The Apeman's Secret (16 page)

“If you mean because your father, the great gumshoe Fenton Hardy, is on my trail—that remains to be seen!”

Noah, the Hardy boys now learned, had recently become aware that the famous detective suspected his criminal activities and was trying to collect evidence against him. So he ordered some of his bolder followers, who had already been in trouble with the law before joining his cult, to spy on the Hardy house and to harass the family in every way possible.

One such cultie, by listening at the window, had seen Frank and Joe watching “The Apeman” show on television. He had done the spooky growling and made the huge footprints and later called the police. Other culties had caused the boys' car trouble in Shoreham and had made the threatening phone calls to Mrs. Hardy and Aunt Gertrude. They had also trailed the boys to New York. Because there were enough culties to take turns from time to time, it was difficult for Frank and Joe to notice that any particular person was shadowing them.

The amulet and scrap of paper with the Hardys' address had been dropped by one young spy who tailed them to the disco party. His pocket had been ripped in the bustle and scuffle during the fake Apeman's getaway. But it was Rollo himself who had appeared at the Hardys' window and broken the pane, because he was enraged at Frank and Joe for spoiling his raid on the disco.

Frank suddenly snapped his fingers. “You were also the cripple we saw on the park bench that night!” he exclaimed to Eckert. “You must've changed clothes in the bushes and strapped on your plaster cast. That's how you managed your vanishing act!”

It was also Rollo Eckert, the Hardys now realized, who had attacked Joe outside the Olympic Gym. He had hidden in the phone booth and called the manager's office when he saw the Hardys leaving. Moments later, when Joe was alone in the corridor, it was Rollo's crutch that had struck him from behind.

“But let's get back to this creep,” said Frank, turning a contemptuous glance on Noah Norvel again. “The cultie that Kelso hired discovered the art folder—the one that Rollo Eckert had stolen for Kelso from the Comic Art Museum. So the cultie brought it to Noah, and when Noah went through it he spotted Archie Frome's original Apeman cartoons and realized Star Comix must have stolen the character. With the cartoons for evidence, he knew he could make Star and the television producers pay him plenty not to spill the beans.”

“But Kelso had a trick up his sleeve, too,” said Joe. “When Noah tried to blackmail him, he sent Rollo to Noah's mansion tonight to get back the evidence!”

“Brilliant, as I've said before,” the cult leader sneered. “But we're wasting time.”

“You'll be wasting a lot more behind bars,” Frank snapped, “when the truth comes out!”

“Then I'd better make sure it doesn‘t, hadn't I?” Noah Norvel chuckled nastily. “Which shouldn't be too hard once this cottage burns down, with all of you inside it!... All right, torch the place!” he added, turning to his four guards.

Meanwhile, Joe had whispered something hastily to Sue Linwood. Suddenly she began to scream at the top of her lungs.

“Shut her up!” Noah shouted angrily to his men. “If that racket carries far enough, she'll have every cottage on the beach wakened up before this place is even set on fire!”

One of the guards darted toward her and tried to clap his hand over her mouth. But Sue writhed away from him and kept on screaming!

With all of the crooks' attention focused on the girl, Frank and Joe seized their chance to fight back. Joe grabbed a chair and disarmed one guard, while Frank floored another with a hard left to the jaw!

Vern Kelso and Rollo Eckert quickly joined in the fray. In moments, the scene in the cottage turned to bedlam as Noah's party fought wildly with their intended victims. The furniture was smashed. At one point, Rollo picked up one guard bodily and hurled him clear across the front room!

But above the noise, the Hardy boys heard the roar of an engine as a plane swooped down toward the beach. Scarcely a minute or two later, three men came charging in the front door of the cottage. Fenton Hardy was in the lead, followed by Jack Wayne and Zack Amboy!

The tide of the battle soon turned, and the famed private investigator now took charge of the prisoners. Not only were Noah Norvel and his guards lined up with their hands in the air and their faces to the wall, but Vern Kelso and Rollo Eckert were as well.

“You'll all answer to the law!” Mr. Hardy told them curtly. “Great work, Sons!” he added proudly to Frank and Joe. “You not only solved your own cases, but mine, too!”

The boys learned that soon after his first radio contact with Jack Wayne, he had found a pilot willing to fly him from Long Island to the Westchester County Airport, where Wayne and Zack Amboy had picked him up after dropping the boys at Bayport.

Further questioning revealed that Micky Rudd, aside from pirating Archie Frome's cartoon character, had not taken part in the network executive's violent attempts to cover up the secret.

“Did Kelso drug Zack Amboy?” Joe asked.

“He had Rollo Eckert do it and tried to frame Zack by means of the two anonymous phone calls and the drawing dropped in the museum,” Mr. Hardy replied.

Frank shook his head. “And all this to keep his job,” he said.

“I'm afraid the network will have to get along without him from now on,” Mr. Hardy said with a grin. “He'll be in prison for a long time!”

After the criminals had been delivered to the police, the Hardy boys went home, dead tired. Just before he fell asleep, Frank vaguely wondered if there would be another mystery for them to solve in the future. But he was too exhausted to worry about it and had no idea that
The Mummy Case
would soon require their full attention.

The Hardy boys were awakened the next morning by a visit from Chet Morton. The fat boy looked utterly crestfallen as he showed them a set of photostats he had just received in the mail from Star Comix. The photostats showed how his Captain Muscles story would look when published in one of the Star Comix books.

“Just look what they've done!” Chet wailed. “They've changed the wording in the balloons to make Captain Muscles sound like an idiot! They're running it as a
funny
story, as if the whole thing's a joke!”

“Well, after all, it'll appear in a
comic
book,” Joe pointed out, smothering a grin.

“Never mind him, Chet,” Frank sympathized, clapping the double-chinned cartoonist on the back. “Besides, you've still got the money they're paying you. That ought to be good for
some
fun!”

“You're right,” said the fat boy, brightening up as his usual good humor came to the surface again.

“Tell you what, guys! I'll use it to throw another big disco party for all the Bayport gang!”