Part 15 (1/2)

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 s.h.i.+p. 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 s.h.i.+p. The name of the captain is Foster.”

”You mean our man Ayres is on that s.h.i.+p?” 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 s.h.i.+p.

”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 s.h.i.+pment 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 s.h.i.+p.”

”Pretty fascinating story,” Tony Prito spoke up.