"We"ll have to stay away from the road project," advised Joe, "or our scheme may fall through."
"" There must be another lane to the cliff without going on the one we know."
With a little search they found one. They left the truck parked near the top of the slope, donned their disguises, and started the climb up the rough hillside. Joe remembered the place where he had seen the hooded figure signaling on the night they found the power drill in the scarecrow.
The wind from the sea blew strongly over the cliffs. The boys" sinister cloaks fluttered in the gale.
The Hide-ouS 203 "Now for the torches!" exclaimed Frank.
In the gloomy waters of the bay they could see no movement, no sign of life. But Frank realized that there might be men waiting in one of the coves below, as on the night of his adventure with Chet. He drew matches from his pocket, lit one, and touched it to the oily rags.
They flared up brightly. The Hardy boys held the torches high.
"From side to side!" Joe reminded his brother. "That"s the signal to come ahead."
They waved the torches slowly in a sweeping, sidwise motion. Instantly a light nickered in the darkness of the cove below.
"They"ve seen the signal 1" exclaimed Frank. "They"re coming!"
The Hardy boys did not have long to wait. Soon they heard the sound of rowlocks, heard voices in the darkness below. In a few minutes a man came scrambling up a hidden path that led up the side of the cliffs. When he saw the hooded figures, he turned and beckoned to someone below.
"Where"s the truck?" he asked.
"Follow us," said Frank, his voice m.u.f.fled by the hood, his heart pounding wildly.
The Hardys retraced their steps. Glancing back, they saw that the first man had been joined by others-half a dozen in all. Unsuspectingly, they trooped behind the boys in the gloom. Frank and Joe kept far enough ahead to avoid conversation, but there was no need for this cau204 tion, for none of the men spoke. They made their way down to the road and back to the truck in complete silence. The Hardys climbed into the cab.
The others climbed into the back of the truck. One of them called out in a low voice: "O.K.! All set!"
Frank used the starter, then threw the truck in gear. It moved forward, then gathered speed.
"Why don"t you take off that confounded hood!" asked a man just behind Frank.
"Orders!" replied the driver.
He hoped the explanation would be accepted, and had a bad few minutes until he was sure it was. If anything had gone wrong, if members of the gang had become suspicious, the Hardy boys realized that their plight might be serious. But they arrived at Wortman"s cottage without any trouble. The place was still in darkness. Frank stopped the truck.
He heard a murmur of voices as the men scrambled out. One of them strode forward.
"What"s the idea of driving right up to the cottage?" he demanded angrily. "We never did that before."
"Wortman"s orders," grunted Joe.
"Say that again."
"Wortman"s orders."
"Maybe they"re Wortman"s orders," declared the leader suspiciously, "but there"s something fishy about this. Come down out of that truck J"
205 A long arm shot out. A hand gripped Joe"s shoulder, yanked him roughly out of the cabin. The hood was stripped from his head.
"Who"s this fellow?" cried the man who had grabbed Joe. "Scatter, you men! There"s something going on here that I don"t like!"
"Don"t move, any of you!" cried a sharp Voice from the darkness. "You"re covered. And under arrest!"
From the shadows of the cottage Fenton Hardy, Cartwright, and two uniformed policemen stepped into the open yard. Each held a revolver.
"" Up with your hands!""
There was little fight in the group when they saw the guns. Their arms went up. Fenton Hardy advanced.
"Well, boys," he said, "it looks as if now we"ve rounded up all the members of the flicker*
ing torch gang!"
CHAPTER XXV.
THE PUZZLE SOLVED.
in the library of the Hardy home iu Bayport the next morning, Fenton Hardy smiled broadly as he read a telegram from high government authorities in Washington: "HEARTY CONGRATULATIONS TO YOU AND YOUR SONS ON SOLUTION OF.
DIFFICULT CASE.".
He pa.s.sed the message across the desk to the boys. "There"s a pat on the back for you," he said proudly.
"How did they know about us?" asked Frank, when he and Joe had read the missive.
"I told them, of course. I was speaking to one of the men over long distance telephone early this morning. They"re very pleased."
"We wouldn"t have rounded up any of the gang if you and Detective Cartwright hadn"t been on hand," declared Joe modestly.
"Let"s say it was a cooperative proposition," Mr. Hardy remarked. "At any rate, we have the flickering torch gang behind bars, including Hal Wortman, the leader, and Hefty Cronin.
There"ll be no more thieving of construction 206.
207 supplies anywhere in the country or local material to run the mine."
"" And d.i.c.k Ames won"t lose his job after all,"" Frank said. "I called him up a little while ago to tell him that Hefty Cronin had been arrested. d.i.c.k was so relieved he couldn"t thank us enough."
There was a knock. The door opened and Chet Morton peeped in. He had managed to locate a piece of pie on his way through the kitchen, and he was munching contentedly.
"How about letting me in on this session?" he said, his mouth full. "I came over to help Mrs. Hardy, but I"d like to hear about the mystery you cleared up."
""Nothing much to tell, Chet," said Fenton Hardy. "We rounded up the flickering torch gang, that"s all."
"Not for me it isn"t all," declared the stout boy. "There are a whole lot of things I want to know about. Didn"t Frank and Joe start out to solve some silkworm thefts? That business hasn"t been cleared up yet, has it?"
"Oh, yes," Frank told him. "You see, the flickering torch gang was headed by Hal Wort-man. Boots was an old pal of his. When the gang was planning to steal road supplies around here, Wortman came to ask Boots about a good hiding place for the things. Boots told him about the abandoned mine. Then Wortman bought the property from Mrs. Trumper for a very small sum, expecting to be through using 208 it before he paid any interest on the mortgage."*
"But I nipped that one," said a voice, and Aunt Gertrude came into the room.
"Wortman discovered the valuable ore quite by accident," Mr. Hardy went on. "He and a few of his pals began to operate that on the side, in addition to storing the stolen goods.
They used equipment from the road to do it, but were too busy to make any great hauls from the new highway construction. That fooled me for some time."
"Wortman thought he was going to cheat dear little Mrs. Trumper," said Aunt Gertrude, "but not now. He may own his cottage and the land around it, but not the mine."" Proudly she read from a copy of the deed a.s.signed to the man. "You see, if ore were ever mined under the ground, she was to receive half the profits. She"ll be a rich woman now-but no thanks to Mr. Wortman."
"You still haven"t told me about the silkworms," Chet reminded the Hardys.
"That was Boots" own special proposition," Joe replied. "He went by the underground route to Asa Grable"s secret laboratory and from there he was able to rob the greenhouses.
The scientist did not know about the rock door, so he didn"t always lock the inner one."
"What did Boots do with the silkworms!"
"He raised them himself. He had been in the Orient and knew a lot about silkworm cul20S ture. He had a place of his own hidden in the woods."
"I stumbled on that when Cartwright and I were hunting for the hoys" stolen car," Fenton Hardy explained. "We traced the automobile to a shack in the woods and found Boots there yesterday afternoon. He talked. Then Cart-wright and I went back to Wortman"s place to round up the rest of the gang. Later we picked up Hefty Cronin. He was responsible for the groans we heard near the scarecrow, the stolen power drill, and forcing Frank off the road in his car."
Chet munched solemnly at his pie. "And set fire to this house! I thought so," he added, as Frank nodded. "" And where does the boy come in?" he asked, blinking.
"Boy!" asked Fenton Hardy.
"The boy Frank and I saw on the cliff. We thought he was Joe. One of the hooded men grabbed him. I"ve been puzzling about that angle ever since."
"We found out about that," laughed Frank. "The boy was Charlie Wortman. He"s Hal Wortman"s son. He was on the cliff that night with his father, being used as a signal to warn the flickering torch gang to look out for-well, for the Hardy boys. And to grab them if they could."
"Well, I"ll be doggoned!" exclaimed Chet. * And here I"ve been feeling sorry for that boy 210 all along. 1 thought those awful men had strangled him or thrown him into a dungeon, or something."
"Charlie Wortman was the person who stole our car, by the way," added Frank.
"Dressed himself up as a girl and claimed the car at the garage."
"Visitors!" announced Aunt Gertrude, who had gone to answer the doorbell. "Mr. Grable and Mr. Jenkins want to see you, Fenton."
"Send them right in," called out her brother.
"Archibald and I had to come, Mr. Hardy, to thank you and the boys for all you Ve done. I "11 admit now I was so worried over the loss of my silkworms that I was afraid I wasn"t going to be able to continue my experiments."
"And those experiments were mighty important," spoke up Archibald Jenkins. "In fact, Mr. Grable is to give a lecture about them at Henley College at two o"clock this afternoon."
"Two o"clock!" said Joe.
"" Two o "clock sharp,"" said Mr. Grable. "It"s so long since I"ve worn my college robe that I was afraid the moths had eaten it. I tried it on last night just to make sure."
The Hardy boys looked sheepish. They remembered their suspicions when they had seen Asa Grable with the robe in the secret laboratory the previous night. The explanation had been innocent enough after all.
"I"m glad it"s all over," Frank remarked.
211 "Now Joe and I will be able to settle down to some serious farming."
Aunt Gertrude sniffed. "For how long?" she demanded tartly. "You"ll be gallivanting off on some other mystery before the end of next week."
It was not quite that long, but soon they were to become involved in "The Melted Coins."
"If they do get mixed up with a mystery," said Asa Grable, "they"ll solve it! I didn"t think much of them as detectives at first, but I"ve changed my mind."
"There was one mystery we didn"t solve," Joe said. "We never did find out who threatened you over the telephone."
Asa Grable frowned. "That"s a fact," he said. "I don"t know that I should tell you now."
Archibald Jenkins stirred uneasily in his chair. He coughed. "I"m afraid I"ll have to take the blame for that," he said, his eyes down.
The Hardys stared at him.
"I"ve always wanted to be a detective," sighed Archibald. "" I-I took a correspondence course in it. This did seem like such a good opportunity for me to practice. I didn"t want Mr.
Hardy or his sons working on the case until I"d had a chance at it. I thought I could solve it myself."
"For that matter," grinned Frank, "we should apologize to you, Archibald. Joe and I were pretty sure you were stealing Mr. Grable"s silkworms. Especially when that ladder broke the window in the greenhouse."
"I saw the thief inside," explained the would-be detective, "and it frightened me so much I broke the window."
"Archibald knows I couldn"t get along without him," smiled Asa Grable. "I forgive him.
But," he added to his a.s.sistant, "in the future I think you had better confine your duties to helping me with the silkworms. You"re a very fine scientist, but unlike the Hardy boys, you"re a very poor detective."
"I know it now, sir," replied Archibald Jenkins humbly, and smiled at Frank and Joe in admiration.
THE END.