The Giant Rat of Sumatra Read online

  “Openers, places, please,” a crew member announced.

  Battenberg and Gordean walked out onstage into Holmes’s living room and sat down at a small round dining table. Gordean picked up a copy of the London Times, and Battenberg filled a pipe with tobacco.

  A table with all the props on it was a few feet behind Frank. Celia Hatteras stopped at it and picked up a tray loaded with cups, saucers, plates, and a teapot. She looked it over. Frowning, she said, “Props? I’m missing a teaspoon.”

  One of the crew hurried to her side. “I checked it just ten minutes ago,” he said.

  “There’s only one spoon,” Ms. Hatteras pointed out. “Mrs. Hudson needs two—one for each of them.”

  “I’ll get another in half a mo’,” the stagehand said. He rushed off.

  Frank could hear the murmur of the audience through the curtain. It seemed to be getting stronger and more impatient. Frank noticed that all of a sudden the lights aimed at Holmes’s breakfast table grew brighter. Then he heard a loud crackle and saw a blue flash.

  The stage was plunged into darkness.

  10 Crossed Circuits

  * * *

  A babble of confused and alarmed voices rose from the theater. Dim emergency lights came on, and someone went out through the curtain to apologize to the audience. The uproar gradually subsided.

  Frank dashed across the stage toward the light booth. Bettina was just ahead of him. “What happened?” he asked when he caught up to her.

  “When I find out myself, I’ll tell you,” she answered. She sounded angry. “I knew we were going to have trouble with that light board. It’s so old, it was probably installed by Thomas Edison himself!”

  The light booth was a platform three steps up from the stage, with a railing of two-by-fours around it. The control board was a confusing array of switches and dials, each labeled with a ragged strip of masking tape.

  Frank followed Bettina up into the booth. The man who stood behind it was about twenty-five. He had silver rings in his left ear and was wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt with the logo of a heavy metal group, and black parachute boots. He looked a little dazed.

  “Okay, Jeff, what’s the story?” Bettina asked.

  He looked around at her and blinked a few times. “Beats me,” he said. “I started bringing up the number-three pot for the curtain, and bam! All the circuit breakers blew.”

  Frank knew that pot was an abbreviated form of the word potentiometer. The pots were manipulated to control the lights.

  “Okay, Jeff, we have about ninety seconds to find and fix the problem,” Bettina said tersely. “You got a flash?”

  Jeff reached under the light board and produced a big four-cell krypton flashlight, the kind highway patrolmen carry. Bettina grabbed it out of his hand, went to the side of the board, and shone the light on the back. Frank leaned over and craned his neck to see.

  “Bettina?” he said. “Why is that metal teaspoon lying across those wires?”

  Bettina said, “I guess you’re not as useless as you look. Jeff, pass me some kind of tool with an insulated handle.”

  Jeff handed her a rubber-handled screwdriver. She reached down and flicked the teaspoon off the wires. It clattered to the floor. Frank bent down to pick it up, then held it in the beam of the flashlight. The surface of the metal had a bluish sheen.

  “You have to get stainless steel really hot for it to take on that color,” Frank said.

  Bettina glanced at the spoon, but she obviously had other things on her mind. She turned to Jeff and said, “Reset the circuit breakers, starting with the main. Let’s find out if we’re going to be able to do a show tonight.”

  Jeff stretched to reach the row of switches near the top of the board. He carefully flipped each one in turn.

  Bettina stood watching tensely as the stage lights came on again. “Okay, we’re in business,” she finally said. She turned to go, saying, “Carry on.”

  Frank held up a hand. “Bettina, how did that spoon get there?”

  She shrugged. “I guess somebody left it on the board and it fell in back. Murphy’s Law: If anything can possibly go wrong, it will. Excuse me—we’ve got a show to put on.” She hurried off.

  Frank turned to Jeff. “Just a couple of questions,” he said. “Did anyone come visit you in the booth in the last half hour or so?”

  Jeff gave him a sidelong look. “Visit? Not really,” he said. “One of the cast came by to ask about a lighting cue.”

  “Do you know his name?” Frank asked, masking his eagerness.

  “Sure,” Jeff replied. “He’s Sherlock’s understudy. Will something-or-other.”

  “Robertson,” Frank said, nodding to himself. “And that’s it? No one else?”

  “That’s it,” Jeff told him. “Oh—and Donald O’Lunny came by to shake my hand and wish me luck. Nice guy, not stuck up at all.”

  Frank frowned. “Oh? Does he usually do that?”

  Jeff said, “I don’t know—last night he didn’t, tonight he did. What about it?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Frank said quickly. “Who brought you the coffee?” He pointed to a paper cup on the shelf next to the light board.

  “Nobody did,” Jeff said. “I went to the greenroom and got it for myself. Why? Oh, I get it—you’re wondering if somebody put that spoon there intentionally. Well, you may be onto something. It’s hard to see how the spoon could land in that particular spot, all on its own.”

  A green light appeared on the board.

  “Sorry,” Jeff added, reaching out with both hands to grasp two dimmer knobs. “That’s my first cue.”

  The play started. As the by now familiar strains of “Kippers and Eggs” began, Frank circled behind the set to his usual station in the wings at stage left. The teaspoon was in his pocket.

  O’Lunny came up beside him. “Only ten minutes late,” he said in an undertone. “For a preview, that’s practically on time. I dread to think what the next problem will be.”

  Frank glanced over at him and stiffened. O’Lunny was wearing a blue flannel blazer. Frank recalled seeing it on him before. What he didn’t recall seeing were the white dots on the right sleeve. They stretched from the elbow down and thickened near the cuff. It was exactly the pattern you would expect to see if someone had worn the blazer while using a spray can of white paint to write graffiti on the set.

  Frank tried to think of a way to get a sample of the white dots. What if he tugged at his collar, complained about how warm it was in the theater, and offered to hold O’Lunny’s coat for him? Could he start to shiver, then ask to borrow O’Lunny’s jacket for warmth?

  Finally deciding the direct approach was best, Frank blurted out, “What are those white spots on the sleeve of your jacket?”

  O’Lunny raised his arm to look, then shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I hope they come out. This is my favorite blazer.”

  “Let’s see.” Frank grasped the sleeve in his left hand and scraped at the dots with his right forefinger. Some of them flaked off into his palm. “It should be okay.”

  Turning away, Frank fished a plastic bag from his pocket and dusted the flakes into it. O’Lunny was too busy watching the stage to notice.

  • • •

  To Frank’s relief, the play went off without a single incident. The finale was as rousing as ever, and so was the applause. After the last curtain call, Joe came offstage with a big grin on his face. “Hey, I could get into this performing,” he told Frank.

  “Don’t,” Frank said. “You’re enough of a ham already.”

  A stream of well-wishers was flowing into the backstage area. One of them, tall and bald, caught Frank’s attention . . . and everyone else’s. He was wearing a black cape lined with red satin over his white tie and tails, and he held a silk top hat in his left hand.

  “Frank!” Joe whispered. “That’s the guy in the photo—Tertius Lestell! What’s he doing here?”

  As Lestell was shaking hands with the actors and congratul
ating them, Hornby came rushing over. He was trying to look impassive, but Frank could see the vein in his temple throbbing.

  “Well, Tertius,” Hornby said. “Have you come to learn what real theater is from next season’s biggest hit?”

  Lestell gave him a smug smile and said, “This is a holiday for me. I’m spending a few days in Bayport, at the Waterside Inn, and I thought I could use some amusement. Charming place, the Waterside Inn. I recommend it.”

  As Lestell repeated the name of the Waterside Inn, it seemed to Frank that he looked directly at someone in the crowd. Frank tried to see whose eye he was meeting, but he couldn’t.

  A few minutes later Lestell left. Frank followed him outside, at a distance, and saw him get into a white stretch limousine. The license plate read LESTELL1.

  • • •

  Fifteen minutes later Joe pulled up at a traffic light and turned to stare at Frank. “You suspect O’Lunny?” he exclaimed. “But he’s the one who asked us to take on the case!”

  Frank said, “I don’t exactly suspect him. But from what Li Wei said earlier, he has a motive. He doesn’t seem to enjoy working with Hornby or Battenberg. O’Lunny had the opportunity to short the light board. And there were those spots on his jacket. What bothers me is that we didn’t notice them last night when we discovered the graffiti.”

  The light turned green. As he started across the intersection, Joe said, “He had his raincoat on. Remember?”

  “Hey, that’s right,” Frank said. “I wonder if Dad’s friend Mr. Hiroto would be willing to put the samples through a gas chromatograph analysis for us, even though it’s the weekend. We should give him a call first thing in the morning.”

  “Okay. But we shouldn’t ignore our other suspects,” Joe said. “Hector, for instance. If the play fails, he may get to do that TV role.”

  “There’s evidence against Gordean, too,” Frank pointed out. “I know you think he may have been framed, but that doesn’t mean we should forget about him. What I’d like to know is who Lestell was telling to get in touch with him at the Waterside Inn just now. Gordean? O’Lunny? Hector?”

  Joe smiled. “Well—we can’t tap his phone. But there’s nothing to stop us from hanging around the Waterside Inn tomorrow morning and seeing if he meets anybody we know.”

  • • •

  The next morning was cloudy, but by the time Joe and Frank had driven across town to the harbor, the sun had come out. They parked the van next to the marina, across the street from the Waterside Inn, and settled down to watch the boats and wait.

  The Waterside Inn was a white frame building with green shutters and a wide veranda. It had been an important town landmark since the days when Bayport’s whaling ships had successfully prowled the world’s oceans in search of prey.

  Joe opened a Thermos and poured two cups of coffee. As he handed one to Frank, he said, “The inn’s a nice place, but I can’t see someone like Lestell coming here for a vacation. He probably owns his own island in the Caribbean.”

  “Bayport’s closer,” Frank said. “Look—we’re just in time. There’s his limo.”

  The long white car pulled up the drive and stopped next to the inn’s front steps. Lestell must have been waiting at the entrance, because he came out the door and down the steps immediately. He got into the limo, and it purred away. Joe gave it a half-block lead, then followed.

  A few minutes later he said, “He’s headed for downtown. Look, we’re nearly at the theater.”

  “And to the Madison Hotel, where most of the cast is staying,” Frank added.

  The limo turned onto Madison Street and pulled over to the curb. Joe stopped a few spaces back. Who would come out to meet Lestell? Gordean? His friend, Robertson? Or even Donald O’Lunny?

  A moment later the Hardys had their answer. A slim woman in a scarf and dark glasses came out of the hotel and hurried over to the limo. The door opened, she ducked inside, and the powerful car sped away.

  “That was Li Wei!” Joe exclaimed, as he started the van. The limo already had a two-block lead. Joe accelerated and pulled out of his space.

  A second later Frank shouted, “Joe, look out!”

  A big black sedan was passing them on the left. It abruptly swerved to the right, cutting Joe off. Reflexively, Joe spun the steering wheel to avoid being hit. Tires screamed as Joe slammed on the brakes. The van skidded sideways, toward the sidewalk, where a woman and a young boy were standing, frozen in shock.

  Joe pumped the brakes harder as the van’s right front tire rolled up onto the curb, only inches from the woman and her child.

  11 A Deadly Merry-Go-Round

  * * *

  Frank saw the woman and boy loom closer as he sat in the passenger seat, feeling panic-stricken and helpless. Joe was wrestling grimly with the steering wheel, trying to steer the van away from the woman and child.

  Finally the van came to a shuddering halt. One of the hubcaps flew off and went clattering down the street. Frank could smell scorched rubber from the tires.

  Joe took a deep breath when he saw that the woman and child were out of harm’s way on the sidewalk. A man rushed over to them and led them away from the scene.

  “Good save,” Frank said. “I thought we were going to hit that woman and kid for sure.”

  Joe shook his head. “That was way too close for comfort. I can’t believe that turkey in the black sedan who cut us off. He didn’t even slow down to see if we were okay. Which we almost weren’t.” Joe looked out Frank’s window and saw that the people were gone. He wanted to apologize to them.

  “I can believe it,” Frank replied. “You didn’t have time to see the license plate, did you? It read LESTELL2. Lestell must have noticed that somebody was tailing him and used his car phone to call in some interference.”

  Joe smiled grimly. “Yeah, well, we got a good look at the person who got into the limo with him. She’s going to have to do some explaining. I’ll go chase our hubcap,” Joe added, reaching for the door latch. “You check out the tires, okay?”

  Frank got out and checked all four tires, which were still sound. He gave them a couple of kicks, then returned to his seat. A few moments later Joe tossed the dented hubcap in the rear of the van and climbed behind the wheel.

  “So it was Li Wei who had a date with Lestell,” Joe remarked, as he started the engine. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “Me, neither,” Frank admitted. “On the other hand, she was seriously ticked off at Battenberg and Hornby over getting rid of her favorite song. I don’t know if she was mad enough to try to wreck the show, though.”

  “But, Frank,” Joe said, “they only ditched her song yesterday, right? So why would she pull the dirty tricks that happened earlier?”

  Frank thought hard. “What if she’s not the only one who’s in cahoots with Lestell? There’s Gordean, for example. We know from the photo on Lestell’s Web page that they’re linked in some way. Or what about Hector?”

  “Pretty soon, we’re going to be suspecting everyone, even ourselves,” Joe grumbled. “I’ve still got some time before my rehearsal. Where to?”

  “Let’s go home and call Mr. Hiroto,” Frank suggested.

  Hiroto, a forensic chemist, agreed to run the analysis of the paint flecks. The Hardys drove by his lab with the two plastic bags of specimens. When Hiroto saw how little there was, he raised his eyebrows.

  “I can’t promise anything,” he said. “But I’ll try. Where can I reach you later this afternoon?”

  Frank gave him their number and added, “If we’re not home, the machine will be on. And thanks for your help. We appreciate it.”

  “Thank your father,” Hiroto replied. “I’m doing it for him.”

  As they drove downtown to the theater, Joe said, “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a kick being in the Rat. But it keeps getting in the way of our investigation. If I’m not rehearsing, I’m learning my entrances or studying my lines or putting on makeup. When do I get to question suspects?”

&nbs
p; Frank grinned. “Now, for a start. You’re one of the cast. You can talk to them without anyone getting suspicious and clamming up. What do they know about Lestell? What are they worried about? What’s the latest gossip? Oh, right—and do any of them have white specks on their sleeves?”

  “Okay, okay,” Joe said. “I’ll get with the program. What about you?”

  “It’s a long shot, but I’m going to try to check out that bottle of ammonia,” Frank told him. “I also want to do a little snooping in the office.”

  Joe parked the van behind the theater and they went inside. The first person they saw was Hector. He grabbed Joe’s elbow and said, “A couple of things we need to talk over before the rehearsal.” They went off together.

  Frank watched them go. Then he walked back to the office. The door was closed, and there was no answer when he knocked. He waited a moment, then used his key to go in.

  The file cabinet in the corner was not locked. He started at the bottom and checked each drawer. The file he was looking for was in the second drawer from the top. It was labeled Publicity Pix. Frank took it to the desk and started to sort through it. He took out head shots of Battenberg and Gordean, then one of Robertson.

  As he was adding a photo of Li Wei to the pile, the office door swung open and in walked Hornby. When he saw Frank, he asked gruffly, “What are you doing here?”

  Covering the pile with his hand, Frank said, “Mr. O’Lunny asked me to pick up some photos of the cast for him.”

  Hornby continued to look unhappy. “Well, in the future,” he said, “remember that those files are confidential. If you need something in there, wait until someone is here to get it for you. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” Frank replied. “Sorry.” He replaced the file, picked up the photos, and walked out. What a grouch!