The Secret of Sigma Seven (12 page)

“Yes,” Gillis said distractedly. “Well, I'll be packing up and heading back to Hollywood soon. I've got to get back out to the tent and start preparing the props for the trip back. If you'll excuse me . . .”

Joe watched Gillis stand up and walk away. Then he noticed a small black object that the special-effects director had left on his table.

“Hey, what's this?” Joe said. He reached down and picked up the object. “Gillis must have forgotten it.”

Joe turned and called out Gillis's name, but he had already left the coffee shop. Joe shrugged and held up the object to examine it.

“What is it?” Frank asked.

“Some sort of electronic gadget,” Joe said. “It looks sort of like the remote control for our VCR.”

Joe turned it over in his hands. It was made out of black plastic in a rectangular shape and measured about five inches by two inches. There were several buttons on one side of it, with markings beneath them. Joe jabbed several of the buttons at random.

“Look out,” Frank said. “You may have just launched a flight of missiles somewhere in Omaha.”

“Why do I doubt that?” Joe said. “Well, we'll just
have to give this back to Gillis the next time we see him.” He stuffed the device into his shirt pocket and turned back to his brother.

“There's nothing else to do here,” Frank said. “Let's go check out some other leads. Maybe we can find Feinbetter and his friend Hennessy.”

“Lead on,” Joe said.

As the Hardys exited the coffee shop, they noticed several solemn-faced people wandering around outside.

“Word must be getting around about what happened to Simon Devoreaux,” Joe said. “That ought to put a real damper on the convention.”

As they stepped into the hallway, Joe heard the sound of raucous laughter. He turned to see two men with wide smiles on their faces happily slapping each other on the back.

“Well, speak of the devil,” said Frank. “Richard Feinbetter and Arlen Hennessy. Wonder what they're so happy about?”

Feinbetter looked up to see the Hardys standing in front of them. “Well, hello, boys,” he said jovially. “Have you heard the news?”

“You mean about Simon Devoreaux?” Frank asked.

“Yeah, that was the news,” Hennessy said.

“I don't believe you guys,” Joe said. “Are you laughing because Simon Devoreaux just got hauled off to the hospital?”

“Simon Devoreaux got what was coming to him,”
Feinbetter said. “That fraud has been making a fortune off my ideas for nearly ten years now, and I feel no sympathy for him at all.”

Arlen Hennessy stopped laughing. “Maybe the kid's right, Rich. Devoreaux's treated you pretty badly over the years, but he didn't deserve to get poisoned.”

“Mr. Feinbetter doesn't seem to agree,” Frank said. “Do you, Mr. Feinbetter?”

“You're still wondering if I had something to do with the attacks on Devoreaux, aren't you?” Feinbetter said. “Well, I didn't. I'm not sorry that any of it happened, but it wasn't my doing. That's not my style.”

“What
is
your style, Mr. Feinbetter?” Joe asked. “Stealing films?”

Feinbetter gave Hennessy a dirty look. “You should never have made that joke about me and the films, Arlen,” he told him. “These boys aren't going to let up until they find the real culprit. Which I hope happens soon.”

“I don't suppose you have an alibi for what you were doing when Mr. Devoreaux got poisoned, do you, Mr. Feinbetter?” Frank asked.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” Feinbetter said. “For the last two hours I've been in one of the conference rooms delivering my guest-of-honor speech. And I have over one hundred witnesses. In fact, I just got out.”

“Can't get a better alibi than that,” Hennessy said.
“And I was there with him the whole time. So don't start getting any ideas that I might have had something to do with what happened to Devoreaux.”

Hennessy nodded at Frank and Joe. Then he and Feinbetter turned and walked away.

“He's got us there, Joe,” Frank said.

Joe sighed. “I guess so. But if Feinbetter didn't do it, who did?”

“Morwood isn't off the hook yet,” Frank reminded his brother. “And neither is Pete Amchick.”

“Yeah, but something's bugging me about all of this,” Joe said. “I'm not sure what it is, though.” He shrugged. “I'm starting to get a little stale. Maybe if we get our minds off this thing for a minute, we'll start getting some ideas.”

“I saw something in the program about a room where they're showing movies,” Frank said. “They had some neat stuff on the schedule. Maybe a half hour of old films will clear the cobwebs out of our brains.”

“That's it over there,” Joe said, pointing across the hall from the coffee shop at a sign that read,
Baru the Jungle Boy vs. the Martians:
Special Showing. Two metal spears had been propped in front of the sign as decoration. Next to the sign was a meeting room.

Frank opened the door and entered the room with his brother. It was dark inside, except for the flickering of a movie projector and an old black-and-white film showing on a screen at one end of the room. Several rows of chairs had been set up, and a few
scattered fans were sitting in them. Frank found his way to the second row and sat down with his brother.

The film was mindless and silly, but Frank had to admit it was a lot of fun. A young boy who had been raised by apes in the jungle was battling against midget-size invaders from Mars. Frank watched along with his brother for about fifteen minutes, laughing at the dated dialogue and absurd plot twists.

“This is great,” Joe said finally, “but we'd better get out of here and back on the case.”

“Okay,” Frank said, standing up. “Let's go.”

On the screen a native tribesman in an elaborate headdress was preparing to throw a spear at one of the Martians. He cocked back his arm and prepared to launch the spear into the air.

As he threw it, there was a ripping noise from the screen. Frank, looking up in astonishment, realized that a real spear had come leaping out of the screen— and it was headed straight toward him!

Frank twisted aside just in time. The spear landed right in the middle of the chair in which he had been sitting.

Joe looked at his brother in amazement. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “A spear. Straight from the jungle to my seat.”

“Down in front!” somebody behind Joe shouted. “I can't see the screen.”

“You can't see the screen because there's a big hole in it,” another voice replied. “Somebody turn on the lights.”

A moment later the room was flooded with light. The projectionist, a slender young man, turned off the film, and the image vanished from the screen.

“Wow!” exclaimed a boy in the row directly behind the Hardys. He stared at the spear that jutted up from Frank's seat. “This is better than three-D movies.”

“A lot more dangerous, too,” Joe said.

“Who would do such a crazy thing?” Frank asked, looking down at the spear embedded in the seat next to him.

Joe gazed up at the gaping hole in the middle of the screen. “There still could be somebody behind there,” Joe said, pointing. He raced to the screen and looked behind it, but nobody was in sight.

“He would have gotten away by now,” Frank said. He turned back to the projectionist. “Did you see anybody leave this room after that spear was thrown?”

“Yeah,” the projectionist said. “Some guy just rushed out the door.”

“Did you see what he looked like?” Joe asked.

“No,” the projectionist said. “The lights were still out. All I saw was a silhouette when he ran into the hallway.”

“Come on,” Frank said. “Maybe we can still catch him.”

Frank and Joe hurried into the hallway and looked around, but there was no one in sight. When Frank glanced back at the door to the room, however, he noticed that one of the spears that had been part of the display was missing.

“Well, we know where he got the spear,” Joe said.

“Great,” Frank said. “But that doesn't help us. We still don't know who threw it.”

A light seemed to switch on in Joe's eyes. “Wait a minute!” he cried, grabbing his brother's arm. “I just realized something. There's a common thread running through a lot of the events that have taken place this weekend: the lightning bolt that almost hit Devoreaux, the phony elevator I walked through, the smoke bomb thrown by the costumed sorcerer, even that spear that jumped out of the movie screen.”

“Yeah,” Frank said. “They're all a lot weirder than the stuff we normally run into.”

Joe shook his head. “They're all special effects— like you'd find in the movies. And not everyone here has the know-how to create special effects,” Joe continued.

“Jack Gillis?” Frank suggested. “But somebody tried to
kill
Gillis yesterday afternoon. We were there, remember?”

“I know,” Joe said. “But Gillis seems to be the most likely suspect.”

“What about Pete Amchick?” Frank said. “He knows enough about electronics to pull off a lot of this stuff.”

“True,” Joe said. “But remember how I was wondering earlier who would have a key to let that elephant loose? Gillis would have one, and Pete Amchick wouldn't. Pete Amchick has the technical know-how to build that electrical contraption that almost zapped Simon Devoreaux last night, but I'm betting it's Gillis.”

“And Gillis was in the restaurant while Devoreaux was eating,” Frank said. “He could have gone over to Devoreaux's table to say a few words to him and secretly dropped something into his salad.”

“There's one thing I can't figure, though,” Joe said.

“What's that?” Frank asked.

“Why would Gillis steal his own film?” Joe said. “He said himself that he was co-creator of the movie. Why would he want to get rid of all the copies? For that matter, why would he want to kill Simon Devoreaux?”

“I don't know,” Frank said. “But I think maybe we'd better have another conversation with Jack Gillis.”

“Sounds good,” Joe said. “Where do you think he is?”

“He told us he was going back out to the tent to get the props ready to ship back to Hollywood,” Frank said. “Let's look for him there.”

Frank and Joe walked back to the lobby. When they reached the parking lot, they could see the large green tent, but the flap was closed, and nobody appeared to be around.

Joe walked to the entrance of the tent. There was no place to knock, so he called Gillis's name instead.

“Mr. Gillis?” Joe shouted. “Are you in there? We have to talk to you for a minute.”

There was no answer. Joe called Gillis's name again, but no one opened the flap.

“Maybe we should invite ourselves in,” Frank suggested.

“Fine with me,” Joe said. “It shouldn't be hard to open the flap. It looks as if Gillis left it unlatched.”

Joe grabbed the edge of the flap and pulled it away from the canvas behind it. He looked inside. The exhibit was still set up the way he remembered it from the day before. Apparently, Gillis had not yet begun to disassemble it for the trip back. The two hovercars sat about ten feet away from Joe.

“Gillis doesn't appear to be around,” Joe said.

“Let's wait for him awhile,” Frank said. “He'll probably be back soon. The fact that he left the tent open probably means he wasn't going away for long.”

Frank opened the flap and stepped inside the tent. “Where did this trunk come from?” he asked, pointing at a long, black trunk sitting in the middle of the tent. “It wasn't here yesterday.”

“Maybe it's got more movie stuff inside it,” Joe said.

“Let's take a look,” Frank said. He knelt down in front of the trunk, popped open the latches, then lifted the top.

His pulse leaped. Inside the trunk were several costumes, including a sorcerer's robe, an astronaut's space suit, and a porcupine outfit. And on top of the pile was a green medallion with the moon and a star on it.

“This is incredible,” Frank said. “Whoever put this stuff here is the same person who tried to kill Devoreaux.”

“And who tried to kill me, too,” Joe said. “Do you think this trunk belongs to Gillis?”

“It makes sense,” Frank said. “Gillis seems to be running the whole show inside this tent.”

“That clinches it,” Joe said. “We're definitely going to have to talk to this guy again.”

“Hey,” Frank said suddenly. “What about that gadget Gillis dropped in the cafeteria? Do you think that might have anything to do with the case?”

“I don't know,” Joe said, pulling it back out of his shirt pocket. “I don't have the slightest idea what it does.”

He poked at a couple of buttons on the rectangular device. Suddenly the hovercar inside the tent began to move. Its fan started whirring, and it lifted about a foot into the air.

“What?” Joe exclaimed. “The hovercar just started up.”

“Maybe—” Frank started to say.

Joe jabbed at another button on the little black box. To his amazement, the hovercar started moving forward, at full speed.

And this time it was heading straight toward Joe!

“Get out of the way!” Frank shouted, leaping back through the flap of the tent as the hovercar hurtled toward them.

“Not yet!” Joe cried, holding out the black box in front of him, ready to dive rapidly to one side. He jabbed a button on the box, and the hovercar came to an immediate stop, about two feet in front of him.

Frank walked cautiously back into the tent and saw with relief that his brother was unharmed. “You're nuts, Joe! That thing could have flattened you. That car isn't science fiction—it's the real thing.”