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  Karen studied the marked story. "Not much, I'm afraid. As far as I know, Jillian didn't know this Emily Cornwall." She started to hand the magazine back, then stopped. "But there is one thing."

  "What?"

  "Well, this girl in the picture - Emily Cornwall, I mean. She does look incredibly like Jillian. Of course, she's a brunette, and Jillian's blond. And she doesn't look anywhere near as healthy as Jillian, but the resemblance is amazing."

  "When's the last time you and Jillian talked?"

  "Two weeks ago. I phoned to confirm the details of my visit."

  Taking the magazine back, Joe folded it under his arm. "Did she mention a big movie role that was coming her way, or maybe a nice part in a new play?"

  Frowning, Karen answered, "Yes, she did. She wasn't full of details, though. All she said was that there was a good possibility she'd soon be as rich as I was."

  "You're rich?"

  "Not me, actually, no." Karen looked down at her hands. "But my father happens to be a millionaire."

  "That's a nice sort of father to have. How was Julian planning to get rich?"

  "It was from an acting job. But, as I say, she was reluctant to talk about it."

  Joe gave Karen a skeptical look. So Jillian had a big acting job coming up - that seemed like a pretty poor time to disappear on a vacation. "Was she usually that closemouthed?" he asked.

  "No, not Jillian. This time, however, I had the impression someone had cautioned her not to talk about this particular job. Show business people can be very secretive at times - 'Don't tell anyone about this, or it might spoil the deal.' "

  Joe shook his head. This whole situation made no sense. Threats against Jed, warnings not to look for Jillian. Jillian's disappearance - which might or might not be wrapped up with a secret acting job. Karen Kirk's appearance on the scene right after her friend disappeared. And where did the magazine article in his pocket fit in? There were altogether too many questions here, and far too few answers.

  He checked his wristwatch. "I'm due to meet Frank for lunch in half an hour," he said. "If you came along, we could pool what we know."

  "Are you inviting me to lunch?"

  'Yeah, in a purely businesslike way, understand," Joe said with a wide grin.

  A quick ride on the London Underground brought them to the Bloomsbury area and the restaurant where Joe was supposed to meet Frank. A huge sign in the window read Real American-style Burgers. They grabbed a white Formica-topped table and settled in to wait for Frank. After fifteen minutes, Joe went ahead and ordered sodas and burgers for Karen and himself.

  They took nearly half an hour to arrive. And after one bite, Joe stared at the shriveled-up beef patty in his bun. "American burgers, huh?" He glanced at Karen. "Does this taste like a Connecticut burger to you? It sure doesn't taste like a Bayport burger."

  Karen put her bun down, too, giving Joe a lopsided smile. "Maybe it fools the British, but not two hungry Americans."

  "Right now I'm more worried about lost Americans." Joe looked at his watch, frowning. "Frank should have been here when we arrived. Now he's almost forty-five minutes late."

  He dug some money out of his pocket to pay for the almost-untouched burgers.

  "Something's wrong here, very wrong. I think Frank's in trouble - and I know the first place to check."

  Chapter 7

  The world was faded, woolly, and full of dust. At least, that's how it seemed to Frank Hardy as he came to. He sneezed on the dust and regretted it. Sneezing isn't smart when you're dizzy, sick, and have an awful headache.

  Frank was just getting his face out of the old carpet when he heard footsteps approaching. He struggled to his feet.

  Ian Fisher-Stone - or whoever it was - wasn't going to get away with it a second time. Catching a blurry glimpse of legs, Frank lunged into a tackle.

  "Hey!" a voice burst out.

  "Nice play, Frank," said another voice.

  Frank was down on the rug again, where he discovered he'd just tackled a young woman wearing jeans.

  His brother, Joe, stood just beyond the tangle, grinning. He helped Karen up and said to Frank, "Glad to see you're conscious. Let me introduce you to Karen Kirk."

  "Sorry about that," muttered Frank as Karen helped him up.

  Karen looked at Frank and said, "That's okay. I'm getting used to being jumped by men I've never seen before. You take after your brother in that respect." Then she asked, "What happened? When you didn't show up for lunch, your brother and I hurried over here. Why were you on the floor?"

  Frank touched his head carefully. "I was dumb," he answered. "So I got rapped on the skull because of it."

  "By Fisher-Stone?" Joe asked.

  "By a guy who wasn't Fisher-Stone but tried to convince me he was."

  Joe looked carefully at his brother. "You'd better see a doctor. Maybe at the hotel ... "

  "I'll be okay."

  "You could have a concussion," said Karen.

  "I've been hit on the head before, and this doesn't feel like a ... Hey, what's that?"

  Lying on the rug where he'd been sprawled was a crumpled piece of paper. "Looks like a railroad timetable - whoa!" Bending to pick up the paper, Frank suddenly felt woozy.

  Joe caught his wobbly brother and guided him to a chair. "Even if you don't have a concussion, sit down for a while."

  Karen gathered up the fallen timetable, straightened it out, and leafed through it. "This might mean something." She pointed to one of the station names - circled in pencil.

  Joe squinted. "Whoever bopped you noted down the train departure times for Beswick."

  "That's down in Kent, I think. About a hundred miles from London," Karen said.

  "Beswick ... Beswick," murmured Joe. He snapped his fingers, grinned, and tugged out the news magazine he'd slipped into his back pocket. "That's the town where Emily Cornwall is supposed to go - No, by now she's living there, at the Talbot estate."

  "Maybe I'm groggier than I realized." Frank gave him a look. "I don't seem to know what the heck either of you is talking about. And who is this Karen Kirk?"

  "Oh, she's the redhead - urn, the auburn-haired young woman I met last night," Joe said. "You know, the one who was walking a dog - except there was no dog."

  "Oh, sure, that's clear so far."

  "I'm a friend of Jillian Seabright's," Karen told him. "I'm looking for her, too."

  "Karen's a reporter from Connecticut. She was supposed to room with Jillian while she's over here on vacation."

  Frank rubbed his forehead. "How long was I out? You learned her entire life story, and - "

  "A good investigator asks the right questions," Joe told him. "You can get a lot of information quickly that way."

  "Fine - so now suppose you tell me who Emily Cornwall is. And why Beswick is suddenly the hottest town in England."

  "Read." Joe set the open magazine on the edge of the cluttered desk. "That's Emily Cornwall in the picture - the thin one."

  "I can read the caption." Frank glared at his brother. "So?"

  "If you bothered to keep reading ..." Joe said, pointing at another paragraph in the story. "See here? Emeralds. Heiress. Emily Cornwall seldom seen. Returns to England."

  "And?"

  "We found the magazine, with that particular story marked, in Jillian's apartment," Karen said. "This Emily Cornwall person looks quite a lot like Jillian."

  Joe looked at Frank. "Does that fact suggest to you what it suggests to me?"

  "It's a possibility," Frank said.

  "Let's cut the mumbo-jumbo," Karen said. "You think Jillian may be impersonating Emily Cornwall?"

  "I think it's worth looking into," Frank said.

  "There's the big money Jillian was hoping to make," Joe pointed out. "But I'm not sure where the man in the Rolls-Royce fits in."

  Frank rolled his eyes. "What man in the Rolls-Royce?"

  Joe ran through what he'd learned from Mrs. Farnum. "So that's the whole story. Whatever's up doesn't sound very legal."<
br />
  Karen cut in. "I know Jillian - she'd never do anything that was against the law."

  "This Emily Cornwall business is just one possibility." Frank frowned. "It might even be some kind of curve ball to throw us off - pitched by the people who kidnapped Jillian." His frown deepened. "If, of course, she was actually kidnapped."

  "I think that knock you took has put all sorts of weird ideas in your head," Joe said. "Maybe you should take the afternoon off."

  "No, I can handle it. Besides, we have an appointment at the theater this afternoon." Frank tested his sore head again and winced. "There's a matinee of 'Tis a Pity She Won't Be Woo'd, and we'll be able to talk to most of the people who worked with Jillian."

  Karen picked up the news magazine. "Let me show this to some friends in the magazine biz. I won't give away anything, and I may be able to find out more about Miss Cornwall and her fortune."

  "Sounds like a good idea," Joe said. "Then you and I can meet for dinner afterward, Karen, to talk over what you've found out."

  Frank took his brother aside. "Joe, you and I are supposed to be handling this case. We don't need volunteer help."

  "I do," Joe told him, and then turned back to Karen. "Dig into Emily Cornwall - as a personal favor to me."

  Karen smiled and dropped the magazine into her big black shoulder bag. She turned to Frank. "I really am a good reporter," she said. "I'll get you all the information there is to be found."

  Frank studied her silently for a few seconds. "Okay," he said finally. "We'll see."

  ***

  The manager of the Piccadilly Rep, the company presenting 'Tis a Pity She Won't Be Woo'd, was putting on his makeup for the play. "I'm flattered that an American movie agent - Larry Berman - was interested in our show."

  The man glued pieces of bushy black beard to his face, having painted his nose and cheeks bright red. "I play Sir Toby Bearpit," he said, talking to Frank's and Joe's reflections in his makeup mirror. "Even gotten some excellent notices. 'Ralph Estling is more than adequate.' That's from the London Times, my boys."

  "I'm happy for your career," Frank told him. "But I'm afraid Larry Berman didn't arrange this meeting to check out your play. We're trying to locate Jillian Seabright. Why did she quit?"

  "According to her agent, she got a better offer." Estling puffed out his cheeks, snarling so his white teeth showed under the false hair. "Beard is just about right, I think."

  "We're talking about Ian Fisher-Stone here?" Frank asked.

  "Yes, old Ian. Not much of an agent, as I told Jilly many a time. She's a very talented lady and deserves much better representation."

  "You've met Fisher-Stone?"

  "Yes, unfortunately. I'm not partial to having whiskey fumes breathed on me."

  Frank nodded to his brother. "How did he let you know Jillian was leaving - in person?"

  "No, thank heaven, merely over the telephone. 'Dear gell is off to do a major role, old man.' Something like that."

  Joe said, "And you just let Jillian out of her contract with you?"

  Estling smiled, still carefully smoothing his beard. "We're a pretty informal lot - don't pay much, either. So if Jilly had a chance to do better for herself, I wouldn't stand in her way."

  "Did Jillian ever discuss this big part with you?" Frank asked.

  "Never said a word, but that's not unusual." Estling put on a wild black wig, then slipped into a padded coat. Joe stared. He'd watched the actor transform himself from a burly but mild-mannered type to a rather scary-looking bully.

  "When did the agent call you?" Joe asked. Before or after her final performance?"

  "Morning after." Estling's voice became a booming growl as he started getting into character. "Good thing we had an understudy. She's not quite as good as Jilly was, but more than adequate. Well, my lads, I'm in the first scene, and the curtain's going up very soon. Any more questions?"

  "Not now," said Frank, grinning at the transformation. "But we'd like to talk to some of the other people in the company who knew Jillian."

  "I'll allow that. Just don't make anyone miss his or her cue." Estling gave a final fluff to his false beard, made a low rumbling sound in his chest, and strode to the dressing room door, grandly yanking it open. "If you run into Jilly, give her my best."

  The Hardys split up, Frank hitting the dressing rooms while Joe checked the green room, where the actors congregated between scenes.

  After knocking on two doors and getting no answer, Frank heard a reply at the third. A high, fluting voice said, "Come in."

  A plump sixty-year-old actress introduced herself as Beatrix Graill. And from the look of things, she didn't intend to leave her dressing room for a while.

  "We have plenty of time for your questions, young man," she told him as she heated water for tea on a hot plate. "Lady Victoria Gadabout doesn't make her entrance until the second act."

  "You knew Jillian well?"

  "We were friends, yes. I'll explain why I'm so interested in talking to you - in addition to concern for the girl, that is." The actress sat down, carefully shifting her wide skirt with its rustling petticoats. "Two years ago I played Mrs. Dillingham on television."

  Frank nodded. "That's right, the lady detective. I thought you looked familiar. We saw that on a public broadcasting station in America."

  "The old girl's dottier and frowzier than I am." Frank noted that she looked a lot different now, in an elaborately curled and powdered wig. "Playing a detective got me interested in investigating. I read lots of mysteries - you might call me an amateur sleuth." She grinned. "Or an annoying busybody. Jillian probably would describe me the second way."

  "Was there some reason - "

  "Yes - and its name is Nigel Hawkins." Beatrix Graill deftly poured boiling water from a saucepan into a cracked china teapot.

  "You sound like you're describing some kind of awful insect."

  "Rather close," she answered. "The acting profession, alas, has many a shady person on its fringes. Nigel is one of the shadiest. It pained me to see Jillian dining with him at one of my favorite Soho restaurants a few weeks ago."

  "What does this Hawkins do?"

  "He's a producer of low-budget films, at the rate of about one every other year or so. Dismal things, designed to cash in on some current fad - punk music, celebrity lawsuits, political scandals. Although Nigel seemingly makes a good living, none of his movies ever pays off for the investors. Or for the poor actresses and actors - and they certainly don't help their careers."

  "Was Jillian planning to be in one of Hawkins's films?"

  "I certainly hope not," Ms. Graill said. "The fact that she departed so suddenly, however, makes me worry. Maybe she did agree to work for that dreadful man."

  "But Jillian didn't actually tell you she'd signed up with him?"

  "She acted very odd when I mentioned that I'd seen them together." The plump actress suddenly dug a hand into an open trunk nearby. Ah, look at this." She held up a framed photo. Nigel in the flesh. He's the handsome chap at the left of this garden party group, just next to me."

  Frank took the picture and studied it. Nigel Hawkins was a tall, thin man of about fifty. Very well dressed, his light hair worn long and wavy, his small mustache neatly clipped. "Does he have an office in London?"

  "Last time I heard. A small one, in an unfashionable part of the city."

  "Perhaps I should go talk to him."

  Beatrix Graill returned to her teapot. "Be on your guard with that man," she warned. "I've heard rumors that he's been in more things than questionable films. This is all hearsay, mind you. But there's been talk that he's involved in fencing stolen gems."

  "So he'd be interested in, say, emeralds."

  "Just about anything that sparkles."

  A heavy fist knocked on the door. When Beatrix opened the door, Joe came bursting into the dressing room. "Trouble," he announced.

  "What's happened?" Frank asked.

  "Larry Berman called us here at the theater - he remembered t
he appointment he'd set up." Joe looked a little numb. "He wanted to know if Jed was with us. When I told him he wasn't, Berman got really upset."

  Frank took a deep breath. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

  Joe nodded unhappily. "Looks like Jed Shannon has disappeared, too."

  Chapter 8

  Frank and Joe took a taxi to Jed's town house, where they met up with Larry Berman, wearing a different, even more explosive Hawaiian shirt this afternoon. "I'm worried, guys, really worried. My boy may be in danger - and on top of that, we blew six interviews." From the amount of pacing going on in the town house living room lately, Joe wondered if there'd be any rug left.

  "Give us some details," Frank told the nervous agent.

  "The day was going beautifully," Berman began. "Jed's a bright boy, and the media people love him. He's very good at interviews and can be, you know, likable, funny, sincere - whatever the situation calls for.

  "Okay, so we're at London Stitches, a very trendy fashion magazine. In the middle of the interview a girl walks into the editorial offices to say there's an important call for Jed. I'm about to tell her to get lost, but he jumps up and goes out to take it in the reception area."

  "So who was the call from?" Joe asked.

  "Jed never told me. When he came back to continue the interview, I asked him who was on the horn. He said it was nothing important." The agent shrugged. "After that we stopped for coffee at some dinky overpriced bistro. Jed said he had to use the washroom. And stupidly, I let him go alone."

  Berman shook his head. "After about ten minutes, I sent those bonehead security guys who were with us out hunting for him. He was nowhere to be found. But they dug up a waiter who told me he saw Jed head out the back door."

  "Alone?" Frank asked.

  "From what the waiter told me, yes."

  Frank shook his head. "Then it doesn't look as though Jed was kidnapped."

  "Maybe they lured him outside somehow and grabbed him there." Berman did some more unhappy pacing. "Anyway, I haven't heard from him since, and we're talking hours here. I'm in a major bind."