CHAPTER XIX.

AUNT GERTRUDE STEPS IN.

the Hardy boys were taken completely by surprise!

They had been in and out of so many tight fixes in the course of their adventures as amateur detectives that by this time, they had come to pride themselves on their ability to look ahead and to guard against traps. And this was a trap they had entered with their eyes open. In spite of all their caution, they had been outwitted.

The boys struggled furiously. Enveloped in the heavy folds of the cloaks, they were almost helpless. The two hooded figures overpowered them easily. The frightened horses, after rearing and plunging in terror, suddenly bolted and raced off down the path in the direction of the distant stables.

m.u.f.fled by the heavy cloth, the boys' shouts did not carry more than a few yards away. At that hour of night the grounds of the Experimental Farm were deserted. Frank and Joe, gtill fighting, were bound with ropes and dragged off down the path and through a clump of bushes. In a driveway near at hand a car was parked beneath some trees.

159.

160 One of the hooded figures wrenched open the door. The boys were bundled into the back seat. The other man slid behind the wheel, while his companion jumped in and stood guard over the boys. The automobile leaped forward, its lights dimmed.

Frank knew that struggle was useless. They had walked right into a trap, and he bitterly realized that they should have been smart enough to have avoided it. As the car sped through the night, he set his mind to estimating the length of the journey, and to trying to ascertain the direction the car was taking. It veered to the right, stayed on a rough road for a few minutes, then made a wide swing to the left. Presently it struck a smooth stretch of roadway, continued on this for about a hundred yards, swung to the right again. It ran along a rough, b.u.mpy surface, and finally slid to a stop.

"I could almost believe we've been going in circles," thought Frank.

The boys were lifted from the car. They were dragged and pushed through a doorway, then given violent shoves. A door thudded shut. They heard a mocking laugh and then the echoes of footsteps as the men hurried away.

"Joe!" Frank called out through the stifling folds of the hood. "Are you here, Joe?"

A m.u.f.fled shout indicated that his brother had been thrown into the same prison. Frank worked furiously at the ropes. They had been hastily tied, and in a few minutes he managed 161 to wriggle free. He wrenched at the hood and worked it clear of his head.

He could see nothing. The place was in utter darkness. Near by he could hear Joe grunting and panting in his efforts to extricate himself. Frank groped his way through the darkness to his brother's side. He tugged at the ropes and soon the other boy was free.

"Where are we?" gasped Joe, getting to his feet.

"In the dark, and that's all I can tell. A fine pair of detectives we are!" Frank grumbled with disgust. "Letting ourselves be caught!"

"Stuck our heads right into the trap like a couple rabbits!" Joe groaned.

He felt in his pockets, and finally discovered a match. Then he groped bis way forward, until his outstretched hand came in contact with a concrete wall. He lit the match.

Its meager flame revealed that they were in a small, square room, with concrete floor and walls. There were no windows-only a ventilator set high in one wall, close to the ceiling.

The heavy wooden door was locked.

"We're in a tough spot!" muttered Joe, worried. The match burned down and flickered out, "If those fellows don't come back and let us out, we may starve to death.''

"Here's another match," said Frank. The flame blazed up. "I thought I saw something over there."

By the tiny light Frank investigated. In one 162 corner of their prison he found a hox. Evidently it had been left there for them, as it contained several loaves of bread, a large bottle of water, cold meat and cheese-enough food to last them a week.

"Well," said Frank, relieved, "at least they don't mean to starve us. But from the quant.i.ty of food, I figure they intend to leave us here for a few days."

"And what's going to happen in those few days?" remarked Joe.

The brothers realized now that the conspirators had set another trap similar to the first one. If the fire at the Hardy home had been meant to keep the boys out of the way, this trap had the same purpose.

"That ventilator is pretty high up. But maybe one of us could reach it." Joe took up a position against the wall. "Try climbing up on my shoulders."

Frank's match flickered out. He felt his way across the room, put his foot in Joe's cupped hands, and managed to scramble up. He pulled himself up high enough to see through the ventilator. There was nothing but pitch darkness, although he could detect rain.

He even thought he could scent a faint odor of flowers.

"I think we're still on the Experimental Farm property," he said as he leaped to the floor.

'' Remember those concrete storage houses we saw on our first day here? I have an idea we're locked in one of them."

163 "The storage places are in a field at the far end of the farm. n.o.body ever comes near them. We could shout ourselves hoa.r.s.e and we'd never be heard."

"That," said Frank, "is probably why the men in the hoods brought us here." Gloomily he sat down on the floor with his back against the wall. "No use fooling ourselves, Joe. We've been neatly tricked, and I think we're going to be here for a long, long time."

The boys stared into the darkness. They wondered how much time would elapse before they would be missed. There would be a search, of course. But who would think of looking in the old storage vaults ?

"Aunt Gertrude will say it serves us right for falling into such a simple trap," groaned Joe.

"She'll say anyone should have known that message was a fake."

And in this Joe was right. That, in fact, was exactly what Aunt Gertrude did say after she returned to Mrs. Trumper's farmhouse the next morning. Their relative had not come there to stay. Because of the fire, the Hardy home was undergoing repairs, and she felt that her services were urgently needed to supervise these operations.

But when she had opened the bag she had packed so hastily when she had left Mrs.

Trumper's, she made a discovery. In her excitement, Aunt Gertrude had packed a considerable quant.i.ty of the widow's personal papers.

164-She had been giving them some study, hoping to prove her belief that Hal Wortman had cheated the shy little woman when he bought some of her farm acreage.

Aunt Gertrude realized that the papers must be returned, so she journeyed back to the widow's house that morning from Bayport. It was then that she learned her nephews were still away.

"Staying out all night, eh!" sniffed the boys' relative. "Up to more of their silly detective work, I'll be bound." Actually Aunt Gertrude did not consider detective work silly. She was secretly proud of her nephews' achievements in that line.

For some time she expected them to show up any minute, but as the morning wore into noon and no word came from them, she became disturbed. She telephoned to the S. E. F.

and to Mr. Grable. Frank and Joe had not been seen.

"What in the world can have become of them?" fumed Aunt Gertrude.

"A note came for them yesterday. I have it here," said Mrs. Trumper. "As soon as the boys read it, they went away."

'' Let me see that note!'' Aunt Gertrude read the crumpled missive with rising suspicion.

Then she snorted. "A fake!" she declared. "A transparent fake. They've been kidnaped!"

she shrieked, heading for the tele165 phone. "Fenton must hear of this at once!"

"Do you really think they've run into some danger?" quavered the widow anxiously.

Aunt Gertrude rattled the receiver impatiently. When the village central office answered, she put through a call for the Hardy residence in Bayport. "And don't dawdle, young lady,"

she said to the operator. "This is a matter of life and death!"

The widow was aghast. "Life and death!" she moaned. '' Oh, my goodness!''

The connection was put through quickly. When Aunt Gertrude heard her brother's voice on the wire she was relieved.

"I'm so glad I caught you, Fenton. You'd better come out here as fast as you can. Frank and Joe have disappeared and it's my opinion they've walked into a trap."

"You say they've disappeared?" exclaimed Fenton Hardy.

"Yes, but don't tell Laura. She'll worry herself sick. I'll help you find the boys, but hurry out here!"

"I'll start this minute!" promised Fenton Hardy. The receiver clicked.

The boys' father returned to his living room, where he had been in conference with a private detective named Walter Cartwright. Mr. Hardy occasionally employed this man on some of his more complicated cases. Cartwright had just arrived in Bayport from New York.

166 "Come along," said the boys' father. "I'll probably need you. My sons have disappeared."

Fenton Hardy seldom displayed excitement or emotion, but his face was pale as he hurried out of the house and into his car. Cartwright scrambled in beside him. As they drove swiftly through Bayport and out the country road to the Trumper homestead, the troubled man outlined the brief details Aunt Gertrude had told him.

Cartwright whistled. "Maybe the boys stumbled on something big. If they've become tangled with the flickering torch gang, it may be serious," he said.

"We'll hope for the best," returned Fenton Hardy gravely. "They're a resourceful pair.

They've been in some pretty tight spots before this."

When the detectives saw the note from the S. B. F. sample room clerk, they agreed with Aunt Gertrude that it probably was a fake. Nevertheless, Fenton Hardy stepped to the telephone and called the storeroom department at the Experimental Farm, and asked to speak to the young man in charge.

"Certainly, I remember the boys," the clerk said in reply to his question. "Write them a note! Why should I write them any note! As for asking them to meet me at the underwater section-somebody must have been playing a practical joke."

167 Fenton Hardy checked up on the man and found he had been nowhere near the S. E. F.

at eleven o'clock the evening before. That settled it. He and Cartwright got into the car. The obvious place to begin their search was at the underwater section where the boys were presumed to have kept their strange appointment the previous night.

"I'm going along," declared Aunt Gertrude. "I won't rest easy until I see those boys again.

And if they've been mistreated, they'll need me."

Mr. Hardy did not argue with his sister. He was in too much of a hurry, so he waited only long enough for her to step into the back of the car. Then he set out for the spot from where he would try to trace his boys. The rain had filled the holes of the hoofmarks left by the horses the boys had ridden the night before. But these ended in the S. E. F. stables. Every other clue had been washed away.

"I'm afraid we're up against a difficult proposition," whispered Mr. Hardy to Cartwright, a slight catch in his voice.

CHAPTER XX.

THE BOTTOMLESS POOL.

frank and Joe, knowing there was no chance to escape from their prison during the night, finally had spread the black hooded robes on the floor, and gone to sleep on them. But as soon as it was light, they looked through the ventilator again, confirming their suspicion that they were on the Experimental Farm in a storage room not in use at present.

"So no one is likely to come near here," groaned Joe.

Nevertheless, as soon as they knew the workers would be arriving on the place, the boys took turns shouting through the opening high overhead. There was no response.

"Let's eat," suggested Frank, "and try to figure this thing out. What's your idea of who brought us here last night?"

"Boots, for one. Who else would have thought about using that platform at the underwater farming section? But I can't be sure of the other man."

"How about Cronin? You recall he and Boots acted in that Midvale restaurant as if they were making plans for something."

"We got the note before that," objected Joe.

168.

169 "True, but probably they were only rehearsing a scheme already made," replied Frank.

"What puzzles me is why they left these robes."

"There's no identifying mark on them," said Joe. "And if our guess is correct, that they intend to keep us here for several days, the flickering torch gang will have pulled their big job and skipped out. Knowing that Dad and we are onto their disguise, they'll probably never use it after this time."

Frank suddenly slapped his knee. "I just thought of something!" he exclaimed. "You remember that boy on the cliff-the one Chet and I thought was you? I'll bet he's part of the gang. When the hooded man drew him inside his cloak, it was a signal!"

"A signal for what?"

"An order for the men to capture a boy who was sneaking up on them. That would mean you or me."

"It's a good hunch," praised his brother. "And that boy probably is the one who posed as our 'sister' and stole our-Listen!"

Joe thought he heard footsteps outside. Was one of their captors coming back or was help arriving?

"Quick! Let me jump on your shoulders and look out the ventilator!" he said excitedly.

But when he gazed through the opening, he could neither see nor hear anyone. Hours pa.s.sed, the Hardy boys becoming more vexed as time went on.

170 The boys had just finished eating a second meal when they became aware of a car pa.s.sing near by. In an instant Frank had jumped to Joe's shoulders and was shouting through the ventilator. Already the automobile was some distance away. Would the driver hear him?

"Joe," his brother cried excitedly, "that was Dad's car! Help! Help! Dad!"

The car did not even slow down, but a few moments later a lady in the back seat of it grasped a shoulder of the man in front of her and ordered him to stop.