The Pentagon Spy (13 page)

“Ed isn't here anymore!” Chelski exploded. “He quit his job just after you two left this morning.” He looked greatly disturbed and ran his fingers through his hair in agitation. “Look, fellows, I'm awfully sorry. I'll have Ed Bryle prosecuted for attempted murder if he turns up again. But I hope you realize I had nothing to do with it—”

“Don't worry, Mr. Chelski,” Frank assured him. “We know you didn't. But you must understand that we can't be responsible for the boat under the circumstances, either.”

“Of course.” Chelski seemed relieved.

“We found Clifford Hunter's sailboat,” Joe said, changing the subject. “It was in a cove down Chesapeake Bay.”

“You're kidding! You mean Cliff came back with you?”

Joe shook his head. “No. We have no idea where he is. The boat was abandoned. We tied it to your dock. Can you make sure it's kept as is until the FBI checks it out?”

“Sure,” Chelski promised. “I won't let anyone touch it.”

The Hardys said good-bye to the marina owner and returned to the Sunset Motel, where the desk clerk handed them a small package, about four by six inches and rather flat.

“I don't know who delivered it,” he said. “I was away from the desk showing a guest to his room. When I got back, this package was here with your names on it.”

Joe picked it up. It was lightweight. “Thanks,” he said, and the boys went to their cabin. Frank immediately called the FBI in Washington. When he mentioned Clifford Hunter's name, he was shifted by intercom to the office of the director, who listened with intense interest to the story of the
Bay Queen.

“You boys have done great work,” he praised them. “This is the first real break we've had on the case. An FBI agent will leave Washington for Chesapeake Crossing at once.”

While Frank was making the phone call, Joe unwrapped the package. It was a cassette!

“There's a player in the lobby,” Frank said after he hung up. “Let's try it.”

The boys went to the machine that stood in one corner of the room. No one was there. Frank turned the player on after slipping the cassette into place.

Seconds went by, and they heard nothing but the slight rustling of the spool revolving.

“Nothing on it,” Joe said finally.

“Must be a hoax,” Frank agreed. He was about to remove the cassette when the silence was broken.

“Hardys, the hex is on you!” squealed the strange voice that had threatened them before. “Get off the case or you'll be playing tag with the crabs at the bottom of the bay!”

Startled, the boys let the tape continue in case there was more to the threat. However, the tape finished playing in silence. Frank turned the cassette over. The other side was blank, too. He took the tape out of the player and put it in his pocket. “Whoever this weirdo is,” he said, “he's warning us off the case. I just wonder which one he means, the Pentagon spy case or the weather vane mystery?”

“Must be the weather vane investigation,” Joe said. “ He threatened us once before when we were still at Hammerley's to beware of the hex. At that time we weren't even working on the Pentagon spy mystery.”

“Which means he trailed us here all the way from Pennsylvania Dutch country,” Frank con-eluded. “We'd better make sure he doesn't follow us to Barren Island, or he might interfere with our work for Dad!”

“Right. That's our next project. Let's get a map and see if we can find the place.”

Frank bought a nautical chart of Chesapeake Bay, then they went to their cabin. The phone rang as they walked in the door. The caller was their father, who asked them to go to a public booth and call him back so they could talk without being overheard by a potential wiretapper.

Frank and Joe went to the nearest diner and were soon speaking to the detective, telling him the news. When he heard about their discovery of Clifford Hunter's sailboat, he was elated.

“This gives us something to go on!” he exclaimed. “And it shows my theory was right about Hunter staying in this area. I'll keep looking for him on land; you follow up the Barren Island angle. It's near the Eastern Shore of Maryland.”

Then he hung up and the boys returned to their room. They consulted their chart of Chesapeake Bay. Finding that Barren Island lay nearly opposite the mouth of the Potomac River, they plotted the best course from Chesapeake Crossing.

In the morning they rented another powerboat from Herb Chelski at the marina. They made sure no one was following them, then cruised to Barren Island. Edging up to the beach, they tied their boat to a small bush half hidden in the sand and went ashore.

The island was about a mile across. Sand and scrub vegetation met their eyes wherever they looked.

“Barren Island is the right name for this place. Who'd want to live here?” Joe said.

Frank pointed to a building on the opposite shore. “Somebody does. Even though it's hidden by those bushes, it looks like a big house. Let's check it out.”

The boys rounded the island and pulled into a derelict wharf. The pilings that once formed steps leading up from the water had slipped into a jumbled heap. Climbing to the top, the Hardys found a walk made up of broken flagstones with weeds growing between them.

The house was in ramshackle condition. The windows were boarded up and shingles from the roof littered the ground. Most of the porch railings were broken, and birds nested in the chimney.

“I guess I was wrong,” Frank said. “Nobody lives here. Looks as if the owners just sailed away and left the house to fall down.”

Joe tried the front door. “It's locked,” he said. Circling the house they found the back door locked as well. Joe scratched his head. “What do we do now? Break a window?”

“Let's check the cellar door first,” Frank suggested, and they went to the wooden doors covering the entrance to the basement. Frank lifted one. It rose on creaking hinges and hung partway open. “It's too rusty to lie flat,” he said. Descending the stone steps, he tried the handle to the cellar door. “It's open,” he called in a muted tone to his brother. “Come on.”

The boys went into the basement. It was clothed in semidarkness because the boarded windows let in only a few rays of light. A musty smell greeted them, the result of the house being boarded up for years. Water oozed through cracks in the foundation and lay in puddles on the flagstones of the floor.

“Nice home for rats!” Joe muttered as a rodent scurried out from underfoot.

The boys scouted through the cellar, poking around piles of torn fishnet, broken oars, and clamshells. “Look at this!” Frank said with a low chuckle. He held up a bow and arrow. “Chet should be here.”

Joe grinned. “He'd try crabbing with it!”

Frank tossed the bow and arrow aside, and they went deeper into the cellar until they came to a second room in the back, where a flight of stairs led to the first floor. They could make out a number of barrels in the semidarkness.

Joe squatted on his heels. “Flour, sugar, salt,” he read in large letters on the barrels. “This must have been the storage room. The other—”

A loud noise at the cellar door brought him to his feet. “Somebody's at the rear door!” he cried.

In a flash, both boys raced back through the basement toward the steps leading outside. The wooden doors were back in place over their heads!

“We're locked in!” Joe gasped.

Frank pressed his hand against one door and breathed a sigh of relief. “It's open,” he said. “The wind must have closed it.”

“Thank goodness!” Joe blurted out. “I really got scared for a minute.”

“Me too!”

They returned to the cellar and Joe stopped at the stack of fishing rods. “Hey, Frank! I don't see the bow and arrow anymore. You think someone took them?”

Frank shook his head. “I tossed them aside and they probably got stuck in those nets. It's too dark to look for them. We've got to go through the rest of the house, so let's not waste time.”

Passing through the cellar, they reached the stairs and went up to the first floor. The kitchen was large with an old-fashioned wood-burning stove. Kindling protruded from the top of a barrel next to it, and there were fragments of broken dishes on the counter.

“Do you figure anyone's been cooking on the stove lately?” Frank asked.

Joe drew a line through the dust between two burners. “Not since the year one.” He lifted a heavy lid and looked inside. “Nothing but old ashes,” he announced.

The dining room was empty except for a chair with a broken leg. They went into a hall flanking the living room, which was equally bare. A board had fallen from the picture window in front, admitting a broad shaft of sunlight. The fireplace was boarded up, and dust covered everything.

“Nothing in there,” Joe said, after peering in from the hall. “Let's go upstairs.”

The bedrooms on the second floor contained no furniture, either, and the boys drew a blank on possible clues. They proceeded to the attic, a low ceilinged room up against the roof. Eight-by-fours formed two catwalks across the beams on opposite ends, which slanted down so sharply from the peak of the roof that the boys had to move part of the way on their hands and knees.

Frank took one catwalk and Joe the other. The ceiling was stained in many places by rain leaking through holes in the roof. A bird fled from its nest on one windowsill as Joe approached. They saw nothing except pieces of tar paper strewn about.

“Nothing here but the pigeons,” Frank said, coughing from the dust. “They can have it. I'm getting out!”

“I'll race you to the door,” Joe said with a grin.

They crawled along the catwalks to the attic door, emerged, and stretched their cramped muscles. Then they descended the stairs to the ground floor.

In the hallway, Joe expressed his disappointment. “We bombed again! Took that long trip over here for nothing!”

Frank had been staring at the floor. “Wait a minute!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Look here!”

He pointed to marks in the dust at the front door. “Here's a footprint. A lot of footprints!”

Joe was galvanized by the sight. “You're right! Let's see where they go.”

The Hardys followed the trail through the hall into the living room and up to the fireplace. The prints became indistinct there in front of the boards covering the opening, as if someone had moved about in that particular area of the room.

“Somebody's been here!” Frank declared. “And there's a trail leading back to the front door!”

Joe dropped onto one knee and inspected the marks more closely. “There are
f our
sets of prints coming in, but only
three
going out!” he declared.

Frank nodded grimly. “Something peculiar's been going on here. We'll have to—”

Wham!
Something zipped across the room and slammed into one of the boards covering the fireplace. Looking up, the boys saw an arrow quivering in the wood just above their heads!

Whirling around, the Hardys spotted a shadow flitting past outside the picture window.

“Let's get him!” Joe shouted.

They ran to the window and peered through the opening where the board had fallen down. On the ground outside lay the bow Frank had discovered in the cellar. They saw a tall man wearing a black beard and dark glasses running toward the beach!

“That's our suspect!” Joe cried. “The guy who rented the chopper from Juniper Field!”

Without another word, the Hardys hurled themselves against the remaining boards in the window, which gave way and clattered to the ground. Frank and Joe vaulted through the opening, landed in the sand, and ran after him.

They rapidly closed the gap between themselves and the fugitive, who was running toward an outboard motorboat pulled up on the beach. Frank leaped through the air and hit the man with a flying tackle just before he reached the water's edge. They went down in a heap and rolled over and over in the sand, struggling furiously.

Frank was about to pin his antagonist as in a wrestling match, when suddenly the man reached into his pocket, pulled out a blackjack, and struck the boy on the side of his head. Dizzily, Frank fell into the sand.

Joe had rushed up and grappled with the fugitive, but he too suffered a blow from the blackjack that broke his grip. In a flash, the man dashed away.

Momentarily stunned, the Hardys pulled themselves up on their hands and knees, shaking their heads to clear the cobwebs. They heard the putt-putt of the motorboat racing away from the island. Quickly they rose and dashed to the beach, but now the boat was safely out of their reach.