A Figure in Hiding (16 page)

“Come on, Joe!” urged Frank, springing to his feet.

The boys bounded to the top of the stairs. The upper hallway was dark and lined with doors. Frank and Joe ran through it, heading toward the rear of the building. Joe suddenly spotted a side passage on their right.

“This way!” Joe hissed, tugging his brother's sleeve. As they turned, they could hear confused sounds coming from the stairwell.

The passage connected to another corridor. Frank sighted a flight of steps leading downward and steered his brother toward it. “We must get back to that switch and turn off the electricity to the fence!” he whispered hoarsely.

The brothers plunged down the stairs to the first floor, then along a corridor that turned right and opened into the main hallway. It appeared empty and the Hardys raced along. They could hear pounding steps on the second floor, fading toward the rear.

“Whew! Let's hope we're not too late!” Joe breathed as they darted into the vestibule.

Frank flicked off the fence power switch.

“If only we could find Dad!” Joe muttered. “This place is like a maze!”

“Maybe Izmir will tell us!” Frank headed back to the stairs, with Joe at his heels, and ran lightly up the steps.

This time, instead of going straight through the second-floor hall, they turned toward the front of the house. A connecting corridor branched both ways. The Hardys followed it to the right.

Suddenly Frank grabbed Joe's arm and pointed to a doorway at the comer of the hall. A thin line of light seeped out below the door.

“That's the room I saw from the tree,” Frank explained in a whisper. “Izmir's in there!”

The boys crept closer. Frank put his hand gently on the knob and flung the door open.

Inside, Malcolm Izmir was standing at a bureau, putting a small jeweled ivory figure into a pouched money belt. He whirled and his jaw dropped in surprise.

Before he could cry out, Joe snatched a pillow from a bed near the door and flung it at him. Izmir ducked, but the pillow caught him in the face. In a split second the Hardys were on him like tigers!

Frank crooked an arm around the startled man's neck and threw him heavily to the floor. Joe knelt on top of him, pinioning Izmir with knees and hands. Meanwhile, Frank poised a hard-knuckled fist directly over Izmir's face. “One yell out of you and—” he warned. “Just tell us where we can find the steam room.”

“Second floor back,” Izmir croaked. “Last door to the left—main hallway!”

“Tear up some sheets, Joe. Quickly!” Frank ordered. “We'll tie him up!”

In a few minutes the fugitive lay bound and gagged. The boys hurried from the room, and dashed back to the main hallway. At the end, Frank opened the last door on the left. A glare of light dazzled their eyes.

“Dr. Vardar's operating room!” Joe exclaimed.

The white-gowned surgeon stood at an operating table on which a patient lay outstretched. Another man in white, evidently the doctor's assistant, stood near the foot of the table. Both wore surgical masks. Above these, their eyes stared in complete astonishment at the Hardys.

Frank slammed the door before either man could make a move. “Izmir tricked us!”

The boys fled down the back stairs. They could hear running footsteps now in several parts of the house. “We
must
find Dad!” Frank said grimly.

Desperately he and Joe dashed down a rear hallway. At the end of the corridor were a pair of swinging doors. The boys burst through them and stopped short with exclamations of horror.

A row of steam cabinets stood along one wall of the white-tiled room. From one cabinet protruded the head of a gray-haired man. It was drooping to one side. His eyes were closed and his red face was dripping with perspiration.

“Dad!” Frank cried in a choked voice.

While Joe turned off the steam, Frank quickly opened the front of the cabinet and raised the top flaps so they could pull out the unconscious investigator. He had been thrust inside fully clothed, his arms tied behind him.

“Look at this lump on his head,” Joe said. “They must have knocked him out first!”

The boys untied their father's hands, then Frank got some cold water from a nearby basin and bathed the detective's head. After the brothers had worked over him for a few minutes, Mr. Hardy began to regain consciousness. Soon he was able to talk and stand up. Frank and Joe briefed him quickly on all that had happened.

“Thanks, boys,” the detective said tensely. “I couldn't have lasted much longer in there.”

“You won't last much longer—period!” a voice snarled. The three Hardys whirled in dismay as a group of men burst into the room.

At their head was a small, foxy-faced individual clutching a gun. With him were Lemuel, Sinder, and Dr. Vardar's surgical assistant.

“Better not try anything, Grafton,” said Fenton Hardy in a taut voice. “Your number's up. You won't stand a chance of getting away.”

Doc Grafton's face twisted into a gold-toothed smile. “Don't make me laugh, Hardy!” he jeered. But at this moment a siren wailed outside.

“The cops!” gasped the surgical aide. “Let's blow!”

“Not till I take care of these three rats!” Grafton snarled. He started toward the detective and his sons, but Lemuel grabbed his sleeve frantically.

“Don't be a sap! We don't want a stretch in prison!”

As Doc's gaze shifted for a moment to Lemuel, Fenton Hardy snatched up a wet towel and hurled it at Grafton. It caught the criminal in the face and chest, checking his advance.

Lemuel and the others were already dashing from the room. Before Grafton could regain his wits, two more towels caught him in the face. Joe brought him down with a flying tackle and Frank pinned his arms.

While the two boys quickly subdued Grafton, Mr. Hardy raced in pursuit of the other criminals. They were running out the front door when they blundered straight into the arms of Chief Collig and a trio of husky policemen!

In a few minutes the fight was over. Doc Grafton and his cohorts stood panting and handcuffed, facing the Hardys and the police.

“How did you get here so fast?” Joe asked the burly chief.

“Well, for one thing, your father radioed us to stand by,” Collig replied.

“That was right after I heard from you fellows,” Mr. Hardy explained. “I figured the case was about to blow wide open, and as soon as I had the evidence, it would be time for Chief Collig to take over.” He added that he had been seized by Lemuel and Sinder soon after entering the building. Upon close examination the men had recognized the detective's features.

“Then we got a second call from Chet Morton to get here in a hurry,” Collig told the boys. “He contacted us over your car radio.” The chief turned as Chet himself came bustling in through the front door. Frank and Joe pounced on him joyfully with bear hugs and handshakes.

“I'm glad you're okay!” Frank exclaimed.

“Chet, old buddy, you're the greatest!” Joe told him.

“I'm glad you fellows realize it,” their chum said, his moonface splitting into a wide grin.

“Incidentally, we caught Nick Cordoza tonight and he talked plenty,” Collig went on. “Seems he was a member of the Goggler gang—or the Evil Eyes, as they call it—and Malcolm Izmir was the head. Izmir had also been acting as banker for the gang's loot. But suddenly he told them it was time to break up—and then double-crossed them by paying them off in counterfeit money. No wonder they were trying to get him!”

Collig was astounded as the boys told him how Izmir had been picked up at sea by Lemuel and brought back to hide out at the health farm and have his face altered by Dr. Vardar.

“You two were way ahead of us,” the chief commented wryly to the boys. “But that was a great job of detection, Frank and Joe. And you helped a lot, Chet.”

A search was made of the building and half a dozen wanted criminals were taken into custody. All had been staying at the health farm—unknown to the regular guests—and were in process of recovering from facial surgery. The patient whom Frank and Joe had seen on the operating table turned out to be Pampton.

A figurine found in Izmir's money belt was indeed the Jeweled Siva. Also secreted, in other waterproof pouches, were diamonds and thousand-dollar bills.

Glumly the captured ringleader told his story. Lemuel, whose help he needed to stage his fake drowning at sea, was the only member of the gang not included in the double cross. Doc Grafton, Sinder, and the surgical aide—an ex-convict named Frosh who had worked as a prison orderly —knew all about the Evil Eyes and Izmir's plan. He had promised them fat sums for their services.

“Some of the mob found out who I really was,” Izmir said, “and my business investments were about to collapse. That's why I had to clear out. I figured I could start a new life with a new name and a new face.”

“And become a figure in hiding,” Frank remarked.

Izmir said that before sailing he had converted all his remaining funds into cash and diamonds. He had learned through Fontana about the Jeweled Siva being for sale and had concocted a scheme with the art dealer to get hold of it through a fake robbery.

“I paid Fontana with a new car,” Izmir went on, “and he was also going to keep the insurance payoff for the theft. He lied to Mrs. Lunberry that his insurance didn't cover it.”

All members of the gang possessed glass-eye receivers. Izmir had had them made in Japan as a means of signaling instructions to his men on criminal jobs. But Spotty Lemuel had dropped his glass eye aboard the
Sea
Spook and had returned to the boathouse to inquire about it.

“So Spotty did overhear Bill Braxton talking to us on the phone and knocked him out,” Frank put in.

“Yes.” Izmir went on to say that Lemuel had then guessed that the Hardy boys had become suspicious of him. Unable to find the eye after a frantic search, he realized it must be in the Hardys' possession.

This had thrown Izmir into a panic. He feared the boys or their father might foil his scheme to jump off the
Cristobal
with an inflatable life raft by picking up his radio signals once overboard. Frantic efforts had been made to get back the glass eye before he sailed—first by luring the boys into the ambush at the vacant house, later by having Frosh, disguised as a meter reader, attempt to crack the Hardys' safe. Finally he had tried the midnight summons to Lookout Hill.

Rip Sinder and Doc Grafton had assisted Lemuel at the Lookout Hill rendezvous while Frosh had decoyed Mrs. Hardy and Aunt Gertrude into leaving the house in order to blow open the safe.

After learning that one of the double-crossed gang members had held up the Bijou in a car stolen from Izmir Motors, Malcolm Izmir had come to keep watch on the police's activities near the crash scene. While there, he had spotted the Hardy boys, trailed them to Mrs. Lunberry's home, and left the warning sign chalked under her window. Fontana had reported the Hardys' attempt to talk to Zatta and this had led to the peddler's kidnapping.

Izmir guessed that the boys might trace the green sedan and had had a fake call made to his sales manager so that Sykes would get rid of them. Izmir himself had been in the automobile showroom that day and had spotted the boys approaching. He had left by a rear door, and later had had Lemuel and Sinder lure them into the road trap.

Hoping for a lighter sentence, Izmir willingly identified all members of the Evil Eye gang. Two of them were the men who had tried to break into his estate.

“We should be able to round up the rest of them without too much trouble,” Collig said. “And that art dealer, Fontana, too.”

Mr. Hardy accompanied the police and their prisoners to headquarters. Frank and Joe, with Chet, drove off in their convertible. As they passed through the arched gateway, Joe remarked, “Boy, it sure was lucky we got the juice to the fence switched off in time!”

“Juice? What do you mean?” Chet queried.

When their stout friend learned of his narrow escape from the electrified fence, Chet's face went white. “You mean ... you mean ...” He gulped and slumped back on the seat.

“Good grief! Chet's fainted!” Joe cried out.

Frank winked and said sadly, “Too bad Chet had to pass out. I was all set to buy him all the banana splits he could put away.”

Chet's eyes opened and he sat up indignantly. “Well, for Pete's sake, why didn't you say so?” he complained.

Joe grinned. “No more rugged diets, eh pal?”

“You said it! And no more getting mixed up in any dangerous Hardy cases!”

But this resolution of Chet's was soon to be forgotten when Frank and Joe were confronted with
THE SECRET WARNING.

“Come on!” Chet urged. “My mouth's dry as cotton. Let's get over to the Hot Rocket!”