The Mysterious Caravan (5 page)

There shouldn't be any problem, Joe thought, of reaching the police before the pursuers, one of whom had followed Frank.

But he had taken no more than twenty steps when Stribling and an unkempt-looking fellow approached him from the opposite direction, trying to block his path!

Joe raced into the street, just missing a car that screeched to a halt to avoid him. As he gained the other side, he tripped on the curb and fell, sprawled out on the sidewalk. Quickly he picked himself up, grabbed the camera case, and dashed away while onlookers stared at the chase. “Not a cop in sight!” Joe thought desperately. “What'll I do?”

As the men gained on him, he saw the restaurant where Phil had eavesdropped. He ducked into an alley, went around behind the place, and burst into the kitchen, nearly bowling over the big chef.

“Help me!” Joe gasped. “Please!”

The Jamaican grabbed his shirt front. At the same time his eyes fell on the African trinket around Joe's neck.

“Where did you get this?”

“William Ellis gave it to me.”

Without another word the chef shoved him into the pantry and barred the back door with arms akimbo.

Joe's pursuers were now looking behind garbage cans, peering into every doorway.

“Did you see a white kid hanging around here?” Stribling asked the cook.

“We'll meet at the airport!” Frank said.

He looked impassively at the questioner. “Listen, man, I mind my own business. But if you spill one of those cans, I'll put it on your head like an Easter bonnet.”

The men hurried off, cursing their bad luck. When they were safely out of sight, the chef opened the pantry door. “What they want with you, man?”

“They're thieves. Tried to take my camera case.”

“Well, they're gone now.”

“Could you call a taxi for me, please?” Joe said.

The big man went to the telephone in the restaurant and a few minutes later a cab appeared in front of the place. Joe said good-by with a look of gratitude on his face.

“If you're a friend of William's, you're a friend of mine,” the Jamaican said, with a big grin.

The taxi sped toward the airport.

In the meantime, Frank had already arrived and told the others what had happened.

“I figured I could make them run after me instead of Joe,” he said. “But I guessed wrong.”

“I hope nothing happened to him,” Phil said. “We shouldn't have left you the way we did.”

Their flight was called and passengers filed from the waiting room through the final gate.

“Please don't leave till my brother Joe arrives,” Frank said to the agent who checked the boarding passes.

“We'll hold it as long as we can,” the man replied.

Soon the plane was filled. “I'll have to close the gate now,” the official said. “Do you want to take another flight?”

“I think we'll have to—oh, there he is!” Joe hurried up to them, the camera case swinging in his right hand.

“Just in time,” Frank said.

“Kwa heri,”
William said. “Good-by to all of you!”

The boys shook hands and invited William to visit them in Bayport whenever he could. Then they hurried through the gate and onto the plane.

Once aboard, Frank handed his sport jacket to a stewardess, asking her to hang it up. Something white fluttered to the floor. She picked it up.

“Does this underwear belong to you?” she asked.

A dozen heads turned and the boys laughed out loud.

“Your missing shorts!” Joe snorted, sliding into his seat. “And you blamed me! Some nerve!”

“They must have gotten stuck inside my jacket in the suitcase,” Frank said lamely. “But now tell us. What happened to you?”

Joe described his escape. “William's trinket saved me,” he concluded. “It must have a special meaning.”

“And you still have the mask?”

“Right here in my camera case.”

“Now you're carrying contraband,” Phil declared.

“We'll just have to take it along,” Frank said. “Nothing we can do about it.”

The flight north was smooth and they enjoyed a good lunch. In New York they changed planes and arrived in Bayport without further excitement. Their parents were on hand to meet them, and they went their separate ways.

At the Hardy home, after their aunt greeted them, she handed them a telegram. Frank ripped it open.

“It's from William! Listen: ‘George Aker took the second section of that flight to New York. He is on your trail.'”

The boys told Aunt Gertrude and their parents what had happened, and Mr. Hardy immediately turned on the electronic surveillance system that protected their home.

Then Joe pulled the mask out of his camera case. Aunt Gertrude shuddered. “How horrible!” she exclaimed. “A death mask. This can bring nothing but bad luck. Look at those eyes! It just gives me the willies!”

“It won't bite you,” Joe said with a grin.

“Worse than that,” Aunt Gertrude said. “It's going to haunt us!”

Later in the evening, Mr. Hardy called his sons into his study. He was a handsome man, graying
slightly at the temples. His face was rugged, his shoulders square, and his general demeanor confident. Fenton Hardy had once been a top-ranking detective with the New York Police Department, but had retired to Bayport to raise his family and conduct a private-investigation service that had gained a world-wide reputation.

He sat behind his desk as Frank and Joe slumped into lounge chairs.

“I think you had quite some excitement,” Mr. Hardy said.

“You can say that again,” Joe replied, adding, “can you tell us anything about your new case?”

His father explained that he had been commissioned to work for a number of airlines, acting together. “It's a pretty serious situation,” he said. “Carriers are losing millions of dollars in ticket thefts. Previously, a few had been stolen by employees every now and then, but now a wholesale pilferage is going on. Cartons of blanks are hijacked from printing plants and wind up in the hands of a crooked network. They even went as far as demanding ransom for the blanks!”

“It wasn't paid, was it?” Joe asked.

“It was. One airline paid seventy-thousand dollars for tickets that could have been worth two million. This must be stopped and the airlines are going all out to—”

A shrill noise interrupted the detective. The alarm!

All three rushed to the door. Aunt Gertrude screamed that her prediction had come true. The “intruder,” however, was Biff Hooper. He walked briskly up the front steps.

“Hey, it's only me!” he said. “I was driving by and noticed someone snooping around. Thought you'd like to know.”

“I wouldn't be surprised if it was Aker,” Frank said.

“Aker?” Biff asked. “He's in Jamaica!”

“Not any more.” Frank showed his friend William's telegram.

“Wow!” Biff said. “You must really have hit on something with that mask.”

“No doubt it holds a clue that the crooks know about and we don't,” Frank said. “I'm sure they wouldn't go to those lengths for just a piece of metal, even if it is an antique.”

The Hardys notified the police immediately, then started a search themselves.

“Frank, you check the shrubs on the other side of the house,” Mr. Hardy said. “Joe and Biff, try the back. I'll look across the street.”

They rushed out the door and split up. Frank walked through remnants of snow to a dark clump of mountain laurel. As he was about to peer into the shadows, a figure jumped out and clapped a crushing headlock on him!

Frank tried to cry out, but in vain!

F
RANK
struggled with his assailant, but could not break the deadly grip. He felt the man's muscles flexing as he applied more pressure to the headlock. Spots began to swim before the boy's eyes, and he knew that he was in danger of passing out.

With one final wrench Frank broke loose from the vise and fell to the ground while the intruder ran toward the street. Moments later, Frank heard the sound of a motor revving up and a car making a fast getaway.

Frank rested on hands and knees until his head cleared, then struggled to his feet and called for help.

Joe and Biff raced over to him to hear what happened.

“We'll chase that scoundrel!” Biff declared, racing to his car with Joe at his heels. But it was
a futile effort. The intruder was long out of sight, and minutes later the two boys returned.

Meanwhile, the police had arrived and were searching the grounds. The only clue was footprints between the mountain laurels and the first-floor windows.

“It was Aker. I feel sure of that,” Frank said. He told his father about the man's sturdy build. “Powerful arms, as I recall,” he concluded.

At breakfast the next day Fenton Hardy announced that he and Sam Radley, his assistant, were leaving town for a few days to investigate the airline-ticket racket.

“There's a printing outfit in Connecticut,” the detective explained, “that supplies blanks to several airlines. A truck from this plant was hijacked, and the thieves stole thousands of tickets.”

“Sounds like an inside job,” Frank said.

“That's what we think. Sam and I will give the place a thorough check to see if any employees are involved.”

“Can we help you, Dad?” Joe asked.

“Later, perhaps,” Mr. Hardy replied. “So far Sam and I can handle this alone.”

Frank and Joe decided to go to the local library to look up African history. Perhaps they would find a clue to the gold-salt reference carved into the back of the mask.

Half a dozen volumes were available, but the
librarian recommended one title in particular,
The Golden Trade of the Moors
.

Frank obtained it and they walked into the hushed and carpeted reading room. Sitting side-by-side, they pored over the events in North and West Africa from the fourteenth century on.

“Look, here's something about Mansa Musa, King of Mali,” Joe pointed out. “No wonder William admired him so much.”

Their excited voices could be heard by one of the librarians. She looked up and cautioned them to speak lower. They nodded in embarrassment and quietly devoured the pages devoted to the fabulous Mansa Musa.

The black king, who was a Muslim, set out on a
hadj
, or pilgrimage, to Mecca in 1324. Mounted on horseback, he was preceded by five-hundred slaves. Each slave carried a staff of gold weighing five hundred
mithqual
. A footnote explained that a
mithqual
, or
mithkal
, was about one-eighth of an ounce of gold. They proceeded in a camel caravan numbering nearly one-thousand camels.

“Holy catfish!” Joe whispered. “Can you imagine what that's worth at today's prices?”

When the king passed through Cairo, he gave away so much gold as gifts that the country was thrown into a terrible inflation that lasted many years.

“What a guy,” Frank said.

The report went on to say that Mansa Musa was a good, just king, greatly loved by his subjects.

“Do you know how far that trip was?” Frank asked. “Let's look it up on the map.”

“Wow! On foot and with camels? It seems impossible.”

Joe went through the indexes of the remaining books and finally said, “Frank, look at this. Salt was carried south from Sijilmasa and exchanged for equal weights of gold in West Africa! That's what the inscription on the mask refers to.”

Further reading told them that Sijilmasa had long since become a lost city.

“Perhaps that's where the mysterious caravan vanished,” Frank conjectured.

The hours had flown by quickly, and it was noon before the Hardys realized it.

“We'd better get home for lunch,” Joe said. “My stomach's growling.”

“Mine, too.”

The boys arrived to find their mother and Aunt Gertrude in a state of excitement.

“You've had a phone call,” Mrs. Hardy said, “from Jamaica!”

The brothers looked at each other in amazement.

“Who was it?” Frank asked.

“Your friend William. He wants you to call him back right away.”

Mrs. Hardy handed Frank the number, and he had no difficulty reaching William.

“Hi, this is Frank Hardy. What's going on down there?”

Frank listened for more than a minute, then said. “Sure. That's fine. You let us know and we'll meet you at the airport.”

After Frank hung up, the others were eager to hear the news.

“Is he coming to visit us?” Mrs. Hardy asked.

“Yes. He shadowed Stribling and Brown and found out that they want to get the mask at any cost. They're leaving Jamaica for New York tomorrow morning. Whether they'll come on to Bayport, William doesn't know.”

“Our buddy's really on the ball!” Joe said with admiration.

“Sure is. He'll take the same flight and follow them wherever they go. He'll call us from New York and let us know what's up.”