Cult of Crime (9 page)

“What happened to them?” Holly asked in bewilderment.

“Beats me,” Joe replied. But he knew. Whoever had knocked out the two men had acted silently and skillfully. And Joe could see no bruises on them, which indicated that their attacker had special talents for dealing with people.

There must be thousands of people like that in the world, he knew, but it was unlikely that any of them would be there at that time and willing to help them. There’s only one person it could be, he thought to himself. He couldn’t suppress a big grin. It was impossible, but it had to be true. Frank was alive!

“Joe!” Holly screamed again. More men were coming at them. Joe turned. Others were bearing down. It was too late to get away. The men circled them, surrounding them on all sides. Joe counted fourteen all together, coming closer and closer… He could stop three, maybe four at best, but the others would certainly get him. They were trapped. Frank, he wondered, where are you when I need you?

He bobbed up and down, looking over the shoulders of the approaching men, but Frank was nowhere to be seen. Apparently, he had his reasons for wanting everyone to think he was dead.

“‘I’m sorry Holly,” Joe said as the men closed in. He clenched and raised his fists. “I let you down.”

He slugged the nearest attacker, a bearded man in a denim jacket, and the man toppled like an oak. A fist pounded against Joe’s jaw. He staggered back, dazed, and swung without connecting at a second man.

Another fist slammed his shoulder and a third his back.. Pain clouded his sight. Joe felt his hand strike something hard, but he couldn’t see what it was. He couldn’t see anything.

Joe’s body had taken over for his mind. He ignored the pain, swinging wildly as somewhere beyond the cloud around his mind, Holly screamed and screamed until her voice became a long, shrill howl that filled the world.

He was still swinging as the police cars pulled up, sirens blaring. The men scattered at the first sighting of the cars, but Joe kept swinging.

Slowly the cloud lifted from Joe’s mind. His arms, terribly tired, fell uselessly to his sides, and he gazed down. Five men lay at his feet. Holly was nearby, jumping up and down, frantically waving at the police.

He realized it was the scream of their sirens, not Holly’s screams that he had heard. He wanted to run again, but he knew that he and Holly could never escape the cars on foot. And maybe I shouldn’t, he thought. There’s only one person who could have called the police. Frank.

The cars screeched to a halt in front of him, forming a line. As policemen leaped from their cars and took shelter behind them, they took careful aim at Joe. He nodded and sat down on the ground, hands behind his head. A policeman and his partner approached Joe slowly, keeping their guns carefully trained on him. Another policeman led Holly to the cars.

“You’re Joe Hardy?” the first policeman asked.

“Yes,” Joe replied as the policeman helped him to his feet. “Am I under arrest?”

“Not yet,” he replied. “I’ve got orders to return you to Bayport for questioning. Where’s your brother?”

“He was in the caboose the last I saw him,” Joe said.

“Check it out, Matt,” the policeman said. His partner ran to the caboose and disappeared inside it for a few minutes. Finally he popped his head out a window and yelled, “Nothing in here but some big sacks of grain. No sign of the kid.” He came running back.

The first policeman led Joe to the car while his partner opened the back door. Before he got in, Joe took a last look at the train yard. Aside from the police and the few’ groaning men he had knocked down, there was no movement. Where was Frank?

Okay, big brother, Joe thought as he climbed into the police car. We’ll play it your way. I just hope you know what you’re doing.

THOUGH CHET MORTON had grown up in Bayport, he had never grown tired of the town. With its clean air and tree-lined streets, it was the only place he would ever be able to think of as home. But while Bayport had stayed the same through much of his childhood, the town had changed a lot in the past few years, and Chet wasn’t sure he liked all the changes.

Those thoughts were running through his head as he strolled past the closed-up brick buildings near the town square. Once they’d been full of stores. Chet fondly remembered long summer afternoons in Mr. Reis’s Soda Paradise, sipping strawberry sodas and reading comic books. But the Soda Paradise was gone, a For Rent sign on the window of its building. Other stores were gone, too. They had moved out to the mall built near the interstate highway that curved around Bayport a few miles out of town. The mall drew the kids, emptying the Soda Paradise until no customers were left.

No customers except Chet, that is. He drank Mr. Reis’s sodas right up until the day the shop closed. “You shouldn’t drink so many sodas,” Mr. Reis would scold. “Are you trying to keep me in business all by yourself?” Chet would laugh then, because he would have kept Mr. Reis in business if he could have.

But the Soda Paradise was gone, and Mr. Reis was gone, too, moved to Miami. Peering into the window of the store, Chet could see that the counter was still there, but it was bare. The comic and magazine racks were empty, and large clumps of dust lay on the floor.

I don’t like change, Chet decided. He moved on. The stores were gone, but offices had taken the place of some of them.

But while the new growth would save Bayport from extinction, it would also bring the crime and noise that people were coming to Bayport to get away from. It wasn’t something Chet was looking forward to.

Some things would never change, though. The old town square stayed the same, no matter what, with the police station on one side, and City Hall, with the mayor’s office and the courthouse in it, on the adjacent side. Across the square stood the Strand Bank. It was still the bank most of the people of Bayport used, and it had resisted the move to the mall. But this day, the town square was different. It was lined with rickety old school buses-dozens of them, each carrying forty or more boys and girls. More buses rolled into town every hour, converging on the square, where the marquee’ on the old movie theater read: TONIGHT ONLY! THE RAJAH SPEAKS!

Chet walked past the town square and turned north on the next block. He didn’t want to run into the Rajah’s followers congregating there in their turbans and robes.

Though he would never have admitted it, Chet was surprised to see they were actually well behaved. They sat quietly on the buses, chanting their chants. Nothing in their manner indicated that they were any nuisance or threat to the people of Bayport.

Chet pictured himself in a turban and gown, his hair shaved off and a glazed look in his eyes, and he shuddered. He sped up from a fast walk to a jog and didn’t slow down until he was far away from the town square.

Chet was almost at the Hardy house when he saw another bus. It was parked across the street from the house. There was no one in the bus, but Chet could see picket signs inside with-slogans like the murderer must be punished and Free our sister. Chet knew the Rajah’s people were around somewhere. He couldn’t see them, but he could feel their eyes watching everything that happened on the block. He continued around the block to the next street and approached the Hardy house by the old shortcut through the backyard. .

Before he could reach the door, a man appeared in front of Chet, and Chet’s heart jumped to his throat. This is it, he thought. They’ve got me now. I’m doomed. He opened his mouth to scream.

“Kind of jumpy, aren’t you, Morton?” Con Riley said, grinning. He was one of the best cops on the Bayport force, but he lived in the shadow of Fenton Hardy and his famous sons. Usually he took this situation with good humor, but he still enjoyed ribbing the Hardys and their friends. “You better get in there, Morton. The chief’s waiting for you.”

Chet gulped. If Police Chief Collig was there, the meeting would be trouble. For a moment, he considered leaving. But that would mean looking foolish in front of Riley, so Chet opened the screen door and went into the house.

He noticed the change in the house as soon as he entered the kitchen. The room was normally filled with the sweet scent of Aunt Gertrude’s baking, and he had hoped to get a slice of cherry pie from her. It was as if she weren’t in the house at all. Puzzled, he strolled into the living room. “It’s about time,” said Tony Prito, who sat on It, his sofa next to Phil Cohen. They were both friends of the Hardys, too. Chet liked Phil, though Phil was so smart he often made Chet feel stupid by comparison. Tony, who worked at the pizza place in the mall, was okay, but Chet thought he was a show-off and didn’t quite trust him.

“We’re about to get our orders,” Phil said with a smile. There was something reassuring about Phil. No matter how great the danger, he never lost his sense of humor, and Chet had the feeling they were heading for danger now. “Allow the chief to explain.”

Chief Collig stood next to the easy chair. He was clearly uncomfortable. Though he had often asked Fenton Hardy for help, he never liked putting the boys in danger.

“In case there are any of you who don’t know,” he began, “a couple of days ago, Frank and Joe Hardy rescued Holly Strand from this madman who calls himself the Rajah. Today the Rajah has brought his people to town in an attempt to get the girl back. And Frank Hardy is still ‘missing. “

Chet heard footsteps on the stairs and looked up to see Joe Hardy. ‘Hello, Joe,” he said uncomfortably.

Joe had been involved with Chet’s sister, Iola, until she was killed by a bomb meant for Joe. It was the event that had given Joe and Frank a new direction in their lives, as dedicated crime fighters. But it had left Joe and Chet unsure of what to say to each other.

“Hi,” Joe replied. Then he said to the chief, “I don’t think it’s as simple as that.”

“Wait a minute!” Chet cried. “I thought you were in jail. Didn’t the police bring you in yesterday?”

The chief shook his head. “There’s not enough evidence to hold him. The Rajah has turned over a gun with Joe’s fingerprints on it, but he won’t let anyone see the body of the man who was supposedly killed. He’s a strange one.”

“And all the witnesses are his followers, which makes it a little hard for the police to trust them,” Joe added. “But it does restrict my movements.”

“Yes,” Chief Collig agreed. “Until we’ve sorted it out, you’re still a suspect. I’m afraid you’ll have to stay in the house.”

Joe nodded. “Which is why we need you and Tony and Phil, Chet. You’re going to be my eyes and legs. As I was saying, the Rajah’s up to something that’s bigger than just getting Holly back.

She told me how his people followed her when she ran away from home. He finally came looking for her personally and took her up to his commune himself. No one else got that kind of special treatment.

“Then, when I was in the Rajah’s home, I heard him arguing with his assistant, Vivasvat.

Vivasvat called himself Shakey Leland and called the Rajah Mikey.”

“Leland, huh?” the chief said. “I remember him. He used to run con games up in the Boston area. I ran him out of Bayport a couple of times, but he vanished a few years back. No wonder the Rajah doesn’t want us looking at the body.”

“There’s more,” Joe said. “He knew who Frank was before Frank got into the commune. He knew who I was. So he must have let us take Holly out of there.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Tony mused. “If he went to all that much trouble, why would he let her go? And then come after her?”

“It puzzled me, too,” said a voice behind them. “There’s only one explanation I can think of;” They all spun abruptly and stared at the tall, brown-haired boy who leaned against the kitchen doorway.

“Holly’s more valuable to the Rajah here,” said Frank Hardy.

“FRANK!” JOE CRIED. “You’re back! I thought you were alive, but when you didn’t show yourself … What have you been doing?”

A little nosing around-while the Rajah and his people thought I was dead,” Frank said. “I took advantage of the dark and chucked a grain sack off the caboose. That’s what fell into the river. “

Great trick!” Phil Cohen said. “But how’d you manage to sneak back here without the Rajah’s people spotting you?”

“I know my way around Bayport a lot better than the cultists do,” Frank said with a smile. “Like the old shortcuts we used when we were kids.” He looked around. But where are Mom and Dad?” “Fenton’s guarding Emmett Strand and his daughter. I’ve called to tell him you’re all right,” Chief Collig said. He sent your mother and your aunt out of town until all this blows over. They’ll be glad to know you’re back.”

“What did you mean, Frank?” Chet asked. “You said something about the Rajah needing Holly out here?”

Frank pursed his lips, thinking. “She holds some special meaning for him. What’s special about Holly? She’s pretty enough and smart, but what’s extraordinary about her?” “Her father?” Phil suggested. “The bank!” Tony shouted. “Exactly,” Frank said. “The Rajah plans to rob the Strand Bank.”

“I don’t get it,” Joe said. “How can Holly help him rob the bank? Even if she could get him in there, computers control the vault doors. No one can get to the money without the proper control codes. It would’ve made more sense for the Rajah to hold Holly hostage in exchange for the codes. “

The chief cleared his throat. “It doesn’t matter. Now that we’ve figured out his scheme, we’ll just arrest the Rajah the instant he sets foot inside Bayport. That will take care of him. “

“But not his followers,” Frank said. “We haven’t got any proof of the Rajah’s plans, and you can’t arrest him without proof. If you do, there’ll be a riot. Can you imagine five thousand teenagers on a rampage in Bayport?”

“Five thousand!” Chief Collig gasped. “Surely there aren’t that many’?”

“There are,” Frank said. “Every follower he has in the world. They’re all in Bayport.

“And so is he.”

Fenton Hardy pulled aside the curtain and looked out the front window of Emmett Strand’s house. He was annoyed that none of the Rajah’s followers were visible outside. They were ‘but there somewhere, probably watching him even as he was looking for them, and he would have felt better if he could see them.