Night of the Werewolf Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1 - The Glowing Beast

  Chapter 2 - A Silver Clue

  Chapter 3 - Weird Lore

  Chapter 4 - Telltale Limp

  Chapter 5 - A Frightening Phantom

  Chapter 6 - The Missing Suspect

  Chapter 7 - Forest Castle

  Chapter 8 - A Sinking Feeling

  Chapter 9 - Ghostly Voices

  Chapter 10 - Skyscraper Caper

  Chapter 11 - Xavier’s Story

  Chapter 12 - Restaurant Meeting

  Chapter 13 - Toy Boat Trick

  Chapter 14 - The Mustached Stranger

  Chapter 15 - Paleface Archer

  Chapter 16 - Tomahawk Reward

  Chapter 17 - The Flying Chicken

  Chapter 18 - Nine O‘Clock Shadow

  Chapter 19 - The Werewolf

  Chapter 20 - Battle Royal

  A FEROCIOUS, wolf-like creature appears during the night of the full moon in a small Adirondack town, attacking livestock and scaring many of the residents. John Tabor, a young man with a history of werewolves in his family line, is suspect. Frank and Joe Hardy are hired to clear the young man’s name.

  At the same time, Fenton Hardy requests his sons’ help on a case of industrial sabotage. The Hardy Boys, with the assistance of Chet Morton, tackle their assignments with gusto and find themselves face to face with danger wherever they go. Joe barely escapes a horrible death as the young detectives battle their unscrupulous enemies before finally solving this exciting and hair-raising mystery.

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  Copyright © 1979 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved. Published

  in 2005 by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group,

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. THE HARDY BOYS’ is a

  registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a

  trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. S.A.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-07668-2

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  1

  The Glowing Beast

  “Oh, oh! Look who’s here,” said Frank Hardy. “Mountain Man himself.”

  “Man Mountain, you mean,” quipped his brother, Joe.

  It was Saturday evening, and the Hardys were munching pizzas in the Bayport Diner with their dates, Callie Shaw and Iola Morton. Iola’s tubby brother Chet and lanky Biff Hooper had just walked in and came to their table.

  “Boy, you’ve got to see that scene where Lobo Jack fights a bear on the edge of a cliff!” Chet exclaimed, his moonface alight with excitement.

  “Don’t tell me you saw that movie about the Rocky Mountain trappers again!” Joe groaned and the girls giggled. “What is this, the tenth time?”

  Before Chet could bore them with more breathless scenes, the Hardys paid their bill and the group left. They were halfway across the parking lot when Iola gasped in fear.

  “Good grief! What’s that?”

  The Bayport Diner lay on the edge of town and was bordered by a patch of woods. lola pointed to a weird-looking creature bounding out from among the trees. It was a snarling, wolflike beast whose fur glowed in the dark!

  “Watch out!” Frank cried. “That critter means business!”

  Callie screamed in alarm as she saw the animal charging straight toward them, its fangs bared ferociously. The beast would be upon them before they could either reach the safety of the Hardys’ car or retreat into the diner!

  “Get behind us!” Joe shouted to the girls; then he and Frank thrust out their arms to fend off the expected attack.

  Luckily Callie’s scream had been heard and their plight seen from inside the diner. Chet, Biff, and several others dashed out to help.

  “Beat it, you!” Biff bellowed, and the others joined in the outcry, yelling and waving their arms.

  The glowing wolf-creature stopped short with a deep-throated growl, evidently startled by the noisy outburst from the young people. Then it turned and ran back into the woods.

  “Wow! My legs were ready to give way,” Iola confessed, clinging to Joe’s arm. She and Callie were both pale with fright.

  “What was that thing?” Chet asked as he hurried up to them.

  “I’ve no idea,” said Frank, “but I sure intend to find out.”

  He and Joe picked up flashlights from their car and were about to head into the woods when Callie called out anxiously, “Wait! Where are you going?”

  “That brute could be dangerous!” a man from the diner added.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll keep our distance,” Joe replied. “We just want to see where it came from.”

  Blond, seventeen-year-old Joe Hardy and his dark-haired older brother, Frank, were the sons of famed private detective Fenton Hardy, who had once been a crack investigator on the New York City police force.

  The two young sleuths never could resist a mystery, and the weird creature who had come streaking out of the darkness at them posed too great a challenge to pass up. Their father had taught them never to take foolish chances, but they felt the glare of their flashlight beams away from the diner would dazzle their quarry enough to keep it from attacking.

  The phantom beast had disappeared among the trees and underbrush. Cautiously, the Hardys pressed forward, moving their flashlights to and fro and keeping their eyes peeled for a glimpse of its glowing fur.

  “Maybe it veered off in a different direction,” Joe conjectured.

  “No, it went this way,” Frank said. “Look at this freshly broken shrubbery. The stalks are still moist.”

  “But how could it vanish so fast? That fur alone would give it away at quite a distance.”

  “I know. I can’t figure it out, either. If we found any of its hairs that brushed off on trees around here, we could take them back to the lab and examine them under a microscope.”

  “That’s an ideal It might give us a clue to—,” Joe broke off as his brother raised a hand for silence.

  “Sounds like Chet calling us,” said the older Hardy boy. The two listened.

  Sure enough, their friend’s yell from the parking lot was repeated. “Come back here, Frank and Joe!”

  The Hardys retreated through the woods in the direction of the diner. Chet was leaning against their car with Biff and the girls standing next to him.

  “What’s up?” Frank asked.

  “You got a radio call.” Chet pointed to a red light blinking on the dashboard.

  Frank opened the door and slipped behind the wheel. He flicked a switch on the specially licensed radio transceiver mounted under their instrument panel.

  “H-1 here,” he spoke into the hand mike. “Come in, please. ”

  “G calling,” crackled a voice from the speaker. “Do you read me?”

  “Loud and clear, Aunt Gertrude. Anything wrong?”

  “Yes. Customer’s here and no one’s minding the store.”

  “Customer? You mean a client?”

  “Do I have to spell it out?” his aunt replied tartly.

  “Must be a new case for Dad,” murmured Joe, who was standing at the car door, listening in.

  “Who is it, Aunt Gertrude?” Frank inquired into the mike. “Any idea what the problem is?”

  “Come home and find out,” was the withering response. “I know better than to discuss cases over the air, and so should you!”
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  “Right you are, Aunty.” Frank chuckled wryly.

  “As always,” Joe muttered with a grin.

  “We’ll start back as soon as we take the girls home,” Frank added and signed off.

  “We can drop Callie off if it’s something urgent,” Chet offered.

  “Of course they can, and don’t worry about it,” Iola said with an understanding smile as Joe started to apologize for ending the evening so abruptly.

  Both the cute, pixie-faced girl and blonde, brown-eyed Callie Shaw, who was Frank’s date, said good-by to the Hardys and walked off with Biff and Chet.

  “Something should be done about that wolf-dog, or whatever it was,” Frank said with a worried frown before starting the car.

  Nick Pappadopolos, the shirt-sleeved proprietor of the diner, who had been talking to several people in the parking lot, walked up to the group and overheard the remark.

  “I’ll take care of it,” he promised. “I’ll call the pound and tell ‘em there’s a dangerous animal loose. Who knows, it may even be rabid!”

  “Thanks, Nick.” Frank waved and backed out of the lot.

  They were almost home when Joe said, “Frank, you forgot your jacket in the diner.”

  “I thought I left it in the back seat.”

  Joe squirmed around to look. “It’s not there. You must have forgotten it.”

  Frank hesitated for a moment. Should he drive back and get his coat? He decided it was more important to meet the client who was waiting for them. “I’ll pick it up tomorrow,” he said and drove straight home.

  A small red station wagon was parked in front of their white frame house on Elm Street. The boys scrutinized it quickly on their way to the garage.

  Somewhat to their surprise, the unknown client turned out to be an attractive, though rather plump, teenage girl named Alena Tabor. She had curly brown hair and a fresh, apple-cheeked face.

  “I didn’t mean to call at such a late hour,” she explained, “but I had car trouble on the way to Bayport. ”

  “That’s a shame,” said Joe. “Can we help?”

  “Thanks, it’s fixed now. Just a broken fan belt, but it took hours getting road service.”

  “And now that you’re here, Dad’s away. I’m sorry about that,” Frank said politely. “Is there anything we can do? Joe and I sometimes assist him on his cases.”

  “I know, and you also investigate mysteries on your own, which is why I’m here.” Alena smiled. “Actually, you two are the ones I came to see. I’m the daughter of Karel Tabor.”

  “The architect!” Joe exclaimed, recognizing the name. “I believe Dad interviewed him recently.”

  Alena nodded. “Yes, in connection with that case Mr. Hardy’s working on for the insurance underwriters. So we knew he would be busy. But my father thought you might help us with our problem.”

  “We’ll sure try,” Frank said. “What is your problem?”

  “Werewolves.”

  The Hardys were startled. They stared at her, wide-eyed, as if not quite sure they had heard her correctly.

  “You did say werewolves, didn’t you?” Joe inquired.

  Alena smiled. “I know, you probably think I’m crazy. But it so happens there’s a tradition of werewolves in our family.”

  “Tell us about it,” Frank said.

  Alena related that the Tabors were descended from a Bohemian soldier—a native of what is now Czechoslovakia—who had come to the United States in Revolutionary War days. He had deserted from King George’s hired Hessian troops, joined Washington’s army, and later settled in the Mohawk Valley in northern New York.

  “We still live up that way,” Alena added, “in the Adirondack Mountains near Hawk River.”

  Joe looked puzzled. “From what Dad said, I thought your father’s office was in New York City.”

  “It is. He commutes there every day by helicopter,” Alena explained.

  She said that her twenty-four-year-old brother John was also an architect and had recently graduated from college. A brilliant student, his building designs had won prizes in several competitions, and he expected to join their father’s firm.

  “But then he suffered a nervous breakdown from overwork,” Alena went on unhappily, “and now we’re wondering if he’s going out of his mind.”

  Frank frowned. “What gave you that idea?”

  “The family legend. It says that every seventh generation, some member of the Tabor family becomes a werewolf.” She glanced nervously at the Hardys. “You know what a werewolf is, of course?”

  “According to superstition, it’s a human being who turns into a wolf, usually during the full moon every month,” Joe said.

  “That’s right,” Alena said. “And my brother and I are the seventh generation since the last reported werewolf in the Tabor family.”

  “You don’t believe such yarns, do you?” Frank asked.

  Alena shivered. “I don’t know what to believe! Lately John has been behaving very strangely. And now there are stories about some awful creature attacking people and livestock around Hawk River during the full moon—supposedly a werewolf with luminous fur that glows in the dark!”

  “Fiddlesticks!” said Aunt Gertrude, who had been hovering in the living room after serving the young people cocoa. “Some local busybodies have probably heard of your family legend, dear.”

  Alena shook her head. “That’s just it, they haven’t heard it yet. We never talked about it in public. But Father mentioned it once to a magazine writer who was interviewing him. Now we’re afraid someone may dig up that story.”

  “What exactly do you want us to do?” Joe asked.

  Alena said her family owned a small cottage near Hawk River. She suggested that the Hardys drive up to the Adirondacks on Monday, bringing friends if they liked, and stay there during the ensuing full-moon period. By posing as vacationers, they could keep an eye on the situation without attracting attention or causing any gossip.

  “Sounds like a great idea. We’ll enjoy it,” Frank said, and Joe agreed.

  Just as Alena was leaving, weird howls echoed outside the house. Frank saw a look of fear pass over the girl’s face. He told her to wait in the hall while he and Joe searched the area with flashlights.

  Soon the boys returned. “Don’t worry, no lurking werewolves,” Joe reported. “Come on, we’ll walk you to your car.”

  Alena smiled with relief. A few minutes later, she drove off and the boys returned to the house. Frank switched on the electronic alarm system before everyone settled down for the night.

  “What do you make of this werewolf story?” he asked his brother later in their room.

  “Don’t know,” Joe replied, pulling off his T-shirt. “Funny coincidence, that glowing wolf-dog turning up at the diner. But I think it’s just as wise we didn’t mention it to Alena, or to Aunt Gertrude or Mother, for that matter.”

  “Check,” Frank agreed.

  Some time later, the boys awoke with a start from the sound of a gunshot. It was followed instantly by a heavy thud at the front of their house!

  2

  A Silver Clue

  Frank and Joe were out of bed in a jiffy, hastily flinging on clothes.

  “Where’d that loud thump come from?” Joe asked excitedly, tugging on his jeans.

  “Our front door, I think!” Frank replied.

  They were met in the hallway by their mother and Aunt Gertrude, both in night robes, their aunt with her hair pinned up in curlers.

  “One of you call the police, please!” Frank suggested as he and Joe hurried downstairs.

  “What about you two?” Mrs. Hardy asked as the women followed anxiously.

  “Don’t be foolish!” Gertrude Hardy scolded her nephews. “If you go out the front door, you may be making targets of yourselves.”

  “Smart thinking, Aunty,” Joe agreed. “We’ll use a window instead.”

  He and Frank squirmed out a side window in case either the front or back door was being covered by the
unknown enemy. Splitting up, they searched the grounds cautiously, only to meet again ten minutes later. Neither had sighted any intruder.

  Just then they heard the front door open, and their aunt, who had been watching them through the window, called out, “The phone’s dead!”

  “No wonder, the line’s been cut,” Joe reported after picking out the dangling wire with his flashlight.

  “I’ll go find a police car or a public phone booth,” Frank said. “You stay with Mom and Aunt Gertrude, Joe.”

  He quickly backed their car out of the garage and headed for the nearest storefront street. After beaming out a call over the police waveband, he soon sighted a responding prowl car and guided the officers to the Hardy house.

  When they arrived, Joe was busy with a knife at the front door. “You were right, Frank,” he reported. “Look what I dug out of the wood!” He held up a small, gleaming lump of metal.

  “That looks like silver,” exclaimed one of the policemen. He stared at the Hardys. “You mean this was fired into your front door?”

  Frank nodded.

  “Seems as if you have a new enemy,” the other officer added.

  Frank shrugged. “Or an old one. Who knows?”

  The two patrolmen promised to cruise around the area, keeping a sharp lookout for suspicious characters. Later they would take the bullet to the police lab for ballistic examination.

  As they drove off, Joe glanced at his brother. “A silver bullet! You know what that means?”

  “You bet I do! According to superstition, that’s the only kind that will kill a werewolf!”

  “Boy, I wouldn’t believe this if I heard it on the news,” said Joe. “Do you suppose it means someone in town really thinks a werewolf is haunting Bayport?”

  “Could be,” Frank mused. “It could also mean that someone’s warning us not to meddle in the Tabor case.”

  Even though the next day was Sunday, the telephone company sent out a special repairman to reconnect the Hardys’ line. Meanwhile, Frank and Joe went to church with their mother and aunt. Afterwards they drove to the Morton farm, where they found Chet building a birchbark canoe.