The Clue of the Broken Blade Read online

  The back door opened and Mrs. Steele stepped out.

  “These are the ones!” she said. “Thanks for getting here so fast, Officers.”

  “Did you call the police about us?” Frank asked in astonishment.

  “That’s right!”

  “But why?”

  “You’re thieves, aren’t you?” the woman said tartly.

  The boys looked at each other, then back at Mrs. Steele. “Where did you get that idea?” Joe inquired.

  “While you were outside fixing your horn, the phone rang. It was a man. He wouldn’t tell me his name, but he said to watch out for three young thieves who were working the neighborhood. He described you perfectly.”

  Frank said to the deputies, “Someone must be trying to get us in trouble. We were visiting with Mrs. Steele when our horn started blowing. We went to fix it and found it had been shorted on purpose. Probably the same person did it who phoned Mrs. Steele while we were outside!”

  The deputy with the deep voice said, “Do you have any identification with you?”

  “Certainly,” Frank said, and all three handed over their driver’s licenses.

  After examining them, the deputy said, “I see you’re all from Bayport. And two of you are named Hardy. Any relation to Fenton Hardy, the famous detective?”

  “He’s our father,” Joe replied.

  The deputy frowned at Mrs. Steele. “I don’t think the Hardy boys would steal anything, ma’am. You’ve heard of Fenton Hardy, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, of course. They didn’t tell me they were his sons.”

  “Well, now that you know, how do you feel about it? We’ll run them in if you want to sign a complaint.”

  Mrs. Steele hesitated. “Couldn’t their identifications be faked? The man who phoned said they were thieves!”

  Chet suddenly sat down on the back steps and put his hand to his forehead. “My brain’s beginning to feel fried again,” he said in a weak voice.

  The deputy looked at him curiously. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  Frank and Joe both realized Chet was acting. Joe said, “Aftereffect of the shock, I guess.”

  “What shock?”

  Mrs. Steele said hurriedly, “I suppose the boys really are who they claim, and whoever called was just trying to cause a lot of trouble.”

  She gave Chet a fleeting glance and went on, “Perhaps I acted too hastily in phoning the sheriff. As you say, Fenton Hardy’s sons wouldn’t be thieves. Shall we just forget it? Will you boys come back inside?”

  “What’s wrong with him?” the deputy repeated.

  Chet made a miraculous recovery. Standing up, he said, “I had a little too much sun today, Officer, but I’m all right now. Let’s go in, fellows.”

  The deputy still seemed suspicious, but there was nothing he could do except take Chet’s explanation at face value. Since Mrs. Steele had decided to withdraw her charge, the officers left.

  The woman switched off the light over the garage door and led the boys into the living room. She left them there while she carried the cookie bowl back to the kitchen to replenish it.

  “You’re some actor,” Frank said to Chet. “Maybe you should be in the movies!”

  “My fried brain sure got us invited back in the house fast, didn’t it?” Chet said with a grin. “Mrs. Steele didn’t want the deputies to know about that electrified fence.”

  “It can’t be legal,” Joe said. “These people would be in real trouble if the police found out about it.”

  “Who do you think shorted our horn and then phoned Mrs. Steele?” Chet asked. “Could it have been the same person who eavesdropped on us when we were talking to old Jimenez on the houseboat?”

  “No,” Frank replied. “That was Red Bowes, and he’s in jail.”

  “How about Jimenez himself?” Chet inquired. “His great-uncle was a bandit. Maybe he’s one, tool”

  “That’s silly,” Joe said. “All that guy wants is to be left alone.”

  Mrs. Steele returned with the cookie bowl piled high and with fresh Cokes. When she had seated herself, she said to Chet, “Thanks for not telling the sheriff’s men about our electric fence.”

  “I didn’t want to get you in trouble,” Chet said. “But you ought to disconnect it.”

  “I’ll insist that my husband do it,” she promised. “He’s due home Sunday—tomorrow.”

  Frank asked, “What’s the name of the movie your husband is working on?”

  “It’s working title is The Sword Adalante,” Mrs. Steele replied.

  Chet nearly choked on his drink. When he recovered his breath, he sputtered, “Does he know where it is?”

  “Where what is?” Mrs. Steele asked.

  Joe, who was sitting next to Chet on the sofa, kicked his shin and said smoothly, “He means where is the movie being shot, don’t you, Chet?”

  “Uh—yes, that’s what I meant,” Chet said.

  “Oh. The interiors are being done in a San Francisco studio. For the exteriors they’re using a vineyard.”

  Frank asked, “What’s the movie about?”

  “It’s based on the life of a legendary Swiss swordsman of the last century, Giovanni Russo. In the movie he is called something else, though, because there are living relatives who might object to the use of his name. I forget what they call him in the movie.”

  “What is the meaning of the movie’s title?” Joe asked.

  “The sword Adalante was a famous saber owned by Russo. In real life it was broken in a duel and lost many years ago. But in the movie this doesn’t happen. The hero still has his sword at the end.”

  “We’re interested in old swords,” Frank said. “One of our teachers is writing a magazine article on the history of swords, and we’re doing some research for him. Perhaps your husband can give us some information about this sword Adalante.”

  “I’m sure he’d be willing to,” Mrs. Steele said. “It’s the least he can do in return for your silence about the fence. Why don’t you stop by here again tomorrow evening when he’s home?”

  The boys agreed to do this. After a few more minutes of conversation, they thanked her for the refreshments and left.

  On their way to the car, Chet said, “I thought the reason we came here was to search the cellar for the guard end of that sword.”

  “I couldn’t think of any excuse to ask to see the cellar,” Frank said. “Why didn’t you think of one?”

  “My brain’s fried, remember,” Chet told him. “You and Joe are supposed to be the smart ones.”

  “We’ll get her husband to show it to us tomorrow,” Joe put in. “I just had an idea about who might have shorted our horn and phoned Mrs. Steele.”

  “Who?” Frank asked.

  “Harry Madsen.”

  “The bulldozer operator?” Chet asked. “Why would he want to do anything like that?”

  “He threatened to get even with us.”

  In a thoughtful voice Frank said, “Could be.” He looked around in all directions. “I don’t see anyone lurking about, but then we didn’t notice anybody before our horn was tampered with. Whoever it was may be watching us right now.”

  “Well,” Chet decided, “it won’t help to stand here. Let’s go pick up a sack of hamburgers and head for the motel.”

  “Getting tired?” Joe queried. “All that sleuthing too much for you?”

  “I almost lost my life!” Chet said indignantly.

  He opened the rear door of the car and climbed in. Frank walked around to the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel. As Joe got in next to him, his shoe came down on something soft and live that writhed beneath his foot and emitted a spine-chilling rattle!

  CHAPTER XIII

  A Blunt Warning

  CAR doors burst open as all three boys jumped out. The dome light blinked on, revealing their uninvited guest. It was a thick rattlesnake, more than two feet long.

  Hissing angrily, the reptile coiled and struck at Joe. But he slammed the door in time, seve
ring the snake’s head from the body.

  “Whew!” he said, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief.

  Chet leaned weakly on the fender. “You can say that again.”

  Frank came around to look at the headless rattler. “Somebody is starting to play rough,” he muttered. “You can’t pass this off as just a practical joke!”

  “Seven rattles,” Chet counted. “Doesn’t that mean it was seven years old?”

  “I think that’s a myth,” Joe replied. Lifting a foot, he gingerly scraped the dead snake out into the gutter.

  The boys got back into the car. Frank drove toward the bridge that led south off the island. In the rear-view mirror he had noted a pair of headlights that stayed about a half block behind them.

  “Somebody’s tailing us,” Frank remarked.

  The other two looked back. Chet said, “Must be whoever planted that snake. Let’s stop and find out who it is.”

  “If it’s that bank-robber gang, they’re probably armed. We’d better shake them instead,” Joe said.

  “I agree with Joe,” Frank decided.

  He increased the Ford’s speed. The car behind them started to go faster, too. By the time they reached the bridge, both were moving at sixty miles an hour.

  Fortunately there was little traffic. They roared across to the next island and to the following bridge. Their tail stayed with them.

  As they crossed the second bridge, the headlights of two approaching vehicles could be seen driving onto the other end. From the first one’s size and height from the ground, the boys could tell that it was a large truck.

  Passing on any of the bridges was against the law, but the driver of the vehicle behind the truck was impatient. Misjudging the speed of the Hardys’ Ford, he started to swing around the truck.

  All of a sudden headlights were glaring right into Frank’s eyes. He hit the brakes hard. At the same instant the truck’s tires squealed as its driver applied his air brakes. The reckless passer squeezed in by a hair’s-breadth.

  Frank was furious. “That idiot!” he said through clenched teeth.

  Joe shook his head in disbelief.

  Frank bore down on the accelerator again. Until they were out of the delta area, there was no way to shake the tailing car, because there was only one route to take.

  On the outskirts of Stockton, however, Frank slowed in order to let the pursuing car get close behind them. Then he suddenly swung into a closed gas station. The other car shot on past.

  As Frank circled around the pumps to swing back in the direction they had come from, his headlights shone briefly on the other car. Two men were in the front seat, but the boys could not make out who they were.

  Their pursuers made a U-turn at the next intersection, but by then Frank had swung into a side street. After a series of random turns, he pulled over to the curb and cut his engine and lights.

  “That should do the trick,” Chet said, relieved.

  “Let’s wait and make sure,” Joe suggested.

  When several minutes had passed with no pursuer in sight, Frank drove to their motel.

  It was a complex consisting of individual cabins. Frank pulled the Ford around behind theirs so it could not be seen from the road.

  As they entered the cabin, Chet said, “We forgot to stop for hamburgers!”

  “Doesn’t anything make you forget food?” Joe asked. “A couple of killers are after us, remember?”

  “Well, I don’t want to die on an empty stomach,” Chet complained.

  “The motel restaurant is open all night. Go over there and get something if you want to.”

  After considering, Chet asked, “How do we know the killers aren’t watching the restaurant?”

  “We don’t,” Frank told him. “But it’s unlikely they know where we’re staying. They must have picked us up when we left the construction site after Joe’s bout with Madsen. And we haven’t been back here since, until now.”

  After weighing the possible danger of running into killers against satisfying his appetite, Chet decided to chance going to the restaurant. He returned with three hamburgers in a bag. Frank and Joe both declined, so Chet ate all three.

  Even though they were fairly sure that their tails did not know where they were staying, the boys decided to take no chances. They divided the night into three watches, and each stayed awake for a couple of hours. Fortunately the night passed without incident.

  The next morning after breakfast the boys decided to change cars. “That’ll throw our tail off,” Joe said.

  They checked the yellow pages of the classified telephone directory and discovered that Stockton had a local branch of the car rental agency from which they had rented the Ford in San Francisco. It advertised twenty-four-hour service, seven days a week.

  They drove down to the rental office, turned in their car, and selected a Chevrolet.

  As they pulled out of the lot, Frank gave a grin of satisfaction. “That ought to throw those guys off our trail!” he said.

  When they came back to the motel, they found a note under their door, requesting them to come to the office. Frank went.

  The clerk said, “There was a phone call for either Frank or Joe Hardy. The man didn’t tell me who he was, but he’ll call back at eleven o’clock.”

  “How did anyone know we were here?” Frank wondered aloud, mystified.

  “I don’t know. He just asked if either of you were registered, and when I told him ‘Yes,’ he gave me the message.”

  “Thanks,” Frank said and returned to the cabin.

  When he relayed to the others what he had just heard, Joe said thoughtfully, “The man must have called all the motels in the neighborhood, asking if we were registered, until he hit pay dirt. Maybe we’d better move and check in somewhere else under false names.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Frank said. He looked at his watch. “It’s five to eleven. So let’s wait for the call before we leave.”

  The man phoned promptly a few minutes later, Frank answered, but held the receiver so that the others could hear, too.

  A low, obviously disguised male voice said, “Is this one of the Hardy brothers?”

  “Yes, this is Frank.”

  “If you value your lives, you’ll get out of California before it’s too late!”

  There was a click as the man hung up.

  Joe said ruefully, “Too bad we didn’t have a recorder with us to tape the voice.”

  “We ought to pick up a portable job in case anything like this happens again,” Frank suggested.

  “Are any stores open on Sunday?” Chet wanted to know.

  “There’s a big shopping plaza a couple of blocks from the car rental office, and the parking lot was crowded when we went by,” Joe said.

  “It won’t hurt to inquire,” Frank said.

  The boys checked into another motel a few blocks away. They let Chet register under his name, figuring that if the mysterious threatener called motels again, he would ask for the Hardys as he had before, not for Chet Morton.

  Then they left for the shopping plaza. After they bought a pocket-sized tape recorder, they had lunch in a nearby restaurant. Chet suggested that since they were not due at the Steeles’ house until that evening, they had time to check out the third wine storage building.

  Frank grinned. “You’re right on the ball, Chet! I was going to suggest that.”

  They drove across the various bridges to the island once owned by Giovanni Russo, and to the mountainous area at its north end.

  They had no trouble finding Burns Mountain Road. It wound along about a mile before they came to a narrow gravel road leading off to the right. Chet pointed to a wooden sign that read: Carson’s Ski Lodge, 300 Yards.

  Frank parked in front of the building and they all got out. The lodge was at the base of a long slope, which obviously served as a ski run during the winter months. Their eyes followed the cable up the hill, where the lift ended at a low stone building.

  “That must
be the wine storage place,” Joe said.

  Frank nodded. “There’s no other building in sight. But why would anyone store wine at the top of a hill?”

  “Hey, guys!” Chet called out. “Look at this!”

  “Vineyards might have covered all the slopes at one time,” Chet reasoned. “But what a climb!”

  “Too bad the lift isn’t operating now,” Joe said.

  Chet noticed a sign posted on the porch of the lodge and went over to look at it.

  “Hey, guys! Are we ever in luck!” he called out. “Look at this!”

  Frank and Joe hastened over to read the notice. It said that the lift would be in service the following week. For a dollar people could ride up the mountaintop and enjoy the view.

  “Bring the whole family on a picnic. Upper lodge will be open!” the sign invited.

  “Now there’s an idea just made to order for Chet,” Joe said.

  Chet ignored the gibe. “Do we have to climb now?” he inquired.

  “I think we’d better wait,” Frank replied. “No doubt the place up there is locked, so we couldn’t get in anyhow. But it’ll be open when the lift’s running.”

  The boys drove back and had dinner at the same restaurant they had eaten the night before, then they drove to the screenwriter’s house.

  Chet glanced up and down the street, looking for anyone who might be a practical joker. But the street was empty.

  When Frank rang the bell, Mrs. Steele came to the door. She greeted them cordially and ushered them into the living room.

  “My husband is in his den,” she said. “Make yourselves comfortable while I get him.”

  “What do you suppose he’s like?” Chet whispered after she had left.

  “We’ll soon find out,” Frank said.

  “I’ll bet he looks like Ernest Hemingway,” Joe said. “You know, very distinguished, like writers are supposed to look.”

  A few moments later footsteps sounded and Mrs. Steele returned. Behind her was a tall, thin, gray-haired man. A yellow scarf with tiny black polka dots was knotted around his neck.

  Frank stared at the man’s face in utter astonishment.

  “Professor Von Stolk!” he blurted out.