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Authors: Franklin W. Dixon

BOOK: The Ghost at Skeleton Rock
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“Eight-Howe-Baker! This is Tancho radio! Bayport tower has requested us to convey a message to you from Mrs. Hardy! You are requested to land at Centro in Tropicale! Repeat—land at Centro in Tropicale! Over!”
The boys were puzzled. Why land at the new Caribbean island democracy? Frank decided to check.
“Tancho radio! This is Eight-Howe-Baker! Would you please contact Bayport tower and have them call Mrs. Hardy? We would like to verify that message!”
“Stand by!”
Several minutes passed before the communicator's voice again crackled from the loudspeaker.
“Eight-Howe-Baker! This is Tancho radio! Bayport tower reports they called your home! No answer! Can we be of further assistance? Over!”
“This is Eight-Howe-Baker! Negative! We are proceeding to Centro. Please change our flight plan accordingly! Over and out!”
Shifting course to the right, Jack headed south-west toward Tropicale. Finally the lush green shores of the island came into view. The pilot consulted a map as they flew inland and soon they sighted the bustling city of Centro.
Arrowing in toward the airfield on the outskirts of town, Jack cleared with the tower and made a smooth landing. Almost before the plane rolled to a stop, a man in a white suit came running out to meet them. He was tall and dark with a long, drooping mustache.
As the boys climbed out of the plane, the stranger shoved a note into Frank's hand, then dashed off the field. Puzzled, Frank unfolded the paper and read the typewritten message. It said:
Danger. Do not come.
Dad
CHAPTER X
Cross Fire
CHET groaned in dismay at Mr. Hardy's message. To have come all this way and not go on to Puerto Rico.
Jack had a different idea. “Maybe it's a trick,” he suggested.
“Yes, and the radio message too,” Frank agreed.
“Then let's find that guy and make him talk!” Joe urged.
“Okay. Anybody see where he went?” Frank asked.
He and the others stared around the field. With several airliners loading and discharging passengers, the place throbbed with activity. Tourists swarmed about the terminal building.
“There he is!” cried Tony, pointing to a tall figure in a white suit talking earnestly to a group of men. They were standing near the roadway that bordered the field.
Joe took off at a fast sprint. All the others but Jack raced after him. As the boys ran, they caught a stir of movement in other parts of the field. Several uniformed men were pushing through the throng of people.
Suddenly a shot rang out, then another! The white-suited man and his companions jerked around, their hands flying toward their hip pockets.
“La policia!”
one of them shouted.
Whipping out revolvers and automatics, they began shooting back. In an instant the Hardys and their friends found themselves caught in a fusillade of cross fire as bullets whined back and forth through the air.
“Wow!” Tony exclaimed as one whistled close to his ear.
“We've walked into a war!” Chet wailed.
Following Joe and Frank's example, the others fanned out, but kept on running—in an effort to escape the deadly exchange and catch up to the deliverer of the note.
One of the gunmen spotted the Americans. He let out a sharp cry in Spanish, which seemed to throw his companions into a panic. The men ran toward two parked cars.
Bringing up the rear was the mustached man in the white suit who had delivered the note. Joe was now within a couple of yards of him. With a lunge the boy hurled himself in a fierce flying tackle. The white-suited man went down with a thud.
The other gunmen, already in the parked cars, made no effort to rescue their comrade. They sped off with a roar of exhaust!
By this time, the police had reached the scene in jeeps to give chase. But a lieutenant and several others stayed behind to take over the prisoner from the Americans.
“Caramba,
señores!” the lieutenant exclaimed to Frank and Joe. “You are brave young men to capture, unarmed, such a gunman. In fact, you are all brave señores and I offer you my thanks!”
“Glad to help, but who are these men?” Frank asked.
“Rebels plotting against the Tropicale Government,” said the lieutenant. “But if you will be so kind, you will tell me why you were mixed up in this.”
Frank told his story briefly and the officer urged the boys to accompany him to police headquarters and repeat what had happened.
When they arrived at headquarters, he introduced them to Lieutenant Garcia and once more the boys told their story. Before the officer could take action, five other members of the rebel group were brought in, two of them injured. One of the getaway cars had smashed into a lamppost while making a turn. All the occupants had been captured.
“A bad business, señores! You see, there have been several uprisings lately,” Lieutenant Garcia explained to the Hardys. “The first took place at Santia, on the southeast coast of our island, but each new raid occurs farther west. We fear the rebels may be moving toward Savango.”
He explained that the police had learned only a few hours earlier about the group's latest plan to seize or blow up the airport.
“But why?” Frank asked. “What's their purpose?”
The lieutenant shrugged.
“Quién sabe?
Perhaps they are criminals, crazy for power, trying to overthrow the lawfully elected government.”
Meanwhile, the prisoners were being questioned in another room. Frank and Joe were allowed to be present at the interrogation. It was disappointing, because none of the captured men would talk.
“I'll bet the one we caught won't tell us anything, either,” Joe whispered to his brother.
As Frank nodded, the man suddenly raised his hand to mop the sweat from his brow. Joe gasped and clutched his brother by the arm.
“Look!” he whispered.
On the prisoner's left forearm, just above the wrist, was a pineapple tattoo!
The Hardys exchanged excited glances. Did this sign mean that the man was a member of the same racket as the one in Eastern City with the tattoo on the left arm? The boys decided the chances were too slim for them to mention their suspicion to the Tropicale police.
After the prisoner had been taken to a cell, Lieutenant Garcia turned to the Hardys and said, “May I see the note, please, that was handed to you on the field?”
When the officer finished studying it, Frank added, “I have a hunch the radio message we got in the plane was a fake, but I'd like to make sure.”
He asked permission to place a long-distance telephone call to Bayport. In a few minutes Mrs. Hardy's voice came through.
“Is everything all right?” she asked quickly.
“There's nothing to worry about, Mother,” Frank reassured her, then asked if she had sent the radio message.
“Why, no, son.”
Somewhat upset, Mrs. Hardy begged her sons to take care of themselves. “And that goes for Chet and Tony and Jack!” she added.
When Lieutenant Garcia heard Frank's report, he frowned. “It would appear, senores, that this gang was trying to lure you into some kind of trap. Fortunately their plan failed.”
He summoned the prisoner who had delivered the note. The man glibly said a stranger had asked him to do the errand. Frank and Joe were sure he was lying, but he refused to change his story and was taken away to a cell.
After making signed statements, the Hardys were driven back to the airport in a police car. Here they ate a hearty lunch, then took off again for Puerto Rico.
“I certainly hope we have no more delays,” Joe said, heaving a great sigh.
It was late afternoon when they came in sight of the beautiful Caribbean island. From the air, it looked like a paradise of emerald green. White beaches with waving palms rimmed the shore line. Farther inland, cool blue mountains reared upward from the coastal plain.
“Ah me! What a place in which to relax and dream!” Chet said as he peered down from the cabin window.
“You mean with a well-filled lunch basket?” Tony put in, chuckling.
To the southeast of the International Airport near San Juan a green-clad mountain peak soared against the sky. “That's
El Yunque—
The Anvil,” Jack pointed out. “It's a tropical rain forest with ferns as high as houses.”
They landed and admired the large white modernistic terminal building as they walked toward it. The structure seemed to be poised on stilts.
Mr. Hardy was waiting to greet the travelers as soon as they cleared customs. “Good flight?” he asked.
“Wait'll you hear!” Joe grinned. “We stopped off in Tropicale and barged smack into a revolution!”
“Well, I'm glad you came through it alive!” Though eager to hear all the news, Mr. Hardy cautioned everyone not to talk freely until they were in their hotel rooms.
The group managed to squeeze into a single taxi. Soon they were whisked through a beautiful residential area of pink and white villas, then out onto a wide boulevard lined by palms, in clear view of the sea.
“Pretty nice place,” Chet remarked. “Let's have some fun while we're here and not get mixed up with a bunch of crooks.”
The others smiled. When they reached the hotel, the boys went at once to Mr. Hardy's room for a conference.
Frank and Joe quickly related everything that had happened to them since receiving his message of “Find Hugo purple turban.”
Mr. Hardy was amazed. “So there were diamonds in the dummy! This case is even more complex than I realized,” he declared, his face grave. “And you've done a good job. I thought that message might be a clue to a smuggling racket. It was written on a piece of paper left in a hastily vacated house.”
The detective confided to the boys that he was working for the United States Government on the theft of some rare isotopes—materials which could be used in the manufacture of atomic weapons.
“The FBI believes they were stolen here in Puerto Rico, en route to foreign countries,” he added. “It looks as if we may be up against a gang of air-freight thieves and smugglers who deal in other things besides isotopes!”
“Any leads so far?” Frank asked.
“Just one. My next job is to keep watch at a freight warehouse near the airport.”
Joe jumped up from his chair in excitement. “How about Frank and Chet and Tony and myself doing a stakeout at the warehouse?”
The other boys were equally enthusiastic about the idea, and Mr. Hardy finally agreed. They soon devised a plan. The boys would hide in crates to be carted to the warehouse that evening.
After dinner the boys started out for a trucking company on a street called Calle Pacheco. The owner of the firm was cooperating with the police on the freight robberies.
“Don't look now,” said Tony a few minutes later, “but I think a car's tailing us.”
Frank leaned forward to watch the taxi's rear-view mirror. “You're right,” he muttered. “Maybe we'd better split up.”
Quickly he arranged with Chet and Tony to stay in the taxi and try to shake off their pursuer. “If you lose him, meet us at the trucking company in half an hour.”
Three blocks down, the driver stopped for a red light. Quickly the Hardys jumped from the taxi and lost themselves in the passing throng of pedestrians.
They had not gone far when Frank and Joe noticed that a tall man seemed to be trailing them. His face was almost hidden by the pulled-down brim of his slouch hat. The Hardys were struck by something familiar about the fellow! But there was no time to mull this over.
“Better shake him,” Frank muttered.
Joe agreed. Quickly the boys hailed a taxi and resumed their ride to the trucking company. When they arrived, the owner said:
“Ah,
sí,
I have the boxes all prepared. The covers, of course, will not be nailed down.”
A few minutes later Chet and Tony joined them. The boys took their places in the big crates, which were loaded aboard a truck. Soon they were bumping and rattling through the streets of San Juan.
When the truck arrived at the warehouse, the boxes were carried inside to the main room. As closing time neared, the workmen's voices died away and everything became quiet.
The first half hour of the boys' vigil went slowly. Cramped and tense in their hiding places, they sweated out each passing moment.
Then Frank heard a noise!
CHAPTER XI
Warehouse Marauders
FRANK strained his ears, wondering if he was mistaken. Then he heard it again—a faint scratchy noise which he could not identify.
Raising the lid of his box, he beamed a flashlight toward the sound. A large sheet of dirty wrapping paper lay a few yards away. On it crouched a small, brown furry creature.
“What gives?” came a whisper from Joe's box.
“Just a rat.”
The rodent froze for a few seconds in the glare of light, its beady eyes shining with reflected brilliance. Then it scampered off into a dark hole nearby—apparently the opening to a small tunnel for an electrical conduit, but large enough for a person to crawl into.
The boys resumed their wait, shifting occasionally to exercise their cramped muscles. The warehouse lay wrapped in gloom, pierced only by a faint glow from the moon through a skylight.
Some time later another noise broke the stillness. It was a faint curse in Spanish! The voice sounded oddly hollow and muffled.
Frank and Joe raised the lids of their crates a crack. A moment later they saw two figures wriggle through the tunnel opening. Both snapped on flashlights and played them around the room. Then the intruders, whose faces were in shadow, separated and began examining the shipping labels on the boxes and crates.

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