The Clue of the Broken Blade Read online

  The strangers asked no more questions. They finished eating before the Hardys, gave them polite good-bys, and left.

  Frank said, “I think they were fishing for information, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Joe said. “But I wonder why. Do you think they are some kind of criminals?”

  “I’m pretty sure of it. Did you see how they looked at each other when I told them anyone who wanted to buy a spectrograph was investigated? In the morning we had better warn the people at the Voiceprint Lab to take extra precautions against burglary.”

  “But why would criminals want a sound spectrograph?” Joe asked.

  Frank shrugged. “I don’t know. Anyway, it’s a good thing you didn’t spill the beans about Dad’s project.”

  “Right,” Joe said. “First time I’ve ever been thankful for a kick in the ankle.”

  They discussed Mr. Hardy’s catalog system. “I’m glad he put it in the Bayport Bank and Trust Company,” Frank said.

  Just then they heard the sound of someone leaving the booth on the other side of the partition. Suddenly realizing that whoever had been there had heard their conversation, the boys rose and peered over the top.

  They could only see the man’s back as he went out the door. He was broad-shouldered and thin-hipped, and wore a dark-blue suit. A black Homburg was perched on the back of his head.

  As the Hardys sank back into their seats, Frank said, “I hope he wasn’t a crook, too. We sure gave him an earful.”

  The boys were in bed by ten that night, but at three o’clock in the morning Joe suddenly sat up. He shook Frank and whispered, “Hey! I think I just heard a truck pull in behind the lab next door!”

  Frank got up at once and put his trousers on over his pajamas. In less than a minute both boys were dressed and out of the motel room. Silently they moved toward the back of the Voiceprint Laboratories.

  As they reached the corner of the building, they saw the outline of a truck. Even though it was a moonless night they could make out the figure of a man sneaking into the back entrance.

  “Come on,” Joe whispered. “Let’s get him.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t know how many are inside. If there’s a half dozen of them, they’ll clobber us.”

  “Then I’ll go for the police.”

  Frank put a hand on his brother’s arm. “Look, they’re coming out.”

  One man emerged slowly, walking out backwards and straining under a heavy load. Then a second figure came into sight. Between them they hefted a large crate.

  “Hurry,” one of them said hoarsely. “The wood’s cutting into my fingers!”

  “Shut up,” came the reply. “What about me? My back’s breaking!”

  Frank whispered, “On your mark, Joel”

  CHAPTER III

  The Legacy

  THE men set the crate down, apparently to rest before lifting it onto the truck. As they stooped to pick it up again, Frank signaled Joe and the two moved forward.

  “What are you doing here?” Frank called out.

  The men dropped the crate and whirled. One swung a fist at Frank. The other leaped toward Joe.

  Ducking, Frank drove a left, then a right into his attacker’s stomach. The man doubled over with a gasp and his hat fell to the ground.

  Meantime Joe and the other man were standing toe to toe, trading blows. In the darkness they could not see each other’s faces. The man grunted when Joe landed a hard blow on his chest. But then he caught Joe in the middle of the forehead and knocked him down.

  Frank was ready to finish off his man when he saw Joe fall. He turned to attack Joe’s opponent, whereupon his adversary hit him from behind with a rabbit punch, driving Frank to his hands and knees.

  “Let’s get out of here!” the thug shouted.

  Though dazed, Frank was aware of both truck doors being slammed shut. Then his head cleared and he looked up just as the vehicle started to pull away. The driver switched on his lights. This illuminated the rear license plate—New Jersey, FHB-548. Frank memorized it.

  As he scrambled to his feet, Joe also got up. “Are you all right?” his brother asked.

  “Okay,” Frank mumbled. “How about you?”

  “I’ll live,” Joe said, fingering a growing lump on his forehead.

  Frank went over to look at the crate the thieves had left behind. Its label showed that it contained a sound spectrograph of the same model owned by their father.

  Joe whistled. “Hey, one of those guys left his hat,” he said, picking it up.

  “Bring it along,” Frank said. “We’ll go back to the motel and call the police.”

  When they returned to their room, Joe exclaimed, “This is the same kind of hat as the one the man was wearing in the restaurant tonight!”

  Frank took the black Homburg. He examined the inside. He lifted out a hair and studied it closely. It was thick, red, and rather greasy. Taking an envelope from the writing desk, he placed the hair inside and slipped the envelope into his pocket.

  “We’ll save that for the police,” he said, picking up the phone.

  While Frank was calling, Joe examined the hat further. From inside the band he pulled out a folded newspaper clipping.

  When his brother hung up, Joe said, “Look at this, Frank!” He showed the clipping, headlined KIDNAPPER TRAPPED BY VOICEPRINT. “It tells how a guy was arrested on account of a spectrogram,” Joe went on. “He kidnapped a young boy and telephoned the father for ransom. His voice was taped by the police and later the boy was found unharmed!”

  Frank put the clue in his pocket next to the envelope. “The police will want this, too,” he commented.

  Two officers arrived in a squad car five minutes later. When the boys explained what had happened, one of them put out an all-points bulletin for the truck. Then they drove the police car behind the Voiceprint Lab and illuminated the scene with their spotlight.

  Along with the boys, they searched for further clues. The rear door had been jimmied, but the burglars had left no other marks.

  “A robbery squad officer will be over shortly,” one of the policemen told Frank. “He’ll make the investigation inside.”

  Soon a tall, leathery detective, who introduced himself as Lieutenant Howell, arrived at the scene. Frank and Joe described their encounter with the thieves, then accompanied him to their room, where they gave him the hat, the news clipping, and the strand of hair.

  “I’ve called the lab manager,” Lieutenant Howell said. “He’ll be right over. We’ll go and check the building with him.”

  They went back to the lab and met the manager at the door. He thanked the boys for their alertness and led them through the building. The alarm system had been cleverly disconnected, but nothing aside from the spectrograph had been disturbed.

  One of the policemen came in to report that a bulletin had just come over the radio about the truck. “It was reported stolen earlier in the evening,” he said, “and has just been found abandoned at the airport.”

  “Well, that’s that,” the lieutenant said gloomily. “If it hadn’t been too dark for you boys to see the faces of those men, we could have all flights checked for persons answering their descriptions.”

  He told the lab manager he would arrange for a police guard until morning, since the rear door lock was broken, then left.

  During the following week Lieutenant Howell had no news for the boys on the would-be thieves. Frank and Joe finished their course and received certificates attesting to the fact that they were qualified voiceprint operators.

  The boys’ plane landed at the Bayport airport at noon on Saturday. Chet Morton picked them up in his jalopy. It backfired as usual, sounding like a gang war in progress. When he pulled into the Hardy driveway, the uproar brought Aunt Gertrude to the front door.

  Fenton Hardy’s unmarried sister, who lived with the family, was tall and lean and had a heart as soft as a marshmallow under her decisive demeanor. She was also t
he best cook in Bayport, and that made her one of Chet’s favorite people.

  Aunt Gertrude showed how glad she was to see the boys back safely by making a flurry of dire predictions.

  “Well,” she declared as they carried their suitcases into the house, “you survived another trip in Chet’s mechanical monster, I see. You’ll all blow up in it yet, if you don’t get yourselves stabbed at that fencing school first. Or killed by robbers like those in Somerville.”

  “How’d you hear about that, Aunt Gertrude?” Frank asked.

  “The Somerville police phoned your father. He and your mother got away on their vacation, incidentally, so there will be only the three of us for lunch. Unless you’ve invited guests.”

  She looked pointedly at Chet, who sniffed the aroma of freshly made chili coming from the kitchen. He grinned. “I’m available if you’re looking for somebody to invite.”

  “Then wash up and hurry,” Aunt Gertrude commanded. “Lunch is in ten minutes.”

  Shortly before three that afternoon Frank and Joe were on their way to the Russo School of Fencing.

  “You know,” Frank said, “I’ve been thinking about the maestro’s problem. I wonder if we couldn’t give him a hand in finding the missing piece of that saber.”

  Joe grinned. “You just want to have a little vacation on the West Coast!”

  “Well, if he has any idea at all of the area where the saber was broken, it might be a good idea!”

  They parked the car and went inside. Biff, Tony, and Phil came in a few moments later.

  Russo beckoned to the Hardys while the others were changing to fencing suits. “I’ll have to leave tomorrow for Switzerland,” he announced. “Are you boys still willing to keep the school open for me?”

  “Mr. Russo,” Frank began, “I’m sure the others can handle that. How would you like my brother and me to find the Adalante?”

  “How do you expect to do that?”

  “We thought if you had any clue at all—”

  Russo shook his head. “I just don’t know. All I can tell you is there’s an old recluse named Miguel Jimenez who lives in the delta region of northern California. He is supposed to know the details of my grandfather’s duel and also where the tip end of the broken sword was found.”

  “Haven’t you asked him about it?” Frank put in.

  “He refuses to talk to me,” the fencing master said. “I don’t know why.” He scratched his head and looked thoughtfully at the boys.

  “If I paid your fare to California, perhaps you could get the old man to tell you!”

  “What’s his address?” Joe inquired.

  “I don’t know. I only met him once in Stockton. He lives near there on a houseboat.”

  After some discussion, the Hardys decided to leave for California on Monday.

  “You’ll find that my grandfather was well known in that area,” Russo said. “There’s a book in the Stockton Public Library about him. His name was Giovanni Russo, and he was one of the richest men in the delta at the time he died. He made his fortune from the extensive vineyard he owned there.”

  “Okay, maestro,” Joe said with a grin. “You just hired yourself a couple of detectives.”

  Russo smiled. “Good luck,” he said. “And now you’d better change. This will be your last lesson before I leave.”

  That evening Chet stayed for dinner at the Hardy home. Aunt Gertrude had baked rhubarb pie, which was his favorite, and he ate three pieces. Miss Hardy pretended to be worried that he would burst, but secretly she was pleased that he liked the pie so much.

  When the boys told her they were flying to California on Monday, her concern was not feigned. She imagined all kinds of dire things that could happen to them, including getting caught in an earthquake.

  Fortunately Bayport’s Chief of Police Ezra Collig stopped by after dinner and allayed her fears. The husky, keen-eyed friend of the family told her that he did not believe the doomsday prophets who kept predicting that California would slide into the ocean. “They’re the same ones who always predict the end of the world.” He chuckled. “And neither event is likely to happen in the near future.”

  Collig assured Miss Hardy that the boys were well able to take care of themselves.

  He had come by to see the sound spectrograph. The boys took him and Chet to the lab to demonstrate it. After recording all their voices on tape, they made spectrograms of them.

  “So that’s my voice!” Chet said in amazement. “Look at those funny shapes.”

  “Your voice isn’t the only thing about you that has a funny shape,” Joe needled.

  “Lay off,” Chet grumbled. “I’m still growing, that’s all.”

  On Monday morning Frank and Joe were packing when the phone rang.

  “Maybe it’s Dad,” Frank said hopefully. They had tried to reach their parents to tell them about their trip, but with no success.

  Frank scooped up the phone. It was Chief Collig.

  “Bad news,” Collig said curtly. “The Bayport Bank and Trust Company was just robbed. They got three hundred thousand dollars in cash, plus the box your father had in the storage room!”

  CHAPTER IV

  A Phony Voice

  FRANK and Joe rushed downtown to meet the chief at the bank. They found the place in an uproar. Everyone was talking at once, trying to tell what happened.

  Holding up both hands for silence, Collig said, “Take it easy. First I want to hear Mr. Dollinger’s story.”

  Plump Henry Dollinger was the bank’s vice-president. He said, “There were four bandits, all with nylon stockings over their heads. How they got in I don’t know, but they were concealed in various places inside the bank when we got to work.”

  “When was that?” Collig asked.

  “At eight-thirty. The bank doesn’t open until nine, but employees get here a half-hour early to prepare for business. One of the gang was hiding in my office closet. I was dictating a letter into my dictaphone about a quarter of nine when he stepped out, put a gun to my head, and said, ‘This is a stick-up. Make a wrong move and you’ve had it!’”

  Dollinger mopped his forehead and went on. “He made me open the vault. I’m sure he must have known the time lock was set so it could be opened at a quarter of nine.”

  “Where were the rest of the bandits hiding?” the chief asked.

  “I don’t know. When we came out of my office, they were covering the other employees with guns and making them lie face down on the floor.”

  A woman teller said they had been hiding in the bank president’s office.

  A squat, muscular man who spoke with an accent said, “That was a good place for them to hide. The president is on vacation.”

  Chief Collig peered at him. “Who are you?”

  Mr. Dollinger answered. “He is Signor Zonko, from the Ticino Bank in Bellinzona, Switzerland. He’s here on an exchange program to study United States banking methods.”

  While the Swiss and the chief were shaking hands, Joe whispered to Frank, “His accent sounds Italian to me!”

  “He’s from the Italian section of Switzerland,” Frank whispered back. “That’s where Mr. Russo is going. Ticino is Italian for Tessin.”

  Chief Collig asked Zonko what he knew about the bank robbery, but the man said he had arrived after it was all over, a few minutes past nine.

  The chief turned his attention back to the bank’s vice-president. When he asked for descriptions of the bandits, Mr. Dollinger said the man hiding in his closet had been heavy-set, about five feet eight, and a hundred and eighty pounds. He had not particularly noticed the other three men.

  The woman teller spoke up again. “One of them was tall, wide-shouldered, and had narrow hips. I noticed a wisp of red hair where the stocking was tied together over his head. It looked kind of greasy.”

  Joe blurted out, “Our eavesdropper in Somerville!”

  “Your what?” Chief Collig looked blank.

  Joe quickly explained about the man who had been s
itting behind the partition in the motel restaurant and how later that night they had found a hat left at the spectrograph burglary scene.

  “A strand of hair Frank found in the hat was red and greasy,” Joe concluded. “We turned it over to the Somerville police.”

  Chief Collig agreed that it could be the same man. Then bank employees described the other two bandits. One was tall and thin, the other a heavy-set, burly man. Frank and Joe said the description fitted the two strangers who had pumped them about the Voiceprint Identification Course. When they described the men, the chief sent an officer to put all four descriptions on the air.

  Frank now voiced a question that was uppermost in his mind. “What happened to the alarm system?” he asked.

  “It was put out of commission,” the chief replied. “Telephone lines were cut, too.”

  “I had to send one of my people out to call the police from a pay phone,” Mr. Dollinger told them.

  “Therefore,” Chief Collig went on, “the thieves had been gone from the scene a full ten minutes before we even heard about it. And apparently no one saw the car they escaped in.”

  Frank turned to the bank’s vice-president. “Mr. Dollinger, tell us about my father’s records.”

  “The box was in our storage room in the basement,” the man began. “Things like that are not kept in the vault. The basement is protected by iron bars and locked, of course.”

  A detective came over to report that there was no sign of forced entry.

  “Looks as if they had inside help,” the chief said. “Knowing how to put the burglar alarm out of commission and knowing when the lock on the vault was to be opened makes it almost certain. I’ll want a complete rundown on all your employees, Mr. Dollinger.”

  Joe said, “Why don’t we tape their voices and make voiceprints, Chief?”

  “What for, Joe?” Frank asked. “We couldn’t compare them with anything because Dad’s catalog is gone!”