The Secret of the Caves Read online

  Another light winked from in front of Wilson’s cave. Slowly the sub surfaced, its whaleback silhouette standing out in the darkness.

  “They’ve contacted each other,” said Joe. “If we only had a boat.”

  “I have an idea,” Frank said. “We’ll swim out to the sub.” He stripped down to his shorts and Joe did the same. “We might make it if Wilson doesn’t turn on the big searchlight.”

  The brothers concealed their clothes behind a rock, then waded into the surf. They dived into a wave, and, with strong overhand strokes, rapidly swam toward the submarine. Silently the Hardys came up to the undersea craft, and treading water, clung to the hull.

  Tensely the boys waited. A few moments later the hatch opened. Frank and Joe held their breaths as six men piled out, dragging a large rubber life raft. They flung it into the water with a plop, and stepped inside, where two of their number manned paddles.

  Hearts thumping wildly, Frank and Joe pressed back against the sub, their faces barely showing above water ten feet away from the raft.

  The men spoke a strange foreign language, but suddenly one said sternly in English, “Do not use the mother tongue. It is dangerous. We are now in America!”

  Frank decided on a bold strategy, and nudged his brother. “Come on!”

  Swiftly the boys pushed off and swam underwater to emerge silently right behind the raft. They reached up and gripped it with one hand, scissor-kicking so as not to be a drag on the rubber craft as the paddlers guided it across the waves toward shore.

  The brothers glanced back, to see the conning tower of the sub disappear beneath the waves.

  “Ah, there’s Wilson’s light,” came a voice from the raft.

  “Yes, our calculations were correct,” said another man. “We will show these Americans!”

  Finally Frank and Joe felt their toes touch bottom. When the men hopped out, the boys swam underwater away from shore, then surfaced and once more treaded water. This time their eyes fell upon a most unusual scene. In the glow of the light inside Wilson’s cave, they saw the commander greet each of the new arrivals, pumping their hands as they stepped inside.

  But there was something different about Wilson. His face looked younger. And ... his hair was black.

  “Wilson’s no old man. That was a gray wig he was wearing!” hissed Joe. “He used face make-up, too.”

  “There’s no time to lose!” Frank said, and both boys swam to the beach. The only evidence of activity was the dim glow coming from the cave mouth. Now and then it faded as if those inside were milling about.

  The Hardys quickly got their clothes and slipped them on. “If we only had some help,” Frank said as they inched closer to the entrance of the cave. From within came the hum of voices.

  They halted and looked about in the darkness. “I think they would have posted a sentry,” Frank said. “Do you see anybody, Joe?”

  Joe flashed his light up and down the beach, but could see no one. “What now, Frank?”

  “Into the cave. We’ve got to see what this is all about.”

  The brothers listened, but the voices had receded. Only muffled sounds emerged from the cavern. Clutching their flashlights, Frank and Joe slipped inside. At first the interior looked much the same as the first time they had seen it. The shotgun lay on the ledge, the code book was still in evidence, and the food supply was stashed as it had been previously.

  But as the boys penetrated deeper, their mouths fell open in wonderment. To the rear of the cave was a thick electrical conduit which snaked back into the cavern. Tiptoeing forward, Frank and Joe finally came to a thick wooden partition with an iron door.

  “Good night!” Joe declared. “Frank, this is set up like a hidden city.”

  “I think those men might be spies, or saboteurs,” Frank whispered. “Maybe they’re connected with the trouble at the radar site.”

  “But what about Quill and Todd?” Joe asked. “How do they fit into all this?”

  “I don’t know yet. But we’ve found the mine that Chet discovered,” Frank said. “That metal conduit. And it makes a beeline to the Palais Paris.”

  “I could just smell something phony about that whole place,” Joe declared, moving closer to the iron door. “Frank, let’s go in!”

  “Okay, I’m game. But we’d better stick together.”

  Joe’s hand reached for the door handle. Suddenly a voice behind them froze the boys into immobility.

  “Hardys, you’re through!”

  The boys wheeled about. Joe gasped. “Cadmus Quill!”

  The short, bouncy college instructor leered at them. Behind him stood four henchmen.

  “You’re trapped!” Cadmus Quill said.

  Frank whispered to his brother and Joe nodded. As Quill and his strong-arm men advanced, the boys uttered a bloodcurdling war cry and charged like halfbacks! Joe tackled two of the men, bowling them over. They scrambled to their feet and grabbed Joe. He twisted frantically to escape their grip. Frank doubled Quill with a blow to the solar plexus, then dashed past the other two men toward the cave mouth. They darted after him.

  Frank’s plan was working! With speed born of desperation, the boy leaped toward the ledge and grabbed the shotgun. Then he aimed it overhead, close to the electrical conduit.

  Frank pulled the trigger. There was a deafening blast and a shower of sparks. The lights went out and an acrid pall of smoke filled the cavern.

  CHAPTER XX

  Loyal Pals

  THE sudden blast and blackout threw the Hardys’ assailants into confusion. The next moment, youthful shouts were heard from the entrance, and two flashlights illuminated the cave.

  “Frank! Joe! What’s going on?” came Chet’s voice.

  “Wow! They need help!” cried Biff.

  Quill and his four thugs, seeing the reinforcements, dashed to the iron door and jerked it open. The four young sleuths raced after them, but were too late. The fugitives disappeared inside, the door clanged shut, and a bolt clicked fast. The brothers, then Biff and Chet, tried the handle to no avail.

  “How did you know we were here?” Frank asked.

  “Chet and I got to thinking about you two working on this case all alone,” Biff said. “So we drove down to Johnny Donachie’s. We missed you by minutes.”

  “So we climbed up the cliffs and down the ravine,” Chet added.

  “And made it here just in time,” Joe said. “I don’t think we could have scared them off much longer without you.”

  “That isn’t all,” Biff went on. He said that before they had left Bayport, Mr. Hardy had alerted the State Police to search the Palais Paris. “Some of the cops are on their way to the caves, too.”

  The boys heard scuffling sounds coming from behind the iron door.

  “Sounds like somebody running,” Joe said.

  “And stumbling about in the dark,” Frank added.

  The brothers reasoned that the short-circuited conduit had also blacked out the area beyond Wilson’s cave.

  Just then the ruckus inside was accompanied by frantic shouts. The bolt clicked, and as it did, Frank and Joe grabbed the handle and held it tightly.

  “We’ve got them trapped, and we’re going to keep them that way!” Frank declared.

  The melee within grew in intensity. It was punctuated by a shot. Someone groaned. Then came banging on the iron door.

  “Frank and Joe, if that’s you, open up!”

  “Dad!” Joe exclaimed, hardly daring to believe his ears.

  “Open up, boys. We’ve caught the gang.”

  The brothers let go the handle, and stepped back as the door swung inward. Several great searchlights illuminated the chamber and Fenton Hardy stepped out. He was followed by six policemen, each of whom had a manacled prisoner in tow. One of the prisoners the boys recognized as E. K. T. Wilson. He glowered at them balefully.

  “Great going, Dad!” Frank exclaimed. He now reported the submarine incident and had just finished when two state troopers dashed in throug
h the beach entrance. They were officers Starr and Dunn. “Have you got them all rounded up?” Trooper Dunn asked.

  “I think so,” Fenton Hardy replied. “But there’s one man still missing—Morgan Todd. We think he’s around here somewhere.”

  Upon learning of the sub, Trooper Starr switched on his portable radio transmitter and broadcast an urgent request to intercept the undersea prowler.

  Revelations came so thick and fast that Frank and Joe were dazed by the hornets’ nest which they had uncovered. At Fenton Hardy’s direction, the troopers took up positions at the mouth of the cave while the rest of the party pressed deeper into the passageway behind the iron door.

  The gradient was up, and as the boys marched along they could see that the tunnel was man-made. The walls and ceiling bore the marks of excavating tools, and here and there, the passage was shored with planks.

  Finally Fenton Hardy led the young sleuths to a flight of concrete steps. They ascended to a metal door, opened it, and found themselves in the kitchen of the Palais Paris!

  There, on the floor and manacled back to back, sat Dumont and Marcel. They glared at the Hardys with hate-filled eyes.

  “They’re the ones who did this to us!” Marcel said bitterly. “If they hadn’t come snooping—”

  “Shut up!” Dumont snapped. “Fool!”

  “It’s okay for you, big shot,” Marcel complained. “You’ve got plenty of dough to help you. But not me!”

  Police Chief Collig of Bayport and two of his men stood by with drawn pistols as three other gang members were flushed from upstairs rooms at the Palais Paris.

  “I think we have them all rounded up now, Fenton,” Collig said.

  “Good work. The Federal men will be here any minute.”

  A sound of sirens from a distance reached their ears. They howled like banshees as they drew closer, then petered out in front of the Palais Paris. Car doors banged shut, and ten Federal agents burst into the restaurant.

  Dumont and Marcel were pulled to their feet, and stood in line with the rest of the prisoners as the government men entered the kitchen.

  “You’ve done a splendid job for us, Fenton,” said a tall man with hair graying at the temples.

  Mr. Hardy turned to his sons. “This is Special Agent Alberts,” he said, and made the introductions. Then the detective added, “Actually, my sons and their friends cracked this case. My credit is secondary.”

  “Well, you all did a magnificent job,” Alberts told the four boys.

  “But we still haven’t solved the mystery of the missing Morgan Todd,” Frank said.

  “You found Morgan Todd all right,” Agent Alberts said, grinning at the young detectives.

  “What?” they chorused.

  The tale which the Federal men unfolded nearly defied imagination. The Hardys’ warning about the sub had been relayed instantly to the Navy and Coast Guard. Destroyer depth charges in the area off the caves had forced the craft to the surface.

  “The Navy has caught a nice prize,” Alberts said. “And your friend Todd, who’d been imprisoned on the sub, is aboard one of our de stroyers this moment, safe and sound.”

  Hearing this, Joe dashed to the telephone and called the Hardy home. He spoke to his mother, who relayed the good news to Mary. He could hear Mary’s cry of delight, and then sobbing, as she broke down and wept with joy.

  A police van carried the prisoners to Bayport for further interrogation. Biff Hooper went back in the Envoy, while the Hardys, Chet, and Agent Alberts returned in a police car. It was then the boys learned the true magnitude of their case.

  “Morgan Todd was the key to the whole mystery,” Mr. Hardy told them. The young instructor had, while abroad, stumbled upon bizarre information. The foreign country in which he was studying had set up a spy and saboteur center in the Honeycomb Caves. Also, they had engineers working on a project designed to nullify the effect of the new U. S. Coastal Radar Station at Telescope Hill.

  “A device was to be raised out of the cave area at night,” Agent Alberts said, “and would have jammed the radar signals.”

  “But where does the Palais Paris come in?” asked Frank.

  “That was a front,” Mr. Hardy said. “The gang’s engineers constructed the tunnel to lead directly from the Palais Paris to the shore, and enlarge the caves.”

  “And credit for that discovery goes to Chet,” Frank said, slapping the stout boy on the shoulder. “His metal detector did the trick!”

  “And the U. S. Government,” the Federal agent said, “is going to reimburse you, Chet, for your detector, and also for repairs to your car, Frank and Joe.”

  Alberts went on to explain that Morgan Todd, being cautious and conservative, had decided to conduct a solo investigation of the caves before turning over his information to the U. S. Government.

  “I’ll bet that’s where he made a mistake,” Chet commented.

  “Right. Cadmus Quill, who had been brainwashed by the foreign spy ring into being a traitor, helped to kidnap Todd. But before they carried him away that night, Todd begged them to allow him to prepare the examination for his students.”

  “A pretty clever fellow,” Mr. Hardy conceded, “to leave that Rockaway tip. And you boys did a grand job in discovering it.”

  “Commander Wilson had me fooled,” Joe said wryly as the car neared Bayport.

  “Dad had the right angle on him,” Frank said.

  When the limousine pulled up in front of the Hardy house, Alberts said he would drive Chet home. They would all meet Chief Collig for a conference at Bayport Police Headquarters at ten o‘clock the next morning.

  It was nearly daylight when Frank and Joe fell asleep. They awakened later to learn that all of Bayport was buzzing with the excitement of the great coup the boys had pulled off.

  Frank and Joe went to headquarters with Mary Todd. In Chief Collig’s office they were joined by Chet, Biff, Iola, and Callie. Then two Federal agents appeared with Morgan Todd. He and his sister flung themselves into each other’s arms in a fond embrace.

  Morgan Todd shook hands vigorously with the Hardys. “I can’t thank you enough for saving my life!” he said warmly. Todd revealed that the submarine was to have taken him to a remote part of the world, where he would have been incarcerated for the rest of his life.

  “We have some other interesting details, too,” Alberts said. “Commander E. K. T. Wilson was a phony, of course. In his younger days he was an actor, who defected while in the service of his country on a foreign tour of duty.”

  “That nutty bit of his nearly paid off,” said Joe, “with that shooting and all.”

  Frank grinned. “Good thing he overdid it somewhat, at least enough so Dad caught wise.”

  Chief Collig reported that Wilson, under relentless quizzing, had admitted losing the pistol on the beach the night he had prowled about the boys’ cave. As for the stacked wood, it had been left there by picnickers months before. An expert on explosives, Wilson had been called by Dumont to booby-trap the metal detector.

  When Iola Morton asked if there would be any international complications as a result of the Hardys’ victory, the agent said, “The State Department has already successfully negotiated the matter.”

  It was also revealed that Pierre Dumont, the spies’ chief man in the U. S. came from a French-speaking part of the world and had applied for U. S. citizenship. Marcel had worked under him abroad and was merely a strong-arm dupe. The woman shopkeeper at the Palais Paris was found to be innocent of any wrongdoing.

  “And what about the foreign caps?” Joe asked.

  “A careless mistake on the saboteurs’ part,” Fenton Hardy answered.

  The boys learned that the henchman who had dropped his cap at the radar site also had posed later as the newspaper reporter. The same foreigner also had set the boathouse fire.

  Mr. Hardy smiled proudly. “You boys were really on the ball!”

  “And I’d say that the U. S. Government is in debt to all of you who worked on th
is case,” Agent Alberts added.

  The Bayport Times had already bannerlined the Hardys’ feat, and the telephone rang with congratulatory messages all day.

  That evening Mrs. Hardy was hostess at a get-together in the detectives’ home. Happy, ex cited voices filled the living room as Laura Hardy and Aunt Gertrude served refreshments. In the midst of the gaiety, a telegram was received by the Hardy boys. It came from Kenworthy College and stated that the fraternity had expelled Cadmus Quill. The message also contained an apology to the Hardys, and congratulations on their patriotic efforts.

  Then Joe turned on the record player. Chet, usually bashful with girls, asked Mary Todd to dance, and soon the living room was a blur of motion as the young people gyrated to the latest steps.

  “I guess your brother wasn’t planning to get married after all,” Chet said.

  “What!”

  “Oh, nothing. Just another one of Quill’s lies.”

  When the music was over, Mrs. Hardy smilingly called for attention. The young folks gathered in a circle, and Aunt Gertrude emerged majestically from the kitchen, carrying a spinning wheel.

  Frank and Joe gaped in surprise. “Is that the one we bought?” Joe burst out.

  Aunt Gertrude pursed her lips and looked proud. “Indeed it is,” she said. “I put it all together myself. And I might add it’s a rare antique you two found!”

  When the claps and cheers died down, Frank Hardy spoke up. “Then you are in favor of our detective work,” he said.

  Aunt Gertrude’s answer could not be heard amid the laughter that followed, nor could the boys foresee that their next big adventure would be The Mystery of Cabin Island.