The Dangerous Transmission Read online

  “I figured we’d find this,” Joe said when they reached what had been the exhibit of kings and queens. The wax royals had melted into odd-looking shapes. Some were grotesque, and some just funny-looking. A few were still melting.

  “There’s my teeth,” Jax pointed out, reaching down toward a set of dentures floating on flesh-colored wax.

  When a guard cleared his throat in a gentle warning, Joe stopped Jax’s arm from reaching any farther. “Don’t touch,” Joe warned his friend.

  Joe continued to walk around the room. A fireman followed, asking Joe and Jax questions about the time before the fire.

  Two guards entered the room with a tall ladder. They opened it in the middle of the floor, using it to prop up the massive chandelier which now drooped on one side. As they moved the ladder around the floor to get it in the right position, they pushed a pile of clothing that had been on one of the king figures.

  When the cloth was moved aside, Joe spotted a knife with a long narrow blade. He crouched to get a better view. The antique handle was covered with wax, but he clearly saw two initials: J. B.

  “Is this yours?” Joe motioned Jax over. One of the guards followed.

  “Ummmm . . . yes, it is,” Jax said, a hint of surprise in his voice.

  “It looks pretty valuable,” Joe said to the guard. “Let him take it, okay? He must have dropped it when we were working here earlier. You won’t get anything from it but his own prints—and maybe not even that, now that it’s been in this fire.”

  The guard nodded, and Jax put the knife in his pocket.

  By the time Joe and Jax had finished looking around and had gone back outside, Frank was searching for them.

  “So what did you find out?” Jax asked. “What caused the fire?”

  “The fireman said it might have had something to do with one of the work lights,” Frank said. “One of them was lying on its side—it might have sparked off the fire when it fell. Or there could have been a short in the wiring. The investigators are going to work all night until they come up with something. Nick’s staying too, to help.”

  “You were in the Palace earlier with these two gentlemen?” One of the firemen was approaching Frank. “Please tell me what you remember,” the fireman said. As he had done with Joe and Jax, he questioned Frank about the time before the fire started and jotted notes in a small black book.

  After forty-five minutes of interrogation the guard escorted the Hardys and Jax to the Tower gate. “There’s the Tube,” Jax said, nodding to a sign. They walked across the street to the Tower Hill station for the London subway, called the Underground by the British, and nicknamed the Tube. They each bought a Travelcard, which entitled them to unlimited Underground travel for one week.

  Frank, Joe, and Jax walked down three long flights of steps, then took an escalator down two more. One final flight, and they were at last at the tracks for the London subway system.

  “When they call this the Underground, they’re not kidding,” Joe said, smiling as he scanned the handy map on the wall.

  “A lot of the Underground stations were bomb shelters during World War II,” Jax said. “People needed to be far from the surface.”

  The platform was a large open area, with several tracks for trains on the left and the right. Joe could also see a second set of tracks, which handled trains going in the opposite direction. People waited for those trains on the other side of the tracks.

  On the ride back to Jax’s flat, Jax showed the Hardys his father’s knife.

  “You had a funny look on your face when I found it,” Joe said. “Why?”

  “I was surprised that I’d taken it to the Tower,” Jax replied. “I didn’t use it for either the raven or the teeth. Frankly, I didn’t realize it was even in my bag.”

  The Hardys and Jax got off the train at the Knightsbridge station and walked the hundreds of steps back up to the surface. A four-block walk took them to Jax’s winding lane. His neighborhood was very quiet, comprising mainly narrow buildings. Most of them had shops or offices on the street level and flats on the upper floors. Jax’s medical suite and two-bedroom flat were on the second floor of a brown brick building.

  They walked past the two stores beneath Jax’s flat. One was a jeweler’s store, and the other was Jax’s father’s taxidermy shop. The third floor of the building was empty. Jax and the jeweler used it for storage.

  “Let’s go into Dad’s shop,” Jax said. “I’ll always think of it as his, even though I own it now.”

  The inside of the store held a fascinating assortment of common and uncommon objects. Dozens of animals, birds, and fish hung on walls, perched on tables, and rested in display cases. Jax described the variety of animal shapes and parts that he was working on.

  “Here’s one made from papier mâché,” he pointed out, “and one from burlap and plaster, like the head Nick made of himself. This one’s made from dental compound. And some are formed from acrylic or fiberglass.”

  He pulled out some drawers with trays in them. “You can’t preserve lips, tongues, ears, noses, or eyes,” he said. “So you either make fake ones yourself or buy them ready-made.”

  In the back of the store was his studio. Leaves, branches, moss, rocks, and other objects to help the mounts look real sat on shelves. Tools, wire, brushes, surgical implements, and measuring instruments were scattered on tables.

  Jax walked over to a large cabinet and opened the door to reveal bottles and cans of paints, dyes, and cleaning fluids. “Some of the hides have a lot of fat in them,” he said, “so we use gasoline to dissolve it. Dad used arsenic to kill bugs in the furs, but most of us use borax now.”

  He led the Hardys to a wooden cupboard that was mounted on the wall like a medicine cabinet. Inside was a large knife rack with a cubbyhole full of sharpening stones. He pulled the knife that Joe had found from his pocket, picked off the dollops of melted wax, and slipped the blade down into the empty slot.

  “The weird thing is that I never use any of the knives in this case,” Jax said. “I have my own set. Taxidermists are funny about using their own knives. Dad’s are pretty special to me, and I wouldn’t want anything to happen to them, so I don’t take them out. But I must have. I’d really hate to lose one—which I almost did. Thanks, Joe.”

  “This is a really unusual studio,” Joe said, “but cool.”

  “Most of my jobs have been fun. I especially enjoy building an animal from scratch—making a form, and then fitting the hide over it. I did a really good dog for the Sherlock Holmes house. We’ll go see it sometime while you’re here.”

  Jax turned out the lights and led the Hardys out the back door of the shop and into an alley behind the building.

  “You have your key, right?” Jax asked. “Go on up. I want to get the mail.” While Jax continued on to the lane and toward a jumble of old-fashioned mailboxes, Frank and Joe walked to the iron stairway on the side of the building that led up to Jax’s second-floor flat.

  Long snakes of fog swirled through the air, alternately hiding and exposing the moon. A damp breeze riffled through Frank’s open jacket. Chilled, he reached in his pants pocket for the key Jax had given him when the Hardys had arrived the day before.

  Frank stood on the landing in front of the door and pushed the key into the lock. He turned it, but the key wouldn’t budge.

  Frank looked at his brother standing halfway down the stairs. “I think Jax gave us the wrong key,” he told Joe. “This one won’t—”

  Wham! Frank couldn’t finish his sentence before the wind was knocked out of him. The door opened behind him and slammed hard into his back.

  He stumbled to one knee, then felt himself being pulled up from behind. He heard Joe call his name, but the voice sounded so far away. The last thing he saw before he blacked out was the shocked look on Joe’s face.

  3 Off with His Head

  * * *

  Joe had just a few seconds to brace himself before his brother’s body sailed into him. He stood his groun
d long enough to maintain some control over their inevitable fall. Then Frank’s head butted into him and the two tumbled back down the steps.

  “What happened?” Jax yelled, sprinting over to the steps.

  “Make sure Frank’s okay,” Joe ordered, scrambling to his feet. “Then call the police,” he called back as he raced along the walk to the lane. “Someone was in your house.”

  When Joe got to the lane, he stopped for a minute. There was no one in sight in either direction. He strained to hear through the thick, hovering fog. He thought he heard the clicking of footsteps in the distance toward the right. The Underground! he thought. Of course!

  Joe raced the four blocks to the Underground station. At each intersection he paused for a moment, listening for footsteps or the whirring of bicycle wheels or a vehicle motor. There was nothing.

  He clambered down the five flights to the Underground in record time. There were a few people waiting for the train, but he saw no one familiar. He didn’t recognize any of the people waiting as the person who slammed out of Jax’s flat and pushed Frank down the stairs. Of course, he hadn’t really seen the figure—but no one in the station looked at all suspicious. He decided to hang around there for a few minutes, though, to see if the person showed up.

  A peculiar loud noise interrupted the familiar sound of subway trains coming and going. Joe looked to his left and saw a strange-looking yellow car moving by itself about two miles an hour along the track. It had no windows or doors. “What kind of car is that?” he asked an Underground security guard who was also watching it.

  “It’s our new tunnel cleaning train,” the guard answered, raising his voice as the car passed by. “We’re trying it out. It takes in about two million pounds of trash and garbage a day.”

  “What’s the most unusual thing it ever picked up?” Joe asked.

  “I never saw it myself, but I hear we got a mattress once,” the guard said, shrugging. “But mostly, lots of umbrellas, cell phones, garbage, and clothing.”

  Joe waited and watched the platform for a few more minutes, then decided to return to the flat. All the way back, he kept his senses alert, watching and listening for a sign that the intruder was still nearby.

  • • •

  While Joe was tracking the intruder, Frank and Jax checked out the flat. At first Frank felt a little woozy from his slamdunk to the bottom of the stairs. But he grew stronger with every step. Careful not to disturb any possible evidence, he led Jax through the living quarters and then into the medical suite.

  When they got to Jax’s medical lab, Frank stopped. “Where do you keep your invention—the Molar Mike?” he asked.

  “It’s in my medical office,” Jax answered.

  Jax started toward the office. As Frank followed, he noticed something glimmering on the floor. “Just a minute,” he called out. He walked over and crouched near where he’d seen the glow. A piece of gray metal lay on the floor.

  “It’s shaped like part of a leaf,” Jax observed, crouching down with Frank.

  Frank reached for a tissue off the lab counter. Then he used it like a glove to turn the piece of metal over. “There’s part of a hinge on one end,” he said. “It might be half of a clasp. Have you ever seen this before?”

  “Never,” Jax said.

  “Do you have a camera in here?” Frank asked.

  “Sure,” Jax said. “It’s one of those instant ones.” He went to a closet, got the camera, and brought it over.

  “Perfect,” Frank said. He took one shot of the front of the pewter fragment, and another of the back. Then he folded the tissue over the metal and slipped the package into an envelope.

  While Frank took the pictures, Jax went into his office. “The Molar Mike’s still there,” he reported, quickly returning to the lab.

  Frank heard the police car, and he and Jax went to the door. Joe arrived at the same time.

  “You okay?” Joe asked his brother. “We took quite a roll out there.”

  “I don’t even remember it,” Frank said. “I got slammed from behind, and then I blacked out, I guess. What happened exactly? Someone was inside the flat?”

  “Until you started to open the door,” Joe said, nodding.

  “Right,” Frank said. He thought back to the moment at the top of the steps. “Now I remember. I tried to turn the key, but it wouldn’t budge.”

  “The person inside was probably jamming the lock,” Joe pointed out. “Then he—or she—came barreling out, knocked into you, Frank, and shoved you down the stairs into me. We both ended up on the ground. The intruder jumped over the stair railing and ran off. I took off after him but lost the person’s trail in the Underground.”

  “Can you describe the person any better?” the policeman asked, introducing himself as Officer Somerset.

  “Well, I didn’t get a really good look,” Joe said. “I think it was a man—but it could have been a woman, I guess. Pretty athletic. He dropped from the landing over the stairway, and took right off. Outran me for several blocks.”

  “How about clothing?” the officer prompted.

  “Dark pants and jacket, black cap with a little brim on the front . . . I couldn’t see any hair.” Joe stopped for a moment to think back. “Medium build,” he continued, “a few inches less than six feet tall, maybe.”

  “This person didn’t speak?” the policeman asked.

  “No,” Joe said, shaking his head. “Have you had a chance to look around?” he asked Jax. “Is anything missing?”

  “Not that I’ve discovered,” Jax said.

  “I found something,” Frank said. He reached inside the envelope, pulled out the lumpy piece of tissue, and peeled back the ends of the paper to reveal the small piece of pewter.

  “It could be a piece of jewelry or an ornament of some kind,” the policeman suggested. Frank refolded the package and put it back in the envelope. Then he handed it to the officer.

  Frank, Joe, Jax, and the policeman made another quick tour of the flat but found nothing else. “Let me know if you discover anything missing or find anything suspicious,” the policeman told Jax, handing him a card with a telephone number.

  After the officer left, the Hardys helped Jax make one more security check around the second floor. They checked all door and window locks.

  When the Hardys finally hit the beds in Jax’s guest room, it was two o’clock in the morning. Frank was still wired from the day’s excitement. “Looks like this is going to be a working vacation,” he said to Joe.

  “Are you talking about the fire at the Tower or the break-in here?” Joe asked.

  “The break-in,” Frank said. “It looks like the fire could’ve been an accident. I’m not sure why anyone would burn the exhibit. But I can see why someone might rob Jax, can’t you?”

  “You’re talking about the Molar Mike, right?” Joe guessed.

  “You got it,” Frank answered. “That thing’s rigged so people can get messages from a computer or a cell phone. It opens up all sorts of possibilities.”

  “Uh huh,” Joe agreed. “For good and bad. If someone can program a computer to communicate with a tooth receiver—”

  “Someone else can hack in and change the program,” Frank said, finishing his brother’s sentence.

  “Exactly.”

  “That pewter piece might help us,” Frank pointed out. “I took a photo of it before the policeman got here.”

  Joe heard the rhythmic breathing that told him his brother was falling asleep.

  Joe turned over and tried to get his mind to shut down. As he finally felt sleep coming on, a peculiar sound reached his ears.

  Joe fought back the drowsiness and turned on his back. Skrrrrt. Skrrrrt. The odd sound drifted through the air again. It’s like a scraping noise, Joe thought. And it’s coming from up there. He looked at the ceiling. When he heard the sound again, he reached over and punched Frank’s bed.

  “Wake up,” he whispered. “Frank! Wake up.”

  “Mmmmmmm, this better be
good. What’s up?”

  “Listen,” Joe whispered.

  Frank sat up and shook his head.

  The Hardys sat still. Joe strained to hear the sound again, but there was nothing. Then, as he turned to swing his legs out from under the blankets, he heard a thump on the ceiling.

  “Whoa,” Frank said. “There’s something up on the third floor.”

  “I heard a scraping sound earlier,” Joe said, his voice low. He pulled sneakers on as he talked. “There’s definitely something moving around up there.”

  “That’s supposed to be an unoccupied flat,” Frank reminded his brother. “Jax told us that he and the other shopkeeper in this building use it for storage since there’s no one living there. Maybe it’s the jeweler, checking some of his stuff.”

  “At this hour?” Joe wondered. “Maybe. If it’s not him, though, who—or what—could it be?” Joe asked.

  “Could be just a rat or a mouse,” Frank pointed out. “Or a bird that got trapped in there. Let’s check it out.”

  The Hardys grabbed flashlights, left Jax’s living quarters, and quietly moved into the medical suite. They walked through the reception area and into the hallway that led to the examination rooms. At the end of the hall was the lab and the door leading to the stairway up to the third floor.

  They had to move slowly. The old building had creaky floorboards and stairs. They took each step very carefully, so as not to make any noise.

  Finally they reached the top floor. It was very dark, but they could tell they were in a hallway. Frank turned on his penlight and aimed the beam at the wooden floor. He waited a minute but didn’t hear anything, so he cautiously moved the light around the hall.

  In the shadows he could see that at the end of the short hall stood a wooden door with a dark, frosted glass windowpane in the top half.

  “There’s no light in there,” Frank whispered. “So it’s probably not the jeweler.”

  Frank and Joe stepped silently down the hall toward the door. As they got closer Frank lowered his light so that it shone only on the floor. The beam reflected off the dusty floor back up to his face, causing an eerie light effect.