Mystery of the Samurai Sword (14 page)

“Not only that—the value of our company stock will plunge disastrously on the stock exchange! People who have invested heavily in shares of the Satoya Corporation will lose millions of yen!”

“You are quite right, gentlemen,” Muramoto said regretfully. “As a major stockholder, I myself shall be one of the biggest losers. But my honor demands no less. My late uncle, General Akira Muramoto, was a longtime friend of Takashi Satoya's. If you two or anyone else have harmed him or done away with him, my uncle would certainly wish justice to be done and the guilty parties punished, no matter how many millions of yen it might cost.”

Suddenly Frank cut in. “Mr. Muramoto, may I make a request?”

The bespectacled young Japanese said, “I promise nothing, but I am certainly willing to listen.”

“From what my brother and I have just heard, it may wreck the company if you go ahead and make your accusation public. But I think even you will admit that this whole situation is a mystery.”

“The only mystery, I'm afraid, is what has happened to the real Takashi Satoya.”

“Put it that way if you like,” Frank said. “But at least give Joe and me a chance to solve the mystery. All we ask is twenty-four hours before you take such a drastic step.”

Chief Collig added, “What they're asking certainly sounds reasonable to me, sir. I can assure you these young fellows are no mean sleuths. They've been trained by their father—who's probably the greatest criminal investigator in America—and they've solved a number of important cases.”

Muramoto hesitated before replying, his forehead creased in a frown. But at last he nodded reluctantly. “Very well. I shall wait until this same time tomorrow morning before calling in the press or cabling my government—but no longer!” Bowing to everyone, he turned on his heel and strode out of the office.

Satoya, or the man who was impersonating him, flashed Frank and Joe a grateful look.

“Young men, I am much indebted to both of you—perhaps even more than you realize,” he declared. “If you care to accompany me back to my hotel, I shall explain the reason for my disappearance.”

Frank and Joe were eager to hear Satoya's story and readily accepted his invitation. His black limousine was waiting at the curb, with the stony-faced chauffeur at the wheel. The Hardy boys rode in the back seat with the tycoon, while his two senior aides—Kawanishi and Oyama—followed in a separate car.

“My story begins many years ago, in the closing months of World War II,” Satoya told them. “Your General MacArthur had begun to recapture the Philippines, and it was only a question of time before the Americans would invade Japan herself.”

A certain group of Japanese officers, he related, felt that an honorable surrender was the best course to take, rather than wait for their country to be devastated by bombing and invasion.

One of the group was Takashi Satoya. Although he was only a young lieutenant, he volunteered to carry the group's written, signed surrender offer to the Americans, concealed in the secret compartment of his sword hilt. But on the way he was badly wounded during a strafing attack by American fighter planes, and then taken prisoner.

“For weeks I lay unconscious or delirious in a jungle hospital,” the tycoon went on. “By the time I recovered, my sword was gone. Either it was still lying back at the spot where I was wounded, or perhaps it had been picked up by some American GI or Filipino resistance fighter.”

“And the surrender offer was lost with it?” Frank inquired.

“Precisely.”

“Didn't you tell the Americans who captured you about the surrender document you'd been carrying?” asked Joe.

“I tried to, but no one would believe me. I imagine they thought I was still out of my head with fever, or else that my story was a trick to help me gain special treatment.”

Because the surrender offer never reached the proper U.S. authorities, the war wound down to its grim conclusion, including the atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“Later, after the war was over,” Satoya said, “the officers who had taken part in the surrender plan met in Tokyo and agreed to keep the whole story secret.”

“But why?” said Frank. “By that time I should think most people would have felt you were absolutely right.”

“So it may seem to you now, in the United States, but there were still many in Japan who felt otherwise, especially among the samurai class. Some of the older, stiff-necked military men thought we should all have died for the Emperor. They would have called us cowards and traitors had the truth leaked out.”

Even today, the Japanese tycoon told the Hardys, some of his countrymen might react the same way.

“For myself, I do not care,” Satoya added. “I am an old man. What other people think of me is no longer important. For that matter, most of the senior officers who were involved in the surrender attempt, such as General Muramoto—are now dead. But even so, the truth might cause shame to their families if it became known.”

“Then in a way,” said Joe, “you're actually protecting the general's nephew, Toshiro Muramoto, who's over here calling you a faker.”

Satoya smiled dryly at Joe's remark. “That is so. Life plays strange tricks at times. In any case, the only way I could make sure that the story never came out was to find my lost sword and destroy the surrender document hidden inside the hilt.”

“So that's why you were so eager to buy the sword!” Frank commented.

“Exactly. It was also my main reason for coming to the United States, rather than risk entrusting the job to someone else. I intended to make sure that no one outbid meat the auction, and then to destroy the surrender document as soon as the sword was in my hands.”

The limousine had now arrived at the Bayport Chilton Hotel. Frank and Joe accompanied Mr. Satoya inside and went up in the elevator to his private suite. He telephoned room service to order tea and resumed his story without inviting Mr. Kawanishi or Mr. Oyama to join them.

“You still haven't told us how or why you disappeared,” Frank reminded the gray-haired industrialist.

“I was just coming to that,” Satoya replied. “The fact is, I had begun to suspect that there was a traitor in the company—probably a top-rank executive.”

The Hardys were startled. The tycoon's words seemed to confirm their father's theory!

“What gave you that idea?” Joe asked.

“Two things. First, someone has recently been leaking information on our business to a competitor, a company called Gorobei Motors. The information included data that was only known to me and my two top aides.”

“You mean Mr. Kawanishi and Mr. Oyama?”

Takashi Satoya nodded grimly. “Correct. Also there have been several attempts on my life.”

“Wow!” Joe blurted. “You actually think one of them might have tried to kill you?”

“To tell the truth, I do not know what to think. But one thing seemed clear. This trip to the USA would give the guilty party a good chance to have me murdered—and then to blame the crime on American terrorists or assassins. That is why I decided to disappear. It seemed the best way to ensure my own safety. Also, by secretly watching Kawanishi and Oyama, I hoped to discover which one was the traitor.”

To accomplish this, Mr. Satoya had arranged to have the hotel rooms of his two senior aides electronically bugged.

“When your limousine arrived at the hotel from the airport,” Frank put in, “your other aide, Mr. Ikeda, was unconscious. Did you anesthetize him somehow?”

The gray-haired Japanese nodded. “Yes, I must confess that I did. While he was busy looking out the window on the other side of the car, I suddenly jabbed him with a hypodermic needle, using a quick-acting anesthetic. It started to take effect almost immediately, before he could collect his wits enough to make any outcry. I am ashamed to tell you this, but it seemed the best way to carry out my scheme.”

Once Ikeda was unconscious, the tycoon had vanished exactly as the Hardy boys had deduced. He had hidden in the limousine's secret compartment and then had his chauffeur let him out of the car when it was halfway down the ramp, out of sight from both the street and the basement parking garage. The chauffeur, in fact, had been his only confidant, and was the one who had bugged Kawanishi's and Oyama's hotel rooms.

“One more question, sir,” said Frank. “Have you any idea at all as to how or why a duplicate sword could have been substituted for your family sword?”

Mr. Satoya shook his head helplessly. “I am relying on you two young men to solve that mystery. I can only assume that it is part of a plot to wrest the company away from my control.”

The Hardys promised to do their best to solve the case as soon as possible. Satoya's chauffeur drove them back to police headquarters to pick up their car.

As they headed homeward, Joe switched on the car radio to check the time. An announcer was reading the news. Suddenly he said:

“A flash has just been handed to me. That missing Japanese businessman, Mr. Takashi Satoya, has now turned up again—or at any rate, a person who calls himself Satoya has turned up. He's reported to have walked into Bayport police headquarters just a short time ago. But now he's accused of being an impostor! A major stockholder in the Satoya Corporation has flown here from Japan to make the charge.”

The announcer added, “This is the second report to come over the news wires this morning on this strange case. For those of you who missed our earlier story—it was learned this morning that the valuable Japanese samurai sword stolen from the Palmer-Glade Auction Galleries in New York was found last night somewhere near Bayport. According to one unconfirmed report, this sword belonged to the real Takashi Satoya. We will keep you posted on any further developments in the story as they come in.”

“Sufferin' catfish!” Joe exclaimed. “I wonder if Muramoto broke his promise about giving us twenty-four hours to crack the case?”

“Sure sounds that way,” Frank gritted. “This means we've really got to work fast!”

When they arrived home on Elm Street, Aunt Gertrude was waiting eagerly to quiz them about what had happened at police headquarters. Before the boys could satisfy her curiosity, the telephone rang. Frank answered. The caller was Sam Radley.

“What's up, Sam?” Frank inquired.

“I've finally run down Krunkel and his partner!”

“You mean you've got them under arrest?”

“Not yet. I figured it might be better to keep them under observation for a while and see what we can learn from them.”

“Smart idea!” Frank agreed.

Radley explained that he had shown Krunkel's photo to the desk clerks of various hotels and motels in the Shoreham area, and had finally located the place where the squint-eyed burglar was staying. He and another man named Darbold, who was a known accomplice of Krunkel‘s, had registered at the Seneca Motel on Main Street.

“I've got the place staked out,” Sam added, “but there'll be two suspects to watch—so I may need help. Could you and Joe lend me a hand?”

“You bet!” said Frank. “Tell us where to meet you, and we'll be there in a jiffy!”

A short time later the two youths walked into a coffee shop across the street from the Seneca Motel. Radley was seated in a booth by the front window, nursing a cup of coffee.

“Great work, Sam!” Frank congratulated the operative as the Hardys joined him.

“Have either of them shown yet?” asked Joe.

“Not yet, but it's past noon, so they ought to be coming out soon to get something to eat. When I showed the desk clerk Krunkel's mug shot, he told me they were still in their room.”

“Any chance they could have slipped out when you phoned us?”

“No way. I called you from that booth in the corner, which has a clear view of the motel.”

The boys ordered hamburgers and wolfed them down with hearty appetites. They tensed with excitement as Radley suddenly exclaimed, “There's our man!”

A tall figure had just emerged from the motel. Sure enough, it was the hawk-faced man whom the Hardys had seen talking to Len Boggs after the motorcycle race! He made his way toward one of the cars in the motel parking lot.

Radley flipped a coin to see who would follow him. The Hardy boys won.

“Maybe it's just as well,” Sam commented. “I think Krunkel might recognize me quicker than he would you two. But be mighty careful, fellows! This guy has no record of violence, but you never can tell.”

“We'll watch it, Sam,” they promised.

Frank and Joe hurried outside and reached their own car just as Krunkel was pulling away in a sleek, silver-colored, foreign-made coupe.