The Clue in the Embers

by Franklin W. Dixon

  “He’s buying a window shade and some brackets!” he reported. “And I heard the clerk call him Mr. Valez.”

  “Watch it!” warned Frank, equally excited, as he saw Valez step outside the store. The man glanced in both directions, then started back toward the apartment house.

  Frank asked Chet to return to the store and see what he could learn about Valez from the clerk. “I’m going to follow him!” he said, still keeping his eyes glued on the man.

  “Where shall I meet you?” Chet asked.

  “On the corner of the crosstown avenue,” Frank replied. “Explain to Joe and Tony if you arrive before I do.”

  They parted and Frank hurried after the suspect. The man turned into the apartment-house entrance. He paused to open a mailbox, then disappeared into the foyer.

  “He certainly seems to live here,” thought Frank, wondering where the man had been when Sergeant Murphy had investigated the place. Then he headed toward the avenue to join his friends.

  “We’ve been waiting half an hour and nothing to report,” said Joe. “How about you?”

  Tony and Joe listened wide-eyed to Frank’s tale of discovering the suspect at the apartment house. His account was interrupted by the arrival of Chet.

  “Your friend is the superintendent of the building,” he said, “and has been for years. He’s never had a mustache and the clerk told me he’s well thought of in the neighborhood. His name is Eduardo Valez!”

  “I still think there’s a connection between him and the blowgun guy,” Frank said. “He looks just like him. And Valez is the name of the fellow who threatened Tony. It can’t all be coincidence!”

  Joe nodded thoughtfully. “Perhaps Eduardo wears a fake mustache as a disguise, or”—and his eyes brightened—“he may have a mustached twin who’s the real villain!”

  “That’s a possibility!” cried Tony. “The twin might have hidden in his brother’s apartment while the police were searching the building.”

  “It’s a far-fetched theory,” Frank said. “But possible. Let’s go home and talk this over with Dad.”

  “Sorry, fellows, but I promised to get back to the farm,” Chet said.

  Tony declared that he would like nothing better than to continue work on the case, but he was due to drive a truck for the Prito Construction Company the rest of the afternoon.

  Frank and Joe went home and told Mr. Hardy of their latest adventure.

  Immediately their father called his assistant Sam Radley and asked him to watch the building. When he had hung up, he said to the boys, “I’m going to check with the Immigration Service and see what I can find out about Valez. Meanwhile, I think you both should go and question him.”

  Eduardo Valez proved to be friendly when the boys told him they were detectives. His basement apartment was attractively furnished and on the mantel stood several carved figures.

  “Are these wooden statues from your country?” Joe asked with interest. “They’re beautiful!”

  Without a moment’s pause Valez replied, “Yes, they come from Guatemala. They’re made of the best grade of mahogany,” he added proudly.

  Frank and Joe had the same thought. Some of the telltale ashes were of Central American mahogany. Had Valez left the burning embers?

  Frank decided to pursue the subject of a brother indirectly. “Do you have relatives in Guatemala?” he asked casually.

  “Ah, yes. Many. But I’m—how do you say?—hundred per cent American now,” Valez replied in his soft Spanish accent.

  “And relatives in this country?” Joe asked with a disarming smile. “For instance, do you have a brother in the United States?”

  The man’s pleasant manner was ruffled for a moment. He dropped his eyes and his jaw tightened. Then he recovered his composure. Smiling, he said, “No. I have no brother in this country.”

  Further conversation led nowhere, and soon they thanked the man for his cooperation and left.

  “What do you make of him?” Joe asked Frank on the way back home.

  “He seemed on the level until we asked about his brother. I think we might be closer to the truth with our theory than we expected.”

  “Let’s see if Dad found out anything worthwhile from Immigration,” Joe said.

  When the boys entered their home, Mr. Hardy called them into the living room. “Your man on Weller Street is a citizen,” he reported. “He’s been here more than five years.”

  “Does he have a brother in the United States?” Frank asked.

  “No.”

  “I’ll bet he does, and he’s here illegally,” Joe remarked.

  “That’s possible.”

  Just then Mrs. Hardy appeared and announced dinner.

  When they had finished eating, the boys went into a huddle with their father on what angle of the mystery to tackle next.

  “I believe we ought to wait for a report from Sam Radley,” Mr. Hardy said. “Give yourselves a rest.”

  His sons took the advice and went to bed early. As they were dressing the next morning, Mrs. Hardy called to say that they were wanted on the phone. “It’s Chet,” she added.

  Frank hurried to his mother’s bedroom to answer on the extension. “F-Frank,” Chet said in a quaking voice, “I just got a letter with a warning in it. Even has some ashes. The message says, ‘You, too, are now cursed!’

  “Frank,” Chet groaned, “when I offered to help you fellows, I didn’t bargain for anything like this!”

  Frank said he was sorry and advised Chet to stay close to the Morton farm. “If you have to go to town, make sure you don’t try it alone.”

  Just as Frank hung up, Joe was taking in the morning mail. A suspicious-looking envelope addressed to “Mr. F. Hardy and Sons” was among the letters. Quickly he slit the envelope, which was postmarked Bayport. It contained a quantity of ashes!

  “Dad, come here quick! You too, Frank!” When they reached the hallway, Joe read the printed note aloud: “‘We have sent warnings to your friends Tony Prito and Chet Morton. This is the last warning. Stop your sleuthing in this case or harm will come to you.’ ”

  “No need to microtome these ashes,” Frank said. “Central American mahogany again!” He held up one unburned bit of the familiar wood.

  Meanwhile, at the Morton farm, Chet’s pretty, dark-haired sister Iola was worried about him. She had never seen him more nervous. And she too was upset over the note. Hoping to take her brother’s mind off the threat, she proposed a steak roast that evening at Elkin Amusement Park.

  “We’ll go early and have some fun on the rides before we eat.”

  Iola, who was usually Joe’s date, soon extracted promises from Callie Shaw, the attractive blonde who often dated Frank, and two other girls, Maria Santos and Judy Rankin, to come along. Then she invited Tony and the Hardys.

  “Swell idea!” agreed Joe, who answered the phone. “We haven’t seen you girls for a long time.”

  “We’ve reserved fireplace Number Twelve for our picnic,” Iola explained. “An attendant will watch our food and lay the fire for us.”

  “Great,” Joe said. “I’d like to do nothing for a change.”

  “Oh, you’ll have to do the barbecuing,” Iola replied. “And of course we’ll go on the rides and visit the House of Horrors!”

  “Fine! We’ll pick up the other girls shortly after five,” Joe replied.

  “Meet us at the farm,” Iola said. “We’ve fixed up something special. ’By now!”

  About three o’clock Frank phoned Callie to tell her the plan. “Frank, a funny thing happened here a short while ago. I didn’t think anything about it at the time, but now it worries me.”

  “What is it?”

  Callie said she felt that unwittingly she had told a stranger about the picnic plans. A man had come to the Shaws’ selling novel kitchen gadgets.

  “I bought a couple of them,” Callie went on. “Then suddenly the man said, ‘You’re a friend of Frank Hardy’s, aren’t you? Nice guy.’”

  “I
hope you agreed,” Frank said teasingly. Callie did not laugh. “I’m worried, Frank. He seemed so nice, but now I realize he asked me a lot of questions. He may be a spy—one of those men from the patriotic society Iola was telling me about.”

  Frank asked if the man spoke with a Spanish accent and had a mustache.

  “No,” Callie said. “He was tall and blond, about thirty.”

  “Well, stop worrying,” said Frank. “Just concentrate on having a good time.”

  Callie promised to do so, then Frank put down the phone. Despite his lighthearted attitude about the incident, he was alarmed. There was no question in his mind that the kitchen-gadget salesman was a phony.

  “But if he has any evil intentions, we’ll be safer at the amusement park—with so many people around—than at any other place,” Frank reasoned.

  After picking up the three girls and Tony Prito in their father’s car, the Hardys set off for the Morton farm at five o’clock. When they arrived, the group learned that Chet had piled hay into his father’s truck, so they could all go on an old-fashioned hayride to the amusement park.

  “Len is going to drive us,” Iola announced.

  A big cheer went up from the boys. Len Wharton, a good-natured former cowboy, had recently come to work at the Morton place.

  Len grinned. “Shucks, I figured that if I was seventeen I sure wouldn’t want to be stuck with the drivin’”

  Zigzagging through the back-country roads, Len stretched the trip to Elkin Park into an hour-long ride. As the picnickers got out, he said, “You just call me at the farm when you want to get on back.”

  The baskets of food were carried to the reserved fireplace, where the attendant stored them away.

  For an hour the four couples whirled about on the thrill rides, and laughed their way through the House of Horrors.

  “And now—the best for last,” Iola announced.

  “Before we go back to the fireplace, let’s take a ride on the roller coaster.”

  The young people boarded the bright red cars and strapped themselves in.

  They reached the summit and rolled smoothly around the bend. Suddenly they snapped into the steep dive! Maria and Judy screamed as the cars streaked past the white uprights. Hitting the bottom of the run, they plunged into the blackness of a short tunnel, and emerged on a level center track that passed the ticket booth. As the coaster began another climb, Frank uttered a gasp.

  “Joe!” he exclaimed to his brother in the seat behind. “He’s here! Near the ticket booth!”

  “Who?” Callie asked.

  Not wanting to worry her, Frank merely said it was a man for whom he and Joe were looking. Through the rest of the breathtaking swoops and turns the Hardys could think of little else. The chances of spotting the blowgun suspect again in the crowd milling around the park were small, nevertheless they would try.

  The instant the ride was over, Frank and Joe excused themselves and darted in and out of the crowd, but did not find the man.

  “I’m sure that he has left the park,” said Frank. “But this means he’s still in Bayport. So our case isn’t so hopeless after all.”

  When the boys reached fireplace Number Twelve, they found the picnic baskets placed on a redwood table. The attendant had laid the fire of kindling and charcoal. It was ready to light.

  Chet knelt at the fireplace and set the fire. The flames, fanned by the stiff breeze, licked rapidly through the kindling. In a short time a fine blaze was roaring.

  “When it dies down, we’ll put on the steaks,” Chet announced.

  Suddenly there came a terrific explosion from the fireplace! Chet fell backward several feet from the flames as glowing embers rained down on the entire group.

  CHAPTER XII

  The Black Sheep

  “HELP!” IoIa cried frantically. “My hair’s on fire!” Desperately she beat her palms against her head, screaming in terror.

  Frank ripped off his jacket and flung it about her head, snuffing out the flame that endangered the frightened girl. Leading her away from the roaring fireplace, he said reassuringly, “You’re okay now.”

  Iola, though still shaky, managed a laugh. “It’s one way of getting a new hairstyle.”

  Chet declared he was all right—aside from having the breath knocked out of him by his fall. The scare over, they all tried to figure out what had caused the blast. Had some explosive substance been sprayed on the kindling? Or had someone planted a crude bomb in the fireplace?

  “In any case,” thought Frank, “the salesman at Callie’s was a spy!”

  The girl ran to his side. “I told you! I’m the cause of this!” She quickly repeated her story of the salesman to the others.

  “Did you mention fireplace Number Twelve to the man?” Frank asked.

  “Yes, I did. Oh dear!”

  Frank put a hand on her shoulder. “Callie, no real harm has been done, so forget it,” he said soothingly.

  A crowd quickly gathered and began to ask questions. The gray-haired attendant, who had been making another fire, hurried over.

  “I didn’t put anything but wood and paper in the fireplace,” he said nervously.

  “Was anyone near this spot while we were gone?” Joe asked him quietly.

  The attendant said a man with a mustache had offered to help him lay the fire in Number Twelve. “I told him I’d do it myself,” the man continued. “He did hang around, though.”

  The Hardys did not voice aloud the suspicion that the salesman had told Torres or Valez the picnic plans. They merely assured the attendant that he was not to blame. The girls found another fireplace, and Chet and Tony carried the baskets over to it.

  “Joe,” said Frank, “we’d better search the embers in Number Twelve. We might find a clue.”

  “Right.”

  After sprinkling a can of water over the still-burning wood, they raked through the damp remains for evidence.

  “Guess this is it,” Frank said. He pulled out a small metal container. “A homemade bomb.”

  “This character, whoever he is, isn’t fooling around,” Joe said grimly.

  “That’s for sure,” said Frank and reached into the ashes. He took out a window-shade bracket. “Take a look at this.”

  “Must have been part of the device that triggered the bomb!” Joe said. “Say, didn’t Chet tell us that our friendly superintendent bought some brackets at the hardware store?”

  “Right,” Frank replied. “Valez is definitely mixed up in this!”

  The boys decided that they would say nothing to their friends about the find, but the next morning would investigate Eduardo Valez again. Try as they might, the group found little pleasure in the meal. The shock of the explosion and the narrow escape of Chet and Iola from serious injury had caused them all to lose their appetites.

  “Even I don’t feel hungry,” Chet lamented. “We should have eaten on the way out here.”

  Iola phoned Len to come and get them.

  “At least,” Frank said, smiling, “we had fun here before the explosion.”

  Early the following day Mr. Hardy and his sons drove across town to question Eduardo Valez.

  “Good morning,” the superintendent said affably as the boys introduced their father. “Come right in.”

  “Mr. Valez, you’d better tell us the truth this time!” the detective said as they entered the apartment.

  “Wh-what do you mean?” the man replied. The detective told in detail the happenings at the amusement park. As he unfolded the account of the explosion and the narrow escape of the young people, Valez’s face whitened.

  “I—I am not the man you are searching for,” he said slowly. Looking at Joe and Frank, he said, “I am sorry I did not tell you the truth at first. Now I will explain.”

  “Thank you,” Mr. Hardy said. “Go ahead.”

  “The man with the black mustache,” Mr. Valez continued with a pained expression, “is my brother. He is the—what you call—black sheep of our family. Six of us childre
n and he is the only one to break the law.”

  “What is his name?” Mr. Hardy asked.

  “Luis.”

  “Where is he now?” Frank asked.

  “I do not know, but he was staying with me for a short time.”

  “Which explains the mustache mystery,” Joe remarked to Frank.

  “Luis sneaked into this country,” Valez went on. “He promised me the day before yesterday he would return to Guatemala at once, so I did not turn him over to the authorities when they came here asking about a mustached man. Luis left here while I was on an errand at the hardware store.”

  “Buying brackets,” Joe murmured.

  “Did you say something about brackets?” Valez asked quickly.

  “Yes. We found a bracket in the remains of the fire,” Joe replied.

  “That is what I went to the hardware store to get,” Mr. Valez added. “There was a bracket missing from one of my apartments. So I had to buy another. And I got a new shade while I was there. Luis must have taken the old bracket.”

  The superintendent went on to tell Mr. Hardy and the boys that he was astonished to learn that his brother had become a suspect in a case of violence. “I thought Luis had come to the United States to get away from some little trouble at home. He said it blew over, so he was going back. Always I have defended my brother,” said Eduardo, clenching his fists, “but now I see I can no longer do this.”

  “Is there anything else you think we should know?” Mr. Hardy asked.

  “Maybe this is not important,” Valez replied, “but a couple of small mahogany objects disappeared too. Luis might have them with him.”

  The Hardys quizzed the superintendent about the possibility of a connection between mahogany and any Guatemalan superstitions. Valez explained that among certain people in Central America there was one such superstition, adding, “It’s said if a person sends the ashes of a piece of native mahogany to his enemy, that man will be rendered powerless to harm the sender!”

  Frank frowned. “That’s a very strange idea.” Valez could give the Hardys no further information, so the detective and his sons thanked the superintendent and left. On the sidewalk, Frank and Joe speculated on the mysterious piles of warning embers and ashes.