Where is the "Secret Four" entrance to
Headquarters?
Robert Arthur makes mention of "Secret
Four" in "Vanishing Treasure" after the
boys foil the bank robbery by Rawley. Jupe has gone to
the museum to recover the Golden Belt of the Emperors,
and he calls Bob and Pete to tell them to test all secret
entrances except Emergency One and Secret Four, an exit
and entrance that are saved for desperate circumstances.
Emergency One is later explained as being the escape
route that the boys take after the midgets break into
Headquarters, but there is no further mention of Secret
Four.
Despite the initial temptation to write this off as a
typographical error and assume that he actually meant
Door Four, I tend to believe that Robert Arthur was
alluding to an entrance to Headquarters that was not
described in any other book. I base this on three facts.
First, Door Four doesn't meet the description of an
entrance that is saved for desperate circumstances. The
boys used it routinely regardless of what was going on
with their cases. Secondly, Jupe told Bob and Pete not to
use Secret Four in their tests, yet by entering
Headquarters after going through Red Gate Rover, they
would have used Door Four (see the section on Headquarters, which explains
the entrances and exits). Thirdly, when the midgets storm
into Headquarters, they come in through three entrances,
one of them being Door Four, which means that the midgets
had seen Bob and Pete using it.
So
I believe there's a fifth entrance to
Headquarters, but I have no clue where it is.
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