The Jungle Pyramid (8 page)

“You see?” Chet said triumphantly to Biff and Tony. “The Hardys always get their man. They'll find the gold!”

His words were overheard by the pilot of the small plane near them. He had just climbed out of the cockpit and proved to be a hulking figure in overalls. He carried a long wrench in his right hand.

The man stared at the boys, his brows furrowed. Then he sidled up to them. “What are you guys doing here?” he scowled. “And who are you?”

“Who are you?” Biff retorted boldly.

“My name's Murphy, and they don't call me Rumble for nothing. Understand?”

“Understand,” Chet said hastily. He was not about to tangle with a man carrying a wrench.

“What are you after?” the pilot demanded.

“Gold,” Chet said.

“It has to do with Palango,” Joe put in.

Rumble Murphy stepped toward them. Glowering, he slapped the wrench menacingly against the palm of his left hand. “You'd better go home right now if you want to stay healthy!”

 

 

 

 

RUMBLE Murphy brandished his wrench. Chet stepped back for fear of being hit, but Tony stood still, his hands on his hips. Biff assumed a karate stance.

“That sounds like a threat!” Frank said.

“It is a threat!” Murphy snapped.

“What do you mean?” Joe asked.

“You'll find out soon enough if you butt in where you're not wanted.”

Joe stepped forward and looked the pilot straight in the eye. “Come on, Murphy!” he demanded. “Why are you threatening us?”

The man's answer was a punch that struck Joe on the jaw. Joe staggered backward and toppled over. Biff and Tony caught him as he fell.

Murphy ran to his plane and jumped in. The boys raced after him. Suddenly Frank shouted, “Hit the ground!”

They all plunged face downward on the runway. A landing plane sped toward them. They felt a gust of air as one wing passed over them with inches to spare! Shakily, the boys got to their feet.

“Lucky you shouted, Frank,” Biff said, “or we would have been mowed down.”

They watched helplessly as Rumble Murphy took off. He became airborne and vanished into the clouds scudding across the sky.

“Murphy's a real pro when it comes to flying,” Frank observed.

Joe rubbed his jaw. “My guess is he's a boxer,” he said. “That guy hit me really hard with that haymaker.”

The boys walked to the airport terminal.

“We must find out about Palango,” Tony remarked.

“Let's set up an appointment with Professor Alvarez,” Frank suggested.

Biff clapped Chet on the shoulder. “You're the expert on archaeology, Chet. We elect you to contact the professor.”

Chet grinned. “I'll be glad to. Just lead me to the phone.”

He made the call to the university. Alvarez said he would welcome the visitors next morning.

The boys claimed their baggage and took a taxi to the hotel at which they had chosen to stay. After freshening up, they decided to use their free time sightseeing.

In the lobby, Frank inquired at the desk about a guide, and soon a wiry Mexican with wavy black hair appeared.

“You want to see Me-hee-co?” he asked the travelers with a friendly grin. “My name is Juan and my car is outside. It will cost you only a few pesos.”

They made a deal with the guide, who led them to an old auto with crumpled fenders and a crack in the windshield.

“This must be fifty years old,” Joe presumed. His companions were thinking the same thing. Feeling somewhat dubious about its reliability, they climbed in.

Juan started the engine, which wheezed and then made a put-putting sound that seemed about to choke off at any moment. He released the brake and chugged away from the hotel, dispensing tourist information as they rattled along.

First he took them through Mexico City's main square. “The
Zocalo,
” he informed his passengers. “Our great plaza.”

The area was dominated by the cathedral. They saw the national palace, the library, the School of Fine Arts, and other public buildings in and around the plaza.

Traffic whizzed every which way. Their guide stepped on the gas and headed into it. His passengers braced themselves as he raced ahead of one car and braked sharply to avoid another.

“Chet, this is worse than your jalopy!” Biff muttered out of the comer of his mouth.

They reached a beautiful broad boulevard. The car bumped along past trees, office buildings, crowds of pedestrians, and benches where tourists and citizens relaxed. Next came the markets of Mexico City, colorful areas with shops and outdoor stalls. Most of the vendors were selling fruits and vegetables.

In the Merced Market, Chet tapped the driver on the shoulder and told him to stop. Juan pulled into a side street.

“What's up, Chet?” Frank asked.

“Come on. I'll show you.”

They got out and followed him as he walked to a stall with succulent Mexican dishes. The aroma of tacos, tortillas, enchiladas, and chili filled their nostrils. Chet closed his eyes and inhaled rapturously.

“We might have known,” Joe said with a chuckle. “Chet never passes up any chow.”

“I'm with him this time,” Frank said.

The rest echoed the sentiment. They ordered a tortilla for each, including the driver, then strolled around the market, examining stall after stall. Juan talked to them animatedly, and occasionally conversed with the merchants in Spanish.

Chet, Biff, and Tony paused to look at some prints of Mexico City. Frank and Joe wandered down a side street into a dingy alley.

“Señores,
permit me to tell your fortune!” The speaker was an old woman with piercing black eyes and a black lace veil over her hair. Her shop had an astrological chart of the heavens on the open door.
“Señores,
only a few pesos!” she urged them.

They went in and found her shelves covered with curios—herbs to be distilled for poisons, signs of the zodiac, and dolls with pins stuck in them.

The woman grabbed Joe's hand and began to read his palm. “You have had a recent misfortune,” she said in a singsong voice.

Joe rubbed his jaw, which was still sore from Rumble Murphy's punch. “Right,” he replied.

Frank extended his hand. “How about reading my future?” he suggested.

The woman surveyed his palm. Her eyes narrowed. “What do I see here?”

“That's what I want to know,” Frank said.

“Much gold!”

The Hardys were startled. They tried to query the woman. Finding she would say no more, they paid her and left the shop.

“Could she know about the gold we're after?” Joe wondered.

“Anything's possible,” was Frank's opinion.

The Mexican guide continued the sightseeing tour by driving to Chapultepec Park, a broad green area of woods and a lagoon, where entire families were enjoying the outdoors. Children played amid multicolored shrubs, bushes, and flowers. Fountains spouted water.

“Chapultepec,” the guide said. “That word means ‘grasshopper' in the Aztec language.”

His battered car huffed and puffed as he pointed it up the hill. At the top he parked in the grounds of Chapultepec Castle, a white stone building with rounded arches and a tall oblong tower. A piece of sculpture on the terrace represented a huge grasshopper.

Inside, the visitors were streaming through the various halls. The boys from Bayport joined them. They saw costumes worn in Mexico City since Aztec times and the apartment once occupied by Emperor Maximilian, who ruled Mexico during the American Civil War.

“What happened to Emperor Max?” Joe asked.

“We shot him,” Juan said laconically.

They climbed up to the roof garden for a view of Chapultepec Park. Frank turned his head. A man with gray hair, wearing a dark suit, was on the other side of the garden. He held a briefcase! Frank tapped Joe on the shoulder and pointed.

“Zemog!” Joe gasped.

The brothers pushed through the crowd, turning and twisting in the press of bodies. At one point they were stopped by a solid wall of visitors and had to detour around them. Struggling and panting, they inched forward. At last they got to the other side.

The suspect was gone!

Frank and Joe hurried through the rest of the castle, only to draw a blank in every hall. They ran out to the terrace. Zemog was not there either.

“This is getting ridiculous,” Joe fumed. “Zemog pops up in the craziest places, and when we follow him, he dissolves into thin air!”

“We let him escape again, as Orlov would put it,” Frank agreed. “Which isn't saying much for us!”

“I'm beginning to think it's Zemog's ghost who's giving us this problem.” Joe chuckled.

The boys strolled around the terrace until they found Juan and their friends.

“What happened?” Biff asked. “You took off so fast we didn't even have a chance to offer our help!”

“We think we saw Zemog again,” Frank explained. “And as usual, he escaped.”

“What do we do now?” Chet asked.

“I think we should finish our sightseeing tour at police headquarters,” Joe suggested.

Everyone agreed, and Juan took them to their destination. The boys thanked him for the tour, paid him, and went inside.

The sergeant at the desk spoke English well and listened to their problem with interest. He checked his records for Zemog, but found nothing.

“Zemog is not a Mexican name,” the sergeant said. “Unless he uses an alias, we should be able to track him down without too much difficulty. I will check all the hotels and see what I can learn.”

The boys returned to their hotel for the night. After breakfast the next morning, they taxied to the university to meet Carlos Alvarez. The professor's office was lined with rows of books on archaeology.

He identified Palango at once. “It is an archaeological site not far from the great ruins of Chichén Itzá on the peninsula of Yucatán. Palango was recently discovered and digging has just begun. It lies in the same area as a lost pyramid of the Mayas. Fifty years ago a hunter reported seeing the pyramid. But since then, every attempt to find it has failed. What is your interest in Palango?”

Frank said that somebody might have flown gold from Mexico City to Palango.

Alvarez was puzzled. “I don't know why anyone would do that. Usually it is the other way around.”

He gave them a little lecture on gold, noting that the Aztecs molded it into fine art pieces. “Their artifacts are so good many people cannot tell the difference between Aztec and Scythian.”

Chet puffed out his chest. “Oh, I can always tell Aztec stuff!” he boasted.

Alvarez smiled. He took a small piece of gold representing the head of a child from his drawer. “What do you make of that, my friend?”

Chet hefted the gold in his hand. “That's Aztec, all right.”

“No, it comes from the Inca civilization down in Peru,” Alvarez corrected him.

Chet turned red in the face. His companions snickered, but Alvarez was indulgent. “An easy mistake to make.” He soothed Chet's feelings.

That ended the session with the professor. The boys, deciding to run down the Palango angle at once, went to the airport and chartered a plane to fly them to Yucatán.

Three hours later they were on their way. The pilot flew across central Mexico, took the long leg of the journey across the Gulf, and zoomed past the shoreline over the jungle, thick with trees and tropical vegetation.

Suddenly the engine began to sputter. The boys looked at one another in alarm.

“What's happening?” Frank asked tensely.

“I don't know,” the pilot replied. “I had everything checked out before we left. But this is definitely trouble.”

He worked the controls frantically. But it was of no use. The engine quit and the plane nose-dived toward the jungle!

 

 

 

 

DowN, down they plunged! The jungle seemed to be rushing up to meet them and presently they could see the upper branches of the trees!

The pilot fought desperately to bring his plane out of its nose-dive. At the last moment, the engine came to life, and he regained control. They swooped down, then climbed just above the trees. Now he was able to zoom back to a safe altitude.

The pilot mopped his brow. “I don't understand what happened. I double-checked everything before we left Mexico City.”