20
THE FINAL RESTING PLACE
JOE
THE ONLY THING FRANK AND I had left to figure out was, what about the treasure?
“The detective in me wants to at least see if it’s there,” I said to my brother from across the booth. We had decided to reward ourselves with a post-case dinner at the Meet Locker, where we were wolfing down fries and milk shakes. My brother had just finished explaining his theory as to where the treasure was hidden.
“I’m with you,” Frank agreed.
“But I can’t help thinking about the Admiral’s curse. I know, I know . . . ,” I said before he could interject. “There’s no scientific basis for the existence of curses, but so far everyone who’s gone looking for the treasure has ended up dead, mute, crazy, or washed down a giant drain.”
“The whole curse thing is superstitious nonsense, but . . .” Frank let his sentence trail off.
“But . . . ,” I encouraged him.
“Well, after all the weird stuff that’s happened, maybe we shouldn’t take the chance, you know, just in case there’s some stuff science hasn’t quite figured out yet.”
“Sounds good to me, dude. If someone is going to steal the Admiral’s treasure, it isn’t going to be the Hardy boys,” I said.
“So it’s settled,” Frank declared, dipping a fry into his shake. “We’ll sneak back to the Admiral’s Tomb and return the keys so they can be buried with him and his wife like he originally wanted.”
It was a good plan. Only . . .
“It would be a shame, though, not to at least take a peek first. I mean, just to see if your theory about where he stashed the treasure is right,” I hedged.
Frank thought about it. “We wouldn’t actually be trying to steal it as long as we didn’t take anything, so technically the curse . . .”
“Which you don’t believe in anyway,” I reminded him.
“Right. The curse that doesn’t exist anyway wouldn’t apply to us. Our intent wouldn’t be impure at all,” Frank said, warming up to the idea of just a little bit more investigative mischief. “In a way, we’d kind of be honoring the Admiral, really.”
“To the Admiral!” I said, raising my shake in tribute.
• • •
We waited until everyone was asleep to sneak out of our house and put Frank’s theory to the test.
A bolt of excitement shot through me when Frank told me where he thought the treasure was hidden. We were headed back to the place where the whole adventure started.
The sinkhole.
Using headlamps and climbing ropes I’d borrowed from the Urbex group, we rappelled down into the pit that held the Admiral’s sunken statue.
“Let’s do it, dude,” I said, grabbing hold of a notch in the Admiral’s bronze sleeve and pulling myself up the statue’s side. It’s a good thing it had landed on its back, otherwise our destination would have been totally out of reach.
The giant book clutched to the Admiral’s chest was even bigger up close and personal. Looking up at it from the ground, you never would have noticed the tiny keyhole hidden on its clasp.
And just as Frank had suspected, the key I’d found in Mrs. Bryant’s coffin fit into it perfectly. The Admiral’s letter had said the treasure was close to his heart, after all.
I made eye contact with Frank before turning the key. The book’s cover popped open. Golden light reflected onto our faces from the hidden chamber within as we stared in silence before turning to each other with big grins.
Then we closed the book’s cover, locked it tight, and crept back to the cemetery to return the key.
Admiral James T. Bryant really did have a heart of gold.
FRANKLIN W. DIXON is the ever-popular author of the Hardy Boys series of books.
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READ ALL THE MYSTERIES IN THE
HARDY BOYS ADVENTURES:
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Library of Congress Control Number 2015937423
ISBN 978-1-4814-3875-9 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4814-3874-2 (pbk)
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Tunnel of Secrets Page 10
