Chapter Three
THE day following the Marines' strange baby-sitting adventures, Gomer was reading a suspense novel. It talked of a jeweled pendant that everyone was after, and not just because of its value in gems—it had very important government information inside!
He was so caught up in his world of intrigue and pendants that he didn't hear Boyle calling to him until he was right next to him.
"Oh, hey, Corporal Boyle," Gomer greeted him. "Golly, I didn't even hear you come in."
Boyle nodded slightly in a return greeting. "Someone wants you on the phone, Pyle."
Gomer closed his book. "They do? Golly, I wonder who that could be."
He followed Boyle out the barracks door and into the duty hut, where he picked up the phone. "Hello?"
It was the clerk from the PX. "Hello, Private Pyle?"
"Yes."
"Well . . ." She lowered her voice. ". . . Another robbery has taken place!"
Gomer's eyes grew big. "Really? Shazam! What happened?"
"I don't know exactly. I was just opening the shop when these two masked men came tearing in. They didn't say a word, just clamped a hand over my mouth and locked me in the back room. Then they must have ran off with more jewelry, because when I finally freed myself, I found seven gold watches and two genuine pearls gone! Not to mention a jeweled pendant."
Gomer shook his head. "Terrible, terrible, terrible. Some people these days just don't have any respect for other people's property. Have you told the police?"
"Well, actually, Private, you're the first one I called. I thought you'd like to know."
"Well, thank you for telling me, ma'am," Gomer said hastily, "but you'd better call the police. Robbery's a matter for them to handle!"
"That's right, and that's exactly what I'm going to do right now," the clerk declared. She and Gomer hung up.
"Another PX robbery," Gomer explained to Boyle. Then he said goodbye and left, returning to his book.
"It's ridiculous!" he said to Carter over the phone. "Why would anyone want that stuff?"
Hacker was talking so loud that everyone in the duty hut could hear him. Boyle said to Carter, "Maybe some hungry hobo wandered on the base, saw the mess hall, and decided it would be a great place to get a meal."
Carter started to relay the message to Hacker, but he interrupted. "I heard him, Vince. I guess it's possible. Anything's possible."
"I'll tell you one thing, Charley," Carter said suddenly. "No one here took it."
"I'm not so sure about that," Hacker retorted. "What about that new Marine who was just transferred into your platoon? He doesn't look so honest to me. You ought to check his record, Vince."
"What would he want with a ten-pound bag of potatoes and a side of meat?" Carter exclaimed. "No one could hide that much food in the barracks without me knowing about it!"
"Maybe someone—but not necessarily the new Marine—decided to sell the food to someone who would pay top dollar for it," Boyle suggested.
"Oh, I don't know, Boyle," Carter sighed. "It seems so farfetched!"
"Maybe so," Boyle replied. "But someone took the food. It didn't walk off by itself."
"Just take my advice, Vince," Hacker called into the phone. "Check out that new Marine's record!" Then he hung up.
Carter paced the floor. "Everything's sure happening around here lately," he said to Boyle. "Hofmayer's Gems is robbed, then the PX, and now someone stole food from the mess hall. If the cases are possibly connected, I can't see how."
"There's one thing the same in all the jewel robberies," Boyle said after thinking for a minute.
"Huh?"
"Well, in each case, a jeweled pendant was stolen. Maybe there's something special about a certain pendant and a gang of crooks is trying to get their hands on it."
Carter stopped pacing. "Oh, it's possible, Chuck. But not very."
"It happens all the time in movies and books," Boyle persisted.
Carter suddenly got an idea. "Boyle, I was thinking about what Hacker said. Maybe we ought to check out this Marine's record. Maybe somehow he ties in with the whole thing. Maybe he was a petty thief—or still is!
"When you get a chance, Boyle," he continued, "maybe you can find something out. Never mind," he retracted the order unexpectedly, "I'll do it myself." Carter put his hat on and headed for the door. "I'll see you later. I've got a date with Bunny."
Mary Ann Harper was Lou-Ann Poovie's cousin on her mother's side. She was a farm girl who decided to move to a big city and get a singing career. As it turned out, she didn't like the hard work it involved and became a schoolteacher. She secretly had a large crush on Cpl. Boyle, and was always starry-eyed and dreamy-voiced when she talked to him.
This time, Gomer answered the phone, because he happened to be on cleaning detail and was washing the duty hut windows.
"Hello, Gomer. Is Cpl. Boyle there?"
Gomer put down the bottle of Windex. "Well, he's around here somewhere. Just wait a minute, Mary Ann, and I'll go find him."
He walked to the door and looked out. Boyle was posting some new thing on the bulletin board. "Hey, Corporal!" Gomer greeted him. "You're wanted on the phone."
"Yeah? Who is it?" Boyle asked as he came inside.
Gomer grinned. "You'll see." He suspected that Mary Ann had a crush on Boyle. He decided to wash the outside of the windows while they conversed, so he took the bottle of Windex and the rag and went outside, closing the door behind him. Boyle shook his head in amusement.
"Hello?"
"Hi, Charles."
"Oh, uh, hello, Miss Harper."
Mary Ann was getting starry-eyed, but tried to concentrate on what she had called about, which was a strange thing that had happened to her while she taught her sixth-grade class that day. "Oh, Charles, do you know what happened today? It was the oddest thing!"
"What happened?"
"Well, it was right in the middle of my math class when the principal came in and said I was wanted on the phone. I couldn't imagine who'd be calling me, and I was flabbergasted at what the caller said!"
"What did he say?"
"Well, after I said hello, this creepy, nasal voice said, ‘Stay away from the jewel pendant!' I asked him to repeat what he'd said, 'cause it sounded too odd to really be true. But he just said ‘The jewel pendant means danger!' and hung up."
Boyle was puzzled. "Jewel pendant?" What in the world had that man been talking about? Did it have something to do with the robberies? But how would Mary Ann fit into the picture? Nothing made sense.
"Isn't it strange?" Mary Ann's voice cut into his thoughts. "I just couldn't imagine such a thing!"
"Oh, yeah, it's strange alright," Boyle agreed. He idly looked up and saw Gomer still washing the windows, occasionally peeking in. He became greatly amused.
"And, by the way, a new girl just moved to town," Mary Ann continued. "She's a brunette who's lookin' for work. Lou-Ann and Bunny told me all about her. They met her at the Bluebird Cafe and said she seems real nice."
"That's interesting. What's her name?"
"Oh, you know—I forgot to ask them!" Mary Ann looked around the telephone booth she was calling from. "Well, Charles, I'll have to go. My dime's runnin' out." They both said goodbye and hung up.
Boyle went to his desk and started going through the file he'd left open. About half-way through, he found a small scrap of paper with a note written in red ink. What in the world is this? he wondered. He was definitely not amused when he read the words.
He closed the door to make sure no one would hear them talking, then told Carter of the latest turn of events.
"Vince, this is getting serious! Mary Ann Harper got a warning, too." He quickly told of the schoolteacher's earlier call. "And how could she possibly have any connection with the robberies?"
Carter was worried too. "Bunny told me someone called her and said the very same thing. She didn't think anything of it. She thought it was probably some kid playing a joke."
"Well, I hardly think a kid would go to all the trouble of slipping a note into this file folder," Boyle replied. "I think we're in real trouble! There's got to be something special about that Jewel Pendant. First some pendants turn up stolen in the jewel robberies. Then they turn up in the warning messages. For some reason, Vince, these crooks do not want us to have anything to do with the ‘Jewel Pendant,' whatever it is!"
Gomer came rushing in just then. "Sergeant Carter! Corporal Boyle! Guess what just happened!"
Sardonically, Carter remarked, "You got lost on the way back from the supply hut."
Gomer shook his head. He looked frantic. "Oh, no, nothing like that, Sergeant. Someone threatened me!"
"You too?" Carter exclaimed.
"Too?" Gomer was puzzled. Quickly the others filled him in on the previous events. "Golly," Gomer said when they were finished. "That's terrible!
"My warning message was different from the others," he continued. "Some nasal-voiced guy called me up on the phone at the supply hut."
"How'd he know you were there?" Carter exclaimed.
"Who knows?" Gomer replied. "Anyway, he called up and told me ‘If you don't want your friends to get hurt, back out of the mystery!' It's terrible, Sergeant, just terrible!"
The three Marines looked at each other. This was certainly a strange case. What was the Jewel Pendant? Who was the mysterious caller? What was all this about? Were the threats just idle to scare them off the case or did the senders mean business?
A loud clap of thunder sounded outside. Everyone jumped. As the rain began to pour, they all wondered what would happen next.
