The Phantom Freighter (7 page)

“A trip? Sure,” he said when they told of Mr. McClintock's request. “I'll take you and your man anywhere you like, so long as you don't ask me to cruise off the Barmet Shoals.”

“What's wrong with the shoals, Captain?” Frank inquired. “You're not afraid of them, are you?”

“Not me. But I got a terrible fright there last evening and I don't want to go near the place again.”

The boys were curious. Captain Harkness was not the sort of man who scared easily. They asked him what had happened.

“Don't know if I ought to tell you,” the fisherman grumbled. “Most likely you won't believe a word of it, but it's true just the same.”

“Try us,” Frank said.

“Some time after sundown,” the captain began, “with a high sea running, I got off my course a bit. Suddenly I spotted a freighter to my starboard side. I could see we were on collision course, so I threw the helm over hard, but I couldn't hold my boat against the rough water. I knew I was going to hit the freighter but there wasn't a thing I could do.”

“So she rammed you?” asked Joe.

Captain Harkness wagged his head. “She did and she didn't. I'd say I ran right through her! That's the part you won't believe, but it's as true as my name is Andy Harkness. By rights I shouldn't be alive now to tell the tale.”

“You ran
through
the freighter?” Frank gasped.

“That's the way it seemed. One minute she's looming up ahead of me big as a mountain, all her lights on, the next minute she's not there at all and my boat is swinging northward off the shoals.”

“And where was the freighter?” Joe queried.

“I tell you, she wasn't in sight!”

“What do you mean?” Frank said. “Where could she have gone?”

The captain gave a convulsive shrug, as if the recollection frightened him. “She was a phantom freighter!” he vowed.

Frank and Joe asked him several other questions, but he stuck to his story.

“Did you see any name on the ship?” asked Frank.

“Yep! Caught a glimpse of her name up on her bow. The
Falcon,
she was called. Never heard of her before. But she's a phantom freighter, that's what she is, boys, a phantom freighter!”

“GOOD thing Captain Harkness noticed the name of the phantom freighter,” said Fenton Hardy after his sons had related the strange story. “It gives us a clue to work on, at any rate.”

He went to a bookshelf. Taking down a thick volume, he thumbed through the pages.

“Registry of Shipping,” he said, scanning a column. “If there is such a ship as the
Falcon
it should be listed here—and it's not.”

“Isn't there a chance this phantom ship is registered under another name?” asked Frank.

“Possibly. But I wonder if the whole thing wasn't a hallucination of Captain Harkness.”

As the boys left their father's study they encountered Aunt Gertrude in the hall. She began to fuss again because the carton containing her valuable papers had not been recovered.

“With three detectives in the family, a little thing like this shouldn't be much of a problem!” she said.

“We've been working on it, Aunty,” Joe said, though he had to admit their leads had come to little.

“The carton was probably in that barn all the time,” Miss Hardy went on. “Did you look through the debris after the fire?”

“There didn't seem to be much point in grubbing through the ruins,” Frank said. “Any papers would have been burned to ashes.”

“Military medals wouldn‘t,” replied his aunt. “There were a couple of old citations among the papers. I'd like to know what happened to that carton one way or another.”

Since Frank and Joe had some spare time while waiting for Captain Harkness to arrange the fishing trip, they drove out to the Phillips house. Permission to search the ruins of the barn was granted, and for the next hour they poked through the debris. Their hands were black with soot and their shirts covered with ashes. Weary of the messy task, they were about to give up the hunt as hopeless when Joe picked up a small object near the front foundation.

“Looks like a penny with a hole in it,” he said and cleaned off the metal. He held it to the light. The inscription was now legible.
Good Luck!

“I've seen medals like this in the stores down at the docks,” remarked Frank. “Many sailors wear them.”

The boys returned to the house and asked Mrs. Phillips if she knew anything about the medal. She said it did not belong to them. Joe then telephoned Aunt Gertrude, who declared that the medal had not been among her possessions.

Frank put the medal in his pocket and the boys left. On the way to town Frank said, “It must belong to our friend with the scar.”

“Who else?” Joe agreed.

They had nearly reached Bayport when a familiar jalopy which sounded more like a helicopter than a car overtook them and pulled alongside. Chet Morton was at the wheel. Biff Hooper sat beside him.

“Hi!” Chet said. “We want you to go out in the
Sleuth.
Got something to show you!”

The Hardys followed, wondering what was up. When they reached the boathouse they learned that Chet wanted to go fishing.

“Not just for the sake of fishing, mind you,” he explained hastily. “It's a scientific experiment for our trip. I've invented a new fish lure. If it works I'll make a fortune. Look!”

From a cardboard box he produced a weird-looking gadget made of tin and strips of aluminum, barbed with hooks.

“I can't imagine any fish going for that!” said Frank. “What is it?”

“A mechanical herring. Commercial fishermen won't have to use real herring for bait any more. One of my mechanical ones will last a lifetime. I'll sell so many I'll make forty-five dollars like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Come on. I'll show you how it works.”

They climbed aboard the
Sleuth.
In a few minutes the trim little craft was about a quarter of a mile out in the bay. Chet attached his mechanical herring to a length of heavy line. Then he doused it with a foul-smelling fluid which he poured from a bottle.

Joe sniffed. “Wow! What's that?”

“Herring oil,” Chet explained. “A mechanical herring should smell like a herring, shouldn't it?”

“I thought fish couldn't smell,” Biff said.

“They do when they've been left out in the sun too long,” Joe quipped.

Chet carefully lowered his creation into the water and payed out the line. Frank throttled down the engine to trolling speed, and they cruised out into the bay.

“The whole secret of this lure,” Chet explained, “is—Wow! I've got a bite!”

The others stared incredulously at their chum, who began hauling in the line. He finally landed a small sea bass with a shout of triumph.

“I knew it would work,” Chet declared proudly. “Just wait until I put that thing on the market. I'll sell thousands. I‘ll—”

“Look!” Joe said suddenly.

His attention had been attracted by a fast motorboat running offshore. It was speeding crazily from side to side as if out of control. Two men in the craft were fighting violently.

Frank snatched up a pair of binoculars. Through the glasses he saw that the men were apparently battling for possession of a large carton. One of them stumbled back with it in his arms. As the other leaped toward him he raised the box high in the air and hurled it overboard.

His opponent sprang at him, knocking him down with a savage blow to the jaw. Then he lurched to the wheel of the boat and swung the craft away from the rocky shore.

The men and their fight were of no great concern to the Hardys, but the carton was. Could it possibly have some connection with their case? they wondered.

Frank headed for the spot where the cardboard container was bobbing up and down in the water, and Biff and Joe hauled it aboard. The sodden carton, with no marks of identification, was torn open. Frank reached in and pulled out the contents. Nothing but tightly packed wool!

“Why were those two fellows fighting over a box of raw wool?” Biff asked, puzzled.

“That's their business,” Chet said impatiently. “Let's go out farther and try my herring again.”

The Hardys, however, were eager to take the carton home and examine it more carefully for possible clues. They were intrigued by the resemblance to the James Johnson box which had come to their house by mistake. Both young sleuths felt sure there was a link between the two!

In their garage Frank went over every inch of the outside of the box. “Not a mark anywhere,” he reported.

Joe, meanwhile, had pulled apart every bit of the compressed wool. There was no trace of anything secreted in the fluffy mass.

“Only one more place to look,” said Frank and carefully examined the interior sides of the carton. “Nothing here, either,” he added. “Whatever was packed in the wool must have fallen out, either before the guy threw the box into the water or after.”

The boys cleaned up the mess and went into the house, where they found that the mystery had taken a new and unexpected turn. Aunt Gertrude, looking grim, met them in the kitchen.

“My papers!” she exclaimed in excitement. “Some of them have turned up. Your father just had a letter about them and wants you to take care of it. Look at this!”

Frank and Joe eagerly read the letter, which was postmarked Hopkinsville, several miles away, and had been mailed the previous day:

The boys gazed at their aunt in astonishment.

“Where did he come across the letters?” Frank asked.

“That's what I'm wondering!” declared Aunt Gertrude. “Because those very letters were in my lost carton. The man has the impudence to try to sell us our own property!”

FRANK and Joe lost no time in getting to Hopkinsville and finding Daniel J. Eaton. He was a short, baldish man. His little store was wedged inconspicuously between an establishment featuring antique glass and one selling furniture.

Hopkinsville seemed to have many such places —stores dealing in stamps, coins, and rare books. An ideal spot to dispose of old documents!

“Here are the letters. They're authentic, all right,” Mr. Eaton told the boys as they examined the Admiral Hardy letters.

“Please tell us where you got these,” Frank requested.

“They were sold to me by a Miss Elizabeth Hardy a few days ago,” the man replied. “She said the letters had been in her possession for many years.”

“Would they be valuable to a museum or to a collector?” Joe asked.

Mr. Eaton shook his head. “Not really. To another member of the Hardy family, however, someone such as your father—”

“Then why didn't Miss Elizabeth Hardy offer to sell them to us, instead of you?”

Mr. Eaton had a ready reply. “She explained about the family quarrel,” he said. “Oh, don't worry, I won't mention it to anyone. Miss Hardy assured me, though, that you would be eager to buy the letters. Said she was in financial difficulties. Otherwise she wouldn't have parted with the letters at all.”

“Does this woman live in Hopkinsville?” asked Frank.

“No. Said she came from out of town. Was only passing through. Gave her address as Post Office Box 499, Trenton, New Jersey. I had never seen her before,” replied the dealer. He cocked his head and looked sharply at his inquisitors. “But why all these questions? Doesn't your father want the letters?”

“He wants them, all right, but he doesn't want to buy them. They were stolen from my aunt several days ago.”

The boys told Mr. Eaton the whole story of the missing carton, said there had been no family quarrel and that the woman was a fraud.

“You mean I'm in possession of stolen prop. erty?” Mr. Eaton exclaimed.

“I'm afraid you are,” Frank replied.

Convinced that the Hardys were telling the truth, Mr. Eaton wrapped the letters quickly and handed them across the counter. “I'm no fence for any thieves,” he said. “Take the letters. I'll suffer the loss.”

“We're sorry, Mr. Eaton,” Joe said, accepting the package.

“The amount was not large,” the dealer went on. “If I got gypped, it's my own fault.”

The boys thanked him. Mr. Eaton said that while he had bought only the letters from the phony Miss Hardy, she had offered him a number of old books that also might have been in the carton.

“Perhaps she sold them elsewhere in town,” he suggested. “There are some secondhand book-stores and antique shops on the next block. If you look around, you may recover the entire lot.”

Before the Hardys left the store they went toward the back to examine some old framed documents hanging on the wall. Mr. Eaton said he had bought them in the course of the previous week.

“Quite valuable,” he said. “I'm certain they're authentic.”

“They
look
authentic,” Frank remarked. “We can give you a tip, though, Mr. Eaton. Many faked documents are being put on the market. They're so cleverly done it's hard to tell they're frauds. If you're offered any more documents, I'd advise you to study the wording carefully. That's where the forgers who make them slip up.”