The Witchmaster's Key Read online

  “My basketball set shot,” Joe whispered.

  “Quiet!” Frank warned. “Someone’s coming.”

  A key turned in the lock. The door swung open and the locksmith lumbered into the room. The boys’ eyes followed him as he searched around. Paying no attention to the suits of armor, he halted a few feet from the Hardys.

  Frank held his breath. Joe wrinkled his nose and just managed to stifle a sneeze.

  The locksmith looked up at the shattered window, a stunned expression on his face. Then he rushed out and they heard the tinkle of the bell on the front door.

  “He’s gone!” Frank exclaimed, “Come on! We’ve got to move fast!”

  Climbing out of his suit of armor, Frank headed for the door. Joe called urgently after him.

  “Wait a minute! I’m stuck!” Joe could not get his foot past the greave on the left leg. Frank ran back and held it, while his brother struggled to work himself loose.

  “Wiggle your toes,” Frank advised. “Hurry!”

  Joe finally eased his foot free. “Boy! Am I glad to be out of that iron overcoat!”

  They ran into the front room of the locksmith’s establishment and out the door. At the corner they peeked around to the rear of the building, where a crowd was gathered.

  People were milling about and pointing toward the smashed window. The owner stood holding the spiked ball in his hand and scratching his head in disbelief.

  “Let him try to figure it out,” Frank said.

  “My guess is he never will.” Joe chuckled. “His suspects are two suits of armor. And they ain’t talking.”

  “Well, how about some refreshments? I’m starved.”

  “Good thinking.”

  They went into a teashop and ordered tea and cakes. When the last of the food had vanished, Joe said, “Any idea what our pal the locksmith really had in mind?”

  “He may be in cahoots with Matthew Hopkins,” Frank theorized. “Hopkins may be the guy who’s wearing the black hat. He could have called ahead and ordered the locksmith to take care of–oh–for Pete’s sake!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I left the cast of the key!”

  “There goes our clue!”

  “If it was a clue, the locksmith will have smashed it by this time,” Frank said.

  Joe nodded. “No use to go back. We might as well concentrate on our next project. Let’s go see the Soho witch collection.”

  They paid their bill and walked down the block, mingling with the throngs who were out for the afternoon. A tout tried to sell the Hardys some black-market money, and quickly moved on when Frank said they were not interested. A sailor, who looked as if he had just jumped ship, followed them and stepped into a pub when he realized that they had noticed him.

  “In Soho, there’s no telling who’s keeping you under surveillance,” Frank noted.

  “That’s a good enough reason to hurry up and get out,” Joe said.

  They passed the Medmenham Book Store again and came to a window filled with amulets, such as bronze necklaces designed to save the wearer from the evil eye. A sign on the door read: WITCHCRAFT EXHIBITION.

  Joe followed Frank through the revolving door. A number of rooms extended before them crowded with shelves and display cases laden with objects similar to those described in Professor Rowbotham’s Witch Museum catalog.

  An old woman was seated at a small table near the door opposite an empty chair. She had a craggy face, piercing black eyes, and a long crooked nose. The boys noticed she wore a bronze bracelet on her left arm, a red comb in her black hair, and a silk robe studded with shooting stars.

  “A fortuneteller,” Frank murmured. “I wonder where she keeps the marked deck.”

  As if reading his mind, the old crone called out, “I am a palmist. I read palms and interpret what I see there. Let me read yours. I never lie.”

  “You might make a mistake,” Joe teased her.

  “Never, oh unbeliever. I am the last of a long line of witches. I know the wisdom of the ages. Trust me!”

  “The whole point,” Frank thought, “is that we don’t trust you.” Aloud he said, “Some other time.”

  The palmist glared as the boys strolled past and began to work their way around the witch collection room-by-room. A number of items appeared to be identical with those pictured in Rowbotham’s catalog. One was a silver wand with a gold handle. Another was a crystal ball on a bronze tripod.

  Frank rubbed his chin. “Joe, those could be part of the loot taken from the Griffinmoor museum.”

  “You’re on my wavelength, Frank. I’d say this calls for a conference with the curator. He has some explaining to do.”

  Returning to the first room, they asked the palmist where they could find the curator of the exhibition.

  “He’s out for tea,” she cackled. “So, you must wait. Why not pass the time letting me read your palms. You have nothing to lose, have you?”

  “I guess not,” Frank admitted.

  Joe sat down in the empty chair and extended his hand. The woman took it in hers and examined his palm for a long time.

  Suddenly she broke the silence with a loud “Hah! This is very interesting!”

  “What is?” Joe inquired.

  “This pattern of the lines of your palm. It tells me you have witch ancestry in your blood.”

  “Not bloody likely,” Joe quipped.

  “Do not scoff, young man. There is more. Let me see. Yes! Yes! Your life line is extremely short. Prepare yourself for sudden death if you proceed on your present course!”

  Joe shivered in spite of himself and said he had heard enough. Frank took the chair. The palmist surveyed his hand.

  “You are haunted by a witchmaster,” she informed him.

  “Has he got a name?” Frank asked.

  “The letters are here in your palm. I can read them. P-I-C-K-E-N-B-A-U-G-H. That is correct. His name is John Pickenbaugh.”

  Frank started when he heard the name. The woman clutched his hand tightly.

  “You had better leave England,” she intoned. “You are in grave danger!”

  Frank tried to pull his hand away, but she kept clinging to it. Giving a sudden twist, she pressed something as sharp as a needle into his palm.

  The room swam before his eyes. The face of the palmist became dim. Frank tried to say something to Joe but the words refused to come.

  Abruptly he keeled over!

  CHAPTER IX

  Jumpy Sleuths

  AS Frank toppled, Joe caught his brother and eased him onto the floor. Frank lay still. His face was deathly pale and his breath came in gasps.

  “Frank!” Joe shouted. “Can you hear me?”

  Receiving no reply, he whirled around to confront the palmist. She was gone! The slow turning of the revolving door showed where she had exited during the confusion.

  Desperately Joe hastened out onto the street and began calling for a doctor. A man with a medical bag answered and offered his assistance. Joe dragged Frank into the witch exhibition, where he lay motionless.

  The doctor felt Frank’s pulse and raised his eyelids for an examination of the pupils. Then he took a syringe from his bag and gave the boy an injection.

  “Your brother has been drugged,” the doctor informed Joe. “But he’ll be all right in a moment.”

  Frank began to breathe more easily. He regained consciousness, opened his eyes, and sat up, rubbing the back of his neck and shaking his head.

  “What happened?” he asked groggily. “Oh, yes. Now I remember. I was having my palm read when the Empire State Building landed on me.”

  He struggled to his feet just as the curator of the witch collection arrived. He demanded to know what was going on in his establishment.

  Joe quickly explained about the palmist. “She disappeared,” he concluded ruefully.

  “What can you tell us about her?” Frank asked.

  “Very little,” the curator said. “She arrived only this morning. Said she could rea
d palms and would amuse the visitors to the witch exhibition. I gave her permission. I should have checked her references before doing so.”

  “Do you know where she lives?” Joe asked.

  The curator shook his head. “I didn’t see why I should ask.”

  Frank grimaced. “She must have been lying in wait for us. And we walked into her trap!”

  “The spider invited the fly into her parlor,” Joe joked. “Only this time it was a couple of flies, Frank. You and me.”

  The curator looked surprised. “If that was her game, you boys must have made her angry. What’s your business in London?”

  The Hardys confessed they were detectives working on the Griffinmoor case. They inquired whether the curator knew about the burglary in the Witch Museum.

  He said he hadn’t heard of it because he had been on vacation in France until the day before.

  “Well,” Frank pointed out, “you have quite a few items in this collection that look as if they had come from Griffinmoor.” He described the wand and the crystal ball.

  The curator slapped his forehead in dismay. “I bought these articles only yesterday. A man brought them in and said they were family heirlooms. I couldn’t reject them. They are authentic witch equipment that once belonged to Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General of East Anglia. Of course I will return them if they were stolen.”

  Frank saw a chance to pick up another clue. “Can you describe the man who sold you these objects?”

  The curator nodded. “He was of medium height. He wore a long robe, had a heavy shock of gray hair, and a bushy beard.”

  Frank and Joe exchanged startled glances. The description fit the leader of the witches at John Pickenbaugh’s funeral! The man who carried the sword!

  Frank signaled Joe not to reveal their suspicion. He told the curator they would make a report to Professor Rowbotham. Then they thanked him and left.

  They walked out of Soho and across London’s Piccadilly Circus to Green Park. There they sat down on a bench for a review of the case.

  Joe tapped a knuckle against his chin. “Who can the palmist be, Frank? And why did she drug you?”

  “My guess is that she used the needle when she couldn’t scare us off,” Frank said. “But how did she know where to wait for us? Who knew we were going to London today?”

  “Professor Rowbotham.”

  “Check,” Frank went on. “Who else?”

  “Our buddy Dr. Burelli. And don’t forget Sears,” Joe said emphatically. “He knows we’re on the Griffinmoor case, and he listens at keyholes.”

  Frank nodded slowly. “We’d better keep a close eye on him.”

  “Anyway, we picked up three more clues,” Joe said. “First, the stolen articles. They might lead us to the thief.”

  “Second,” Frank said, “there’s the guy who sold them to the curator–alias the witch leader at the Pickenbaugh funeral.”

  “Third,” Joe added, “there’s the palmist. She might break the case wide open if only we could find her. Let’s get this info down in writing and see how it shapes up.”

  They took out their notebooks with the pages headed “crimes,” “suspects,” “clues,” and “theories,” and filled in the facts of the Griffinmoor case.

  The Hardys resumed their analysis of the mystery until they began to have a strange feeling that they were being spied on. Frank quickly looked in one direction and Joe in the other.

  Under his breath Frank warned, “There’s a man watching us. He’s too far off to identify. But he’s keeping us under surveillance. Anybody on your side?”

  “Yes. A fat woman. I don’t know who she is, either. But she’s got a bead on us with opera glasses.”

  “Being spied on from opposite directions makes me jumpy,” Frank muttered.

  Suddenly it seemed as if all the people in Green Park were staring at the Hardys. A nurse wheeled a baby carriage in their direction. An elderly man holding an armful of books peered quizzically over his horn-rimmed spectacles. Faces appeared and vanished behind bushes and trees like mocking ghosts.

  Joe shook himself. “I’m as jumpy as you are, Frank. Shall we go?”

  “Okay by me.”

  “Suppose the man and woman follow us,” Joe said.

  “We’ll have to give them the slip somehow. Come on!”

  They got up and strolled down the street. “Let’s stop in front of the display window of that shoe store there,” Joe suggested. “Maybe we can see their reflections.”

  Frank nodded and casually pretended to examine the shoes in the window. The man and woman were still behind them!

  “Oh, great,” Joe muttered. “How about the department store across the street? Maybe we can lose them by leaving through a back door.”

  The boys went in and hurried through an aisle toward the rear. No luck! There was only one entrance! As they walked out, they noticed the couple on the other side of the street.

  “They knew we had to come out here and just waited for us,” Frank said. “Joe, I have an idea on how to get rid of them. Follow me!”

  He led the way to a subway station, where they bought tickets for the underground at a vending machine. Hurrying to the escalator, they descended to the bottom. About ten yards opposite them, the up escalator was moving people toward the top exit.

  Frank and Joe turned a corner at the bottom. They were alone.

  “Quick!” Frank said. “Put on Burelli’s mask!” In moments both boys were transformed from visiting Americans into freckle-faced Scottish youths.

  Frank turned the corner again with Joe on his heels. This time they stepped onto the up escalator. The man and woman from the park were on the other side, going down behind a crowd of riders. Frank and Joe looked at them. They returned the gaze without recognizing their quarry.

  At the bottom, the pair hurried toward the train. At the top, Frank stepped over to the down escalator.

  “You’re not going down again!” Joe blurted.

  “Why not?”

  “Pretty risky.”

  “Joe, they don’t know us from Adam. And it’s time to get to the station.”

  Riding to the bottom, they mingled with the Londoners waiting there. The man and woman had already gone along the platform and were looking through the crowd, when the train rattled in. It came to a standstill and the doors opened. The Hardys got on board. Some minutes later, safely on their way back to the train station, they chuckled over their strategy.

  “We really fooled them,” Joe said.

  Frank nodded. “We should give Doc Burelli our special thanks!”

  Before they had dinner aboard the train to Griffinmoor, the boys removed their masks and pondered the underground chase to see if they could make sense of it. Neither of them had been able to get a good look at the man. But they agreed that they could pick the woman out of a police lineup.

  “Quick!” Frank said. “Put on Burelli’s mask!”

  “She had the most piercing eyes I’ve ever seen,” Joe said.

  It was dark when they got off the train at Griffinmoor, but a lurid red glare suffused the sky to the east.

  “A fire!” Frank exclaimed. “A four alarmer for sure! Looks as if Eagleton Green is going up in flames!”

  CHAPTER X

  A Wild Ride

  A FIRE engine rumbled past, its bell clanging loudly.

  “Let’s follow it!” Joe exclaimed.

  “Right. If there’s been any more sabotage at Eagleton Green, we’d better investigate.”

  By the time the boys reached the scene, firemen were getting the blaze under control. A dozen shops had been damaged and their owners, who had congregated in the street, appeared to be stunned by the disaster.

  Frank addressed the fire chief. “How did it start?”

  “We don’t know yet. But it looks suspicious.”

  While scouting around the area, the Hardys noticed that Lance McKnight’s locksmith shop was barely scorched even though it stood between two badly charred buildi
ngs.

  “That’s strange,” Joe said. “The fire burned through the silversmith’s shop, jumped over McKnight’s, and landed right on the weaver’s next door.”

  Frank shrugged doubtfully. “I wonder if it’s a coincidence, Joe. If McKnight set the fires, he’d make sure he escaped.”

  “That figures.”

  McKnight was working with the firemen. He held the nozzle of a hose and played cascades of water over the burning buildings. Seeing Frank and Joe, he swiveled toward them.

  The powerful stream of water hit Frank in the chest. He was knocked off his feet and sent skidding. Joe got the same treatment.

  Drenched, bruised, and shaken, the boys rose to face McKnight, who had given the hose to a fireman and run to his victims.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said effusively. “It was an accident. Really it was.”

  “So was the London blitz!” Joe said angrily.

  “The hose got out of control,” McKnight insisted.

  “Okay. Forget it,” Frank said.

  McKnight seemed relieved, and he went into the silversmith’s shop, where the fire chief was inspecting the damage.

  “Well, he’s a cool customer!” Frank exploded.

  Joe shook the water from his clothes. “He did that deliberately. We’ve got a score to settle with Mr. McKnight.”

  Filtering through the crowd of Eagleton Green craftsmen, the Hardys kept their ears open. They learned that the fire just about ruined the artisan village and its residents.

  “I’m ready to sell out,” a jeweler stated. “The thefts in the past few months were bad enough, but the fire is the last straw. Start packing, say I!”

  “Aye! Aye!” his neighbors shouted.

  The village bookbinder raised his voice. “What’s the reason for this harassment? Tell me that if you can!”

  “Witchcraft!” a potter bellowed. “The robbery at the Witch Museum in Griffinmoor! It let the spirits of the witches loose! The spirits are haunting us!”

  “That’s right!” said a woman. “There’s a lot of haunting around Eagleton Green! Pigs are dying, and no one knows why! Horses are falling sick, and the vets can’t cure them!”