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  The Missing Chums

  ( The Hardy Boys - 4 )

  Franklin W. Dixon

  Something is amiss in Bayport, the Hardy Boys' home town. First, there is trouble in Shantytown, then a strange black craft tries to ram Joe and Frank's boat, the Sleuth. That night the local bank is robbed. And later that same night the young detectives' pals, Chet Morton and Biff Hooper, mysteriously disappear after a masquerade party. Are the events related?

  HARDY BOYS #004 - THE MISSING CHUMS

  FRANKLIN W. DIXON

  CHAPTER I

  Exciting Assignment

  "JOE, how soon will you be ready to roll?" Frank Hardy burst into the garage where his brother was working on a sleek, black-and-silver motorcycle.

  "Right now, if this machine kicks over," Joe replied, putting down a wrench. "But what's the rush? We're not going to meet Chet and Biff for two hours."

  Joe looked up quizzically at his brother.

  "Chief Collig phoned," Frank said. "You'll never believe it, but he has a case for us."

  "You're sure he didn't mean Dad?" Joe asked. Fenton Hardy was a widely known private investigator.

  His sons had learned from him about sleuthing, and acquired a great deal of skill.

  "Positive. He said he wanted the detective's sons this time-and right away."

  "Wow!" Joe exclaimed happily. "What a break! Summer vacation and a mystery to solve!" He swung into the saddle and kicked down hard on the starter. A roar filled the garage and he

  grinned in satisfaction.

  Dark-haired, eighteen-year-old Frank had jumped onto an identical motorcycle, standing beside

  that of his blond brother, who was a year younger. The two machines roared out into the hot

  morning sunlight.

  Ten minutes later the boys arrived at police headquarters in downtown Bayport.

  They were greeted by the desk sergeant. "Hello Frank-Joe!" He waved them toward the chief's office.

  "He's waiting for you."

  "Come in, boys," boomed Chief Collig through the open door. He was a vigorous, middle-aged man with iron-gray hair. "I'll get right to the point. There's something funny going on in the squatter colony at the end of the bay."

  "You mean Shantytown?" Joe asked, referring to a settlement of shacks on the ocean shore north of Bayport. The odd community was composed mostly of men who had seasonal or temporary jobs-and some who did not work at all.

  Chief Collig nodded. "The men there seem to be in an ugly mood-violence and fighting at night.

  The charitable landowner who permits them to stay there wants us to investigate, but it'll have to be an undercover job because those drifters recognize the police."

  "And that's where we come in?" Frank guessed.

  "Yes. I want you to put on old clothes, muss your hair, and hang around Shantytown for a while.

  See if you can discover what's been stirring up the group. Will you do it?"

  "Will we!" Joe exclaimed without hesitation. He turned to Frank and added, "Chet and Biff aren't due at the boathouse for an hour. Let's take a look at Shantytown."

  "Thanks, boys. Be careful," Chief Collig said as they hurried from the office. Outside, Frank and Joe mounted their motorcycles and rode through the downtown traffic to the Bayport waterfront.

  Leaving the big commercial piers behind, they took the Shore Road, past a section of private docks to where the brothers kept their trim speedboat, the Sleuth. Driving on, the Hardys followed the road along the curve of the left bank of the bay to the mouth of the harbor. Here they turned north and continued parallel with the ocean.

  Soon they saw a jumble of board shanties on the wide beach ahead. Some were nothing more than open lean-tos, but others had glass windows and stovepipes. Pieces of ragged clothing fluttered from ropes in the breeze. Smoke curled up lazily from a small fire around which three men lay, watching the steam from a black pot which hung on a tripod above the flames.

  The boys parked a distance away and observed them intently. "Looks peaceful," Joe commented.

  "A lot of them must be away at work," Frank remarked. "Remember, the trouble comes at night, when they're all here together."

  After studying the quiet scene for a few more minutes, Frank said, "We'll come back later."

  The brothers turned their motorcycles around and headed toward the outskirts of Bayport,

  where the many private docks lay. Brightly painted cabin craft and sailboats with slender masts rode at mooring floats.

  Seeing a yellow jalopy parked in front of the Hardy boathouse, Joe remarked, "Chet's here."

  Frank and Joe parked their motorcycles beside his car, named the Queen. A broad-shouldered,

  good-looking boy stepped through the small side door of the boathouse. He held a key, one of

  the duplicates the Hardys had given to their close friends.

  "Hi, Biff!" Frank greeted him. "Where's Chet?"

  Biff Hooper answered in an unnaturally loud voice and winked at them. "Why-uh-he'll see you soon."

  "What's up?" Joe whispered.

  Biff merely shrugged and kept on grinning. The Hardys knew some joke was in the making!

  Frank asked in a low tone, "Have you opened the bay door yet?"

  Biff nodded. "And unmoored the Sleuth."

  Frank raised his voice and continued talking with Biff, at the same time motioning to his brother to tiptoe to the boat door.

  Joe chuckled, took a bamboo pole from against the boathouse, and picked his way across the

  catwalk to the front. He peered in, then upward.

  Jammed between the rafters and the ceiling was plump Chet Morton! He was looking the other

  way, toward the small door.

  Silently Joe unmoored the Sleuth, and using the pole, pulled the craft halfway out of the

  boathouse,

  leaving a clear surface of water beneath Chet. Then Joe playfully jabbed at his friend with the bamboo pole.

  "Yow!" Chet bellowed. There followed a great splash, and a geyser of water drenched the inside of the boathouse, as the chubby boy went under. A second later he popped to the surface, just

  as Frank and Biff ran in.

  "Why, Chet, what are you doing in the water?" Frank asked, pretending astonishment.

  "As if you didn't know! Where's Joe?"

  "Right here, Chet," he said.

  "All right, you turned the tables," Chet sputtered good-naturedly as they hauled him out of the water. "I was going to scare you. Biff, did you give me away?"

  "Of course not." Biff laughed. "If I'd known it was a swimming party, I'd have worn my trunks!"

  Chet grinned and began peeling off his wet shirt. "Good thing I wore my trunks under my

  clothes," he said.

  In a few minutes his wet garments were drying in the stern of the Sleuth while the powerful

  craft, with Joe at the wheel, cut smoothly through the waters of Barmet Bay. The boys

  munched on sandwiches, which Chet had brought along.

  "Say, how about a camping trip, fellows?" Biff suggested. "We could go to some of the islands along the coast."

  "This boat would hold plenty of provisions," Chet chimed in.

  "We can explore Hermit Island," Biff went on. "I heard that the old man who owns it lives there all alone."

  "Afraid we can't, fellows," Frank answered. "We have a new case." Quickly he told them about it.

  Biff whistled appreciatively but Chet groaned. "Ever since you solved The Tower Treasure

  mystery, our lives haven't been the same."

  With a twinkle in his eyes, Biff said, "Chet was hoping that would be your first and only case."

  "The last one you took on was nearly the death of me," Chet g
rumbled. He was referring to his adventures with the Hardys while solving The Secret of the Old Mill. "From here on," he declared, "just leave me out of any mysteries!"

  His friends laughed, knowing how Chet hated to be left out of anything.

  "Too late," Joe told him. "We're heading for Shantytown to take another look-see."

  By now the speedy craft was far out on the broad bay. The water had grown choppy and was

  turning from green to steely gray. In the distance the boys watched a cluster of white sails

  skimming before the breeze.

  "A race," Biff observed.

  "Hey! Look out!" Frank cried sharply.

  A black hull, parting the water in white sheets at its prow, was bearing straight down on the

  Sleuth's rear on the portside.

  Frank shouted and waved frantically at the oncoming boat. "Cut her, Joe!"

  Still the strange craft roared along toward the boys. At the last moment it came about,

  throwing a heavy bank of water aboard the Sleuth. For a moment the two boats sped forward,

  gunwale to gunwale. The name Black Cat was on the prow of the strange boat.

  "Not so close!" Frank shouted angrily. The pilot ignored the warning. He was a swarthy man with black hair combed straight back. At his side sat a huge man with a bald head.

  Calling on the Sleuth's reserve of power, Joe shot the craft forward, veering to the right. The boys looked back with satisfaction as the black boat dropped behind.

  Facing forward again, Joe caught his breath in horror. Directly ahead loomed the great white

  sails of the racers, bearing down on them swiftly. He cut the wheel frantically to the left. "Hang on!" he yelled.

  "We're going to hit!"

  CHAPTER II

  An Evening of Mystery

  INSTANTLY Frank grabbed the steering wheel held by his brother. He twisted it violently and

  pulled out the throttle at the same time.

  For a moment the Sleuth banked hard and balanced on her side, while the huge tilting sails

  hovered overhead!

  One-two-three-four-dark sailboat hulls sliced safely across the speedboat's boiling wake as she shot outward into the bay.

  "Wow! That last one only missed us by a foot!" Biff exclaimed.

  "Oh, boy, let's not do that again!" Chet said shakily.

  "You okay, Joe?" Frank asked as he slid back to his side of the boat.

  "Yes, thanks to you! Where did the Black Cat go?"

  "There she is!" Biff shouted.

  Looking around, the brothers saw that the other speedboat had veered in plenty of time to run

  easily before the sail craft. The big, bald man was pointing to the boys and laughing.

  "Bank her again, Joe!" Frank cried angrily. "We're going after those men!"

  "I can't!" Joe shouted back over the roar of the engine. "She won't respond to the wheel."

  Already a quarter of a mile of open water separated the two boats. Helpless, the four friends

  watched

  the black craft race away.

  Meanwhile, the Sleuth shot ahead at full speed, her handsome prow lifted clear of the water.

  "Do something!" Chet cried. "We'll run aground!"

  "No, we won't," said Frank, who had noticed the curving white swath of their wake. "We're going in circles."

  The Sleuth, her steering mechanism disabled by Frank's emergency turn, was clearly completing

  a wide circuit.

  "We might as well save gas," Joe said, throttling down. "One thing's sure. We won't make Shantytown today."

  Glumly the four sat still while the distant shores seemed to rotate around them. To the east,

  where the bay opened toward the sea, a grayish mist lay over the black water.

  "Look at that fogbank," Biff said. "I hope we're not stuck here when it rolls in. It would be mighty hard for anybody to find us."

  "I don't think that pea soup will move in before dark," Frank said, but there was a note of concern in his voice.

  "We're supposed to go to Callie's costume party tonight," Chet reminded the others, "so we'd better get out of this mess soon!"

  Suddenly the boys' attention was diverted by the high whine of a motorboat plowing toward

  them across the water.

  "More trouble?" Chet muttered.

  "Trouble, nothing!" Joe exclaimed. "It's the Napoli! Hi,Tony!"

  The four companions waved wildly at their friend and in a few minutes a yellow speedboat

  idled up alongside the Sleuth.

  "Thought it was you," said dark-haired Tony Prito from behind the wheel.

  "Why are you fellows running in circles?" asked Jerry Gilroy, who sat beside Tony.

  "Our steering's fouled up," Joe reported briefly. "Give us a tow, will you, Tony? I'll tell you about it on the way in. Chet, let's have that line back there!"

  Taking a coil of rope from the stout boy, Joe scrambled onto the prow of the Sleuth. He secured the line at the bow, passed it to Jerry in the Napoli, and then climbed into Tony's boat himself.

  While the Sleuth bobbed along toward Bayport in the wake of the Napoli, Joe told the

  newcomers of the near collision.

  Twenty minutes later the six friends stood together on the dock of the Bayport boatyard while

  a mechanic examined the Sleuth.

  "You think the fellow tried to sideswipe you on purpose?" Tony Prito asked.

  "Yes, I do," Frank said. "They saw us clearly and heard us shouting, but they came straight at us, anyhow."

  "Maybe something went wrong with their boat," Tony suggested. "It could have been an accident."

  "Accident!" Chet Morton snorted. "You should have seen the look on the bald man's face after we skinned past that last sailboat. They were out to get us all right."

  "But why?" Jerry inquired. "Did you ever see them before?"

  "Never!" Joe stated positively. "But I certainly hope we see them again!"

  "We'll report this to the Coast Guard," Frank said. "They may want to talk to those two men."

  Just then the young mechanic joined the group. "You have a damaged rudder," he reported to the Hardys. "I've fixed it temporarily, but you'll need a new part to do the job right. It'll take a day or two for me to get it. Bring your boat back then."

  "I'll follow while you take the Sleuth to your boathouse," Tony volunteered. "Then we can all go to the Coast Guard station in the Napoli."

  After the Hardys' craft -had been safely moored in their boathouse, Tony headed the Napoli out into the bay. He turned and followed the shoreline to the long jetties where the freighters were docked.

  Soon the Napoli passed under the gray bow of a big cutter moored at the Coast Guard pier.

  Tony made his boat fast, and the six boys climbed up a steel ladder onto the dock. They entered the small, neat station office, which had a short-wave tower on its roof.

  The officer on duty rose from his desk. "Hello, Frank-Joe-fellows," he greeted them. The personnel at the Bayport station knew the Hardys well. More than once they had cooperated

  with the boys and their father on cases.

  "Hello, Lieutenant Parker," Frank said gravely. "We want to report a near collision caused by a powerboat named the Black Cat. Can you tell us who owns her?"

  Quickly Frank gave an account of the incident while the officer took notes. Then a seaman who

  had been listening brought over a heavy ledger, which he spread open on the desk.

  Lieutenant Parker ran his finger down the list of names and licenses of speedboats on the bay.

  "Nothing here, fellows," he announced, looking up. "She must have come in from an outside port. Have you noticed a boat like that in the last week or so, Thompson?"

  The seaman thought for a moment. "No, sir," he answered. "But there's been a big regatta going on up the coast for a couple of days. She may have run down from there."

  "We'll go up and find her!" Joe put in eagerly. "What town is
it?"

  "Northport."

  "Not so fast," Frank said. "Don't forget our other business, Joe."

  "You win," Joe replied with a rueful grin, "but I hate to see-"

  "We'll have our patrol boats keep a lookout for the craft," the officer promised. "If we find it, I'll call you."

  It was late afternoon when the Napoli plowed through rough water on her return to the Hardy

  boathouse.

  To seaward, the wall of mist had mounted higher and moved in closer, so that now it seemed

  almost at

  the harbor's mouth.

  "The fog's coming in fast," Jerry remarked as Frank, Joe, Chet, and Biff disembarked. The Hardys thanked Tony for his help.

  "That's okay," he replied. "It's getting late. We'd all better go home and get ready for Callie's party."

  "Don't forget your costume," Joe called as the Napoli churned away. He turned to Chet and Biff.

  "How about you, fellows? Are you all set for the masquerade?"

  "I am!" The fat boy chuckled in anticipation. "Wait'll you see what I'm going to wear!"

  Biff grinned. "Even you detectives won't know us."

  "We just have time to pick up our costumes from Mr. French before he closes," Frank noted.

  A few minutes later there was a clatter as Chet backed his jalopy onto Shore Road and he and

  Biff drove off.

  The Hardys kicked their motorcycles into life and started toward town. When they reached

  Bayport's main street most of the stores were closing.

  "We're in luck!" Frank declared as he parked in front of the costume store. "It's still open. Mr.

  French has a couple of customers in there!"

  The boys hurried toward the door. Through the wide shopwindow they could see the tall, spare

  proprietor, with thinning blond hair and a small graying mustache. He was talking earnestly to two men whose backs were turned. None of them noticed the boys.

  As Frank pushed open the door, Mr. French stopped speaking. The taller of the strangers raised his voice and said in an ugly tone: "Well, you're in this now, French, and don't you forget it!"

  CHAPTER III

  Faces in the Fog

  THE door clicked shut behind the Hardys and the speaker whirled. He was a slight man with