“Smart thinking, Hank, ” Frank agreed. “That could be their plan, all right.”
“And the guys who set it up,” Joe added, “may also be involved in those three Chelsea building cases Dad’s investigating!”
“Right, which is why I tipped you two off,” said the Indian high-steel worker. “But what do we do about it?”
The Hardys exchanged thoughtful glances.
“Think we should warn Mr. Tabor?” Joe asked his brother. “After all, he’s the head of the company.”
“I know,” Frank said, deciding to trust the Mohawk and speak openly in front of him. “But we still can’t be sure he himself isn’t mixed up in all this. Was he one of the company officials who came here today to inspect the structure?”
Hank nodded ruefully. “I’m afraid he was.”
“Looks as if we’ll have to play it by ear, then, and use our own judgment,” Frank decided.
“How do we know the lunch box is still there?” Joe asked.
The Mohawk shrugged. “We don’t. I’ve been hanging around here ever since it got dark, trying to keep my eyes peeled for anything suspicious, but that doesn’t prove much. Maybe we’d better check.”
“Isn’t there a watchman on duty?” Frank inquired.
“Sure, but he’s a lazy bum. Spends most of the time with his feet up, reading the paper. Anyone could sneak by him.”
“Okay then, if it won’t stir up any trouble, let’s have a look!”
The skyscraper was going up between two other buildings. The base of its structural skeleton was enclosed by a high board fence. After cautious glances to see whether the coast was clear, the three darted across the street. Hank Eagle gave each of the Hardys a boost up the fence, then leaped for a handhold and swung over easily by himself.
In a lighted booth just inside the access doorway through the fence, they could see the watchman snoring with a newspaper on his lap and a thermos of coffee on the table next to him.
“See what I mean?” Hank grinned.
“How do we get to the twenty-first floor?” Joe inquired.
“There’s a freight hoist, but it makes a lot of noise when you switch on the motor. It’d probably wake even him up. Better walk.”
Temporary wooden stairways had been erected for the workmen, leading up through the building skeleton. The Hardys and their Mohawk friend felt leaden-legged as they neared their destination in spite of their trim physical condition.
Suddenly they heard a metallic clink in the darkness. “Hold it!” Hank Eagle hissed, putting a hand on each boy’s arm.
They were ascending a connecting stairway on the right side of the structure. Peering outward and upward, they discovered that someone had heaved a line from a window of the adjoining building to hook onto the floor of the skyscraper skeleton somewhere above them. As they watched, they could see the dark figure of a man silhouetted in the moonlight, shinnying his way up from the window along the rope.
“I’ll bet he’s going after the lunch box!” Joe whispered.
“Right! Let’s get him!” Frank urged.
All three dashed up the stairs on tiptoe. As they reached the twenty-first floor, they saw the intruder scramble over the edge and onto the temporary flooring of the skyscraper. Then he darted silently across the wooden planks.
“That’s what he’s after, all right!” Hank muttered to the boys. “The lunch box is over that way!”
They moved to cut off the stranger’s retreat to the hook and line. But evidently he heard them. With a fleeting glance over his shoulder, he ran nimbly over an open girder toward another part of the structure. The very thought of his reckless flight, hundreds of feet above the ground, made the Hardys dizzy.
Hank Eagle set off after him without hesitation. “Wait—don’t try it, you two!” he told the Hardys as he dashed over the girder in pursuit. “Leave this to me!”
Watching the two figures intently in the moonlit gloom, the brothers saw the fugitive reach another stairway. Instead of heading downward to street level, he started up, bounding two or three steps at a stride.
“Keep an eye on him while I try to cut him off!” Joe blurted and darted back to the stairway they themselves had used. Construction on the skyscraper had progressed only three stories higher, with the unfinished skeleton ending on the twenty-fourth floor.
As he reached it, Joe caught sight of the intruder, who was running across the wooden planking toward the edge of the structure. Joe sensed his intention at a glance. He was going to leap down onto the roof of the adjoining building from which he had emerged only a few minutes before!
The Hardy boy rushed to stop him. He grabbed the fugitive by the arm. But the man broke loose with a muttered oath. They grappled wildly at the brink of the planking. Too late, Joe saw the man’s fist swinging at him in the moonlight.
The blow caught him on the side of the head and he lost his balance. With a startled cry, Joe toppled into the yawning darkness below!
11
Xavier’s Story
Plummeting downward, Joe saw a rope flash past his eyes. He grabbed it desperately, and the jerk on his arm confirmed that his fall had been broken.
As he collected his wits, Joe realized he had managed to grab hold of the line which the intruder had hooked onto the skyscraper.
What a lucky break! Joe thought. With a prayer of thanks on his lips, he got a two-handed grip on the line. Then he swung his legs around the rope as a further safety measure and made his way downward cautiously, hand over hand.
The line slanted outward, away from the skyscraper skeleton into the adjoining building. As Joe shinnied down the rope and wriggled through the window, a new thought occurred to him.
Perhaps the contents of the room he was now in would enable him to identify the unknown intruder or maybe indicate whom he worked for, if others were involved.
But when Joe groped along the wall and found a light switch, he was disappointed. The room was empty, evidently an unrented office. The line had been tied to a radiator underneath the window. Hastily he switched off the light again so as not to make a target of himself.
“Better not stick my head out the window, either,” Joe reflected. The safest way would be to go down to the street and wait for Frank and Hank Eagle.
Luckily the building corridors were still lighted and the elevators were working. A night attendant glanced at Joe curiously as he stepped into the lobby, but said nothing.
Joe went out into the street and was greeted with excited relief by his brother and their Mohawk friend a moment or two later.
“Thank goodness you’re okay!” Frank exclaimed, putting an arm around his brother’s shoulder. “Boy, I thought you were a goner when I saw you go over the side!”
“I never even got a good look at the guy before he punched me,” Joe grumbled. “What happened to him?”
“He jumped on the roof of the building you went into,” Frank reported, “and then took off via the fire escape.”
“Well, at least he didn’t get what he came for,” Hank Eagle added, displaying the lunch box. The paper and key were still inside it.
“That’s a break!” Joe said with satisfaction. “Whatever he and his pals were up to, we seem to have spoiled their plans.”
“Right,” Frank agreed. “So I guess we don’t have to worry about warning anyone till we get a chance to talk to Dad.” He looked at his watch. “But maybe we should give Mr. Nest another ring.”
When he dialed the number from a nearby phone booth, the answering-service operator said there had been no further word from their mysterious caller. Frank promised to check again the following day and hung up. Hank Eagle invited the boys to stay overnight at his apartment in the Manhattan neighborhood known as the East Village, and they gladly accepted.
Next morning, Frank phoned Bayport. Fenton Hardy answered. When he learned his son was calling from New York City, the detective exclaimed, “Great! You couldn’t have timed it better!”
“How c
ome, Dad?”
“I’ve just had word from the insurance underwriters that the offices of Chelsea Builders were broken into last night. The safe was cracked and looted. I’d like you and Joe to go there and get a full report.”
Frank was startled by the news. When he related their adventure on the skyscraper skeleton, Mr. Hardy agreed with Hank Eagle’s suspicions. “I’d say last night’s burglary proves your Mohawk friend was right. The crooks probably had to break in and crack the safe because you fellows stopped them from getting the key and combination.”
The detective said he expected to leave the house shortly to pursue his investigation. So rather than phone back, Frank promised that he and Joe would stop off in Bayport before returning to the Adirondacks and report what they had learned about the burglary.
Chelsea Builders were located in an office building on Seventh Avenue near 38th Street. The Hardys found the premises swarming with police and newsmen. After identifying themselves as the sons of the famed private detective who had been retained by the firm’s insurance underwriters, they were admitted at once to the office of the president, Karel Tabor.
With him was a younger man, whom Mr. Tabor introduced as his executive assistant, Neal Xavier. Tabor’s manner seemed rather curt and worried.
“Can you tell us what was taken from the safe, sir?” Frank asked.
“Luckily less than a thousand dollars. Just the usual petty cash that we keep on hand.”
“Anything else of special value?” Joe inquired.
Mr. Tabor looked slightly uncomfortable. “We—er—don’t have an exact list of the safe’s contents just yet. The treasurer’s secretary is compiling one,” he replied, then stole a hasty glance at his wristwatch. “Look, if you’ll excuse me, I have a rather urgent appointment to attend to. Perhaps Mr. Xavier here can answer any other questions you may have.”
The Hardys refrained from showing their surprise. “Whatever you say, sir,” Frank said politely.
Neal Xavier, a sharp-eyed, hawk-nosed man with dark hair, conducted the boys into his own office next door and invited them to be seated.
“You’re probably wondering why Mr. Tabor had so little to say,” he began, sitting down behind his desk. “Well, he had his reasons.”
The Hardys waited for Xavier to explain.
“The fact is, he suspects another firm of architects may have had a hand in the robbery,” the executive aide went on, “namely, Upton Associates. But Mr. Tabor feels it’s unethical to make any accusations without proof.”
Xavier thumped his fist angrily on the desk and added, “Well, I can tell you right now that won’t stop me from speaking out. I think a crook is a crook and deserves whatever happens to him!”
“Assuming you’re both right,” said Joe, “that Upton Associates are crooks, why would they want to rob your safe?”
“Very simple,” Xavier replied. “For some time now, my boss has suspected Upton of taking illegal kick-backs and bribes.”
“From whom?” said Frank with a frown.
“From a crooked contractor with mob connections. Whenever Upton Associates designs buildings, they use their influence to see that that particular contractor gets hired to do the work, even though they know his firm is partly run by gangsters.”
“And in return,” Joe said, “you mean the crooked contractor hands some of the money he is paid for the job back to Upton Associates?”
“Right. Under the table, as they say. Since the contractor overcharges the customer, he can afford to return a share of the take to Upton. It so happens Mr. Tabor’s been collecting secret testimony about such payoffs on tape. But now those tapes are missing from the safe!”
Before leaving, the Hardys asked if they could look at the company safe. Its door was hanging loosely by the hinges.
“Expert job,” Joe remarked to his brother. “Evidently the safecracker used just enough nitro to blow it open without damaging anything else.”
Frank nodded and knelt down to scrape some shreds of pinkish substance off the metal with his fingernail. He sniffed it and pulled it apart.
Joe puckered his forehead. “What is it?”
“Believe it or not, it’s chewing gum!”
As the Hardy boys left the Chelsea Builders suite of offices and started down the corridor toward the elevators, they suddenly heard footsteps darting up behind them.
The next moment, each felt something jabbed in his back and a voice snarled, “Hold it, you two!”
12
Restaurant Meeting
Frank and Joe whirled around. From the speaker’s snarling tone, they expected to find a hard-eyed gunman behind them.
Instead, they saw a smiling, freckle-faced young man in his early twenties. He held up a pen in one hand and a keychain flashlight in the other.
“Excuse the funny stuff, fellows,” he apologized. “Just wanted to make sure you didn’t get away. You two are the famous Hardy boys, aren’t you?”
“That’s right,” Frank said.
“I’m Matt Dawson of the Daily Star. Just new on the job, to tell you the truth. But I’d sure like to impress the city editor, and getting an interview with you guys would be a step in the right direction. How about it?”
The Hardys exchanged dubious glances. Then Frank shook his head. “Thanks, but we’d rather not.”
“Are you or your father working on this case?”
“If we were, we couldn’t talk about it.”
“Look, that doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t have to discuss the Chelsea Builders burglary,” the young reporter assured them. “Just an interview for a general feature story will do. Things like how you first got interested in solving mysteries; whether or not you expect to become professional detectives like your father; how your sleuthing fits in with your schoolwork, and so on.”
Frank hesitated. After consulting briefly with his brother, he said, “Okay, it’s a deal, if you’ll do us a favor in return.”
“Sure thing, if I can. What do you have in mind?”
“The Star is one of the city’s biggest newspapers, I believe,” Frank said. “You cover all the arts, don’t you, including architecture?”
“You bet! We’ve got as big an editorial staff as any paper in town, and one of the best in the country. A man named Earl Bruce writes a regular column on architecture in the Sunday Star.”
“Fine. We’ll give you an interview if you can persuade him to give us some information in exchange.”
Dawson grinned. “You’ve got it, fellows!”
The Hardys accompanied the reporter several blocks through midtown Manhattan to the Star building. Once there, Matt Dawson called the paper’s architectural critic on an office phone to confirm the bargain. Frank and Joe were then interviewed and photographed for half an hour. Afterward, Dawson took them to Earl Bruce’s office on another floor of the building and left the two to talk to the editor in private.
“Well, boys, what is it you want to know?” the genial, white-haired newsman inquired.
“First of all, sir,” Frank requested, “we’d like you to keep this conversation in strict confidence, if you don’t mind.”
“Agreed.”
“Thanks. To get right to the point, then, what can you tell us about an architectual firm called Upton Associates?”
“Hm.” Bruce leaned back in his chair and began filling his pipe thoughtfully. “Well, they’ve been in practice for about fifteen years, as I recall. Do quite a sizable volume of business. Commercial stuff, mostly. Office buildings, factories, that sort of thing. Plus several bridges and occasional government projects.”
“Who runs the firm?” Joe put in.
“A man named Zachary Upton.”
“What’s he like?”
A quirky grin shaped itself on Bruce’s lips. “Let’s say he’s a man of strong individuality.”
“Has there ever been any trouble between Upton and Chelsea Builders?” Frank asked.
“Not trouble, exactly, but I believe there
has been considerable rivalry between them. I know they’ve often put in competing bids on the same job; no doubt that may have led to a certain amount of hard feelings. After all, they can’t both win out on the same project.”
“Have Upton Associates ever been accused of anything crooked or illegal?”
Bruce, who was just lighting his pipe, looked up sharply at Frank’s question. “Not that I know of, although I believe Upton has a son who was convicted of some crime and sent to prison.”
“On what charge?”
The white-haired newsman thought hard for a few moments, then shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t recall. It didn’t happen here in New York City. I just heard it mentioned in a conversation.”
After a few more questions, the Hardys thanked Earl Bruce for his help and left the office. In the lobby, Frank paused near a pay telephone.
“Maybe we should try to get in touch with Mr. Nest again,” he suggested.
“Good idea,” Joe agreed.
Frank slipped a coin into the instrument and dialed the number. When the answering service replied, he asked if Mr. Nest had checked in yet.
“Let me see,” the operator replied and consulted her notes. “Yes, he called this morning and suggested meeting you at the Soup Bowl restaurant on East 49th Street. He said he’d contact me again at eleven-thirty to see if you’d gotten the message.”
“Good enough,” said Frank. “Tell him we’ll be there.”
Hanging up, the boy glanced at his watch. It was now ten minutes after eleven, so the Hardys decided to go directly to the restaurant and have an early lunch. After looking up the address in the phone book, they hailed a taxi, which deposited them in front of the Soup Bowl a few minutes later.
The restaurant was already quite busy, but the brothers found a vacant booth and ordered hamburgers and French fries. While they were waiting to be served, Frank mused. “I wonder if that gum on the safe got there strictly by accident, or if it may not tell us something more.”
Night of the Werewolf Page 7