In a few moments chief petty officers Bertram and Brown appeared in the second-floor hall with Captain Ryder. Immediately the state trooper fastened handcuffs onto the prisoner. He was about to take him away when Frank spoke up: "There"s someone else involved in this smuggling who hasn"t been captured yet."
"You mean the man who got away from here in the truck?" Officer Ryder asked. "We"ve set up a roadblock for him and expect to capture him any minute."
Frank shook his head. "Ali Singh, the crewman on the Marco Polo, has a friend who owns a small cargo ship. Right now, it"s lying somewhere offsh.o.r.e. Snattman was thinking of putting my dad, Joe, and me on it and arranging things so that we never got home again."
The king of the smugglers, who had been silent for several minutes, now cried out, "You"re crazy! There"s not a word of truth in it! There isn"t any boat offsh.o.r.e!"
The others ignored the man. As soon as he stopped yelling, Joe took up the story. "I have a hunch you"ll find that your Coast Guard man is a prisoner on that cargo ship. The name of the captain is Foster."
"You mean our man Ayres is on that ship?" Petty Officer Brown asked unbelievingly.
"We don"t know anyone named Ayres," Frank began. He stopped short and looked at his brother. They nodded significantly at each other, then Frank asked, "Does Ayres go under the name of Jones?"
"He might, if he were cornered. You see, he"s sort of a counterspy for the Coast Guard. He pretended to join the smugglers and we haven"t heard from him since Sat.u.r.day."
"I found out about him," Snattman bragged. "That name Jones didn"t fool us. I saw him make a sneak trip to your patrol boat."
Frank and Joe decided this was the scene they had seen through the telescope. They told about their rescue of "Jones" after a hand grenade had nearly killed him. They also gave an account of how his kidnapers had come to the Kane farmhouse, bound up the farmer and his wife, and taken "Jones."
Skipper Brown said he would send a patrol boat out to investigate the waters in the area and try to find Captain Foster"s ship.
"We"ll wait here for you," Captain Ryder stated. "This case seems to be one for both our branches of service. Two kidnapings on land and a theft from the Marco Polo, as well as an undeclared vessel offsh.o.r.e."
While he was gone, the Hardys attempted to question Snattman. He refused to admit any guilt in connection with smuggling operations or the shipment of stolen goods from one state to another. Frank decided to talk to him along different lines, hoping that the smuggler would inadvertently confess something he did not intend to.
"I heard you inherited this house from your uncle, Mr. Pollitt," Frank began.
"That"s right. What"s it to you?"
Frank was unruffled. "I was curious about the tunnel and the stairways and the cave," he said pleasantly.
"Did your uncle build them?"
Snattman dropped his sullen att.i.tude. "No, he didn"t," the smuggler answered. "My uncle found them all by accident. He started digging through his cellar wall to enlarge the place, and broke right through to that corridor."
"I see," said Frank. "Have you any idea who did build it?"
Snattman said that his uncle had come to the conclusion that the tunnel and pond had been discovered by pirates long, long ago. They apparently had decided it would be an ideal hide-out and had built the steps all the way to the top of the ground.
"Of course the woodshed wasn"t there then," Snattman explained. "At least not the one that"s here now.
The trap door was, though, but there was a tumble-down building over it."
"How about the corridor? Was it the same size when your uncle found it?"
"Yes," the smuggler answered. "My uncle figured that was living quarters for the pirates when they weren"t on their ship."
"Pretty fascinating story," Tony Prito spoke up.
Several seconds of silence followed. Snattman"s eyes darted from one boy to another. Finally they fastened on Frank Hardy and he said: "Now that I"m going to prison, the eyepieces to your telescope, and your motorcycle tools, won"t do me any good. You"ll find them in a drawer in the kitchen."
"Thanks a lot," said Frank.
There was another short silence. Then the smuggler went on, his head down and his eyes almost closed, "Mr. Hardy, I envy you. And I-I never thought I"d be making this kind of a confession. You know almost everything about what I"ve been doing. I"ll tell the whole story later. Since they"re going to find that Coast Guard officer, Ayres, on Foster"s ship there"s no use in my holding out any longer.
"I said I envy you, Mr. Hardy. It"s because you brought up two such fine boys and they got swell friends.
Me-I wasn"t so lucky. My father died when I was little. I was pretty headstrong and my mother couldn"t manage me. I began to make the wrong kind of friends and after that-you know how it is.
"My uncle, who owned this place, might have helped me, but he was mean and selfish and never gave us any money. The most he would do was invite my mother and me here once in a while for a short visit. I hated him because he made my mother work very hard around the house all the time we were here. It wasn"t any vacation for her.
"One of the times when I was here my uncle showed me the pirates" hide-out and I never forgot it. After I got in with a gang of hoods I kept thinking about this place, and what a swell hide-out it would be for smugglers. I was afraid to try it while my uncle was alive. But when I heard he was dead, I thought that was my chance.
"You see, I didn"t dare go to claim the property as the rightful heir. But now I"m planning to take it over.
Of course it won"t do me any good, because I know I"ll have to do a long stretch in the pen. But I"m going to ask those executors to use my uncle"s money to run this place as a boys" home-I mean a place where boys without proper home training can come to live."
The group listening to Snattman, king of the smugglers, were too overwhelmed by his complete change of heart to say anything for a few seconds. But when the man looked up, as if pleading for his hearers to believe him, Mr. Hardy said, "That"s a very fine thing for you to do, Snattman. I"m sure that the boys who benefit from living here will always be grateful to you."
The solemn scene was suddenly interrupted by the return of Chief Petty Officer Brown. He reported that another patrol boat had picked up his message about Captain Foster"s ship and within a few minutes had reported sighting it. Then, within a quarter of an hour, word came that Captain Foster had been put under arrest, and that the missing Coast Guard man had been found on the ship, as well as a quant.i.ty of merchandise which the captain had expected Snattman to remove.
The prisoners were now taken away from the Pollitt home and the Hardys and their friends found themselves alone.
Chet asked suddenly, "How do we get home?"
Tony grinned. "I guess the Napoli will hold all of us."
The group went to the woodshed, opened the trap door, and started down the secret pa.s.sageway to the pond below. They climbed into the Napoli and Tony slipped behind the wheel. The Coast Guard men thoughtfully had left the portable searchlight on the prow and Tony was able to make the trip through the tunnel and the narrow channel out to the ocean without accident.
Suddenly Frank spoke up, "Dad, what happened to your car?"
Mr. Hardy smiled. "It"s in Bayport in a garage. I was being followed, so I shook off the shadowers and took the bus." He added ruefully, "But it didn"t do me much good. Snattman"s men attacked me and took me prisoner on the road."
The famous detective now said, "While I have the chance, I want to thank each of you boys individually for what you did. Without the seven of you, this case might never have been solved and I might not have been found alive."
Modestly Frank and Joe and their friends acknowledged the praise, secretly hoping another mystery would come their way soon. One did and by learning The Secret of the Old Mill the Hardy boys encountered a cunning gang of counterfeiters.
Suddenly Joe remarked, "Compliments are flying around here pretty thick, but there"s one person we forgot to mention. Without him, Frank and I might never have found Dad."
"Who"s that?" Biff asked.
"Pretzel Pete!" Joe replied.
"That"s right," said Frank. "All together, fellows! A rousing cheer for Pretzel Pete!"