The Vanishing Thieves Read online

  Red Sluice swung at Frank, who ducked the blow. An instant later, Bruce knocked Frank down with a hard right to the jaw. But as he bore in to finish the boy off, Joe stuck out a foot to trip him. A moment later, Bruce was flat on his face.

  As Frank recovered, Red Sluice rushed at him. Frank pushed him back into Big Harry, who had just come around the desk to join in the fray.

  As the two workmen again moved in for the attack, Joe shoved Slim, Frank hit Bruce, and the two men crashed together, going down with a loud thud.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Joe yelled, leading the way through the door.

  They were almost to the restroom when the four hoods recovered sufficiently to run after them. The boys darted inside and Frank slammed and bolted the door. They climbed out the window just as a heavy shoulder hit the door from the other side.

  Chet started the engine and Vern leaned over to let the Hardys into the rear of the car. When Chet pulled away, the back door of the warehouse opened and the four hoods rushed out.

  “After them!” Big Harry yelled.

  Looking through the rear window, the boys saw the thieves jump into a green sedan parked behind the warehouse. Big Harry took the wheel, swung around, and raced after them.

  Chet sped down an alley and turned right at the cross street before the other car came in sight behind them. Then he swung left into another alley. He continued this winding course for some blocks until he was sure they had shaken their pursuers.

  “Now what?” he asked. “Back to the hotel?”

  “May as well,” Frank said.

  Chet continued on for a few minutes, then pulled over to the curb. “Which way is it?”

  “Are you lost? Vern inquired.

  “No, but I think the car is!” he joked, relieving the tension.

  The four boys laughed and then looked carefully in all directions. Chet’s winding course had confused everyone.

  “I think it’s that way,” Joe said, pointing.

  Chet started up again, but after a few minutes, they realized they were driving deeper and deeper into Old Chinatown. The streets became narrow and buildings on both sides pushed right up to the sidewalks.

  Glancing into the rearview mirror, Chet suddenly said. “Uh-oh.”

  The others turned around to look. A block behind them, the hoods had just turned a corner. Apparently, they had been randomly cruising side streets in search of the boys and had finally sighted them.

  Chet turned right, then swung left into an alley, attempting the same zigzag maneuver as before. But the other car was too close behind this time. It followed wherever the boys went.

  As they sped along one of the narrow streets, Chet sighed. “Hey, here’s a whole block of Chinese restaurants. ”

  “Want to stop for a snack?” Vern inquired sarcastically. Chet did not reply.

  They went past a sign reading ROAD CONSTRUC TION AHEAD, and the pavement suddenly became slick with mud spewed up from a drainage ditch being dug to their right. On their left, a flimsy wooden guard rail edged a sheer twenty-foot drop into a rocky ditch.

  The pursuing car put on a burst of speed and began to come up alongside the boys.

  “They’re going to run you into the ditch, Chet!” Frank cautioned. “Give them a driving lesson.”

  Chet nodded and suddenly slammed on his brakes. He let the green sedan shoot past, then swung left, and gently prodded their opponents’ bumper. Accelerating, he nudged the hoods’ car forward and sideways so that they, instead of the boys, nosed over toward the ditch.

  Finally, the green sedan came to a halt with its radiator buried in the mudbank. Chet swung back to the right in order to straighten his wheel. Just then he hit a patch of mud, skidded, and headed directly for the guard rail with the twenty-foot vertical drop beyond!

  7 The Stakeout

  Chet turned the front wheels into the direction of the skid. The car veered sidewise, but straightened out just as the left rear fender scraped the guard rail. Gritting his teeth, Chet fought for control, and was finally able to drive onto the right side of the road.

  “Whew!” Vern muttered. “Was everybody as scared as I was?”

  “I wasn’t scared at all,” Chet said, his voice shaking. “I’ve got nerves of steel.” Then, exhausted, he slumped behind the wheel, resting his head against the window. Frank twisted in his seat to see what happened to the green sedan. Big Harry and Red Sluice were angrily trying to push the car out of the ditch, but the harder they struggled the more embedded the vehicle became.

  All four boys chuckled smugly, but not wanting to push their luck, they drove quickly back to the hotel, where they decided to phone Fenton Hardy in Bayport.

  Frank dialed and Gertrude Hardy answered.

  “Are you all right?” she asked anxiously. “We heard on TV about that terrible hijacking.”

  “We’re all fine, Aunt Gertrude. Is Dad there?”

  “No, he’s gone away. He said it was a secret mission. You’re to leave word where you can be reached, and he’ll get in touch with you. ”

  Frank gave her the telephone number of the hotel and their room numbers.

  “Have you found Vern’s nickel?” Aunt Gertrude asked.

  “We haven’t had time to look yet,” Frank said. “Maybe we’ll get to it this afternoon.”

  “All right. I’m glad that this time it’s just a simple mystery, and you’re not involved with criminals.”

  “Yes, Aunt Gertrude. Say hello to Mom.”

  When Frank hung up, Joe raised his eyebrows. “Dad isn’t there?”

  “No. He’s on some kind of secret mission. I wish we’d been able to talk to him, so we could discuss our next move. ”

  “That’s simple,” Chet said. “We call the police and tell them about that warehouse.”

  “That may not be a good idea just yet. If they raid the place, all they’ll get is the small fry. We want the kingpin of the operation!”

  “Maybe it’s Big Harry,” Chet said.

  “I doubt it.”

  “So how do we get the chief?” Vern asked.

  “We could stake the place out and photograph everyone who goes in or out with our pocket cameras,” Joe suggested.

  “Good idea,” Frank agreed. “The big boss is bound to show up eventually and when he does, we’ll have some real evidence to turn over to the police. ”

  All four agreed that this was the best plan. They decided to watch the warehouse in shifts. Frank and Chet were to take the first one, while Joe and Vern would check up on the Liberty Head nickel. They all drove to the warehouse and parked a block away. Getting out of the car, the boys scouted the area.

  No one was in sight as they approached the front of the building. A number of empty wooden crates and cardboard boxes were piled near the entrance. While the others kept watch, Frank picked out a large shipping carton that had contained a refrigerator. He used his pocketknife to make a door in the back of it, cutting only the top, bottom, and left side, and then bent the right side so that the door could be opened and closed. He set a small wooden crate into the carton to serve as a seat, then put a hole at eye level.

  “This’ll make a great ‘guard house’ for me in front,” he declared, turning to his friends. “Now let’s find a place for Chet to hide in back of the building. ”

  They began walking toward the alley to pick a safe spot when suddenly Frank, who was in the lead, motioned for everyone to move out of sight. Big Harry was parking behind the warehouse. The sedan’s radiator was caked with dried mud, but none of the occupants seemed to have been injured in the accident. They all got out and went into the building.

  Frank watched them, gingerly peeking around the corner.

  “What’s going on?” Joe whispered.

  “Nothing now,” Frank said. He moved forward and motioned for the others to follow him. “The hoods who chased us just got back and went inside. None of them seemed to be hurt.”

  As they neared the sedan, Vern said, “Those guys must ha
ve had a tow truck rescue them. They couldn’t have backed out on their own. They were nose-first in that mud bank.”

  There was a small shed right across from the rear door of the warehouse on the other side of the alley. They found it unlocked and went in. It was empty. A dirt-encrusted window faced the building. When Chet scraped clean a spot about the size of a silver dollar, he had a perfect view of the door.

  Handing him his pocket camera, Joe said, “Snap pictures of everyone going in or out. Okay?”

  “When are you guys coming to relieve us?” Chet asked.

  “Soon as Vern and I finish our business,” Joe told him. “Shouldn’t be later than one o‘clock.”

  “You mean we have to wait until then for lunch?”

  “It’s not going to hurt you,” Vern chided him.

  Chet grimaced. “You skinny guys can talk, but it takes sustenance to maintain a muscular body like mine!”

  “Oh sure, real muscular!” Vern teased his cousin, as he and the Hardys started back to the street. Frank quickly took up his station in the refrigerator carton, while Joe and Vern went back to the car.

  Slipping behind the wheel, Joe asked, “Where to?”

  “First, we ought to see the lawyer in charge of Uncle Gregg’s estate,” Vern suggested. “He’s in the Nichols Building downtown. His name is Charles Avery. ”

  The attorney had a plush office on the seventeenth floor. He was a plump, middle-aged, cheerful-looking man. Greeting the boys courteously, he asked them to sit down in comfortable chairs.

  “As you know, your uncle had severe financial reverses shortly before he died,” the lawyer told Vern. “Even his extensive coin collection had to be sold to satisfy claims against the estate. All, that is, but the 1913 Liberty Head nickel, which he left to you. Unfortunately, that has disappeared.”

  “How?” Vern asked.

  “The president of the bank where your uncle had his safe-deposit box can explain that,” Charles Avery said. “Let me phone Mr. Barton Laing of the Bunker Bank to make an appointment for you.”

  The lawyer called and was able to arrange an immediate meeting between Mr. Laing and the boys.

  The bank was only two blocks from the Nichols Building, so they left their car where they had parked it and walked. Barton Laing, a tall, slightly stooped man with gray hair, shook hands with the boys and invited them into his office. When all three were seated, he leaned back in his desk chair and began folding and unfolding his hands.

  “This is quite embarrassing to the bank, Mr. Nelson,” he said to Vern nervously. “Of course, we have no legal responsibility for the missing coin. The only evidence that it was ever in your uncle’s safe-deposit box is a statement in his will that on a particular date he placed it there. Nobody saw him do it, because what customers put in or take out of their boxes is their private business.”

  “Why would he say he put it there if he didn’t?” Vern asked.

  “I can’t imagine.”

  Joe spoke up. “Could he have taken it out again and not changed his will?”

  The banker shook his head. “He never opened the box after the day he deposited it.”

  “How can you be sure of that?” Vern asked.

  “Our records show every visit. Whenever a customer uses his safe-deposit box, he must sign a card giving not only the date, but the exact time of day. Our files show no such visits after the date specified in his will.”

  “Could a bank employee have gotten into the box?” Joe asked.

  Mr. Laing frowned. “Impossible. No one but the boxholder possesses a key. A boxholder’s key, that is. There is, of course, the bank’s master key.”

  “Master key?” Vern repeated.

  “Let me explain the procedure. It takes two keys to open a box, the customer’s and the bank’s. The bank key fits all boxes. But it can’t open a box by itself. The customer’s key must be used along with it. ”

  Vern said, “Then when Uncle Gregg put the coin in the box, somebody saw him do it.”

  “Not necessarily. Usual procedure is for the customer to carry his box into one of the curtained alcoves in the vault room, where he can transact his business in privacy. When he’s ready to return the box, he calls the vault clerk, who uses both keys to lock it up again.”

  Joe spoke up. “But if Mr. Nelson had chosen not to use a private alcove, he could have put the coin into his box right in front of the vault clerk, couldn’t he?”

  “Oh yes, but there would be no record of whether or not he did that.”

  “Would there be a record of who the vault clerk was that day?”

  “Of course. She signs the card.”

  “Has she been asked whether or not she saw Mr. Nelson put the coin into the box?”

  Barton Laing gave Joe an indulgent smile. “It’s hardly likely an employee would recall anything about a transaction that took place so many years ago. The person on vault duty may usher as many as fifty people to their safe-deposit boxes in a single day. ”

  “Is the clerk still employed here?”

  “I have no idea,” Mr. Laing said. “But I’ll find out. ”

  Picking up his desk phone, he asked for the safe-deposit-box records to be brought to his office. A few minutes later, a young man delivered a metal file-card holder.

  “Want me to wait?” he asked.

  The bank president shook his head. “You can pick it up later.”

  As the clerk left, Mr. Laing began thumbing through the cards. Finally, he pulled one out.

  “Here it is,” he said. “Yes, she’s still working here. ”

  “Let’s ask her if she remembers Mr. Nelson using his box that day,” Joe suggested.

  Shrugging, the banker again picked up his phone. “I doubt that she’ll remember, but we’ll try.” Into the phone he said, “Send in the vault clerk, please.”

  After a few moments’ wait, there was a knock on the office door.

  “Come in,” Barton Laing called.

  The door opened and the boys gaped. Cylvia Nash stepped into the room!

  8 Trapped!

  “Why, hello, boys,” Cylvia said in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

  “You know these two?” Barton Laing asked.

  “They were on the plane with me,” she explained. “In fact Joe was the one who nearly captured the hijacker.”

  “They want to talk to you about Gregg Nelson’s missing coin,” the bank president said.

  “Oh, are you the nephew?” Cylvia asked Vern. “‘That never occurred to me when we met.”

  Vern grinned. “It’s a common name.”

  “Miss Nash,” Barton Laing said, “You’re registered as the one who admitted Mr. Nelson to the vault eight years ago when, according to his will, he put the coin in his safe-deposit box. Do you remember that day?”

  “So long ago?” She shook her head.

  “No recollection at all of seeing the coin?” Joe asked.

  “I don’t even remember signing Mr. Nelson in.”

  Mr. Laing shrugged. “I guess that settles that,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Vern smiled wryly. “And after all, it’s only a hundred thousand dollars.”

  As the boys walked back to the car, Joe said, “I might believe Miss Nash if we hadn’t seen who met her at the airport. But people who associate with crooks are usually crooked too. For all we know, she was the one who stole your uncle’s coin!”

  “I don’t see any way to find out,” Vern said.

  “Don’t give up so easily,” Joe advised. “We know where she lives. Maybe there’s some evidence at her apartment.”

  “Well, we can’t just break in!”

  “Of course not. But I have a plan. Let’s buy some coveralls.”

  Joe drove to a department store, where each bought a suit of work clothes. Next, they went to a hardware store and bought tool belts resembling those worn by telephone repairmen. They returned to the hotel long enough to change into their outfits and then drov
e to Cylvia’s home.

  They parked in front of the building, went inside, and rang the apartment manager’s bell.

  An elderly woman answered the door. Joe smiled. “Telephone company, ma‘am. The tenant in 2B reported her phone out of order.”

  “She isn’t at home days,” the woman said. “I’ll have to let you in.”

  Leading the way up to the second floor, the manager opened the door of 2B with a passkey.

  “Set the lock when you come out,” she told them.

  “Yes, ma‘am,” Joe promised.

  At the warehouse, meanwhile, Chet was getting tired of peering through the small clean spot in the dirt-encrusted window. He was also getting hungry, thinking about hot dogs, hamburgers, and pizza.

  Just then, he saw a small Chinese boy about four years old meander by, clutching a dollar bill in his hand. A few minutes later the child came back, working a yo-yo with his right hand and licking an ice-cream bar on a stick in his left. Chet could not stand it any longer. He ran out the door and after the boy.

  “Hey, kid,” he called out.

  The child stopped to regard him with large eyes.

  Chet took out a dollar bill. “Do me a favor and I’ll give you a quarter. Go back to where you got the ice cream and get me one, too.”

  “Eh?” the child said.

  When Chet repeated himself, the little boy answered in a stream of Cantonese.

  “Don’t speak English, huh?” Chet said. He pointed at the bar, then down the alley in the direction of a delicatessen he’d seen earlier.

  Smiling, the child held his ice cream up toward Chet’s mouth.

  “No, I don’t want a lick,” Chet said. “I want a whole one.” Again gesturing in the direction of the delicatessen, he held out the dollar bill.

  The little boy suddenly looked as though he understood. Smiling broadly and nodding his head, he accepted the bill.

  He turned around and retraced his way toward the store while Chet slipped into the shed again and put his eye back to the peephole.

  When he spotted the little boy on his way back, he hurried out into the alley. With a big smile, the child handed him a yo-yo and a quarter in change, spouted a friendly stream of Cantonese, and walked away. Chet stared after him darkly, his stomach rumbling.