Green Gate One

     Greetings! You’ve just entered this site through Green Gate One, two green boards in the long tall wooden fence surrounding the Jones Salvage Yard, boards which -- as you may or may not know yet -- turn into a gate when you push the eye of a fish looking out of the water at a two-masted sailing ship foundering in a raging storm. You are now in The Jones Salvage Yard, a very superior junk yard owned and run by Titus and Mathilda Jones, First Investigator Jupiter Jones’ uncle and aunt.

     In the Salvage Yard, the Three Investigators have made their Headquarters. Headquarters is inside a banged-up mobile home trailer, quite hidden from view by the piles of salvage which surround it, junk The Three Investigators have carefully piled to conceal the trailer, although as a joke they have also placed, on the top of one of the piles, an old sign with a large black arrow and the word Office; the arrow really does point to Headquarters. But despite this joke, even Titus Jones does not know that his nephew Jupiter, with his friends Pete Crenshaw and Bob Andrews, have turned the trailer into a Headquarters with an office, a darkroom, a special lab, and an office, with typewriter, telephone, desk and tape-recorder. All the equipment in Headquarters, except for the telephone, has been rebuilt from junk that came into the yard. The Three Investigators have paid for the telephone with money they made helping around the Jones Salvage Yard.

     Now Headquarters -- hidden as it is from common view -- has to be entered through one of a number of secret passages the Three Investigators have constructed, and today Bob Andrews is going in by moving a grating covering the entrance to a corrugated iron pipe, then moving through the pipe, and up through a trapdoor into the trailer, where Jupiter Jones is sitting in a rebuilt swivel chair behind a desk that had one end scorched, at some time, in a fire. Pete Crenshaw is sitting on the other side of the desk.

     In case you don’t already know the boys, Bob Andrews is rather slight, blond, of a scholarly nature, but with a streak of adventurousness in him. Pete is tall and well-muscled, brown-haired, inclined to nervousness, but a tower of strength in any kind of trouble. Jupiter Jones, stocky and sturdily built, has a round face which can mirror something close to stupidity, an ability he finds very useful indeed, since behind that face lies a an astonishingly shrewd and penetrating mind.

    And while there is no day in Three Investigators Headquarters which could be said to be an ordinary day -- although Pete often wishes the firm could have some of those nice ordinary days, just for a restful change of pace -- today is quite a special day because -- as has been noted -- the presses are rolling, and today the press is printing a story that has never been told before, the story of Robert Arthur, the creator of The Three Investigators, who had a long and colorful life before he ever found himself in Rocky Beach.

     Perhaps you will find the story of Robert Arthur’s life in Startling Discoveries, and perhaps you will find a complete list of all the stories he ever wrote -- over two hundred short stories published in magazines like Weird Tales and Thrilling Wonder Stories -- and also a complete list of all the books he ever edited, in Mysterious Treasure. If you would like to have a complete list of all the books ever published in The Three Investigators series, including books published only in Germany, perhaps you will find those listed under A Trail of Question Marks. In Gold Doubloons, it is possible that you will find photographic reproductions of some of the many, many dust jackets The Three Investigators books have appeared in around the world. More will no doubt be added later, since you never know when another gold doubloon may emerge from the sand of Skeleton Island.

     Then, in Calling All Ghosts, it seems more than possible, it seems probable that you will find a list of Three Investigator web sites -- both in the United States and in other countries -- to which you can link from this site if you wish, and in A Surprising Visitor, you may find notes left by other visitors to Headquarters, and you will certainly be invited to leave a note yourself. Amazing Revelations will probably take you to some bits and pieces of inside information about Arthur’s own books provided by Robert Arthur’s daughter, Elizabeth Arthur. Finally, at some future date, The Presses Are Rolling may be able to provide breaking news about The Three Investigators. We can only hope.