“How can you call it a cage?” Pete demanded. “It doesn’t have any bars. It looks like a broken old box.”
“Perhaps the metal shredder has already processed it,” said Jupe. “If you recall, the shredder selects metal from objects and discards the rest.”
“Uh-Uh,” Pete said as he dived off the pile. He came up grinning, holding a long, black iron bar. “That metal shredder is a fake,” he said. “It can’t tell iron from anything. What do you call this?”
Jupe was so pleased, he almost shouted with joy. “Good work, Pete! That might be what we’re looking for. Let me see it, please.”
Pete handed the bar over and Jupe promptly dropped it.
“Butterfingers!” Pete scoffed.
“No, I didn’t expect — ” Jupe bent to pick up the bar again. “That’s odd,” he said. “It feels heavy.”
“Of course it’s heavy,” Pete said. “Why do you think I was complaining the other day when we had to unload a ton of these from your uncle’s truck?”
Jupe stared down at the bar, his eyes gleaming thoughtfully. “I didn’t notice. I’m certain the other one I had was — ”
He stopped, his mouth open.
“What’s wrong, Jupe?” asked Bob.
“N-nothing,” Jupe said. He slung the bar across his shoulder. “Quick! We’ve got to get back to our junkyard at once!”
“But why?” Pete protested. “If you’re so happy with one iron bar, how do you know I can’t find more?”
“Because,” Jupiter stated as he moved away, “there aren’t too many that bear the specifications I have in mind.”
“Such as what?” Pete demanded.
“Such as containing smuggled diamonds,” Jupiter answered, heading rapidly for the wire fence.
They didn’t have too long to wait for Konrad to pick them up on his return trip from nearby Chatwick. On the ride home, Jupiter refused to be drawn into conversation. Instead, pinching his lower lip, he stared out of the window, nodding to himself several times as if to confirm certain inner convictions. Bob and Pete were accustomed to their leader’s temporary fits of silence and knew he wouldn’t explain himself until he was ready.
Once at the yard, Jupe hurried to his workshop. He stopped at the workbench — and cried out in dismay.
“It’s gone!”
“What’s gone?” asked Bob.
“The iron bar I picked up last night when Bo Jenkins chased us.” He ran over to the junk pile hiding Headquarters and returned, looking puzzled. “The first bar I had has disappeared, too.”
“What’s this all about?” asked Pete.
Jupe shook his head impatiently. “I’ll tell you later. Come on, I have to find Uncle Titus. Maybe he knows something.”
Uncle Titus was across the street at the Jones’ house, sitting and smoking his pipe. He nodded contentedly as the three boys approached.
“Howdy, boys,” he said pleasantly. “Have a good time today?”
“Pretty good, Uncle Titus,” Jupe began. “I wanted to ask — ”
“We did pretty good here, too,” interrupted his uncle. “Yes, sirree, had a good spell of business.”
“What did you sell, Uncle Titus — some iron bars?”
His uncle rocked and nodded. “Right smart of you to guess, Jupe. Yes, sir, we did just that. Hans and your aunt scoured the yard for all we had. We needed them, you see,” he added with a wink.
“What for, Mr. Jones?” asked Bob.
“What for? To make cages, of course. Told you the other day we were going to, didn’t I, Jupiter? Well, today Hans and me started to work on them, and then this feller comes in. His problem is he needs some big animal cages — and he needs ’em bad. Some kind of an emergency, I figure, where you suddenly need a lot of cages.
“Well, sir, I had to think fast. Y’see, we meant to fix ’em all up but we were still a few bars shy.”
Jupe felt sick inside. “Was it that man who was here the other day? The one called Olsen?”
“Not that feller. Another chap. Very likeable sort of man. Truth is, Jupe, even though I had my mind made up to save those cages for a circus, this chap’s work was close enough to help me change my mind.”
“It was?” Jupe repeated dully.
Titus Jones nodded, drew deeply on his pipe, and blew smoke. He finally went on. “Well, on account of him being such a nice chap and worried so, needing ’em so bad, I decided to co-operate. We all worked like the dickens fixing the cages and hunting for bars. Now your aunt saw you drop a bar near your workshop — that was the other day — and she picked that one up.”
“Oh, Aunt Mathilda did?” Jupiter groaned.
His uncle nodded. “A good thing, too. We were still one bar too little even with that, until Hans found another one on your workbench, Jupe. We figured you had no earthly use for it. Bars and junk like that come in here all the time, you know, and you’re always welcome to what you want — providing we don’t need it for a customer. Right?”
Jupe nodded dumbly.
His uncle smacked the dottle from his pipe. “Well, that feller couldn’t believe his eyes when we showed him we had the four cages all ready to go. Paid me a hundred dollars apiece, without my even painting ’em up. Said his animals would feel at home in ’em just like they were.”
“You got those cages over in the Chatwick Valley, didn’t you, Uncle Titus.”
“Yep. At a big scrap yard. They didn’t care about cages. Their main business was in junked cars. Had a terrific machine to eat ’em up. Made a racket, it did.”
Jupe gestured helplessly, his worst suspicions confirmed.
As Mr. Jones stretched and stood up to leave, Jupiter had only one more question. “This man with the animals, Uncle Titus — the one you sold the cages to — did you get his name?”
His uncle smiled benevolently. “Of course I did. Easy one to remember, too.” He squinted into the distance to remember the easy name. “It was, lemme see — yep, Hall. That was his name, all right. Jim Hall.”
Jupiter stared at his friends.
17
Jupiter Explains
A call to the Rent-’n-Ride Auto Agency found Worthington available soon for another trip to Jungle Land. While waiting for him to arrive, the boys gobbled some lunch in Aunt Mathilda’s kitchen.
“All right, Jupe,” said Bob as the boys settled into the back seat of the Rolls-Royce. “It’s about time you explained what’s going on.”
“It’s very simple,” said Jupe. “The diamonds are being smuggled by the Hall brothers in iron bars.”
“Are you feeling all right, Jupe?” Pete asked. “That iron bar I picked up at the scrap yard and handed you — are you talking about that kind of bar?”
Jupe nodded.
“But that bar was solid iron,” Pete said. “How can you smuggle diamonds in something like that?”
“You can’t,” Jupe said. “But you can smuggle diamonds in a hollow bar. Remember I told you that your iron bar felt different? Well, it was. It was a lot heavier than the one I picked up last night when Bo Jenkins was after us. And it was a lot heavier than the bar I put aside when we were unloading Uncle Titus’s truck. It was so much heavier that suddenly everything clicked.
“I knew that I had hollow cage bars, and that Uncle Titus must have bought his bars and cages at the scrap yard where Jim Hall had tossed George’s cage and probably others, too.”
“But how did you know that the two bars you had contained diamonds?” asked Bob.
“Well, I didn’t know for sure,” said Jupe, “until I heard that Jim Hall had bought the cages from Uncle Titus. He never would have returned for them if the smuggled diamonds weren’t still in them. It’s just my bad luck that I had the bars and then lost them. I still don’t know why he waited so long.”
Pete looked puzzled. “I don’t get it. If he knew the diamonds were in the cages, why did he discard them in the first place?”