“No use trying to talk to Dad,” Frank said. “Let’s see what’s doing outside.”
“Okay.”
A bigger crowd than before was milling about the sidewalk, a couple of plainclothes detectives circulating among them. The Hardy boys saw Sam Radley conferring with the state policeman and trying to fend off other news hawks.
The boys shucked their raincoats, rolled them up and stuffed them into their motorcycle pouches.
“Oh, oh!” Frank suddenly murmured under his breath.
Joe glanced up at his brother. “What’s the matter?”
“Take a look at that photographer.”
“Where?”
“Over there. The one snapping a picture of the motorcycle cop.”
“What about him?”
Frank drew his brother closer to the man in question. The photographer was using an expensive Japanese-made 35-millimeter camera and a “potato-masher” flash unit powerful enough for long-range shots at night.
Joe looked at Frank, puzzled. “I don’t get it. What am I supposed to see?”
“Those mud stains on his pants,” Frank whispered.
The man’s trouser legs were splashed up to the knees. Even his raincoat bore a few muddy traces.
“Wow!” Joe hissed. “He could’ve been that guy on the hillside who snapped pictures when we were coming in from the airport!”
Joe’s muted exclamation carried farther than he expected. The photographer whirled around and stared at the boys suspiciously. The next instant he dashed off across the street!
“After him!” Frank cried.
The Hardys took off in hot pursuit. Their quarry was already disappearing down the block. He was a healthy-looking young man in his early twenties, and now he was whizzing away from them with long-legged trip-hammer strides. Frank and Joe could hardly keep him in sight!
He rounded the next corner into a dark side street. The Hardys made a skidding turn and continued the chase, though for the moment neither could see the fugitive ahead.
Their pursuit might have ended in failure had Joe not glimpsed a movement out of the corner of his eye. Glancing toward the building on his left, he saw a figure huddled in a darkened doorway.
“Hold it, Frank!” Joe shouted, braking hard with shoe leather. “I think I’ve found him!”
A moment later, as Joe lunged toward the doorway, he caught a fist square in the face!
3
The Face at the Window
The blow was too hasty to have much force, but it landed hard enough to knock Joe off balance. He grabbed the photographer’s raincoat to steady himself, and by hanging on like a bulldog, kept the man from getting away.
By this time Frank had reached the scene. For a few moments fists flew in all directions. But their quarry soon realized he was cornered and gave up.
“Okay, okay, cool it, you two!” the photographer panted.
“You’re the one who started swinging!” Frank retorted angrily.
“What did you expect me to do when two guys start chasing me down a dark street? Just stand still and get mugged?”
“Nobody’s mugging you. We just wanted to ask you some questions.”
“How did I know that?”
“If you had nothing to hide,” put in Joe, “why did you run away from us?”
“Why should I have anything to hide? I’ve never even seen you before!”
“Oh no? How about on the highway tonight, when we were escorting Mr. Satoya’s limousine in from the airport?”
The young photographer glared sullenly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Can the innocent act!” Frank growled. “The film in your camera will prove whether or not you’re the guy who snapped those flash photos on the hillside.”
“So what if I did? There’s no law against taking pictures.”
“There is against blocking traffic—especially when you deliberately plant an obstruction on the open highway, like that tree you dragged across the road!”
“You can’t prove that!”
“Look! We’re not going to waste any more breath,” Frank declared. “If you’d rather have us call the police, we will—and you can explain to them how it all happened. On the other hand, if you’d rather talk to us, we’re willing to listen—and if you’re not mixed up in anything crooked, we’ll promise not to turn you in.”
The photographer hesitated uncertainly, his glance wavering back and forth between the two Hardy boys. Finally he made up his mind. “Okay, I’ll talk... Not that I have much to tell you.”
“We’ll decide that,” said Joe. “You know who we are?”
“Sure, you’re the Hardy boys. From what I gather, your dad was hired to protect Satoya.”
Frank’s eyes narrowed. “Who told you that?”
The photographer shrugged. “Nobody in particular. It was just common gossip among the newsmen around here. Actually I heard a couple of reporters talking about it at the airport restaurant earlier this evening.”
“Any idea where they picked it up?”
“I got the impression someone phoned a tip to one of the papers. He revealed the whole story about Satoya’s visit to this country—including the fact that Fenton Hardy was supposed to keep him under wraps.”
“You work for the Bayport Herald?” Joe asked.
“Nope, just a stringer for the wire services. I’m a freelancer.”
The photographer, whose name turned out to be Pete Ogden, said he had devised and carried out his roadblock trick with the aid of a couple of members of the local Gung-Ho motorcycle gang. One had waited at the airport and called Ogden at a roadside phone booth to alert him as soon as the motorcade got underway for Bayport.
The other gang member had helped him maneuver the fallen tree into position so that it could be toppled across the highway at short notice. Then the same youth had cycled back toward the airport and tipped off Ogden by walkie-talkie when he sighted Satoya’s limousine and escorts.
“I figured if I could obtain a couple of good candid camera shots of Satoya,” the photographer concluded, “they’d not only bring a high price, they might even help me land a job on one of the major newspapers.”
“Wait a minute,” Frank said with a thoughtful frown. “Did you get any good shots?”
“Dunno, I haven’t developed them yet. But I sure hope so. I wanted to shoot some more pictures at the hotel, but it turned out that Satoya had disappeared.”
“But do you think you got him?” Frank persisted.
Ogden scratched his head. “Well, I got somebody. There was a face in the window when the second and third flashes went off.”
“But you’re not sure whose? I mean, you couldn’t describe the face?”
Ogden shook his head. “No way. It all happened too fast, and I was too excited.”
Frank exchanged a look with Joe, who by now had caught the reason for his brother’s questions.
“Leaping lizards!” the younger Hardy boy exclaimed. “If we could see those pictures, they might tell us whether or not Satoya jumped out during the traffic tie-up!”
Pete Ogden was not enthusiastic about sharing his possibly valuable photos with the Hardys. But he realized that if he refused, the police were likely to seize his camera and impound the film as evidence. So he agreed to develop the roll immediately and allow Frank and Joe to inspect the results.
The Hardys and Ogden returned to the photographer’s car, which was parked near the hotel. Then the two boys trailed him home on their motorcycles. He lived in a small flat above a bookstore on the edge of the downtown area.
Frank and Joe waited while he developed the film. The negatives were too small for them to recognize the face in the car window, even when viewed under a magnifying glass. So Ogden made an eight-by-ten enlargement of the best shot.
It showed that the person looking out of the limousine was definitely Satoya! He was wide-eyed and his mouth was partly open, portraying the typical expression of a subject
surprised by a sudden photoflash.
“So he was in the car all right, even after we removed the tree!” Joe declared.
“And he sure doesn’t look like he was about to hop out in the next few moments before we got underway again,” Frank added.
Pete Ogden shot an excited glance at the Hardys. “Then you mean this photograph proves something about the mystery?”
Frank nodded. “I’d say it proves that Satoya did not disappear on the highway.”
“Hey, how about that?” Ogden snapped his fingers triumphantly. “Maybe I can sell these shots for even more than I figured! Thanks a lot, you guys.”
Outside Ogden’s flat, the boys were about to climb back on their motorcycles when Joe suddenly stopped his brother. “Did you see something move just then?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. A dark figure over there in the park.”
“Matter of fact I did, but I thought I was imagining things. Let’s take a look!”
The park was a triangular grassy island at the junction of three streets. The boys darted across to the island and spent several minutes searching among the few scattered trees and shrubbery, but could find no trace of anyone lurking there.
“That’s funny,” Joe said in frustration. “I could have sworn I saw someone dressed in black from head to toe!”
“Guess our imaginations were working overtime,” Frank said. “You’ll have to admit not many people except frogmen go around looking like that.”
“Where to now?” said Joe, as they mounted their street bikes. “Report to Dad?”
“May as well.” Frank hesitated. “You’ve read the Sherlock Holmes stories, haven’t you, Joe?”
“Sure, even Dad likes them. He says Sherlock Holmes and Edgar Allan Poe’s detective are the greatest masters of deduction that writers have ever dreamed up. Why’d you ask?”
“If you remember, one of Sherlock Holmes’s rules was that when you’ve eliminated all the explanations of a mystery but one, then that one must be the answer—no matter how far out it seems.”
Joe frowned. “So? What’re you getting at?”
“Just this,” Frank replied. “We didn’t hit a single red light coming into Bayport tonight. And the only time we stopped was during the traffic tie-up. If Satoya didn’t get out of the car then—”
“He must still have been inside when we got to the hotel!” Joe concluded excitedly. “That’s straight thinking, Frank. And if no one could see him when the chauffeur opened the door—”
It was Frank’s turn to finish the sentence. “Then he must have been hiding inside the car!”
“Which means there would have to be a secret compartment in the limousine. Let’s go check it out right now!”
They reached the Bayport Chilton in three minutes. The crowd of curious onlookers had thinned considerably, and neither Fenton Hardy nor Sam Radley was anywhere in sight. The Hardys took an elevator to the parking garage in the basement.
The black limousine was easy to spot, but Joe stopped abruptly as they neared it.
“Hey, we’ll probably need a key to get inside.”
Without a word, Frank held one up.
“Dad slipped this to me before we left the airport. He arranged beforehand with Mr. Kawanishi to get three extra keys—one for himself, one for Sam, and one for you and me—so any of us could take over in a hurry and drive the limousine out of danger in case of emergency.”
“Great!” said Joe. “Let’s see what we can find.”
Frank unlocked the limousine, and the Hardys proceeded to examine both the front and rear seat areas thoroughly. They marveled at the fine craftsmanship and fittings, but could discover no hiding place.
Finally Joe stepped back and scratched his head. “Hold it, Frank! Did you notice the distance between the back of the front seat and the dividing partition? You sure wouldn’t need all that room just for upholstery or springs!”
“Right,” Frank agreed. “And what’s this little metal button for, right where the glass fits into the lower half of the partition? It can’t be a rivet head bee—”
The next moment, as Frank’s forefinger touched the metal button, both boys gasped.
The leather-covered lower half of the partition was slowly sliding upward over the glass pane!
4
A Trio of Suspects
The leather panel continued moving upward until the glass pane between the top of the front seat and the roof was completely covered.
The Hardy boys could now see a large hollow space between the back of the front seat and the rear passenger compartment, which the sliding panel had previously concealed!
“Leaping lizards! That’s big enough for a man to hide in!” Joe exclaimed.
“Or big enough to stash a body in,” Frank said grimly.
“You mean someone may have drugged Satoya, the same way Ikeda was drugged?” Joe frowned doubtfully. “But they were the only two people in the back seat.”
“So far as we know,” Frank countered. “But suppose someone else was hiding in this secret compartment when the limousine was driven off the plane?”
“You’ve got a point there,” Joe conceded. “So the hidden perpetrator crawls out sometime before we get to Bayport, zaps both Ikeda and Satoya with a hypodermic needle or a whiff of gas and then stuffs Satoya’s body into the secret compartment.”
“Well, it’s one possible scenario,” said Frank in a dubious voice.
“Just one catch to it.”
“Don’t bother telling me, I already know.”
“Namely, what happened to the dirty trickster who did all this?”
Frank grinned wryly. “Look, I came up with part of an answer—you’re supposed to supply the rest.”
“Okay,” said Joe, rising to the challenge. “So maybe the guilty party was a midget or a dwarf. He not only stuffs Satoya’s unconscious body into the secret compartment—he squirms back inside himself and then closes the sliding panel.”
“Pretty tight fit, I’d say—unless he was about the size of Tom Thumb.”
“Why not? Dwarfs can come pretty small.”
“And after the limousine’s parked in the garage, he hops out of the secret compartment again and carries off Satoya on his back.”
Joe returned his brother’s grin. “If you have a better answer, let’s hear it.”
“I think we’re both getting wacko. Before we come up with any more goofy theories, there’s one important point we should clear up, Joe.”
“What’s that?”
“Do Kawanishi and Oyama know about this secret compartment?”
“Hm, good question. Let’s ask them.”
The Hardys locked the limousine and returned to the elevator. From their earlier briefings by their father, they knew the location of the suite reserved for the visiting Japanese. They got out at the fifteenth floor and spoke to the security guard who had been stationed there at Mr. Hardy’s orders.
“Is Dad around?” Frank inquired.
“Nope. Just Mr. Kawanishi and Mr. Oyama.”
“We’d like to speak to them.”
“Just a second.” The guard announced them over a special phone that had been installed for this purpose, then nodded and gestured for the boys to proceed.
Mr. Kawanishi, the burly senior aide who had met the Hardys at the airport, opened the door to admit the two youths. His colleague, Mr. Oyama, was standing by a window overlooking the street. He turned to greet the boys when they entered.
“We have a question to ask you gentlemen, if you don’t mind,” Frank began.
“By all means,” said Kawanishi. “If you lads or your father can do anything to clear up this appalling mystery, we shall be most grateful!”
“Did you know there’s a secret compartment in Mr. Satoya’s limousine?”
There was a silence, during which the two aides glanced at each other uncomfortably.
“Yes, we know about that,” said Mr. Oyama. The squat, broad-shoulder
ed Japanese gestured toward a sofa. “If you will please be seated, we shall try to explain.”
The boys obeyed and waited to hear what their hosts had to say.
“Our revered employer designed that compartment himself,” Mr. Kawanishi told them.
“What for?” asked Joe.
“As a way of eluding newsmen and inquisitive crowds.”
“Wouldn’t it be simpler to curtain the windows,” said Frank, “or just have them made out of one-way glass, like the partition pane between the front and rear seat compartments?”
“So it might seem at first thought,” Mr. Oyama replied. “But actually that would only whet people’s curiosity. You have no idea how much interest and gossip Mr. Satoya has aroused by his secretive ways.”
“In Tokyo,” Mr. Kawanishi put in, “reporters will sometimes hover for hours around our central office building merely in the hope of glimpsing our employer or snapping his photo.”
“If the interior of his limousine were hidden from view,” Oyama went on, “they would assume he was inside it, behind the curtains or the one-way glass. So they would try harder than ever to corner him.”
“But if they see his car leave or arrive empty—or rather, apparently empty,” the other aide added, “then his whereabouts remains a mystery. His pursuers are baffled and tend to become discouraged.”
“I see.” Frank frowned and digested this information thoughtfully.
Joe spoke up. “Why didn’t you tell our father all this when the limousine first arrived at the hotel, and he discovered Mr. Satoya’s disappearance?”
There was another awkward silence and exchange of glances between the two Japanese.
“You are right to take us to task,” said Mr. Kawanishi, bowing his head contritely. “However, it occurred to both of us that Satoya-san might have become—how do you say?—camera shy, because of what happened on the way in from the airport. Therefore he might have chosen to conceal himself in the secret compartment for his own reasons.”
Mystery of the Samurai Sword Page 2