Danger Zone (2 page)

"It's just the shock. Shock makes us all act differently," Frank said, trying to soothe his aunt.

Joe gave his brother an exasperated look. Shaking his head, he stood up and walked to the other end of the room.

A forest ranger in a coastal town like Bayport, New York, could be a lead. But Gertrude could have been wrong about the shirt, or the guy could have bought the shirt at a secondhand shop.

Aunt Gertrude finally fell silent, then began to rise. "Well, I can't look for your mother, but I can pick up. That kitchen is such a terrible mess." As she stood her legs buckled beneath her.

Frank reached out and grabbed her hand. "Please, Aunt Gertrude, just try to rest. Besides, it's best to leave everything the way it is. The police will want to search for clues." He got up and turned to Joe. "I'll be right back."

Frank went into the kitchen so his aunt could rest and stepped over a fallen chair to get to the phone.

As soon as he reached for it, it rang.

He snatched it off the hook. "Hello, who is this?"

There was a brief pause. "Well, aren't you being a little presumptuous? You haven't yet told me who you are."

The voice sent a chill up Frank's spine. It sounded as if it were being programmed letter by letter through a computer voice sampler.

No, that couldn't be, Frank immediately realized. The voice had answered his question, so it couldn't have been recorded in advance.

"This is Frank Hardy. Now get to the point, pal. I need to use this phone."

'We are dispensing with the formalities, are we, Frank Hardy?" the voice replied. "I can go along with that."

A scrambler. That's what he was using, Frank realized. An electronic device held up to the receiver that disguised the voice by filtering it through different frequencies.

Frank moved toward the den. Behind him the extra-long telephone extension cord was stretched taut. He could just see his brother sitting on the couch next to Aunt Gertrude.

"In fact, perhaps I can alleviate your sense of urgency," the eerie voice went on. "You see, you will not be needing to use the phone after our conversation."

Frantically Frank signaled to Joe by waving a hand over his head.

"Yeah?" he said, stalling for time. "I think I'm the one who'll decide that!"

Joe looked up. Gesturing, Frank mouthed the words the phone in Dad's den. Joe immediately stood up. Frank then twisted his arm as if turning a knob and mouthed tape recorder.

Joe bolted from the room.

"Have it your way," the voice replied. Through the odd, disjointed tone Frank could hear an undercurrent of threat. "I would be terribly disappointed if you didn't do what I suggest. It would be a shame to see a noble woman like Mrs. Hardy suffer because of her son's stubbornness."

Frank froze. In the silence he heard an almost imperceptible click as Joe picked up Fenton's phone.

"What did you do with my mother?" Frank asked through clenched teeth.

"Your mother, I'm pleased to say, is enjoying quite pleasant accommodations. And you do want to keep it that way, don't you?"

Hoping that Joe was recording the conversation, Frank said, "All right, let's cut the phony politeness. You'll be dead meat if my mom is hurt, buddy, so you might as well tell me what's going down right now."

"Dead meat," the voice repeated. "A colorful but rather repulsive image, don't you think? What's going down, my hotheaded young friend, is simply this: Fenton Hardy must be back at your house in twenty-four hours to answer a phone call. In person. Is that clear?"

Instinctively Frank looked at his watch, which read five-thirty. "And what if he's not?"

"Must you ask so many questions?" the voice answered. It chuckled malevolently, making a sound not unlike broken glass scratching a blackboard. "If he's not, your beloved mother will die."

There was a hollow click at the other end of the phone. Frank stared at it unseeing for a few seconds before he hung up.

Joe appeared in the hallway outside the den. He looked over his shoulder to check on Gertrude, then walked toward Frank. "That slime-ball," he hissed. "If he laid a finger on Mom - "

"Did you get the voice on tape?" Frank interrupted, his face taut with concentration.

"Yeah, but a lot of good that's going to do us. The guy was using a scrambler, so we can't run a voice-pattern test. There's no way we can involve the police after what he said."

"We're just going to have to find Dad. Obviously this guy doesn't want to talk to us."

"Great," Joe retorted. "Only Mom knows where he is. What do we do, call information for the state of Massachusetts and say, 'Fenton Hardy, please. He's on a secret intelligence trip somewhere in the southwestern part of your state. Can you locate him?' Frank, this guy's got us over a barrel."

"I'm not so sure," Frank said. He cast a concerned glance toward the den. "Let's get Aunt Gertrude upstairs. Then I want to hear that tape again."

They went into the den to find Aunt Gertrude still sitting on the couch, her head back, her eyes shut. "No ... no," she mumbled. "Leave my sister-in-law alone. She has two youngsters. If you must take someone, take me!"

Joe raised an eyebrow. "Youngsters?" he repeated under his breath.

Frank reached out and gently folded his hand over his aunt's. "Come on. I think you need a rest, Aunt Gertrude."

Her eyes fluttered open. "Frank! My goodness, did I fall asleep?"

Frank nodded.

"Who was on the phone?" she asked with sudden hope. "Was it Fenton?"

"No," Joe replied, thinking fast. "It was - uh - an electronic voice. You know, one of those tape recordings that tries to sell you things."

Aunt Gertrude nodded absently. "And for that the two of you had to rush off, leaving me all alone?" Joe opened his mouth to answer, but she waved him off. "Never mind. I suppose I can't expect you to act normally when your dear mother has been - " Her voice choked in the middle of the sentence.

"Please, Aunt Gertrude," Frank said, urging her toward the stairs. "We'll get in touch with Dad. Why don't you have a little nap? I'm sure you'll feel better."

Protesting feebly, she allowed her nephews to take her up to her room. They sat her down on her bed, and before they were out of the room she had curled up and fallen asleep.

They quietly skittered down the stairs, walked into their father's office, and sat down.

"Now we know for sure we didn't run over that soda bottle in the parking lot. The kidnappers punctured the tire to keep us occupied while they took Mom," Joe said.

"You're right," Frank agreed. "I think we should study the tape, listen to this guy's accent, listen for background noise. Did you set the ticker when you turned it on?"

"What do you think I am, an amateur?" Joe rewound to 000 and played the tape back: "Your mother, I'm pleased to say, is enjoying quite pleasant accommodations. . . ."

It was impossible to detect an accent, Frank thought. The voice was so garbled it could have come from Mars. But there was another sound.

"And you do want to - "

"Stop there!" Frank said.

Joe already had. There had been two high-pitched squeals in the background. He rewound and played again. They listened closely to the squeals.

"They sound like screams!" Joe said.

Frank shook his head. "My guess is the scraping of a table leg against the floor, or some feedback into the mike."

"Or a dog barking, or an elephant bleating, or the squeak of grease as this nut twirls his handlebar mustache." Joe slumped into the brown leather chair by his father's desk. "It could be anything! That scrambler is mixing up any noise that comes through the mike."

Something was dawning on Frank, but he couldn't tell Joe. Not just yet. "I guess we're going to have to do what the man says, Joe," he said in a loud voice.

Joe looked at him as if he'd just lost his mind. "But we don't know - "

"We'll find him. I've got to go check the secret phone file."

"Secret phone - "

Joe's answer was interrupted by the loud tramping of footsteps on the living room floor.

"Hey! What's going on?" a voice boomed.

Frank ran out of the room, leaving a bewildered Joe to follow him. "Chet!" he called.

When he got to the living room Chet Morton was standing there, dumbfounded. His broad shoulders had gone slack, making his potbelly jut out even more than usual. Drooping from his left hand was a half-eaten slice of pizza. "What did you guys do to this place?"

Behind him Phil Cohen was squeezing his thin body behind an armchair to unplug a lamp whose bulb had shattered. Biff Hooper was standing on the opposite side of the room from Chet. Together they looked like two useless pillars of a building that had collapsed around them.

"I wish," Frank said with a rueful smile. He quickly told them what had happened. They listened with a mixture of dread, disbelief, and anger.

"We'll trace the call!" Chet said, jutting his pizza forward to emphasize his point. "My dad knows a guy who works for the phone company - "

"Phil," Frank said, cutting Chet off, "can I talk to you out in the backyard?"

Tilting his head quizzically, Phil said, "Sure."

Frank turned to his brother. "Joe, you and the guys straighten up. We'll be right back."

Frank moved through the house with Phil close behind. Together they stepped into the backyard.

"What's this all about?" Phil asked.

"I need your expertise," Frank replied. "About electronics."

He pulled open the garage door and reached around to flick on the light. Mrs. Hardy's car stood on the left side, dwarfed by the shelves that reached upward all around it. Each shelf was stuffed with boxes and boxes of tools, gadgets, and equipment. Frank reached into an unmarked metal box on a bottom shelf.

"I can't believe you can find anything in this mess," Phil commented, shaking his head.

"Actually, it's very easy," Frank replied. "The trick is living in this house for eighteen years." He pulled out a long, sturdy metal loop with a rubber handle and a small white gauge.

Phil asked, "What are you going to do with an inductance coil?"

"Can it detect a current hidden behind a hard surface, like a wall?"

Phil shrugged. "Sure. It's a closed electric circuit with no juice of its own. But if you hold it near an electric circuit, it picks up current, and the meter jumps. What do you need it for, Frank?"

"Follow me," Frank answered.

He ran back to the house. Holding the coil, Phil followed him to the living room. There, Joe, Chet, and Biff were setting up furniture.

"What's going on?" Joe asked.

"No clues back there," Frank answered.

"I could have told you that," Joe said, giving Frank a bewildered look.

But Frank was walking away from him toward a small table by the couch. On the table was a message pad, a pen, and a telephone. Wordlessly, Frank looked at Phil and pointed to the wall behind the table.

Phil nodded knowingly and began to run the inductance coil along the wall.

Before anyone could ask any questions Frank said, "The place looks much better. Let's get started on the kitchen."

Realizing that something was up, Joe led the others into the kitchen. Frank stayed behind and watched as Phil passed the coil along the wall behind the phone table . . . the couch . . . the armchair. . . .

Suddenly the needle on the meter jumped, then settled back. Phil's eyes lit up. He began to say something, but Frank held out his hand, signaling him to be quiet.

Phil slowly brought the coil back. When the needle jumped again Phil held it at the spot. He turned to Frank with a triumphant smile.

Frank nodded, then immediately indicated Phil to follow him again. The two of them went into the kitchen, where Frank waved everyone outside. "Let's put the barbecue grill away, guys, okay?"

"Barbe - " Chet began, but Frank grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out the back door.

One by one, with mystified looks on their faces, they stepped out into the backyard. Frank led them to a secluded spot under an oak tree.

"Okay, what's all the cloak-and-dagger stuff?" Chet demanded. "Don't tell me there's a bomb hidden inside or something."

"Not a bomb, Chet," Frank replied. "A bug. Whoever this kidnapper is, he was listening to every word we said in the house!"

"You mean we were on 'Candid Microphone'?" Chet remarked. "If I'd known, I would have really said what was on my mind!"

"I just hope we didn't let out anything important," Phil said.

Joe shook his head. "What's there to hide? We don't know where Dad is. Maybe they'll believe us."

"That's weird," Phil said.

"What's weird?" Joe replied.

"Your dad just left town without telling you where he was going?" Phil asked.

" 'Southwestern Massachusetts' was all he said," Frank replied with a shrug. "That's the way it goes - sometimes he has to keep things secret."

"I can't believe he wouldn't leave a number," Chet said.

"My mom knows," Frank replied.

"Doesn't do you and Joe a whole lot of good," Biff said. "It's not like you can call her and ask."

Joe furrowed his brow. "No, but I do remember them talking about my dad's assignment a week or so ago. They were upstairs, and I was passing their room. I could hear them."

All eyes focused on Joe. "What did they say?" Frank asked.

"The usual stuff," Joe said, running the hazy events over in his mind. "Mom sounded a little annoyed. She asked if he had to go. Dad said unfortunately yes. Mom mentioned how much work there was to do around the house, Dad said he'd do most of it before he left. Mom asked if he'd call her once he got to ... " His voice trailed off.

"To where, Joe?" Frank pressed.

Joe put his hand to his forehead. "I wasn't really paying attention! I wanted to get back to my room. Now, let's see. What was the name of that town? Mar something."

"Marbury," Phil suggested.

"Marshalltown," Biff said.

"Marmalade!" Chet blurted out.

Biff rolled his eyes. "You marshmallow," he muttered.

Frank ran into the house to get a New England map as the others continued to suggest names. Scurrying back outside, he opened to a list of towns at the bottom of the map.