“Zack Amboy,” Joe said. “He’s promised to hold himself available for questioning.”
“H’m.” The policeman frowned. “He may not be the only one who’ll have to be questioned. In view of what’s happened tonight and what you’ve just told me, you two may have to testify before a grand jury yourselves. Normally I’d be inclined to hold you both as material witnesses. However, because of your father’s reputation and the fine detective work you fellows have done on your own, I’ll let you go for now, that is, if you’ll agree to cooperate anytime we need you up here, to help carry out our investigation.”
“You have our word, sir,” the Hardys promised. Despite Noah Norvel’s angry remonstrances, Lieutenant Allen allowed them to leave the mansion.
The boys sped back to the Westchester County Airport, where Jack Wayne and Zack Amboy were waiting, avid for news of the night’s events.
Frank and Joe filled them in. Then the elder Hardy boy asked Zack, “Any idea where Rollo Eckert is staying while he’s here in the East?”
“Sure. He’s renting a seaside cottage not far from Bayport, where you guys live. It’s right on the outskirts of Shoreham.”
“Shoreham?” echoed the Hardys.
As Zack nodded, Frank asked, “Have you actually seen his cottage?”
“Yeah, I’ve been there.” Zack explained that Eckert had brought no exercise equipment with him when he left California. So he had placed an order through the Olympic Gym for a pair of fixed-weight dumbbells, which he could work out with regularly, in spite of his broken leg. Zack, who enjoyed sailing, had volunteered to bring the dumbbells from the gym to the cottage on his boat, and Eckert had accepted the offer.
“Can you tell us exactly how to find the cottage?” Frank pursued.
“Sure, I can draw you a little map. Why, are you guys gonna look him up tomorrow?”
“Sooner than that. We might even pay him a visit tonight.”
Before taking off, the Hardy boys tried to call their father to report developments and ask his advice, using the radio transceiver in Jack Wayne’s airplane, Skyhappy Sal. But they could get no response.
“Any idea where Dad was calling from when you talked to him tonight?” Joe asked the pilot.
“Long Island, I think. He said he was checking out some important leads on a case, and he wanted to know if I could pick him up at MacArthur Airport tomorrow, in case he needed to get back in a hurry.”
Frank said, “If we can’t raise him before we land at Bayport, could you fly to MacArthur tonight and try to locate him, Jack?”
“Sure thing.”
Zack Amboy, who was eager to clear himself of suspicion, volunteered to go along and help in any way possible. The Hardy boys gladly accepted, feeling that Jack Wayne might need assistance in tracking down their father on Long Island.
As they had feared, the boys were unable to contact Mr. Hardy before Skyhappy Sal landed at the Bayport airfield. Frank then jotted a hasty note, which he handed to the pilot.
“Please keep trying to raise Dad. Use the emergency call letters on your way to MacArthur. And if you do get a response or find him on Long Island, give him that information.”
“Okay, Frank.”
The boys waved good-bye as the pilot and Zack Amboy took off again. Then they hurried to their car in the airport parking lot and were soon heading for Shoreham.
Skirting the business section of town, they took the road that led to the adjoining beach area. Here they parked and made their way on foot across a rise of sand dunes toward the water.
Rollo Eckert’s rented cottage was isolated from other homes along the shore. It was located on a sandy spit jutting out from the rest of the beach. Light glowed from its curtained windows, and two cars were parked in front of the house, one of them a large, expensive-looking limousine.
“Good thing we didn’t drive right up to Eckert’s front door,” Joe muttered to his brother. “This way, we can give him a little surprise.”
Frank nodded grimly. “Right, and if we surprise him enough, maybe we can learn more than what he wants to tell us!”
The boys approached the cottage and Frank knocked lightly. After a moment the door opened just wide enough for Rollo Eckert to peer out.
His jaw dropped wide open and he gasped as he recognized the Hardy boys. Before he could slam the door in their faces, Frank and Joe shoved it wide open. Eckert fell back in dismay, and the boys saw that he had neither a cast on his leg nor a crutch under his arm!
“Did your fracture heal up all of a sudden?” Joe asked sarcastically.
“N-No! I—I mean it didn’t heal all of a sudden,” Rollo Eckert stammered. “It’s b-been mending gradually. The doctor just took off my cast today.”
“And I suppose you’re keeping those two neat halves of the cast for souvenirs!” Frank needled, pointing toward a pair of long white objects visible on a nearby table.
Eckert was dressed in shorts and a tank top, which amply revealed his deep chest and muscular build. His face seemed to be mottled red and white with rage and guilt.
But the Hardys were no longer observing his expression. They had suddenly noticed certain other items. One was a fur garment flung over the back of a chair. Another was a bushy black wig lying on the table near the fake plaster cast.
Frank strode over to pick up a third object. It was a built-up rubber face mask, much thicker in the jaw and forehead areas than in others.
“So this is what gives you that heavy-jawed beetling-browed Apeman look!” the elder Hardy boy exclaimed.
“I didn’t make that,” Eckert blustered foolishly. “It belongs to the TV film studio that’s shooting ‘The Apeman’ series.”
“But you’re the one who’s been wearing it!” Frank charged. “In fact, you’ve been using this costume as a disguise so you could pose as the Apeman when you vandalized that movie theater and the Alfresco Disco and all the other places you’ve raided!”
Rollo Eckert’s face was twisted with emotion. He struggled for several moments to get his voice under control. Then his shoulders seemed to slump as he mumbled, “Okay, I’ll admit I was the fake Apeman. B-But I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone! It was just a—a prank to get even!”
“For losing out in the competition for the starring role,” Frank prompted.
Rollo nodded hopelessly. He scarcely seemed to notice the fact that Joe was silently edging away across the room. “I intended to quit,” he blurted, “after that night you guys almost caught me at the park disco. But then I got blackmailed into pulling those raids on the Comic Art Museum and Noah Norvel’s mansion.”
“You mean—blackmailed by Vern Kelso?” As Frank spoke, he signaled his brother with one hand.
Joe flung open the door leading to the back room of the small cottage. His action revealed two startling figures. One was Sue Linwood, blindfolded, gagged, and tied to a chair! A man loomed over her in a menacing fashion, as if threatening to harm her if she tried to thump her feet or make any other noise to attract attention.
The man was Vern Kelso. Under one arm he was clutching the large file folder stolen from the crateful of Archie Frome’s work at the Comic Art Museum! Both Hardy boys recognized it at once from its similarity to the other folders they had seen in the crate.
Kelso burst into a loud, raging harangue. “How did you two nosy brats know I was in here?” he screamed while Joe set to work untying Sue Linwood’s tightly knotted gag.
“It wasn’t hard to figure, especially with that limousine sitting outside,” Frank retorted. “For one thing, you deliberately lied to us about the competition for the Apeman role on TV. You were trying to cover up the fact that Rollo only lost out at the last minute, so we wouldn’t suspect him. Joe and I also told you about our meeting with Zack Amboy, which made him the obvious choice for a fall guy to be arrested in place of Rollo.”
Kelso’s bravado seemed to collapse when he realized how thoroughly the Hardy boys had uncovered his part in the Apeman mystery. Frank and Jo
e guessed that he also assumed they had alerted their father and the police before coming to the cottage, and they let him go on thinking so.
“Believe it or not, this whole mess wasn’t my fault!” Kelso fumed, striding back and forth as he gave vent to his emotion.
“Oh, no? Then whose fault was it?” Frank prodded.
“Micky Rudd, if you want the whole truth!” As he spoke, Kelso abruptly opened the large art folder that he had carried with him when he ducked into the back room on hearing the boys’ knock.
After leafing through the contents of the folder, Kelso plucked out several pages of artwork, which he held up to show Frank and Joe. To their astonishment, they saw that they contained the drawings for a comic book story featuring a character just like the Apeman!
“Leapin’ lizards!” exclaimed Joe, suddenly catching on. “You mean Micky Rudd stole the Apeman character from Archie Frome?”
“You guessed it,” Kelso replied grimly. “Several years ago, Frome brought this story to Star Comix. Rudd turned it down. But later on, in an emergency, when he needed a story in a hurry to fill out one of his comic books, he pirated Frome’s yarn. He had it drawn by one of his staff artists, but it still had the same plot as Frome’s story, and the Apeman looked practically the same way Frome had drawn him.
“As it turned out, the Apeman made a big hit with the readers of Star Comix, so Rudd was forced to run more stories about him. Finally, the company began putting out a regular monthly comic book titled ‘The Apeman.’
“At first Rudd worried that Frome might discover the theft of his character. But when the artist failed to complain and turned to illustrating children’s books, Rudd began to relax and feel that there would be no trouble over his plagiarism.
“Eventually,” Kelso continued, “a Hollywood producer bought the television rights to the Apeman from Star Comix, and the Federated Broadcasting System purchased the show at my own suggestion.”
“Didn’t Rudd realize he was laying himself open to a possible lawsuit?” put in Joe.
“Certainly! But he was too greedy to pass up such a deal. Besides, Rudd isn’t the sole owner of Star Comix, and the other owners of the company wouldn’t have let him turn down the television offer.”
Frank said, “But I bet that’s what prompted him to try and steal the artwork for the original story from Frome’s studio, right?”
Kelso confirmed this. “At first,” he said, “Rudd was relieved to hear of Frome’s death, thinking that now his guilty secret would be safe forever. But then when he heard Frome’s daughter planned to donate her father’s artwork to the Comic Art Museum, Rudd was scared out of his wits, and that’s when he told me the whole story.
“If someone at the museum discovered that Frome was the real creator of the Apeman,” Kelso continued, “not only would Star Comix and the FBS network be exposed to a costly lawsuit—Frome’s daughter might even go to court to get ‘The Apeman’ television show forced off the air until the suit was settled.
“I’d be fired from the network,” Kelso told the boys. “My career would be ruined.”
Then he had seen the television news film showing the fake Apeman’s raid on the Alfresco Disco. He had recognized Rollo Eckert as the impostor and had hired a private detective to track him.
“That’s when he started blackmailing me!” Eckert broke in. “He said if I didn’t agree to swipe Frome’s story from the Comic Art Museum, he’d turn me in to the cops! But if I helped him out, he’d fix it so I could take over the starring role in ‘The Apeman’ show next season.”
“If you believed that, you’ll believe anything!” Joe said sarcastically.
“What difference does it make now?” whined Kelso. “Anyhow, my troubles didn’t stop there. My houseman-chauffeur got sick, and I needed someone to take his place temporarily ...”
“So you hired one of the Children of Noah!” said Frank.
“Quite right!” rasped an unexpected voice. “Brilliant detective work, my two young snoops!”
The Hardys whirled at the sound. A bearded man had just entered the cottage!
The boys’ faces showed their dismay as they recognized Noah Norvel. With him were four of his armed guards!
20
A Screaming Finish
“Where did you come from?” Joe exclaimed.
“From the Bayport airfield, same as you.” The bearded cult leader bared his teeth in a wolfish grin. “You see, I keep a private plane at the Westchester County Airport. That’s where I headed as soon as I got rid of the police after you two left. My faithful followers had a car waiting for me when we landed, so we drove straight here to Rollo’s cottage. I was quite sure this was where we’d find him and Kelso.”
“Wait a minute!” Frank broke in. “Let’s go back to that crack you made when you walked in just now. Am I right in thinking you get your cult members to pass on information that they pick up in the households where they work as temporary servants?”
“Of course! No harm in telling you, since you punks will never get a chance to inform the police.” Noah boastfully explained that in various big cities along the East Coast his young culties were often hired to do housework and other chores in the homes of important business executives. They were trained to report any interesting items they overheard, in the belief that these might be useful in making the cult’s own business investments, and thereby help their great leader Noah “improve the world.”
Culties employed in the homes of government officials and diplomats in Washington were trained to do the same thing. “What the fools don’t realize,” Norvel chuckled, “is that I can sell all those valuable business secrets and security data to foreign buyers overseas.”
“Including enemies of your own country,” Joe said scornfully.
“It’s no skin off my nose how they use the information I sell them,” the cult leader sneered.
“Let me guess what else your culties do,” said Frank. “You’ve also trained them to sneak out any valuable jewelry or art objects they happen to spot, so their wonderful leader can have a chance to see and enjoy such examples of fine craftsmanship. What you don’t tell them is that the objects you give them back to return to their employers’ homes are forgeries, while you keep the real items and sell them to underworld fences!”
“Correct!” Again Norvel chuckled wolfishly. “A perfect setup, wouldn’t you say? The owners seldom discover the switch, and my youthful stooges don’t realize they’re being used as thieves!”
Sue Linwood gasped. “You’re disgusting!” she cried. Joe had removed her gag but had not yet finished untying her from the chair when Noah and his armed guards burst into the cottage. Now her blue eyes blazed at the bearded cult leader. “To think I was foolish enough to become one of your children!”
“But you did, my dear,” Norvel rasped, “and what’s more, you even helped me dispose of some of the loot. It so happens that the package you delivered to the art dealer’s shop in New York contained a stolen painting!”
Sue’s face froze in a look of utter dismay.
“You won’t get away with the rackets you’ve been pulling!” Joe snapped.
“If you mean because your father, the great gumshoe Fenton Hardy, is on my trail—that remains to be seen!”
Noah, the Hardy boys now learned, had recently become aware that the famous detective suspected his criminal activities and was trying to collect evidence against him. So he ordered some of his bolder followers, who had already been in trouble with the law before joining his cult, to spy on the Hardy house and to harass the family in every way possible.
One such cultie, by listening at the window, had seen Frank and Joe watching “The Apeman” show on television. He had done the spooky growling and made the huge footprints and later called the police. Other culties had caused the boys’ car trouble in Shoreham and had made the threatening phone calls to Mrs. Hardy and Aunt Gertrude. They had also trailed the boys to New York. Because there were enough culties to take tur
ns from time to time, it was difficult for Frank and Joe to notice that any particular person was shadowing them.
The amulet and scrap of paper with the Hardys’ address had been dropped by one young spy who tailed them to the disco party. His pocket had been ripped in the bustle and scuffle during the fake Apeman’s getaway. But it was Rollo himself who had appeared at the Hardys’ window and broken the pane, because he was enraged at Frank and Joe for spoiling his raid on the disco.
Frank suddenly snapped his fingers. “You were also the cripple we saw on the park bench that night!” he exclaimed to Eckert. “You must’ve changed clothes in the bushes and strapped on your plaster cast. That’s how you managed your vanishing act!”
It was also Rollo Eckert, the Hardys now realized, who had attacked Joe outside the Olympic Gym. He had hidden in the phone booth and called the manager’s office when he saw the Hardys leaving. Moments later, when Joe was alone in the corridor, it was Rollo’s crutch that had struck him from behind.
“But let’s get back to this creep,” said Frank, turning a contemptuous glance on Noah Norvel again. “The cultie that Kelso hired discovered the art folder—the one that Rollo Eckert had stolen for Kelso from the Comic Art Museum. So the cultie brought it to Noah, and when Noah went through it he spotted Archie Frome’s original Apeman cartoons and realized Star Comix must have stolen the character. With the cartoons for evidence, he knew he could make Star and the television producers pay him plenty not to spill the beans.”
“But Kelso had a trick up his sleeve, too,” said Joe. “When Noah tried to blackmail him, he sent Rollo to Noah’s mansion tonight to get back the evidence!”
“Brilliant, as I’ve said before,” the cult leader sneered. “But we’re wasting time.”
“You’ll be wasting a lot more behind bars,” Frank snapped, “when the truth comes out!”
“Then I’d better make sure it doesn‘t, hadn’t I?” Noah Norvel chuckled nastily. “Which shouldn’t be too hard once this cottage burns down, with all of you inside it!... All right, torch the place!” he added, turning to his four guards.
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