Footprints Under the Window Read online

  The brown vehicle was just turning the comer at the far end of the block!

  “They’ve stolen the camera!” Joe cried out.

  “Chet,” Mr. Hardy snapped, “find Mr. Dykeman! Have him call the Coast Guard!”

  “Yes, Mr. Hardy.”

  As Chet hopped out, the detective addressed the driver. “We need to borrow this car. Will you trust us with it?”

  “Sure thing!”

  The young man alighted and Frank slipped behind the wheel. He sped off, heading directly for the waterfront. As they neared Bay Street, the Hardys saw the laundry truck ahead. It swerved around a corner. Frank followed just in time to see a large white bundle tossed from the rear of the truck. It landed in an empty lot!

  “The camera!” Joe cried out.

  “This may be a trick!” his father argued.

  Frank had already screeched to the curb. Joe sprinted over and tore open the bundle. Empty!

  In a flash he was back in the car, and Frank made for the boathouse area. He braked to a halt at the Northerly’s dock. The yacht was nearing the mouth of Barmet Bay.

  “They’ve made the pickup!” Joe cried out. “Let’s get the Sleuth!”

  The boys and their father leaped out and started for the Hardy boathouse. Suddenly, from behind a green car parked nearby, two figures rushed toward them. The hulking Walton, and behind him Greber, wielding a machete!

  The huge man lunged for Mr. Hardy, but the detective side-stepped nimbly and jarred him to the ground with an uppercut. Frank and Joe tackled Greber. Two punches to the midriff sent the machete flying and he sank to his knees.

  “Leave them for the police!” Mr. Hardy said.

  He and his sons rushed into their boathouse and boarded the Sleuth, with Frank at the wheel. He sped across the bay. The yacht had already reached the open sea.

  “They’re going to transfer the camera to another boat!” Joe shouted, recalling the spies’ planned “offshore pickup” by “41.”

  “Probably in international waters!” the investigator guessed as the Sleuth streaked from the bay.

  The Northerly now raced full speed ahead, some hundred yards to port. In the distance the pursuers saw a small, net-draped sailing vessel. The Northerly plied directly for it, cutting speed.

  “A fishing trawler!” Mr. Hardy exclaimed. “‘41’!”

  “I’ll try to get between them!” Frank steered straight for the tip of the Northerly’s bow.

  The yacht’s pilot swung left to avert a collision. The maneuver had worked! But as Frank looped back toward the yacht, the larger ship veered sharply, and came at the Sleuth. The Hardys could see Manuel Bedoya, enraged, shouting to the pilot, Decker.

  Joe yelled at his brother, “Look out, they’ll cut us in two!”

  Frank was forced to turn aside, and the Northerly resumed course for the trawler. Suddenly there came a thunderous boom!

  The Hardys looked south at a rising patch of smoke. Two sleek, gray cutters with forward guns were advancing at full steam.

  “The Coast Guard!”

  Instantly the trawler’s motors chugged to life. It headed out to sea, away from the Northerly. Bedoya’s frantic shouts could be heard.

  “Stop! You cannot desert us! Wait!”

  But already one of the cutters blocked the Northerly’s path, and a stern voice blared out:

  “Heave to!”

  The yacht throbbed to a halt. At the same instant, Bedoya darted to the rail and flung a bundle overboard.

  “The camera! Frank, quick!”

  The Sleuth shot to where the object splashed into the sea. Joe dived and grasped the sinking bundle. He brought it up and was helped aboard by his father. By this time the trawler was a speck on the horizon.

  Meanwhile, six Coast Guard men had boarded the Northerly and ordered Decker to head back. Manuel Bedoya stood sullenly in the grip of two officers.

  With a Coast Guard cutter on either side, the Northerly returned to Barmet Bay. The Sleuth kept close behind. Within an hour after docking, Bedoya and all his cohorts had been arrested, and the camera found intact in a waterproof bag.

  Soon afterward, a large jubilant group sat in the Hardy living room, awaiting lunch. Aunt Gertrude was spellbound by the whole story.

  Mr. Dykeman arose from a chair. “Fenton,” he said warmly, “words can’t express what you, your sons, and Chet Morton have done for our government.”

  The boys beamed, then Joe remarked, “The great ‘liberator,’ Orrin North, is out of business for good, I guess.”

  “I should think so,” Aunt Gertrude said tartly. “And to think that I actually was on board ship with Posada’s head spy!”

  Dykeman reported that the smoke bombs had caused little damage to Micro-Eye and no one had been injured. “But the confusion did allow the phony guard Raker to take the camera—supposedly to safety, then to knock out two plant guards before he put the camera in the truck.

  “By the way, Pryce has been exonerated,” the intelligence man said. “Raymond Martin was found half-starving but alive in a remote shack outside Cayenne. The two suitcase thieves were with him. They confessed to having left ‘his skeleton’ to fool any prowlers.”

  Captain Burne and the Dorado crew had been apprehended in South America. The boys were pleased to learn that Gomez and the Huellan refugees had been assured of homes and a new start in the United States.

  “Let’s hope the spies’ failure puts a big dent in Posada’s power,” Frank said. “By the way—that fishing trawler—does it just get away?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Mr. Hardy replied, “but empty-handed, at least. Authorities believe the vessel belongs to a large, anti-American country—and, as you and Joe suspected, that Posada did plan to trade the satellite camera for money and arms.”

  Mr. Dykeman chuckled. “Not even I suspected your whereabouts, Fenton.”

  Chet was still puzzled by the theft of Iola’s shopping bag. “I can explain that,” Mr. Dykeman said. “When your dry cleaning was left at Corporated Laundries, Bedoya’s spies mistakenly sewed the film into your clothing. They confused Morton for Martin, so Valdez had to get them back.”

  “One more unsolved mystery,” said Joe. “Those footprints under the window, both at our house and North’s.”

  Mr. Hardy burst into hearty laughter. “Remember, you weren’t the only sleuths around here.”

  “Dad! They were your footprints?”

  “Guilty.” The detective’s eyes twinkling. He added, “To crack this spy plot, it was important that no one knew I was in town.” The “stolen” papers, he revealed, were part of a dossier on North which he had to pick up.

  Joe gaped. “Well, if that doesn’t beat everything!” Unknown to him, however, the Hardys would soon be challenged by an even more baffling case, The Mark on the Door.

  “Anyway,” Chet said, sighing and relishing the prospect of a titanic meal, “one thing’s sure about this mystery. There was an awful lot afoot!”

  The others laughed heartily.