"The deeper one digs, the closer together they are."- Yor, the Blind Miner (Michael Ende's The Never-Ending Story, 1979)
The Mystery of the Vanishing Treasure (1966) is the fifth entry in a long-running series of fun,
adventurous and imaginative juvenile detective stories about The Three
Investigators, which was penned by the series creator, Robert Arthur, who
only wrote the first ten of the total of forty-three novels – before passing
away in 1969. But the general opinion seems to be that he contributed some of
the best stories to the series.
I picked The Mystery of the Vanishing
Treasure as my next read from this series on the strength of this
particular review
and the book delivered on the promise of being a lively, roller-coaster of a
tale. It was also a pleasure to learn that there was a seemingly impossible
theft from a museum attached to one of the plot-threads, which is where the
story begins for the three young investigators.
Pete Crenshaw and Bob Andrews are
un-mathematically outvoted, "one to two," by Jupiter "Jupe" Jones to
exchange an afternoon of scuba-diving lessons for a trip to the Peterson
Museum.
At the moment, the museum is hosting an
exhibition by the Nagasami Jewelry Company and the centerpiece of the exhibit
is "a special display of fabulous jewels," which comprises of the
legendary Rainbow Jewels and an emerald-studded belt of heavy golden plates –
which represents a combined value of several million dollars. Jupe is of the
belief they could gain valuable experience, for "solving future jewel
robberies," by trying "to figure out whether or not the Nagasami jewels
could be stolen." However, the only piece of knowledge they can take
away from their excursion is that Jupe was not the only person who gave the
subject of stolen jewels some thoughts.
The trio of detectives went to the museum
on Children's Day and as a result the place is swarming with Boy Scouts, Girl
Scouts and Cub Scouts, which causes the place to drown in pantomime and "a
bedlam of sound" when the lights are cut and alarm bells began to wail.
Security immediately rushes to the center of the room and form a protective
ring around the famed Rainbow Jewels, but when the lights come back on they discover
that the glass case, which held the Golden Belt, is smashed to pieces – leaving
a painfully empty spot where a treasure was displayed only mere seconds ago.
But nobody seems to have been in a position to smuggle the belt out of the
building.
No one could have slipped out of the back
entrance, because "it had been sealed immediately after the alarm sounded"
with "a guard posted outside." All of the windows had been bricked up
when the place was converted into a museum and "everyone had been searched,"
but nobody was carrying the belt. The place itself was searched, top to bottom,
but nothing was found. Naturally, the boys offer their assistance to the head
of security, Mr. Saito Togati, but he dismissed them as "silly American boys"
and stated "this is work for men, not for children." It seems they had
no other option than letting this case slip through their fingers.
Luckily, they're soon contacted by their
friend and mentor, famous movie-director Alfred Hitchcock, who has a problem
for them to look into: one of his friends, Miss Agatha Agawam, is a retired
author of children's fiction, but recently she has been plagued by the fabled
creatures from her own stories – a gang of pickaxe wielding gnomes! They sneak
into Miss Agatha's home to throw stuff about and she wakes up in the middle of
the night to "the sound of someone using a pickaxe to dig," which seems
to come from basement. She also saw the gnomes in her garden playing leapfrog
and doing somersaults!
As unbelievable as that sounds, Bob is
soon convinced gnomes roam the place as one of them, "wearing a peaked cap" and carrying "a tiny pickaxe over its shoulder," is "scowling
ferociously" at him through the window. It is decided that they should hold
a nighttime vigil to capture one of them on film or even attempt to catch one
of them, but Bob has family obligations. So this ungrateful job falls on the
shoulders of the other two and their encounter (and scuffle) with the gnomes
must have given some of the youngest readers of this series nightmares.
It's an encounter leading them straight
to an abandoned, rundown and bat-infested theatre, which is where Jupe and Pete
find both an explanation for the gnomes and a considerable amount of danger –
one of those dangerous spots provided an image for the cover-illustration. I
really like that cover image!
I’ll refrain from elaborating on the
thriller-ish and adventurous parts of the story, which you should discover and
enjoy for yourself, but I have to commend Arthur for his excellent and
convincing motivation. I guess most of you can probably deduce the true nature
of the gnomes and how it related to certain plot-threads, but Arthur uses them
to full effect and provides a logical answer as to why there are so many of
them in the neighborhood. I thought it made sense.
It's still extremely pulpy and carny,
but the good kind of pulp. Like something from a Fredric
Brown story.
Finally, there's the impossible theft
from the museum, which is most prominently used in the opening and closing
chapters of the book, but the truly enjoyable parts of this plot-thread are the
many proposed solutions. Before the theft happened, Pete suggested a method echoing
Hergé's Le Sceptre d'Ottokar (King Ottokar's Sceptre, 1939) and
Jupe's first explanation was a variation on Edgar Wallace's "The
Missing Romney," which I read in Murder Impossible: An Extravaganza of
Miraculous Murders, Fantastic Felonies and Incredible Criminals (1990). David
Renwick used a very similar explanation for the Jonathan Creek
episode The Scented Room (1998).
The final explanation for the impossible theft was fairly routine and the false explanations were definitely
better, but I won't complain about that, because the overall story was solid
and fun to read. So I'll continue to dip in and out of this series for the foreseeable future.
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