"Arden, William - The Three Investigators 28 - The Mystery of the Deadly Double" - читать интересную книгу автора (Arden William)

"Somebody," he declared, "stole my lunch?"

Bob gaped. "Your . . . your lunch? That's all you--!"

"Your lunch, Second?" Jupiter echoed, incredulous.

The tall Second Investigator laughed. "Just a joke. Besides, my lunch is important. I'm getting hungry."

"A poor joke," Jupiter said sternly. "False alarms are very dangerous. You know the story of the boy who cried wolf. That kind of fun can--"

Jupiter, the brainy leader of The Three Investigators, could become a little stuffy, especially when he gave a speech. Bob or Pete often had to bring him down to earth.

"Talking won't get you off the hook," Pete interrupted. "I'll bet you couldn't resist a snack when Bob and I were outside in the workshop. I'll bet you swiped my lunch yourself!"

Jupiter reddened.

"I did not!" he exclaimed hotly. A stout boy, if not exactly fat, the First Investigator hated any suggestion that he ate too much.

"Well," Pete insisted, "someone did."

"Maybe you took it out to the workshop, and forgot it," Bob suggested.

"Wherever it is, it can wait," Jupiter said, recovering his self-assurance. "We haven't decided where to go on our outing tomorrow. It's our last chance to do something exciting before school opens again. Since no one seems to want to hire us for a case right now, and we've been working around the salvage yard all summer, I think we should take a real trip. We've all been to Disneyland a lot, so I say we go to Magic Mountain. I've never been there."

"Me, neither," Pete said. "What's it like?"

"It's one of the biggest and best amusement parks in the world, that's all," Bob said eagerly. "It doesn't have the fantasy stuff of Disneyland, but it's got four roller coasters. One of them loops upside down! There're two water chute rides, and do you get soaked! And there's a special kind of Ferris wheel a mile high, and maybe thirty other great rides--all for the admission price. No ticket books or anything. Once you're inside, you just go on any ride you want."

"It sounds pretty good," Pete said.

"Then that's it," Jupiter decided. "And just for some extra fun, we'll go in style--in the Rolls-Royce! I've already called Worthington, and the car's available tomorrow."

"Wow," Bob said, laughing, "they'll think we're millionaires! I can't wait to see everyone's face when we drive up."

"If I live that long." Pete groaned. "I'm starving. Come on, where'd you guys hide my lunch?"

"We didn't hide it, Pete," Bob insisted.

"No one touched your lunch, Second," Jupiter said in an exasperated voice. "You probably did take it out to the workshop with you. We might as well find it, or we'll never get our plans settled."

Suiting action to words, Jupiter raised the trap-door in the floor of the trailer and squeezed down into Tunnel Two. This was the main entrance to Headquarters, consisting of a length of wide metal pipe running under the trailer and the junk that surrounded it. Pete, tall and athletic, practically had to flatten himself on his stomach to get through the pipe, but he slid easily along behind the Investigators' puffing, overweight leader. Bob, the smallest of the three boys, had no trouble at all crawling swiftly in the rear.

They emerged in Jupiter's outdoor workshop, which was in a front corner of The Jones Salvage Yard. The workshop was protected by a sloping six-foot-wide roof which ran around the inside of the junkyard fence. Mounds of junk around the workshop hid the area from view. In it the boys had their printing press and the larger tools that they used to rebuild junk into useful equipment for their detective work. The workshop area also contained a chair, some old crates, and a workbench. It was on the workbench that Bob spotted Pete's lunch bag.

"See, you did leave it out here," the Records and Research member of the team declared.

Pete picked up the torn paper bag. "But who ate it?"

"You probably ate it yourself, and forgot you did," Jupiter said in disgust.