The Shore Road Mystery Read online

  “Yes, he checked in today. Name of Wright. He just dropped his things off, then asked directions to the telegraph office.”

  Frank and Joe headed for the office a block away. Inside, a woman behind a typewriter affirmed the fact that a Slagel had sent a message out, though she was not permitted to divulge its contents.

  As the boys walked away, Frank said, “Joe, sometimes when a person sends a telegram, he makes a draft of it first.” He saw a wastebasket beneath a writing counter and hurried over. It took him only a second to find a torn piece of yellow paper with Slagel’s name at the bottom. When he found the second half, the boys left the office excitedly. Outside, they pieced the halves together and read the message:

  MORE NERVE NOW. TRYING FOR 8-CYLINDER STOCK. TAKING CARE OF TWO FRIENDS. ATTEND TO THEM WHEN JOB DONE IN WEEK OR SO. EXPECT YOU FOR SHIPMENT TOMORROW.

  The message was addressed to Carlton Melliman in New York City.

  “Carlton Melliman-C. M.,” Joe mused. “Frank! He must be our mysterious visitor who wouldn’t give his name. And the ‘8-cylinder’ busi. ness—that cinches Slagel’s connection with the Shore Road gang!”

  Frank nodded. “It fits. I wonder how Melliman figures in. ‘Two friends’ might refer to Mr. Dodd and Jack, which gives us only a week before—We’re going to have to work fast!”

  “If we only knew what this ‘shipment’ is and where it’s going,” Joe murmured.

  The Hardys stopped at an outside phone booth and Frank dialed his home. Mrs. Hardy answered. “I’m glad you called,” she said. “Your father phoned a little while ago, and gave me a list of things for you boys to look up in his file—information to help him on his case. He’s going to call back tonight at ten for your data.”

  “We’re on our way,” Frank assured her.

  When they reached home, the brothers washed and changed, then started work. Among the items their father had requested were the first dates of manufacture of various foreign weapons and ammunition, as well as serial numbers for certain guns made abroad.

  The job took most of the afternoon. The boys had almost finished when Frank exclaimed, “Joel Remember? The grenade and those machine-gun bullets were of foreign make.”

  “Sure enough! You think they have a connection with Dad’s arms-smuggling case?”

  “Possibly, since we’re pretty sure they were used by thieves.”

  After supper Frank and Joe handed Mrs. Hardy the data they had compiled and asked her to relay it to their father. “We’ll get back to our case now, Mother,” Joe explained. “Please give Dad our regards.”

  The boys had decided to cycle along Pembroke Road. Seeing nothing suspicious, they returned to Shore Road. As they approached the intersection, the sun was setting. There was no traffic.

  “Let’s cruise south,” Frank proposed.

  “Right.”

  The young sleuths turned onto Shore Road, with Joe in the lead. Some distance along they had reached a section of the road with a sheer drop to the left and a steep rocky formation on their right, when Joe happened to glance back out to sea. He gave a start, then beckoned Frank to turn around. When they were facing north, Joe pointed toward a high shadowed rock cliff that dropped to the ocean.

  A spidery figure was moving slowly up the rock face!

  The boys rode forward to get a closer look. A turn in the road made them lose sight of the figure. When their view was unobstructed, the spidery form had vanished! They watched the rock cliff a few minutes but saw nothing in the twilight.

  “I’ll bet that was the spider Scratch told us about,” Joe declared.

  “He looked half human, half spider,” Frank remarked. “I’d sure like to know where he went. Well, let’s go. It’ll be dark soon.”

  Frank turned around and went ahead, increasing speed, and snapped on his head lamp. Presently he noticed a slight glitter over the center of the highway. As the reflection grew nearer, alarm coursed through his body.

  Strung chest-high across the entire highway was a fine steel-wire net!

  It was too late to stop. Frank ducked and closed his eyes, yelling as loudly as he could at the same time. “Joe, look out!”

  CHAPTER XI

  Guard on the Cliff

  FRANK swerved to safety an instant before his brother’s motorcycle crashed into the glistening wire. Joe flew into the air, as his vehicle twisted and smashed into a tree to which the net was tied.

  “Joel” cried Frank, leaping off his cycle and running to the still form in the roadway. Joe lay unconscious, blood oozing from his head.

  Both of Joe’s legs were badly bruised, and Frank feared he might have suffered a concussion. Frantically Frank waved down an oncoming car. The driver offered to take Joe to Bayport Hospital. Frank followed on his motorcycle. Joe’s motorcycle lay in a tangled heap of gray steel and chrome.

  An hour later Frank, Mrs. Hardy, and Aunt Gertrude stood at Joe’s bedside in the hospital. A physician watched Joe as he mumbled, moving his head slightly.

  “He has had a nasty shock, but he should be coming out of it soon,” he reassured the others before stepping quietly from the room. “Just see that Joe gets plenty of rest in the next few days.”

  After spending the night at the hospital, Joe was moved home. He had a slight limp and wore a large bandage on his head.

  “How do you feel, partner?” Frank asked, as Joe rested on the living-room couch.

  “A little weak.” He grinned. “But still in one piece. Who put up that wire?”

  “I wish I knew, Joe, but my guess is it was the work of the car thieves. They had the wire netting ready to string across the road.”

  “Was there another theft?” Joe asked.

  “Yes. This time they copped one from the Ely estate during a dinner party.”

  “The Ely estate! Why, that place is walled in like a fortress!”

  “Right. Those thieves are bold, all right. Joe, that barrier across the road reminds me of the nylon net Callie was trapped in underwater. I have a hunch one of the thieves is a skin diver.”

  Joe whistled, then grinned. “You don’t think the thieves hide the stolen cars under water!”

  Frank laughed. “It would be a good place! Maybe that spider-man owns an underwater garage!”

  At that moment Mrs. Hardy and Aunt Gertrude came into the room, dressed to go shopping.

  “Joe, promise me you’ll rest,” his mother said, her face much brighter than it had been the night before.

  “Except for this limp,” he said, smiling, “I feel as if I could run ten laps!”

  “Don’t you dare, Joe Hardy!” Aunt Gertrude scolded.

  The two women had been gone half an hour when the boys heard the front door open and a familiar voice call, “Hellol Where is Joe?”

  “Dad!”

  Fenton Hardy strode with concern into the living room, his face relaxing when he saw Joe sitting up. After shaking hands warmly with his sons, he asked, “You all right, Joe? Mother phoned me about your accident.”

  “I’m okay, Dad.” Joe grinned.

  The brothers briefed their father on what had happened to date in the mystery. When they mentioned liquid gas, the foreign grenade, and machine-gun bullets, he started to say something, then changed his mind.

  “I have some hunches. If I’m right—” He stopped. “It’s my opinion you’re up against a highly professional operation. Promise me you’ll be careful, for the Dodds’ sake as well as yours.”

  “How about your own case, Dad?” Frank asked.

  “I’ll be doing some risky undercover work in the next day or so. Sorry I can’t tell you about it now, but you can reach me at the usual New York address. Meanwhile, you boys use the family car. I understand your motorcycle, Joe, is a wreck.”

  Frank drove his father to the airport and came home for a light salad lunch. Mrs. Hardy apologized for the wilted lettuce. “Apparently a different farmer is supplying stores in town since the Dodds’ disappearance.”

  Later, Joe persuaded
his mother to let the boys go out in the Sleuth, promising he would be quiet. At the Prito boathouse they noticed that Tony’s boat was not in dock.

  “If we can find Tony, he may have some leads on that strange fisherman in the black boat,” Frank said, and drove on to the Hardy boathouse.

  “I’ll take the wheel,” Joe volunteered. “That won’t hurt my legs.”

  The Sleuth’s powerful engine droned smoothly as they cruised south to Willow Beach. Then they turned back across Barmet Bay and north.

  Just past Beacon Point the boys caught sight of the Napoli. Waving to Tony, they drew alongside.

  “Wow! What did Iola do to you?” Tony asked, looking at the bandage on Joe’s head.

  “Somebody handed me a line,” Joe quipped, as Frank laughed. The Hardys told Tony of the accident. He asked several questions but seemed eager to tell them something himself.

  “Would you guys believe me if I told you I saw a—a huge spider—out here last night?”

  Tony described a black form scampering into a crevice in a rock cliff farther up the coast.

  Frank started. “We saw one too. Where exactly did you see the spider?”

  Tony paused in thought. “On a cliff just south of that big seaside estate.”

  “The Ely estate!” Joe exclaimed excitedly. “Frank, it was on that same cliff that we saw the spider-man!”

  The Hardys mentioned the theft which had taken place at the estate the previous night and wondered what relation the “spider” could have to it.

  “That’s not all,” Tony continued. “I’ve been watching our fisherman friend—the one you told me about. Apparently he does some of his fishing at night. Sometimes he has one lamp on his boat, other times two. He keeps on the move up and down the coast.”

  “Is he fishing?” Frank asked.

  “I guess so, or else trolling. I didn’t want him to catch on that I was watching and kept the Napoli at some distance.”

  In the Sleuth the Hardys followed the Napoli north along the coast to the place where Tony had seen the “spider.” The ocean washed at the foot of a high rock cliff, atop which the Ely estate could be seen. The boys glided beneath an overhanging ledge.

  “It’d take a skilled climber to scale that and steal a car,” Frank remarked, training his field glasses up the sheer wall.

  Joe, meanwhile, noticed a gossamer-like pattern in the water. “Look, fellows!”

  The three boys stared at the ghostly, weblike rope floating in the waves. With a pole, Frank pulled it aboard.

  “It’s rope netting, probably for climbing!” Frank exclaimed. “I have a hunch our spider-man is an accomplished climber—”

  “And car thief!” Joe finished. “He could easily —at dusk—look like a spider.”

  “But still,” Tony put in, “that can’t account for the daylight thefts. Anybody swimming in or climbing a precipice like this would be seen.”

  Tony said he had also discovered that the fisherman moored at a small inlet to the north along the coast. The Napoli and the Sleuth sped to the area.

  A makeshift dock extended from a narrow crescent of sand at the base of a high bluff with a “No Trespassing” sign nailed to it. Several buoys dotted the water out from the shore.

  As Frank gazed at the peaceful scene, he wondered : Could stolen cars be shipped out by sea from this beach? The possibility seemed unlikely. Not only was the water cluttered with buoys, but the only grassy slope leading down to the beach was too steep for cars to descend.

  The two boats ran farther up the coast. Frank gazed at the shore through binoculars. Seeing nothing suspicious, they turned back.

  They were passing along the fisherman’s secluded beach when Joe’s hands tensed on the wheel at an eerie sound. Something had scraped against the Sleuth’s bottom!

  “I’m going overboard to take a look!” Frank said. He stripped to his shorts, kicked off his shoes, and dived in.

  The scraping sound had stopped by the time Frank was under water and he found no sign of any rocks beneath the craft. Another thought occurred to him. Had somebody intended to sabotage the Sleuth as he had Jack’s boat? Frank could find no evidence of this on the bottom of the Sleuth.

  Climbing back into the boat, he reported this fact, then suggested they move along the coast for more sleuthing.

  As they left the area, Frank watched the coast through binoculars. Suddenly he said, “Joe! Slow down! I want to get a better look at the top of that bluff!”

  Through the two eyepieces, he could see a lone figure peering, through similar glasses, at the boys. As the man removed his binoculars before disappearing into the brush, Frank’s recognition was instant.

  Carlton Melliman!

  CHAPTER XII

  Planted Evidence?

  “MELLIMAN!” Joe exclaimed.

  The boys told Tony of their visit from the unctuous New York businessman.

  “I wish we could trail him,” said Frank. “But we’d never catch him.”

  “On whose property is that bluff?” Tony asked.

  Joe referred to a map. “According to this, that beach is part of Birnham’s property! He owns land on both sides of Shore Road.”

  As Frank headed back to the Bayport dock area, he said, “Slagel, Birnham, a spider-man, and now Melliman—they’re like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. But I think we’re at least fitting some of them into place.”

  Back in their crime lab, the brothers discussed the latest leads in the mystery.

  “We must find out where the shipment mentioned in the telegram is to take place,” Frank declared. “It must be a load of stolen cars.”

  Joe suggested the possibility of the cars being moved out of the Bayport area by truck.

  “I’m thinking of Birnham’s covered produce job that blocked us. It’s big enough to carry two cars at a time.”

  Suddenly an idea came to Frank. “When Chet and I had that narrow squeak with Birnham’s tractor I noticed a truck—maybe Birnham’s—heading south on Shore Road past us.”

  “Let’s call Chief Collig and suggest his patrols take a look inside the truck.”

  “Good idea.”

  The Bayport chief proved reluctant at first to conduct the search, largely because the farmer himself had been the first victim of the automobile thieves. But at length he promised to do so.

  Collig mentioned that the police, too, were being flooded by letters of protest over the continuing thefts. Another car had been stolen—and recovered—in Bridgewater that morning.

  “Jack Dodd’s identification bracelet was found under the front seat,” he added.

  “Planted, of course,” said Joe. “The poor guy.”

  “We’re inclined to agree,” Collig said. “We’re running twenty-four-hour patrols, and, with the Bridgewater department, several roadblocks. I hope we’ll have some word on your friends or their uncle soon.”

  But when the chief called after receiving reports from his men, the result was a disappointment to the boys. The Birnham truck, returning from Bayport to the farm, had been halted but only empty crates had been found inside.

  By suppertime Joe said he was completely recovered and suggested that they watch Pembroke Road that night.

  “Joe,” said Frank, “remember your idea about the gang’s decoy tactics? We may be up against the same trick at Pembroke. The postmark on that last note, tire marks near Pembroke, maybe even Slagel’s moving to Bridgewater—it’s just too pat. A couple of those thefts could be phonies to draw the police and us away from Shore Road!”

  Joe agreed, and they decided to watch only the farm that night. The boys wired their father in code about the net and Melliman, then changed into fresh sport clothes and telephoned Chet they wanted him along. They picked him up in Mr. Hardy’s car, and stationed themselves beyond a rise in the road. From there they had a better view of the dirt lane leading to Birnham’s farm.

  Shortly after midnight, it began to rain, and the boys shivered under wet ponchos for four hours. Finally, havin
g spotted nothing suspicious, they returned to the car and drove back toward Bayport. Chet looked longingly at an open frankfurter stand as they passed it.

  “How’s the diet?” Joe asked. “You’ve lost weight. But it’ll be a phenomenon when one Chester Morton loses his appetitel”

  “My spirits, not my appetite are dampened,” Chet chattered, as he huddled in the back seat with a large box of raisins. “Do you th-think Birnham, Slagel and Company are 1-laying 1-low for a wh-while?”

  “Could be,” Frank said. “They may have found out we weren’t at Pembroke Road tonight. Not knowing where we were, they decided to play safe.”

  The sun had not yet risen as they passed the vacant Dodd farmhouse silhouetted ominously against the dawn sky.

  “Frank, somebody’s inside the house! I just saw a light flicker in an upstairs window!”

  Applying the brakes, Frank reversed direction and drove as silently as possible down the farm road. Chet seemed disposed to stay locked inside the car but finally accompanied the others quietly around to the backyard. Above the shadowed screen porch, a slight glow was visible in Jack’s second-floor bedroom.

  The back door was locked. Joe tried a window. “It’s open!” he whispered. He noticed Chet trembling. The stout youth swallowed.

  “I’m n-not scared. Just c-cold!”

  Joe preceded the others through the window, where they paused and listened. They heard the faint thump of footsteps overhead.

  “Careful!” Frank whispered.

  Tiptoeing, he led the way through the kitchen. They had just reached the foot of the stairs when Chet sneezed. Both Hardys winced as the raucous sound echoed through the house. The footsteps above stopped for a moment, then resumed at a rapid pace. Soon they ceased altogether. There was only silence.

  Flushing and gesturing apologetically, Chet followed the brothers hurriedly up the stairs into the darkness of the hallway. Motioning Joe to guard the stairway, Frank played his flashlight into Jack Dodd’s abandoned room. When the beam touched a half-open drawer, he flipped on the wall switch.

  The room was empty. Frank crept down the carpeted hall, searching one by one three other rooms before returning with a shrug to the others.