The Ghostwriter Secret (15 page)

“Brake!”

The truck screeched to a halt.

“You've got to be gentler,” said Steve.

“Don't be a backseat driver,” said Dana.

“I'm not. I'm a driver's-seat driver.”

The ghostwriter's car was way ahead of them,
stopped at the intersection. If the light hadn't turned red, they would have lost him.

The light turned green.

“We're going to have to do some aggressive driving,” Steve said.

“Great,” mumbled Dana.

Steve's mom always said driving in San Francisco was tricky. She was right, although Steve didn't have much to compare it to. He drove right up behind the cars ahead of him, swerving in and out of lanes, trying to gain on the gray sedan.

Steve followed the ghostwriter onto Marina Avenue.

They headed toward a highway on-ramp.

“Hit the gas hard,” said Steve. “We're getting on the freeway.”

Steve watched the speedometer climb: 30, 40, 50, 60. “There,” he said. Steve had never driven on a freeway before. He liked it. Steve was concentrating so hard on the gray car, and also on trying not to crash, that it took him a few seconds to realize where he was. “We're driving across the Golden Gate Bridge!” said Steve. To his right the bay teemed with brightly colored sails. To his left there was only a wild expanse of ocean. “It's amazing!”

“Great,” said Dana on the floor.

The gray car took the first exit after the bridge. Steve followed. “Slowly, Dana,” he said. “Let's follow at a distance.”

Steve piloted the truck across the Golden Gate.

They were on a two-lane road that wound through a national park. Steve let the ghostwriter get far ahead—he didn't want the guy to figure out he was being followed. A stretch of blue opened up before them; they were headed toward the ocean. The road curved gently right when it reached the sea and wound along the coast. The gray car turned round a blind curve.

“Ease off the gas,” Steve said. “This turn's pretty sharp.”

Steve worked the wheel and guided the truck around the curve.

“Stop!” he shouted.

Dana slammed on the brakes. The truck skidded and stopped.

The ghostwriter's car had disappeared.

S
TEVE AND
D
ANA PARKED
the truck by the side of the road and got out.

“Where'd he go?” said Dana.

“Secret road,” said Steve.

“What?”

“Secret road.” Steve pulled out
The Bailey Brothers' Detective Handbook
, which has a chapter on high-speed chases:

Shawn and Kevin are super drivers, but crooks can be tricky behind the wheel. Smugglers and car thieves often
build secret roads off the main highway, invisible to law-abiding citizens. When these speedy creeps are chased by police, they turn down the secret roads and disappear! But Shawn and Kevin know what to look for, and so should you: The entrances to secret roads are usually after sharp curves, and they're covered up by fake shrubs, or blocked off by a conspiratorial farmer's tractor! Keep your eyes, peeled, sleuths! Don't be a chump.

There were no farms nearby. There was a forest, but that was a ways back from the highway.

“There must be a secret road here somewhere,” Steve said, looking down the cliff at the ocean below. White froth bloomed on the water's surface and disappeared in translucent puffs.

“This is ridiculous,” Dana said, coming up next to his friend. “There is no such thing as a secret road. We lost him, okay?”

The roar of the ocean obscured the sound of the man coming up behind them, so Steve didn't realize what was happening until it was too late. Steve saw a hand, holding a cloth, in his periphery. Of course. It wasn't a coincidence that they'd run into a ghostwriter.
It was a trap. Steve knew what was about to happen.

Time slowed down. In the moments before the cloth was placed over Steve's mouth and nose, Steve noticed many tiny details.

The cloth was red.

The man's sweater sleeve, rolled up, was turquoise.

On his forearm there was a tattoo. Steve just had time to read “rage will always be my last refuge” before he blacked out.

W
HEN
S
TEVE CAME TO
, his hands and feet were trussed up with rough ropes. It was dark—the only light came from a sputtering candle on a rocky ledge above him. He was cold, and so was the ground he was sitting on. His back was against a wet wall, and the air was thick and damp. The soft plinking sound of dripping water came from all sides. There was no doubt about it. Steve was in a sea cave. And his backpack was gone.

Dana was heaped on the ground to Steve's right. Steve nudged him a couple of times with his feet, and he saw his friend groggily open his eyes.

“Where are we?” Dana asked.

“Who are you?”

Before Steve could answer, someone behind him spoke. “Trapped. In a criminal lair.”

Steve adjusted his position so he could turn toward the voice. A large man with a white beard and salt-and-pepper hair was sitting a few feet away. He was wearing a thick sweater with a large turtleneck and a black eye patch over his right eye. His arms were behind his back, and his legs were bound. The man was smiling, and his smile was warm and wise.

“Who are you?” Dana asked.

Steve knew what the man would say before he said it.

“I'm MacArthur Bart.”

“Y
OU DO EXIST!”
S
TEVE SAID.

“Of course I do,” said MacArthur Bart. “I wrote you that letter.”

Steve's heart was happy. He wanted to shake his hero's hand, and would have, except for the ropes.

“I'm glad to see you, Steve. Although I wish we were meeting under better circumstances. And you must be Steve's friend Dana.”

“Hey,” said Dana. “Good to meet you.”

MacArthur Bart sniffed. “What smells like a campfire?”

“We do,” Dana said. “What's going on? Where are we?”

MacArthur Bart smiled sadly. “We've all been kidnapped by the B. Syndicate.”

“The B. Syndicate's a front!” said Steve. “They claim they wrote the Bailey Brothers books!”

MacArthur Bart's smile disappeared. “I know. Those ghostwriters are nothing more than mercenaries. Smugglers, thieves, and thugs. That's why I got in touch with you—I was hoping you could help me deal with them.”

“What do you mean?” Steve asked.

Bart chuckled. “I suppose I have a little explaining to do.”

“I'll say,” Dana said.

“Well, let's start at the beginning.” Bart leaned back against the limestone wall. “When I was a young man, not so much older than the two of you, I had to support myself. And so I wrote my first book. It was a mystery for children, about two teen sleuths who recover a sunken treasure in the bayside town where they live. The first Bailey Brothers mystery. It was very popular, and I wrote more. Many more. Three books a year for the next ten years.

“Now, boys, like many writers I am shy, even
private by nature. I had a small house in the forests north of San Francisco, where I did my writing in isolation. With success came fame, but I wanted no part of fame. And so whenever I went out in public, I did so under an assumed name.”

“A. C. Snuffley,” said Steve.

“Exactly!” said Bart. “I've used many fake names, but that has always been one of my favorites. And so, even as a nation of children grew to love MacArthur Bart, nobody knew that I was he. And then, after fifty-eight books, fifty-eight thrilling and action-packed Bailey Brothers mysteries, I ran out of ideas. I cobbled together
The Bailey Brothers' Detective Handbook
by pulling tricks and tips from the previous books. But the handbook was the last book I ever wrote.

“I had writer's block. I could come up with bits and pieces of Bailey Brothers stories, sure, but I couldn't finish anything. A year passed. Then five years passed. And soon I gave up. I became more and more reclusive. I threw out my television set, stopped reading the newspaper. That was a long time ago.”

“What about the ghostwriters?” Steve asked.

“I was getting to that. A few years after I stopped writing, I received a visitor: a young man who called himself Jack Antrim. I don't know how he found me, but I was sorry he did. He was a gangster, plain and
simple, the leader of a crime ring. And he had a bold plan. Every illegal enterprise needs a legitimate front. A fake business helps you launder money and throws off the police. Well, this Antrim wanted to hide his gang behind a literary syndicate. It was brilliant. Who's going to look closely at a bunch of writers for hire? I can't imagine a less interesting group of people than writers.”

Steve saw where this was going and chimed in. “So he created the story that his gang wrote the Bailey Brothers Mysteries!”

“Exactly. A completely legitimate front.”

“But why'd you go along with it?” Steve asked.

“I was scared. He said he'd kill me if I went public. Besides, I had money, and, like I said, I didn't want attention.”

“But that's cowardly!” Dana said. Bart winced.

It hurt Steve to hear his hero called a coward, but he couldn't disagree.

“You're right, Dana. It was cowardly. But a few months ago I was stocking up on supplies in the town near my home and I saw a magazine cover promising an article on ‘the Real MacArthur Bart.' I picked it up, of course, and there was a picture of Jack Antrim smiling back at me. It was a bunch of hogwash about his grandfather and the B. Syndicate, and it all made
me so furious I started shaking. I decided enough was enough. And when I received your letter about solving that mystery in Ocean Park—the publisher still forwards my mail to a P.O. box I keep under the name Philip Snatterly—I knew you could help me. So I came to visit you. But the B. Syndicate got to me before we could meet.”

“And so now here we are,” said Steve. “Sorry we couldn't be more help.”

“Oh, I don't know about that,” said Bart. “I could always use the help of a couple detectives.”

“Actually, Steve's the only detective. I'm just Dana.”

“How can we help you?” Steve asked.

“You can help me escape,” said Bart, his eye twinkling.

“But we're all tied up,” said Steve.

“Come on, Steve,” said Bart. “
The Bailey Brothers' Detective Handbook
. Chapter sixteen: ‘Escaping from Your Bonds.'”

“‘Find a keen blade or a piece of slate and secretly saw the ropes against the sharp edge,'” said Steve.

“You forgot ‘jagged limestone formations,'” Bart said. He paused, straining, then smiled. “There.”

He brought his arms in front of his chest and rubbed his wrists.

Bart was free!

M
AC
A
RTHUR
B
ART UNTIED
Dana and Steve quickly. The boys stood up. Steve's muscles were sore, and his head ached.

“Listen up,” said Bart. “We're in a small room off the cave's main chamber. That's where the ghostwriters have their hideout. There's a narrow passageway that connects this cavern to theirs. Are you boys following me?”

Steve and Dana nodded.

“Now,” Bart continued, “there are usually only two ghostwriters here at a time. Our best plan is to lure
them in here and then ambush them. I'll take one; you two take the other.”

“How are we going to do that?” Dana asked. “It's not exactly a fair fight.”

Dana had a point. Bart seemed pretty strong, especially for an old man, but Steve and Dana didn't exactly have the best record when it came to throwdowns.

“I used to box,” said Bart, “and I still train regularly.” Steve was beyond impressed. “I'll try to look out for you two. But if you can, hit these guys in the solar plexus.”