The Masked Monkey Page 2

  “We’re involved in a missing-person case,” Joe explained. “Graham Retson lived at Whisperwood near Granite City with his parents. He’s disappeared under mysterious circumstances.”

  “Granite City!” Miss Hardy sniffed. “That’s a hundred miles from here. You’ll burn a lot of gas commuting back and forth!”

  “Not necessarily,” Joe replied. “Mr. Retson offered to put us up at Whisperwood over his stable while we’re hunting for clues. Besides, there might not be a criminal involved at all.”

  Gertrude Hardy clucked like a wet hen. “Stable indeed! Mr. Retson should have offered you better lodgings. One of you might get kicked by a horse.”

  Frank and Joe soothed their aunt by assuring her there were no horses at Whisperwood to do any kicking.

  “Well, I imagine you’ll find some kind of danger there,” Aunt Gertrude said. “So be careful.” With this parting shot, she flounced out of the room.

  Frank and Joe mulled over the strange disappearance of Graham Retson and the warning note. They decided to accept the industrialist’s offer and go to Whisperwood the next day.

  In the morning Frank and Joe were having breakfast with their mother and Aunt Gertrude when a series of rackety explosions erupted in the street.

  “That’s Chet’s jalopy,” Laura Hardy said.

  The doorbell rang and Frank let their friend in. He was puffing with excitement as he entered the dining room.

  “Morning, Mrs. Hardy, Aunt Gertrude,” he said. When he saw the food on the table, he halted in delight, rubbed his belt buckle, and glanced significantly at the women.

  “Chester Morton, there’s no mystery about what you want,” said Gertrude Hardy. “Can I tempt you with some pancakes?”

  “Please do,” replied Chet, who loved nothing better than eating.

  Joe laughed. “After all, our buddy’s only had one breakfast this morning. His inner man is telling him it’s time for an encore.”

  Chet sat down and consumed a stack of pancakes at an alarming rate. He also drank two glasses of milk. Then he leaned back with a pleased expression. “That was just great,” he said as the women cleared the table. “Thanks very much.”

  “Okay,” Joe said. “What’s the big deal you mentioned on the phone yesterday?”

  Chet rolled his eyes. “You guys ever hear of golf ball scavenging?”

  “Negative,” Frank said. “What is it? A new hobby?”

  “No, a get-rich-quick scheme. Duffers keep dunking golf balls in water hazards on most of the golf courses. Scavengers retrieve them and sell them. I’m a scavenger, and I’ll cut you in if you’re interested.”

  “We might be,” Frank said, “when we have the time.”

  “We’ve got to go back to Granite City this afternoon,” Joe told Chet.

  “You can’t do that!” Chet protested. “I’m counting on you. Hold everything. You’ve got this morning free, right?”

  Frank and Joe nodded.

  “Okay,” Chet went on. “That’s enough time to start operations. Let’s go.”

  The three climbed into Chet’s jalopy and drove to the farm outside of Bayport where he lived. On the way, Chet explained how golf balls were retrieved.

  “Many amateur divers and frogmen,” he said, “descend into water hazards to scour the bottom. Professionals, however, don’t go into the water. They use suction pumps and underwater vacuum cleaners.

  “About sixty million balls are recovered every year,” Chet stated, “and are resold for about fifteen million dollars.”

  Frank whistled. “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Enough to buy several golf courses,” Joe remarked.

  “Sure,” Chet said. “And I aim to get my share of the dough from the golf courses around Bayport.”

  At the Morton farm the three transferred to a small truck. In the back was a very large box with a gasoline engine attached. Lines of small holes showed on one side, and a long hose dangled from one corner.

  “Dad’s letting me use his pickup,” Chet said. “I spent a week building the retriever. Come on. Let’s go to the nearest course and see how my suction pump works.”

  When they arrived at the Bayport links, Chet explained his gadget to the club’s golf pro. He was willing to let the boys have a try at the water hazard, providing they gave him half the golf balls they recovered.

  The trio then drove to a pond at the third hole. Chet turned on the engine, pushed the nozzle of the hose down through the water, and began to vacuum the bottom.

  A mixture of mud and water, sucked through the hose into the container, spewed out through the side holes and back into the pond. Loud rattling came from inside.

  “Those are the golf balls!” Chet exulted. “They’re too big to go through the holes, so they’re banging against the sides. We’ve struck it rich!”

  “The pump works like a charm,” Joe admitted. “Chet, for once you’ve come up with something practical.”

  About an hour later the pro rode up in a golf cart. He told them the recovery operation would have to wait until early evening because some golfers were impatient to play the third hole.

  Chet wound up the hose and opened a door at the top of the container. Frank and Joe peered in. Several hundred golf balls—dirty and muddy from their stay in the pond, but otherwise in good condition—were piled up inside.

  “We can sell these for a good profit,” Chet said, “when we’ve cleaned them.” After turning over half of the take to the golf pro, the boys tossed the rest into the back of the pickup to dry off, and drove to Bayport.

  As they went through the main intersection, a wild uproar broke out behind them. Horns blew. People shouted.

  “What’s wrong?” Chet muttered. “I didn’t go through a stoplight!”

  Joe, looking back, cried out, “We’re paving the avenue with golf balls! The tailgate’s open. We’re losing them!”

  Their cargo was streaming out of the pickup into the crossing. Pedestrians went into frantic contortions as the golf balls rolled under their feet. Cars jolted to a halt. Traffic was snarled in four directions.

  Chet pulled over to the curb. “We’re in for it now,” he groaned.

  “You can say that again,” Frank muttered. “Here comes the traffic cop.”

  “And he’s not too happy about running the obstacle course we just set up,” Joe added.

  “Everybody out!” the officer commanded the three youths. “Start picking them up!”

  Frank, Joe, and Chet meekly climbed out of the truck and began gathering the golf balls. A group of youngsters pitched in for the fun of it. When the balls were back in the truck, Chet double-checked the tailgate before driving off.

  “Lucky I didn’t get a ticket,” he sighed.

  “And fortunately nobody got hurt,” Frank said.

  They arrived at the Hardy house to find their pals Phil Cohen and Tony Prito waiting for them. Phil was the sensitive, studious type, but could be counted on when Frank and Joe were on a dangerous mission.

  Olive-skinned Tony, the son of a Bayport contractor, was another friend who frequently helped the Hardys solve mysteries.

  The two were told about Chet’s new business. They agreed to accompany him to the golf course that evening to complete the ball scavenging operation.

  Frank and Joe drove to Whisperwood. They had dinner in a roadside restaurant. When they reached the estate, Retson showed them to his guesthouse. From a distance came a constant hissing sound.

  “It’s the waterfall,” Retson explained. “It seems to be whispering all the time. That’s why we called our home Whisperwood.”

  “Did your son ever come to the guesthouse?” Frank inquired.

  “Yes, occasionally. You see, Harris used the place while a wing of the mansion was being renovated. Graham liked him and visited him sometimes. Now the work on the house is done and Harris is back in his own quarters.”

  Joe described the incident of the note in his jacket pocket. “We’d like to talk to the butl
er about it,” he said.

  “Of course!” Retson replied. “Harris will have to answer to me if he’s the one responsible.”

  Their host led the way back to the mansion, where they confronted the butler.

  Joe handed the note to him. Harris became pale as he scrutinized the message. His eyes bulged. His breath came in gasps. He folded the note and handed it back. “Where did you find this?” he asked.

  “In my jacket pocket, after you fixed it yesterday,” Joe said.

  Harris frowned. “If you think I wrote this, you are mistaken,” he said.

  “Can you prove that, Harris?” Retson asked harshly.

  “Yes, indeed, sir. As you know, I make out the shopping list for the week. Here is the one I just wrote.” Harris drew a sheet of paper from his pocket. “Compare my handwriting with the note Mr. Hardy found in his coat.”

  Joe placed the two pieces of paper side by side. Frank looked on. The two scrawls obviously did not match!

  “It seems someone else wrote the warning,” Joe mused.

  “But who?” Frank replied. “Who else lives in this house?”

  “Jackson, the gardener,” Retson said. “His wife is our cook. And of course there’s Mrs. Retson. My wife has had a nervous breakdown. She rarely leaves her room in the east wing. A nurse is on duty with her constantly. You can talk to Miss Hopkins if you want to. But don’t bother Mrs. Retson.”

  “We’ll have to check out the whole staff,” Frank said.

  “Well, get on with the investigation first thing in the morning,” Retson urged. “My son may have been kidnapped. Criminals may be holding him prisoner right now!”

  Frank and Joe walked back to the guesthouse. “We’re fresh out of clues,” Joe commented.

  “Maybe we’ll come up with a theory after a little shut-eye,” Frank said.

  “That is, if we can get any shut-eye. Whisperwood gives me the willies. It’s real spooky back here.”

  A high wind blew mournfully through the pines, and clouds scudded across the face of the moon. Granite Rock lay in deep shadows except for outcroppings of stone that resembled gigantic human figures trying to escape over the crest.

  Despite the uncanny atmosphere, the boys fell into a deep sleep. They were awakened by a loud splintering sound in the middle of the night. A missile had crashed through the picture window into their room!

  CHAPTER III

  Careless Talk

  “FRANK! What on earth was that?” Joe asked, fumbling for the light switch.

  Frank had already jumped out of bed to the broken window. Bright moonlight gave him a clear view of the grounds. “No sign of the thrower,” he reported. “Whoever it was ducked out of sight.”

  Joe turned on the small lamp next to his bed and the two searched around the room for the missile.

  Joe reached under his bed. “Look,” he said. “It’s a golf ball!”

  “I suppose it’s a practical joke,” Frank said. “But I don’t think it’s very funny.”

  “Whom do we know who might toss a golf ball in our direction?” Joe asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Chet Morton, that’s who! Let’s collar him if we can.”

  After dressing quickly, they hurried down the stairs and out the door. Joe circled the guesthouse. Frank pushed through the bushes searching for a figure crouching behind them.

  “When I spot an oversize shadow, that’ll be our fun-loving pal,” he said to himself.

  Frank searched the bushes but found no one. Joe reported failure too. Finally they returned to their room and slept soundly the rest of the night.

  Early the next morning there was a knock on the door. Frank opened it. There stood Chet!

  “Do come in,” Frank invited. “We’ve been looking for you.”

  “Why?”

  “What were you doing here last night?” Joe asked.

  “What makes you think I was here?”

  “This!” Joe showed him the golf ball. “It came through that window.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Chet protested. “I was home in Bayport!”

  “You’re here now,” Frank put in.

  “Sure. But I just arrived. I’m after golf ball scavenging contracts around Granite City. I just dropped by to see you two before making the rounds.”

  Frank shook his head. “You made a wonderful suspect. Now we’re back where we started.”

  “Let me have a look at that ball,” Chet said. He turned it over between his fingers. “Condor brand,” he noted.

  “Think you could find out where it came from?” Joe queried.

  “Condors are popular,” Chet said with an air of authority. “Even an expert such as myself might have trouble identifying a single ball. However, I’ll ask around and see if any Granite City club sells Condors.”

  “How soon will you let us know?” Frank said.

  “I’ll stop by this evening and give you the info.”

  Chet drove off to the golf courses. Frank and Joe went to the Whisperwood mansion for breakfast, and told their host about the golf ball and the broken window at the guesthouse.

  Retson also was puzzled, but finally he said, “I still suspect Harris.”

  “Why are you so down on your butler?” Frank inquired.

  “Well, Graham spent a lot of time with Harris,” Retson replied.

  “More than with you?” Joe asked.

  “Much more. I’d rather have seen the boy playing football. But no. He preferred writing verse. Harris said he liked the poetry, which could have been a come-on. He may well be part of a plot against my son.”

  The Hardys suggested checking the handwriting of the rest of the staff before accusing the butler. They set about gathering samples. Joe went to the kitchen, engaged the cook in conversation and persuaded her to write down a recipe for his mother.

  Frank, buttonholing the gardener for a talk about the roses, managed to pocket a shopping list for seeds. Retson himself produced a memo written for Mrs. Retson by Miss Hopkins, the nurse.

  None of the samples of handwriting resembled that in the warning note found in Joe’s jacket!

  Frank looked disappointed. “We’ve learned what everybody’s scrawl looks like, but that doesn’t give us a lead.”

  “I still suspect Harris,” Retson insisted.

  “He could have had a confederate,” Joe mused. “Maybe we should give him a lie detector test.”

  “I’ll get him up here,” Retson said. He pressed a button that rang a bell in the servants’ quarters. The butler appeared.

  Frank asked him, “Harris, you still claim to be innocent of that note, don’t you?”

  “Of course, Mr. Hardy. I am innocent.”

  “Would you be willing to take a lie detector test to prove it?”

  The butler blanched, but quickly regained control of himself. “Whenever you wish.”

  Joe offered to go to Granite City Police Headquarters and ask for a loan of a polygraph, the kind used in testing the veracity of suspects. He was back within the hour carrying a portable machine.

  Harris sat patiently in a chair while the instruments for measuring pulse rate and blood pressure were attached to his body.

  Frank set the graph which recorded physical reactions. Joe then directed a series of test questions at the butler. Then he said, “Harris, did you write that note I found in my jacket?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know who wrote it?”

  “No.”

  “Have you any idea where Graham is now?”

  “No.”

  Watching the graph unroll, Frank saw that the pattern of the needle across the paper remained steady as the questioning continued. Finally he said, “Harris seems to be telling the truth.”

  Retson was clearly disappointed in the results of the test. He told the butler to leave the room and warned him to remain on the premises.

  “I don’t think he’ll go anywhere,” Frank said. “He seems like a loyal employee.”

  “Somebody is disloyal!
” Retson exclaimed. “How else do you explain that note?”

  Joe said, “You have to admit, Frank, it looks like an inside job. Still, the handwriting provided no clue.”

  “Well, let’s be thorough and give all of the staff a lie detector test,” Frank said.

  The Hardys told each employee about the surreptitious warning. No one seemed overly surprised to hear about it, although they all denied any knowledge of who sent it. Also, none of them objected to submitting to the polygraph test. In each case the results were negative.

  Miss Hopkins, the nurse, said Mrs. Retson was too ill to be questioned, and the boys did not pursue the matter. They repacked the equipment in thoughtful silence. They had drawn a blank. Besides being disappointed, they were slightly annoyed by the patronizing half-smile on Retson’s face.

  “Too bad,” he said. “Now what kind of explanation can you come up with?”

  “It’ll take time to figure out,” Frank said. “But there’s an answer to everything. We’ll solve this mystery sooner or later.”

  “I trust it will be sooner,” Retson said as the Hardys left to return the polygraph. “I’m depending on your fine reputation as detectives to find my son!”

  Frank and Joe were glum as they drove alongside a golf course on their way to Granite City Police Headquarters.

  The green for the seventh hole lay close to the road, and a crawling sprinkler had come to rest near the edge of it, squirting water onto the pavement. Just as a car approached from the opposite direction, water splashed across the windshield of the Hardys’ convertible, spraying them and momentarily blinding Frank’s vision.

  Cru-unch! They sideswiped the oncoming car and came to a halt with screeching brakes.

  Frank and Joe got out, as did two men from the other vehicle. One was a muscular individual wearing a slouch hat. His companion was young, slim, and had thick blond hair.

  He managed a smile. “That was a pretty close shave,” he said. “What happened? You seemed to swerve.”

  “Water from that sprinkler hit my windshield,” Frank said.

  The four circled the cars, examining the doors and fenders. The convertible had a slight dent near the left door handle. The only damage to the other car was a scratch on the fender.