be able to help us with.”
“Go ahead.”
“When we gave you our Three Investigators card in your office at Ocean World, did you show it to anyone else or tell anyone about us?”
“No.”
“What did you do with the card?”
“I guess I left it on my desk.”
“Could anyone have seen it there?”
“Sure. I suppose so. I share that office with some of the other trainers so it’s hardly ever kept locked.”
“So almost anyone who had seen us go into your office could have waited until you left and just walked in and seen the card on your desk.”
“I guess they could. I didn’t really look at the card until you three had gone, then I —”
“Then you got worried about Fluke and you drove straight over to Oscar Slater’s house to make sure he was okay.”
“That’s right. How did you know?”
“We were in the parking lot when you drove by.”
“So you were. I almost ran over you, didn’t I?” Constance paused. “What’s the other question, Jupe?”
“It’s about your father. When he was taking Slater down to Baja California to sell those pocket calculators —”
“Yes.”
“How long had he been gone before he ran into that storm and lost his boat?”
There was quite a long silence. Constance seemed to be trying to remember.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “You see, when I’m working, it’s too far to commute to San Pedro, so I stay with a girlfriend in Santa Monica. I usually went home to San Pedro to see Dad every Monday on my day off. But I had to go to San Diego about that time. So I hadn’t seen Dad for two weeks when the hospital called and told me —”
Her voice broke off. She was obviously recalling the shock of that terrible call.
Jupe waited sympathetically until she spoke again.
“I see what you’re getting at,” Constance said in her usual brisk voice. “Dad and Slater could have been out at sea all that time and I wouldn’t have known.”
“It’s possible, isn’t it?” the First Investigator agreed.
“You think it’s important?”
Jupe did. After Constance had hung up, he sat for several minutes thinking how important it could be. Had Captain Carmel and Oscar Slater actually reached Baja? Were they on the way back when they ran into the storm? He had to find out.