Mystery of the Flying Express Page 3

  “Just in time,” Frank gasped as he sat down, exhausted.

  Spencer Given pushed through the knot of gawking passengers. His face showed the familiar tinge of purple that the boys had noticed the day he had come to the Hardys’ house.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” he fumed. “You might have damaged my boat!”

  “Mr. Given,” Frank protested, “your boat might have damaged me! It was touch-and-go down there!”

  “Is this any time for joking? How’s the foil and the propeller?” Given asked. Told that they were in good working condition, he stalked back to the bridge.

  “Real huff he’s in,” Joe remarked.

  “I guess he has a right to be,” Frank said in a low voice. “A detective should know better than to go up on a catwalk alone when he suspects there’s a saboteur on the prowl. We’re here to prevent trouble not to invite it.”

  He stood up shakily as the engine sent vibrations along the metal deck. “By the way, where’s the girl who gave the alarm? I’d like to tell her how grateful I am.”

  They inquired among the passengers, but no one had noticed the girl.

  “Was she pretty?” Callie asked, sounding a trifle jealous.

  “I didn’t have time to notice,” Frank replied.

  The crowd dispersed slowly and the young detectives stepped down into the rear cabin.

  By now the Flying Express had picked up speed again. The passengers were relieved that the man overboard had been rescued so quickly.

  But they were greatly disturbed by the incident. Complaints and criticism flew back and forth. Would they get to Cape Cutlass on time? No one knew. Would they get there at all?

  The hydrofoil passed dozens of small craft sailing the bay or riding at anchor. The appearance of the big boat caused a sensation. Boys and girls cheered. Women waved gaily colored handkerchiefs. But quite a few skippers shook their fists and glared as the Flying Express flashed by.

  Spencer Given came up behind the Hardys while they were viewing the spectacle. “There!” he erupted violently. “See those fellows on that launch shaking their fists at us? That’s the kind of thing I have to expect. Stay on guard! This trip’s not over by a long shot! We can’t trust anybody who navigates anything on Barmet Bay!”

  “What about anybody who flies over Barmet Bay?” Joe pointed at a plane overhead. “That guy in the sky is definitely playing tag. He’s been following us right down the bay, sticking to us like a guided missile homing in on target.”

  “Wonder what’s he up to?” Frank asked.

  The pilot provided the answer. Lining his plane up, with the hydrofoil about a mile astern, he gave it the gun, and swooped down.

  “That plane’s going to crash into us!” someone shouted in terror. Panic broke out. There was a headlong dash for the exit.

  With jaws clenched Frank and Joe waited for the impact, holding on firmly to Callie and Iola.

  “Oh, Joe, I’m so scared!” Iola shuddered.

  At the last possible moment the pilot leveled out. The plane roared over the hydrofoil from stern to bow, coming so close that the sounds of its engines were deafening.

  “No markings!” Joe registered the fact instantaneously. “They must be covered with tape, otherwise they’d be clearly visible at the altitude that fellow flies!”

  Frank nudged him and pointed to the bottom of the fuselage where a heavy wooden log was fastened with clamps just behind the wheels. The next second the clamps opened and the log plummeted into the sea directly in front of the speeding hydrofoill

  The skipper of the Flying Express twisted the wheel and swung his craft sharply to one side. Some passengers were knocked down; others slid off the seats.

  The big boat shuddered as it turned, but the pilot pulled her bow away from the log. It grazed and bumped the foils on one side, then disappeared astern.

  “Quick thinking by the fellow in the wheelhouse!” Frank exclaimed. “If we’d hit that log, the hull might have been staved!”

  “There goes the plane! No hope of identifying him now!” Joe said. “Well, I’d better let Dad know about this incident. I can contact him on Shark Island through the ship’s radiotelephone.”

  Mr. Hardy answered the call. Joe related Frank’s near accident and the plane episode to his father, who agreed that the whole affair was becoming dangerous. He advised the boys to be extremely alert and not to take any chances.

  “There are dozens of planes of that make at the airfields near Bayport,” Fenton Hardy pointed out. “On the other hand, it could have been flown in from some place else just for this job.”

  “That’s right,” Joe agreed. “The pilot might be a lone wolf with a contract to knock off the Flying Express.”

  “If so, that makes it all the worse. It means that the ringleader will stop at nothing. You’d better warn Given. Stay on guard and keep in touch!”

  Joe reported the conversation to his brother.

  “Mr. Given can expect trouble,” Frank said. “Big trouble. And I don’t need Chet’s star charts to make that prophesy!”

  Joe nodded. “Let’s go talk to our client.”

  They found Given in the rear cabin. He complained that he would be ruined financially if the Flying Express suffered any more delays.

  “Trouble!” he snorted derisively. “Of course I’ve got trouble! But there might be less of it if you two would show me some real detective work. And don’t forget I have a return trip this evening! I expect you to do better on the way back to Bayport than you’ve done since we left it!”

  “We’ll be on the alert, Mr. Given,” Frank assured him. “You can depend on it.”

  As the Hardys walked up the narrow steps to the apparently deserted stern deck, Joe said soberly, “We’ll have to come up with something double-quick to show Given he didn’t make a mistake by hiring us. But what?”

  “Like stopping a fight!” Frank exclaimed. “Look!”

  Near the stern railing two females were fighting like cats.

  “Wow!” Joe exclaimed. “Rather unladylike ! Let’s break it up before one of them loses her hair! ..

  The two were wrestling along the rail, kicking and punching wildly. One was a blonde in a dark-green dress. The other was a rather heavy-set brunette in a light-blue dress torn in several places.

  Suddenly the brunette struck a blow with her fist straight from the shoulder. The blonde took the full force of the punch, reeled backward, hit the rail, and flipped over into the water.

  Frank and Joe grabbed her assailant. The torn dress shredded in their grasp. The black hair came loose and fell to the deck. The Hardys gaped.

  Standing before them, blowing and wheezing, and nursing a skinned knuckle, stood Chet Morton!

  CHAPTER V

  The Mysterious Artist

  CHET had a pained expression on his usually beaming countenance. He puffed like a porpoise, his torn dress revealing a checkered shirt and blue jeans. Between gasps he explained that he had come aboard the Flying Express in disguise to do some sleuthing of his own.

  “But you were fighting with a lady, Chet,” Joe protested indignantly.

  “Lady! Are you kidding? That’s the man we spotted coming out of the phone booth in Bayport. He wore a maroon dress before!”

  “Ouch!” Joe exclaimed. “What numskulls we’ve been! Better start a rescue operation pronto!”

  “Save your energy,” Frank said. “It’s too late.” He pointed to the man in the water, who had no intention of being picked up by the hydrofoil. While his blond wig drifted away on the tide, he ripped off his dress and with vigorous strokes swam rapidly away from the hydrofoil.

  “Expert at the Australian crawl,” Frank commented. “But he’ll have a problem making it from this distance.”

  “He won’t have to,” Joe said. “Look!”

  A speedboat came racing over the wave tops. Its driver curved around in a circle of foaming white water and threw out a line. The swimmer climbed in and the boat made for shore.

>   The boys watched glumly.

  “That boat must have been tailing us all along,” Frank observed. “Maybe the skipper was watching the fight through binoculars.”

  “How did you latch on to our ‘girl friend,’ Chet?” Joe wanted to know.

  “I drove into town this morning to get a prescription for my mother. Blondie was in the drugstore, asking for motion-sickness pills in her lovely deep voice. She mentioned the hydrofoil. So I thought it might be fun to tail the disguise in disguise.”

  Joe laughed. “Considering how little time you had, you did a good job on your outfit.”

  “I borrowed one of my mother’s dresses and Iola’s wig. They don’t know it, though.”

  “Wait till your sister finds out. She won’t like this!”

  Frank picked up the disheveled hairpiece and handed it to Chet, who stuffed it inside his shirt. Then he pulled off the tatters of his mother’s dress and deposited the bundle of rags in the sea.

  “We thought you had missed the boat,” Frank said as the dress disappeared in the wake.

  “No. As a matter of fact, I got here early. Spotted Blondie on board and tailed her. I lost her once, briefly, and then found her again leaving the stern in a hurry. I looked down and saw you riding the foil, Frank! So I yelled for help.”

  Frank whistled. “And Callie wanted to know if my female rescuer was pretty!”

  The boys laughed.

  “Let’s go get some chow,” Chet suggested. “That sea air and this nerve-racking detective work gave me an appetite!”

  They met Iola and Callie in the lounge. While they were munching on sandwiches they had brought along, Chet explained his private sleuthing to the girls, leaving out the part of the disguise, however.

  “Hey,” Joe said after a while, “we’re losing speed!”

  The motors of the Flying Express diminished to a low purr and the hull sank gradually until it hit the water, moving forward in the manner of an ordinary boat.

  Through the loudspeaker boomed the voice of the pilot: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to dock at Providence! Watch your step going ashore.”

  The Hardys and their friends filed onto the dock, and walked up into the quaint town with its gray-shingled houses. Souvenir shops and seafood restaurants lined the main street. Tourists milled around and mingled with the denizens of the Cape Cutlass artists’ colony—good-looking girls in slacks with wind-blown hair and suntanned men wearing beards and sandals.

  Callie and Iola were entranced by the artcraft shops. They dragged the boys into one after the other until Chet protested, “This hike is too much for me. You girls appear to be in training. Suppose you go it alone!”

  Frank and Joe agreed. They were standing in front of a place called the Decor Shop, which specialized in feminine attire. Knickknacks filled the display window, along with carved driftwood and mannequins in colorful swimsuits, beach-wear, and casual summer dresses.

  “Okay, fellows.” Iola said. “You disappear for a couple of hours while we look around.”

  “We’ll meet you later at the Pizza Palace down the street,” Callie added.

  The boys moved off as the girls vanished into the Decor Shop.

  “What shall we do now?” Joe asked.

  Chet glanced at his watch. “I’m just about due at the Starfish Marina. How about coming with me? I’ll introduce you to my new boss.”

  The owner of the marina was A1 Hinkley, a typical seafaring type, tanned from years of exposure to wind and salt air, crinkle-eyed from hours of gazing at distant horizons from ships beyond sight of land. He gave the Hardys a friendly welcome, and said that Chet’s job would be that of an all-around assistant.

  The youth would check the boats as they were hired, keep them tanked up with gas, rent fishing rods and nets, and service the skippers who moored there.

  “Quite a responsible position,” Chet boasted to his friends. “Hardly a sailor will be able to make it out into the bay without my expertise!”

  A1 Hinkley corrected him mildly. “Not quite, Chet. We have strong competition. Still, I do run a profitable business here, and I want to stay in business. So be careful about counting the boats every day. I can’t afford to lose any.”

  Frank and Joe strolled around the Starfish Marina and admired the boats at anchor.

  Joe noticed a man about fifty yards away. He sat at an easel, wielding a brush. But there was something odd about him. Each time a person walked close enough to see his painting he quickly put a blank canvas over it.

  “Frank, look at that guy. Wonder why he’s so secretive?” Joe asked.

  Frank observed the artist for a while and shrugged. “Maybe he’s shy.”

  “I’m going to take a stroll and check out his masterpiece if I can,” Joe said.

  When he approached, the man hurriedly picked up his blank canvas, placed it over the painting on the easel, and gave Joe an angry glare. Baffled, Joe walked back to the Starfish Marina.

  “I know artists are supposed to be sensitive,” he told his brother, “but this guy is a little too jumpy to be for real. I vote that we go all-out to see what his art work looks like.”

  Borrowing a pair of high-powered binoculars from Chet, who was now in charge of the marina, the Hardys found a vantage point behind a pile of fish nets, from where they had a clear view of the easel.

  Joe focused on the painting, studied it, and handed the glasses to his brother. Frank peered through them.

  “Why, it’s a detailed drawing of the marina!” he exclaimed in astonishment. “From the jetty to the boats at anchor!”

  “It’s not a painting, it’s a layout. And he’s trying to conceal it,” Joe summed it up. “Fishy?”

  “Fishy. Let’s talk to him.”

  Just then the man folded his easel, jammed it under his arm with his canvasses, jumped from the dock into a speedboat tied up there, and roared off.

  “Too late!” Joe grumbled.

  “It’s a detailed drawing of the marina!”. Frank exclaimed

  They went back to the boathouse. Chet listened to their story about the mysterious stranger, and promised to keep an eye on him if he should return to the area.

  “Incidentally,” Chet went on, “Mr. Hinkley is an interesting character. He’s a Lion.”

  “So what? Dad’s a Rotarian,” Joe said.

  “That’s not what I mean. Mr. Hinkley was born under the sign of Leo. Trouble is, that makes him fire!”

  Joe frowned. “Quit your doubletalk, Chet. Is that some more astrological lore?”

  Chet stated authoritatively. “Each sign of the Zodiac is either earth, air, fire, or water. Mr. Hinkley is fire because he’s Leonine. As a Cancerian, I’m water. Not a good combination! Water goes better with earth. Now if only he were earth! Between us we’d be growing a bumper crop of—”

  “Grass!” Joe interjected.

  “No siree, fat green dollar bills. One of us was born at the wrong time.” Chet sighed mournfully. “Well, see you later.”

  He went off to take care of a customer, and the Hardys walked back into town for their appointed meeting with the girls. But Callie and Iola were not in the Pizza Palace.

  “They must still be on their shopping spree,” Frank complained. “Let’s go back where we left them!”

  The Decor Shop was closed when they got there.

  “What now?” Joe inquired irritably. “Do we have to look all over Cape Cutlass for them?”

  Frank peered through the window. Suddenly he started as if he could not believe his eyes. “The girls are inside!” he cried. “I can see them, but something’s wrong! They’re sitting on stools with their heads on a display case! I’d swear they’re unconscious!”

  The boys banged on the door and shouted. But the only response was the echo of their own voices. The figures did not move.

  Thoroughly alarmed, Frank told Joe, “You stay here and do what you can! I’m going for the police.”

  He ran down the street, through the crowds that had dwind
led with the closing of the shops. Music drifted out of the Pizza Palace. People were turning off the sidewalks into the restaurants for dinner.

  At the end of the avenue Frank caught sight of a blue uniform. He ran to the policeman. “Officer, am I glad to see you!” he burst out. Quickly he explained what had happened—how the girls had failed to keep their rendezvous after shopping and how they were now locked in the Decor Shop.

  “We’ll see about this!” the policeman said, leading the way up the street on the run.

  When they joined Joe at the Decor Shop, the police officer forced the door open.

  The burglar alarm went off with a terrific racket, bringing a crowd of passers-by to the scene. They craned their necks for a view of the interior. More policemen came in a patrol car and cor doned off the area.

  The Hardys took no notice of the turmoil. They hastened over to the motionless figures on the floor and halted dumbfounded.

  They were mannequins—dummies wearing Callie’s and Iola’s jackets!

  CHAPTER VI

  Collision Course!

  FRANK and Joe scurried through the Decor Shop in search of Callie and Iola. Frank peered under the counters, opened closets, and fingered his way along rows of dresses hanging on the racks. Joe took the office first, and then went into the storeroom, where he rummaged through crates and barrels.

  Converging in the middle of the store once again, they shook their heads in distress. The policeman had been inspecting the doors and windows. There was no indication of forced entry.

  “Hank,” the officer called to one of the men from the patrol car, “let’s get Mrs. Lane down here. She owns the place.”

  “Roger.” Hank got into his car and drove off. About fifteen minutes later he was back with a gray-haired, middle-aged lady. She gasped in amazement when she saw her mannequins in Callie’s and Iola’s jackets.

  “Those dummies were in the window when I went home,” she insisted. “I can’t imagine why anyone would set up a fake scene like that.... The two girls? ... No, I don’t remember seeing them. But then I see so many girls during the day. I do hope nothing has happened to them!”