No Way Out (12 page)

Joe thumbed through the brochures while Frank kept talking. “They're codes,” he said. “Some of them ancient, some more modern. This vendor had all sorts of books and samples of codes that have been used through the ages—the Rosetta stone, runes, secret alphabets, international spy codes.”

“Hey, this looks like—”

“Exactly,” Frank said, pulling a page out of his pocket. “Remember this? I found it in Alan's secret study. We thought it might be a maze design, but it's a code.” Frank pulled out one of the brochures. “See? It's like this one. Each of these lines or collection of lines represents a letter of the alphabet. Once you decrypt the code, you can read the message.”

“Wait a minute,” Joe said, reaching into his jeans pocket. “I forgot all about this. I thought it looked familiar, but I was too foggy last night to put it all together.” He showed Frank the note he had found in the maze mailbox.

“It's the same code,” Frank said. “Wow, maybe it
does
have something to do with the maze puzzle and the competition.”

“What else were you thinking?”

“I don't know. I thought it might mean something bigger.” He looked at the two pieces of paper and seemed lost in thought.

“What did Shorty say about the falcon?” Joe asked, pulling Frank's attention back.

“It was not one of the Hortons' falconer's birds. It belonged to a local farmer. It's been missing for a couple of days—the guy didn't know what had happened to it.”

“Stolen,” Joe concluded. “My meeting was a setup, so there's no way that the falcon being in there was a coincidence.”

“Right,” Frank agreed. “Did you talk to Officer Chester?”

Joe told his brother what the policeman had reported. “But I've got bigger news than that,” he continued. “Look at this.” He punched in a few letters on his computer keyboard, then clicked the mouse. The screen filled with a familiar top security identification.

“You tapped into Dad's files.”

“I did,” Joe said. “It's okay—this qualifies.”

The Hardys' father, Fenton, was a career law enforcement officer, and served as a consultant on many international cases for government and private organizations. His top security files were accessible only with a series of passwords. He had
entrusted those to his sons with the instruction to use them only for extreme emergencies. They had always honored this responsibility.

“We entered these files once when Dad was kidnapped,” Frank said. “The kidnapping of a friend's father also qualifies.”

“Right,” Joe said with a click. “I looked up Blackstone first, and found only the maze vandalism in Scotland. Then I found Bruce MacLaren. He's got a petty criminal record: gambling, a few assault arrests—nothing major. The twins were right about his family being a bunch of thieves, deserters, and gamblers. But Bruce also has another interesting talent. He, too, was an Olympic archer.” The screen filled with data on MacLaren.

Frank thumbed through the brochures from the code vendor. Then he looked at the two pieces of paper they'd found that were scribbled in code. “Look up Alan,” he said quietly.

“Alan? Why?”

“Just a hunch. Look him up.”

Joe punched in a few letters and clicked the mouse. “Hmmmmm, that's weird,” he murmured. He punched again and clicked. “Totally weird,” he said.

“What's happening?”

“That's just it,” Joe answered. “Nothing. The file is labeled ‘Highest Security Only' and requires four more passwords.”

“Whoa, that's new,” Frank said, looking over Joe's shoulder.

“And check out Alan's code name for this file,” Joe said, reading it aloud. “EagleSpy.”

“Alan Horton
is
EagleSpy,” Frank repeated. “My hunch wasn't so far-fetched after all.”

“Okay, now you
have
to tell me what you were talking about,” Joe demanded.

“When I saw these code books, I was reminded of that piece of paper I found in Alan's secret study. It was definitely a code. Then I got to thinking about that room. It's like a safe room, a place where he might do secret work.”

“And he got that weird phone call,” Joe reminded them. “On a phone with no dialing mechanism—just two buttons. He said there were other entrances to that room too.”

“Right. And didn't you say he seemed sort of freaked at first when the gauntlet wasn't there, but
then said something about putting it somewhere else?”

“That's right. The story seemed kind of funny, but I just figured he didn't want me to know where it was.”

“There's one more thing that seems odd. I think Penny's been kind of strange through this whole deal,” Frank said. “It's almost as if she knows where Alan is. She doesn't seem to be really worried about him and what might have happened to him.”

Joe looked back at his screen. “There's definitely some things we don't know about Alan Horton.”

“Well, let's go see if we can find them out,” Frank said. “Do you think you can handle the stairs?”

“Definitely,” Joe said. “And I know just where we're going.”

The Hardys went up the large staircase, then up the small one. Joe was a little slower than usual, but determined to follow Frank into Alan Horton's secret study.

The room looked exactly as it had shortly after they had learned that Alan had disappeared. “It doesn't look like anyone has been here since we came up before,” Frank said, turning on the light and small fan hanging over the long drafting table.

“Let's find out if Alan was telling the truth about this room having other entrances,” Joe said.

They began systematically checking every inch of the space—walls, ceiling, and floor. Joe started with
the bookcase. He removed every book and flipped through the pages, looking for a key, a lock combination, a diagram of the room—anything that might indicate a hidden door or window. Then he tapped on the wall behind the books, listening for the hollow sound that might indicate something back there besides insulation.

Frank lifted the chair, slid the trunk, and rolled back the rug. There was nothing. Then he crawled under the long drafting table, pushing and pulling on the furniture, tapping the floor and wall. He removed all the drawers and felt all along the openings. There were no buttons to push, no levers to pull.

“Try the light,” Joe called over his shoulder, as he pressed on every inch of every bookshelf.

Frank reached up to the light hanging over the worktable. He turned it off and on again, twisted it and turned it. Then he turned the fan off and back on. He looked up at the fixture in the ceiling. Then he pulled out his flashlight for a better look. “Well, what do you know,” Frank said.

“What!” Joe said. “Is it something?”

“It's something. There are three switches on this fixture—one for the light, one for the fan, and one for …”

He hopped onto the table and stood up. His head grazed the ceiling as he pulled the third chain hanging from the fixture. A creaking noise filled
the little room immediately, then stopped. Then it started again, and the wall behind the little desk began to move to the right, like a pocket door. It slipped completely away, revealing a wide hallway beyond that ended in a door.

Frank jumped from the table and hurried down the hallway. Joe followed, his walking becoming more steady with each step.

Frank opened the door at the end of the hallway. “An elevator!” he said. “Let's go for it.”

The Hardys got in the elevator and pushed the down button. It was a lurching, bumpy ride down to what seemed like five or six flights below. When it stopped, Joe opened the door. The distinctive smell immediately washed into the little room.

“We're in the mine,” Frank said in a low voice. ‘We're in the marble mine. There's that weird metallic smell, and the gritty dust in the air. I'm sure that's where we are.” He could see a long tunnel stretching out in front of the elevator.

“Probably not a good idea,” Joe said, reading his brother's mind. “Moving this elevator through the ground might cause a cave-in.”

‘We need to get back up and check out the map,” Frank said. ‘We can't be moving around down here without knowing where we are. It's too dangerous.”

“Agreed,” Joe said, closing the door. He pushed the second button, and the little room creaked upward. The trip seemed very slow. All he could
think about was getting back aboveground and safely into the house. At last the elevator stopped, Joe opened the door, and they saw the welcome hallway back to Alan's secret study.

They arranged everything in the study the way they'd found it, closed the pocket door, turned out the light, and went back down to the first floor.

“Man, it's dark out,” Joe said, hopping off the last step of the large curved staircase.

“A storm might be rolling in,” Frank said, looking out the window. “But it's not raining yet. Kay and Penny are running up the drive now. Distract Kay for me, will you? I want to talk to Penny alone.”

“Sure,” Joe said.

Once Kay and Penny got to the house, Joe asked Kay out to the sunroom, saying he wanted to talk to her about MacLaren. Frank guided Penny into the library and closed the door.

“What's going on?” Penny asked.

“I just want to talk to you for a few minutes about EagleSpy,” Frank said. “EagleSpy, the man—
not
the estate.”

Penny stared at Frank for a few seconds without moving. Then she sighed and leaned back in her chair. “How long have you known?” she asked. “How did you figure it out?”

“That's not important right now,” Frank said. “We have to find Alan. Tell me about his work—his work other than maze design.”

“I will tell you because I respect you and your brother as detectives,” Penny said, “and because Alan told me a couple of days ago that if something happened to him and you asked about his intelligence work, I was to tell you.”

“He works in intelligence?” Frank asked. “As a cryptographer?”

“That's right,” she said. “He creates codes and also decrypts codes for an international intelligence agency. Please understand that Kay and Ray do not know the entire story. They know that he has served in the military and has done some consulting for search-and-rescue organizations. They do not know the full extent of his work.”

“We won't tell anyone what you tell us,” Frank assured her. “Do you know where he is now? Has he contacted you since he's been gone?”

“No, he hasn't. When I first realized he was gone, I was frightened because of the maze incidents and that awful confrontation with Bruce MacLaren. But then I talked myself into thinking he might be on an assignment and just hasn't been able to contact me yet. Maybe I'm just fooling myself.”

“That's what we're trying to find out,” Frank said. “If he's on assignment or somewhere safe. We're going to be gone for a little while, but we'll probably want to talk to you some more when we get back.”

“No problem,” Penny said. “I'll do anything to help. I hope you know that.”

They left the library, and Frank signaled to Joe to meet him in Joe's room. Joe arrived a few minutes later, and Frank told him what he'd learned from Penny. “I still want to check the caretaker's cottage,” Frank said. “It's the only building on the estate that I haven't searched.”

“I'm going too,” Joe said. “I didn't have time for a real search either. But let's check the maps first. I want to see the ones for the mine, for the estate, and for the house. Maybe we can figure out where that elevator goes.”

The Hardys spent an hour studying the maps that Kay gave them, trying to line up the mine with the house, and then the elevator with the mine. They finally decided that they had the mine location pinpointed, but they were unsure of how safe it might be in that area.

“It's the perfect place for a kidnapper to hide Alan, you know,” Joe said. “He could take him away from the house without ever going outdoors.”

“Which would explain why none of the vehicles were missing when he disappeared,” Frank added.

The Hardys rolled up the maps and dropped them in a long plastic bag. Then they pulled on jackets, Frank grabbed his sports bag, and they left the house. A dirt road led directly to the cottage, so they took a small truck and drove off.

It still wasn't raining, but the sky had gotten even darker, and the wind was whipping around the truck cab. Frank drove, and Joe served as navigator. After about half an hour, Joe told Frank to start slowing down. “You'll have to park the truck up by those birch trees,” he said, “and we'll walk the rest of the way.”

They could see a narrow trail skirting the birch woods and leading toward the edge of the bluff where the cottage stood. From where they were, Golden Arm Lake looked dark and choppy.

Frank led the way. He was on guard and watchful as they quietly plodded along the trail. When they got to the cottage, it was just as Joe had described it. He peered through a partly broken window. The cottage looked empty and abandoned.

The first thing Joe noticed as they entered the cottage was an impressive collection of old archery equipment scattered in a corner. “Hmmmm, this looks familiar,” he said. “Just like the set the baron carried as he flew by last night.”

“Shhh, I heard something in the water,” Frank whispered, motioning Joe to be quiet. But there were no sounds except the windblown waves of the lake tumbling onto the shore. Frank moved cautiously into the tiny bedroom at the back of the house.

“Must have been a fish jumping,” Joe muttered. “By the way, I'm not picking up that greasy smell
today.” He went to the little kitchen in the corner and began poking through pots and pans. Every once in a while he felt as if someone was watching him, and he turned his head around to check. But there was never anything to see but the walls of the dusty little cottage.