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  Frank dragged Joe’s limp form to the curb in front of the van, out of the way of traffic. After a few seconds, Joe began to stir groggily.

  “Want me to call an ambulance?” the driver asked. “Sorry I yelled at you. I thought you were one of those reckless drivers.”

  “Not usually,” Frank said. “I think my brother’s starting to wake up. Thanks for the offer, though.”

  After the man had left, Frank leaned into the cab of the van and looked around the driver’s seat. He smelled the same acrid odor he had smelled earlier. He looked under the seat and saw the corner of a metal canister.

  Frank reached under the seat and pulled out the canister. Holding it at arm’s length, he placed it on the pavement some distance from where Joe was lying. The canister was open, and there was a foul-smelling liquid inside. The label on the outside of the canister was covered with chemical names that Frank didn’t recognize.

  He remembered how Joe had noticed earlier that the door of the van was unlocked. Someone must have jimmied the lock and placed the canister under the seat.

  “W-What happened?” Joe asked groggily, pulling himself up on one elbow.

  “You got a noseful of whatever’s in that jar,” Frank said, pointing at the canister. “I’ve got a feeling it’s not something that human beings are supposed to breathe.”

  “Why am I lying on the side of the road?” Joe asked, looking around.

  “Gravity, mostly,” Frank said. “You passed out while you were driving.”

  Joe’s eyes opened wide. “Passed out? While I was driving? I could have been killed!”

  “I think that was the idea,” Frank said quietly.

  “How did it happen?” Joe asked as he slowly got to his feet. “Where did that jar come from?”

  “I’m not sure,” Frank answered. “But I think we’ll be asking a few people back at WBPT about that tomorrow morning. Right now, we need to air out the van.”

  The Hardys pushed the van to the side of the road and opened all the doors. Frank found a plastic bag in the back of the van and fastened it around the mouth of the canister with a rubber band to keep the gas from escaping again. Then he and his brother headed straight for home.

  • • •

  The next morning, Frank and Joe entered the WBPT studios by the back door and walked down the hall to Marcy Simons’s office.

  “Do you know what this is?” Frank asked Marcy, placing the canister on her desk.

  Marcy recoiled at the sight of the canister. “Get that stuff away from me!” she exclaimed. “That’s poisonous. Breathe too much of it and you’ll be out like a light.”

  “We know,” Joe said. “We found out the hard way.”

  “The engineers use that stuff for really tough electronic cleaning jobs,” Marcy said, “but only under carefully controlled conditions. They keep it under lock and key in a storage room. Where’d you get hold of it?”

  “Somebody stuck it under the driver’s seat in our van,” Frank said, “knowing that one of us would breathe the stuff. Joe was the lucky one who got to try it out—and almost got both of us killed when he passed out at the wheel.”

  “That’s terrible,” Marcy said in a concerned voice. “Why would somebody do that?”

  “Because the kidnapper doesn’t want us getting any closer to Clarence,” Joe said. “Yesterday’s fire was set up to release smoke into the basement. Someone locked us down there and then tried to kill us, Steve, and Debbie.”

  “The funny thing is,” Frank said, “we’re not even close to finding Clarence. We haven’t got a clue as to where he could be.”

  “Maybe we’re closer than we think,” Joe suggested.

  Frank looked thoughtful. “You may have a point,” he said. “Maybe we almost found Clarence and didn’t know it. And maybe whoever kidnapped him is getting nervous.”

  “So where have you been looking?” Marcy asked.

  “A few places around the station,” Joe replied. “But maybe we haven’t searched those places thoroughly enough.”

  “By the way,” Marcy said, “I remembered something that might be of interest to you. The day before Clarence disappeared, he told me that he needed to talk to Matt Freeman. I don’t know what about, but he seemed a little worked up over something. I arranged for Clarence and Freeman to get together Sunday morning, since I knew both of them would be in the studios that day.”

  “That’s the morning Clarence vanished,” Frank said. “I wonder if they ever had that talk?”

  “I don’t know,” Marcy said. “But it’s possible. Maybe you should ask Matt about it.”

  “Good idea,” Frank said. “That is, if he’s talking to us after the conversation my brother had with him last night.”

  “Hey,” Joe said. “I was just doing my job. But maybe I did come on a little strong with him.”

  Frank rolled his eyes at his brother as they headed for the door of Marcy’s office. “Well, I guess we’d better get back on the investigation. Thanks for the tip, Marcy.”

  “I wonder where Steve and Debbie are?” Joe asked, as the brothers headed down the hallway. “Weren’t we going to talk to them today?”

  “Yeah, but now I’m not sure we can spare the time,” Frank said. “They probably wouldn’t even listen to us. Anyway, we’ve got to get serious about this case. Finding Clarence is our top priority. We can’t worry about Steve and Debbie.”

  Suddenly a piercing scream echoed up and down the WBPT corridors.

  “It came from somewhere outside the building,” Joe said.

  “Let’s go!” Frank exclaimed.

  The brothers dashed out the back door. A baffled guard was standing outside the door, looking around for the source of the screams.

  “Keep watching the exit!” Frank yelled to the guard. “We’ll take care of this.”

  The scream sounded again.

  “It’s coming from over here,” Joe said, pointing around the corner of the building.

  The Hardys raced in the direction of the scream and then came to an abrupt halt as they rounded the corner.

  The first thing Frank saw was Steve Burke, standing next to the building and looking upward helplessly. Then, as Frank followed Steve’s gaze, he saw Debbie. She was hanging by her hands from the rain gutter that ran just under the jutting edge of the building’s roof, two stories above the ground. She was dangling next to the first of three long windows that faced out onto the rear parking lot. It looked to Frank as though she had climbed up the drain spout that ran down one corner of the building and tried to make her way along the gutter to the windows. She had a tight grip on the gutter with both of her hands, but Frank knew that her weight would soon cause it to come loose.

  “Help me, someone,” Debbie gasped, looking down at the hard asphalt below.

  The gutter made a cracking sound as part of it came loose from the roof, and Debbie screamed again.

  10 Clarence Speaks

  * * *

  “You’ve got to get her down!” Steve yelled. “She could be killed!”

  “I think I saw a ladder on the ground next to the back door,” Joe said. He ran back toward the door and found the tall aluminum ladder, splattered with brightly colored splotches of paint, lying next to the wall. Joe grabbed it and dragged it back around to the side of the building, where Debbie was dangling helplessly.

  “Hurry!” Steve shouted. “I don’t know how much longer she can hold on.”

  “Take it easy, Steve,” Joe replied. “We’ll get her down.”

  With Frank’s help, Joe mounted the ladder against the side of the building next to Debbie. Frank grabbed the sides of the ladder and held it steady while Joe scaled it rapidly. The younger Hardy came up beneath Debbie and grabbed her under the arms. The ladder was just tall enough for him to get a grip on her.

  “Okay, I’ve got you,” Joe told Debbie. “Let go of the gutter, and I’ll lower you to the top rung of the ladder.”

  “Let go of the gutter?” Debbie shouted. “I’l
l fall!”

  There was another cracking noise, and the gutter sagged even lower.

  “You’ll fall if you don’t let go,” Joe said urgently. “You’re just going to have to trust me to hold on to you.”

  Debbie gave Joe a look that was anything but trusting. But after glancing back up at the sagging gutter, she nodded. She let go of the gutter, and as she did, it finally gave way and crashed to the pavement. Joe lowered Debbie onto the upper rungs of the ladder. With his help, she made her way gradually back down the ladder and onto the ground. By the time she reached the bottom, she was trembling.

  “You’d both better have a good explanation for this,” Frank said sharply.

  “Or what?” Steve said. “Are you gonna send a note to our parents?”

  “We were engaged in perfectly legitimate detective activities,” Debbie said defensively. “I was performing a surveillance operation.”

  “Surveillance?” Joe asked incredulously. “Of what?”

  “Ted Whalen’s office,” Debbie said in a challenging tone. “You want to make something out of it?”

  “Oh, no,” Frank said with a groan. “You’re not still on Ted Whalen’s case, are you?”

  “We’ve never been off it,” Steve said. “He’s clearly the kidnapper, and he has to be watched.”

  “So Debbie climbed up the drainpipe,” Joe said, “grabbed the gutter to get a better look in Ted’s window, and got stuck.”

  Debbie shrugged. “It could happen to anyone.”

  “So why does it always happen to you guys?” Joe asked.

  “Well?” Steve asked Debbie, ignoring Joe’s comment. “Did you find anything? What was going on in Ted’s office?”

  “Uh, nothing, actually,” Debbie said. “I didn’t get a chance to look. I was too busy trying not to fall off the gutter.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” Steve said. “All that work for nothing.”

  “Uh-oh,” Frank said. “Look who’s coming.”

  A small crowd of people, apparently drawn by Debbie’s screaming, was coming around the corner from the parking lot. At the head of the crowd, flanked by his hulking bodyguards, was Ted Whalen. The station manager’s face was red with anger, and he was clenching his fists.

  “Oh, no,” Steve said, turning to run. “If that guy gets hold of us, we’re history.”

  “We’d better make ourselves scarce,” Debbie whispered. She and Steve took off around the other side of the building.

  “Think we should join them?” Joe asked his brother. “Or should we stay here and explain the situation to Ted?”

  “Get serious,” Frank said, hurrying after Steve and Debbie.

  Frank and Joe followed them around the building and went back inside through the front door. In the lobby, they paused a moment.

  “Well, what now?” Joe asked.

  “I think we should pick up where we left off,” Frank said, “and pay a visit to Matt Freeman. We’ve been so sidetracked by Steve and Debbie that we haven’t had time to take our suspects seriously. And I think that Freeman heads the list.”

  “Right you are, bro. Lead the way,” Joe said.

  Freeman’s office was near Studio A, not far from Marcy Simons’s office. When the Hardys poked their heads inside, however, Freeman gave them a look that said they weren’t welcome.

  “We need to ask you just a few more questions, Mr. Freeman,” Frank said. “Then we’ll let you alone.”

  “I thought I told you kids to go play your detective games somewhere else,” Freeman said, scowling.

  “It’s really important that we talk to you, Mr. Freeman,” Joe said.

  Freeman looked at the Hardys for a moment. “Oh, all right,” he said finally. “You get precisely two more questions. But only because Marcy asked me to cooperate with you guys.”

  “Great,” Joe said. “Marcy told us that you were supposed to have a talk with Clarence Kellerman on Sunday morning. Did Clarence ever show up?”

  “No,” Freeman replied. “Marcy sweet-talked me into meeting with Clarence at nine o’clock Sunday morning, but he never got here. I wasn’t thrilled, because I like to sleep late on Sundays and I went out of my way to be here for our talk. If he hadn’t vanished that day, I would have really bawled him out the next time I saw him.”

  “What was he going to talk to you about?” Frank asked. “Any idea?”

  “How would I know?” Freeman snapped. “He never got here. Though I think I have an idea.”

  “What do you think it was about?” Joe asked.

  “Sorry,” Freeman said. “You’ve already asked your two questions. Now go away and let me get back to work.”

  “You haven’t answered the second question yet,” Frank pointed out quietly. “When you do, we’ll get out of here.”

  Freeman sighed. “Oh, all right. There was a staff party on Friday night, and I guess I got a little talkative. I said some nasty things about the way Clarence ran his show and indicated that I could do a better job. A few of Clarence’s friends overheard what I said and must have told him about it the next day. I guess he just wanted to confront me with it. I was even ready to apologize. But he didn’t bother to show up.”

  “Maybe he couldn’t make it to your meeting,” Joe suggested. “Maybe somebody had already arranged for him to disappear.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Freeman said. “I still think Clarence is pulling a fast one. And now I’d like to remind you that I’ve answered your two questions.”

  “Yes, you have,” Frank said. “We were just leaving.

  The Hardys left Freeman’s office and wandered down the hallway. Once they were out of earshot, Frank said, “Something seems funny about that story.”

  “I know what you mean,” Joe said. “If Clarence was kidnapped before his meeting with Freeman at nine in the morning, what was he doing in the station during the home-shopping show that afternoon?”

  “I don’t know,” Frank said. “Freeman didn’t look like he was lying.”

  “Well, somebody’s lying,” Joe said. “Maybe—”

  “Hey, guys,” said a familiar voice. Frank and Joe turned to see Steve Burke heading down the hallway toward them. “I’ve got an idea I want you two to hear.”

  Frank scowled. “Thanks, Steve, but Joe and I are discussing some ideas of our own right now.”

  “Yeah,” Joe said. “Why don’t you go tell your idea to Debbie? I’m sure she’ll want to hear it.”

  “Oh, I want to apologize for Debbie,” Steve said. “She’s been messing everything up. I have all these great ideas and she steals them.”

  “Sure, Steve,” Frank said. “If it weren’t for Debbie, you’d have solved the case by now.”

  “I’m glad you see it my way, Frank,” Steve said with a grin. “I’m going to need some help with this idea of mine, and I figure you guys can’t mess it up any more than Debbie would.”

  “Gee, thanks, Steve,” Joe said. “But not right—”

  Joe was interrupted by a crackling sound from a loudspeaker set high on one wall of the corridor. The static was followed by the booming sound of a human voice.

  “Help!” the voice shouted. “It’s Clarence. Get me out of here! I’m locked up in the ba—”

  11 All Roads Lead Down

  * * *

  As suddenly as it had begun, the mysterious crackling on the loudspeaker went away, and with it, Clarence’s voice.

  “That was Clarence!” Joe cried. “Where was his voice coming from? It must have been right here in the building.”

  “Come on,” Frank said, grabbing his brother’s shoulder. “We’ve got to find out where the microphone for the system is located.”

  “Marcy will know,” Joe said.

  The brothers began to run down the hall toward Marcy’s office. Steve Burke yelled after them, “Hey, don’t you want to hear my idea?”

  “Later, Steve!” Joe shouted. “We’ve finally got a real clue to Clarence’s whereabouts.”

  As the Hardys rounded the corner,
they saw Marcy Simons bolting out of her office. “Did you hear it?” she asked them.

  “You bet we did,” Frank said. “Where’s the microphone for those speakers? That must be where Clarence is.”

  “There’s one in the newsroom,” Marcy said, “but I’m sure there are others. In fact, there are probably microphones all over the building.”

  Frank’s face fell. “Then we’ve still got quite a search ahead of us.”

  “Maybe not,” Joe said. “Marcy, show us the newsroom. Maybe we can find some kind of clue there.”

  Marcy took them to the newsroom, a spacious area lined with desks and filing cabinets. Frank noticed several reporters sitting at their desks in front of computer terminals. But instead of tapping out news stories or talking on the telephone, the reporters were talking excitedly with one another about Clarence’s mysterious broadcast. In one corner of the room was a handheld microphone that was propped up on a stand.

  “This microphone is attached to the P.A.,” said Marcy, “but I don’t see any sign of Clarence around here.”

  “Neither do I,” Frank said. “I guess that would have been too easy. Still, it’s good to know that Clarence is still alive.”

  “Right,” Joe said. “Now we know for sure that Clarence is in the building.”

  “Maybe there’s a blueprint somewhere that shows where the other microphones are,” Frank suggested. “When was this P.A. system put in, anyway?”

  “Years and years ago,” Marcy said. “I doubt that there’s any kind of blueprint or chart showing where the outlets are, but I’ll take a look around.” She headed back out into the hallway, leaving the brothers in the newsroom.

  “What was it that Clarence said over the loudspeaker?” Joe asked. “That he was ‘locked’ somewhere? Something like that?”

  “He was ‘locked in the ba—,’ but he didn’t get the whole word out,” Frank said.

  “Maybe he’s locked in the bathroom,” Joe said.

  “No,” Frank said. “It was a long a, like ‘bay.’ ”

  “Locked in the Bayport studios?” Joe suggested.