Chapter Four
SAMANTHA called the next morning. Boyle answered.
"Hi, Corporal!" the young girl said enthusiastically. "Guess what!"
"You explored a new part of the house," Boyle guessed.
Samantha giggled. "No. I bet you'll never guess!"
"Mr. Fritz enrolled at Harvard?"
"No. This house used to belong to an old 1930s gangster!"
Boyle started. "What's so exciting about that?" he exclaimed.
"Well, this house is a piece of history! Maybe we should move out and use it for tours!
"And you know what else?" she continued in a hushed voice.
Carter was listening in the background, and now remarked dryly, "Al Capone made moonshine in the basement!"
"One of Ma Barker's friends used to live next door!" Samantha whispered.
"She did?" Boyle was appalled. "Have you told your parents about all this?"
"Well, no," Samantha admitted sheepishly. "I found some old papers in the attic and went through them. I haven't told anyone yet. In fact," she added proudly, "you're the first to know!"
Boyle grinned slightly. "Well, I'm flattered, but you really ought to tell your parents, too. Maybe they wouldn't want to live in a place that was once occupied by an old gangster."
A door was heard opening. "Alright," Samantha whispered. "I'll tell them. Here they come now. They were out in the yard. Abyssinia, Corporal!" She promptly hung up.
"What was that all about?" Carter wanted to know.
Boyle informed him of the latest.
Then Gomer came rushing in, calling again. "Sergeant Carter! Corporal Boyle!"
They turned to stare. "What is it, Pyle?" Carter asked, slightly irritated. "Are you trying to run the Indy 500?"
"No, Sergeant. It's something entirely different. It's gettin' serious!"
With hands on hips, the others continued to stare, confused.
"One of the men disappeared!"
Boyle and Carter looked shocked. "Disappeared?" Carter burst out. "Who? What?"
"It's someone over in Company C," Gomer rushed on. "You know, Sergeant Hacker's platoon."
"Hacker?" the others said in unison.
"Uh huh. A very upright man. He'd never go AWOL. Someone must have kidnapped him!"
Carter waved the idea off. "Oh, for heaven's sakes, Pyle!"
"Well, Sergeant, I hate to admit it, but it happens."
"What I can't figure out," Boyle cut in suddenly, "is why they'd take someone from Hacker's platoon. We're the ones they're after."
"Have you or Hacker notified the police?"
Gomer nodded. "Uh huh. Sergeant Hacker was tellin' me that he'd just come from reporting it to Colonel Gray, and that the police had definitely been notified, too."
At that moment, Corporal Ron Jensen, Hacker's aide, entered. Carter was the first to notice him.
"What are you doing here, Jensen? Does Hacker think we had something to do with the disappearance of that guy?"
"As far as I know, he doesn't," Jensen replied. "Colonel Gray told me to tell you to be on the lookout for PFC Walter Brighton." He gave Carter and the others a description of the missing Marine and was just going to leave when Hacker came barging in.
"Another sack of potatoes disappeared!" he said in despair, throwing up his hands.
"Another one?" Boyle repeated.
"Yeah, another one. And a crate of turnips!"
"Turnips?" everyone exclaimed in unison.
Hacker turned to Carter and said in a low voice, "I heard you and Pyle and Boyle are tryin' to solve a mystery."
Carter shrugged. "Maybe so. But what's that got to do with anything?"
"Well, this might be the bad guys' revenge."
"But why would they take a guy from your platoon instead of mine?" Carter repeated Boyle's question.
"Who knows? Maybe they didn't even realize they were grabbing a guy from my platoon. But Brighton would never go AWOL, Carter, so something would have had to have happened." He pointed toward the door. "And how does my food tie in with it all? Nothing makes sense!"
Suddenly a loud booming sound was heard in the distance. The whole duty hut rocked slightly.
"What was that?" Carter cried.
"It sounded like a grenade or a mortar shell or something of that nature," Boyle responded.
"But no one's having that kind of practice today," Gomer protested.
"Well, Pyle, obviously someone is," Hacker said cynically.
Carter raced for the door. "Yeah! We'd better get out to the mortar range fast!"
Gomer shook his head. "Golly. Whatever happened, it sure was big. The whole duty hut just rocked there for a minute."
That gave Boyle an idea. "Hey! Maybe someone shot off a shell right in the barracks!"
Carter dismissed the idea. "Oh, come on, Boyle! What guy would shoot off a mortar shell or a grenade in the barracks?"
"A total nut!" Hacker suggested.
"Or some angry burglars," Boyle added.
"If they'd actually go so far as to do a hare-brained thing like that then they really mean business!" Carter shot back.
"Well, they probably do," was Boyle's answer.
"Golly, if Corporal Boyle thinks a grenade went off right in the barracks we'd better get down there, and fast!" Gomer broke in suddenly.
"Well," Carter relented, "I guess it wouldn't hurt to look."
Everyone climbed back in the Jeep and drove off.
"I don't see a thing," Carter muttered as they peered behind the large tree that shaded Company B's duty hut.
Just then Gomer's friends PFCs Duke Slater, Frankie Lombardi, and Lester Hummel came running over from Company D.
"Oh, brother, Gome, you'll never believe what happened over in Company D!" was Duke's greeting.
"Shazam! Did a mortar go off?" Gomer guessed.
"Very interesting deduction, Pyle," Lester remarked. "To be perfectly honest, it was a grenade."
"A grenade!" the five Marines repeated.
"That is correct. It went off directly behind the duty hut over there," Lester continued.
"How'd you ever guess, Gomer?" Frankie asked.
"Well, it was kind of loud," Gomer began.
"Kind of loud?" Hacker mimicked. "It was thunderous! The whole duty hut rocked!"
"Yeah," Carter agreed, "it did shake a little."
"Was anyone hurt?" Boyle asked.
"Fortunately, no," Lester replied. "At least, not seriously."
"Huh? What do you mean by that?" Carter exclaimed.
Duke waved Lester off. "Oh, nothing serious, Sarge, honest. What Lester meant is that some of the Marines were so shocked they fainted on the spot. But I wouldn't exactly call fainting getting hurt."
"Fainted?" Carter repeated.
"Well, Sergeant, it would be quite a shock to have a grenade explode in your barracks," Lester responded.
Gomer's pals left shortly after.
"Terrible, terrible, terrible," Gomer said sadly.
Carter was pacing the floor again, like he always did when he was nervous or trying to dream up some new plan.
"What don't you get, Vince?"
"These latest mishaps. First a guy apparently gets kidnapped from Company C, and then this grenade goes off in Company D. If it's the work of the jewel thieves, why are they targeting those companies? Why aren't they coming after us?"
Boyle resumed his typing. After a few minutes he looked up. "Hey, Vince! Maybe they've got some new gang member who's not very good at remembering things."
"Huh?" Carter stopped pacing and stared at Boyle in astoundment. He wasn't making sense.
"Well, they might tell him to kidnap someone from Company B and he'd forget and think it was Company C. If you got confused, I guess you could mistake C and D for B."
Carter started to smile thoughtfully. "Yeah! That's possible. That would explain several things." He frowned. "But it still doesn't help us figure out why these guys are after us!"
"Well, Vince, we'll just have to keep working on that. Maybe someday soon we'll solve it."
"Yeah, sure, Boyle, but how soon?" Carter worried. "Who knows what they might try next?"
Boyle stared down at his typewriter's keys, as if hoping to find a clue in them. "Well, Vince, we'll have to attack this puzzle from another angle. Maybe visit the scenes of the jewel thefts or something and see if we can pick up some clues."
"But the police have gone over every inch of the PX and Hofmayer's Gems," Carter protested, "and they didn't find a thing!"
"Well, Vince, you never know. We could try at least."
Carter nodded, looking out the door. "Yeah. We could try."
"Oh, Corporal Boyle, you won't believe what happened," the Southerner cried.
"What happened?" Boyle asked. He had a sneaking suspicion that he knew what was coming.
"Someone sent me a warning in the mail!"
"A warning?" His suspicion had been right.
"Uh huh. It says . . ." The shuffling of paper could be heard. ". . . ‘Get that boyfriend of yours to stop fooling around with the Jewel Pendant or you'll be sorry!' What on earth could it mean, Corporal? Why is someone so angry at Gomer?"
"Well, actually, Miss Poovie, they're angry with all of us," Boyle whispered, after making certain no one was around.
"All of you?" Lou-Ann exclaimed. "Why, I'm afraid I don't understand. Who would be angry with all of you, and why?"
"Well, I can't tell you all of the details, because I don't know whether the phone's bugged, but basically, someone's mad at us because we're trying to solve a mystery."
The thought had just occurred to Boyle that very minute that perhaps the phone was bugged. He'd have to inform Carter of his suspicions so that he wouldn't blurt out some information over the phone that could put them in worse danger.
"Why, that's just awful! Maybe you'd better not solve that mystery!" Lou-Ann declared.
"Well, I don't think we should back out now. Certain things have happened, but I won't say exactly what over the phone."
He didn't wonder about it very long, however, because Colonel Gray called. He wanted Boyle, Carter, and Gomer to deliver some important papers to General Prescott up in L.A.
