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Authors: Franklin W. Dixon

The Short-Wave Mystery

BOOK: The Short-Wave Mystery
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Table of Contents
 
 
THE SHORT-WAVE MYSTERY
WHEN thieves hijack a collection of stuffed animals from a country auction, Frank and Joe Hardy pursue the getaway car and are drawn into a thrilling mystery. The recently acquired interest of their best pal, chubby Chet Morton, in taxidermy as a hobby adds fresh twists to the puzzle.
At the same time, the young detectives' father—famed private investigator Fenton Hardy—is tracking down an industrial spy ring. Over the Hardys' ham radio, Frank and Joe pick up a coded message from the spies, consisting of names of various wild animals. Are the industrial spies somehow mixed up in the hijacking at the auction and the rash of stuffed animal thefts that follow?
This suspense-filled story of pursuit and detection will keep the reader breathlessly following the chain of unexpected developments that lead Frank and Joe to the spine-tingling climax in the wilds of Northern Canada.
They steered into the swirling blizzard
Copyright ® 1972, 1966, 1945 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, Inc., a member of The Putnam & Grosset
Group, New York. Published simultaneously in Canada. S.A.
THE HARDY BOYS® is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Grosset & Dunlap, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 66-10288
eISBN : 978-1-101-07638-5

http://us.penguingroup.com

CHAPTER I
The Apeman's Warning
DIDAHDIT
...
dahdahdididit
...
didididahdah
...
dahdidahdit
... Frank Hardy's fingers deftly pounded out the CW-key sign-off: “R 73 C U AGN AR WB2EKA DE WB2XEJ SK.”
Then the dark-haired, eighteen-year-old ham operator jotted an entry into a black logbook. “Coming in clear tonight, Joe!”
“Sure is. Let's see what else we can pick up.” Joe Hardy, blond and a year younger, flicked the phone switch and played the transceiver dial along the 2-meter band.
The Hardy brothers, both licensed radio amateurs, were enjoying an hour of short-wave hamming in their newly equipped attic “shack.” Static and bits of conversation crackled over the speaker. Suddenly a weird garble of nonsensical, voicelike sounds broke in.
“Sufferin' cats! What's all that?” Joe muttered. As a whistling noise began to drown out the gibberish, he “tendered” the tuning dial left, then right. Again the jumbled voice came in. “Sounds like a tape being played backwards.”
Frank frowned. “Must be a scrambler.”
“But why would anyone be using a voice scrambler over this frequency?” Joe asked.
A shrill scream from somewhere below caused both boys to leap from their chairs.
“That's Aunt Gertrude!” Frank cried out.
The boys raced downstairs. In the dining room they found Miss Hardy, their tall, bespectacled maiden aunt, standing with a horrified look on her sharp-featured but kindly face.
“Aunty! What's wrong?” Joe exclaimed.
“There's an ape out there—peering in at us!” She pointed a trembling forefinger. “Great heavens! It must have escaped from a zoo!”
“An ape?” Frank echoed incredulously. The boys turned toward the side windows, straining their eyes to see into the gathering autumn dusk.
“In the evergreens.” Aunt Gertrude's voice quivered.
Joe gasped in astonishment. Among the branches he could make out a hideous dark face. Its beady orange eyes glared back at him, reflecting the glow of light from the room.
“Good night! She's not kidding!” Frank made a dash for the kitchen. “Come on, Joe!”
Rocketing out the back door, the two boys sprinted across the yard and around the house. Frank reached the cluster of evergreens first—then froze, wide-eyed. “For Pete's sake,” he whispered, “it's a baby gorilla!”
The animal, perched among the branches, appeared not to notice them.
“What do we do now?” Joe gulped. “From what I've heard, those things are
strong—
even in the junior size!”
“If it did escape from a zoo, it's probably tame,” Frank said.
Nevertheless, the boys moved closer cautiously. The gorilla made no movement. Joe, whose high spirits often landed him in dangerous situations, could not resist reaching out and giving one of the evergreen branches a tug. The gorilla slipped downward slightly, but still did not seem to move a muscle!
“Wait a second!” Frank exclaimed. “That thing looks phony to me—I'll bet it's not even alive!”
He gave the evergreen a harder shake and the gorilla tumbled from the branches!
Joe stared down foolishly at the chunky black figure at their feet, its sightless glass eyes still wide open. “Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle! It's just a stuffed specimen!”
Frank nodded. “But where did it come from?”
“Search me.” Joe picked up the small gorilla with a chuckle. “Let's go see what Aunt Gertrude thinks of Junior.”
Grinning, Frank accompanied his brother back to the house. If they had expected Miss Hardy to be frightened, the boys were doomed to disappointment. She greeted them with a scornful sniff. “Humph! Nothing but a moth-eaten dummy. I suspected as much.”
Joe burst out laughing. “Aw, you peeked, Aunt Gertrude!”
As he set the gorilla down on the window seat, the brothers examined it. The stuffed animal was shabby and patches of fur were missing.
“Boy, this really is moth-eaten,” Frank murmured. “You have sharp eyes, Aunty.”
Aunt Gertrude pursed her lips as she resumed sweeping crumbs off the dining-room tablecloth. “Probably left over from Halloween,” she snapped. “No doubt some prankster thought the creature would have me screaming my head off.”
“He should have known better.” Joe winked at his brother. “Queer sort of a prank, though. Maybe one of the high school crowd got hold of a stuffed ape.”
Frank gave a puzzled shrug. “I don't recall hearing any of our gang mention one. It could have been an outsider.”
Both boys loved nothing better than a spine-tingling mystery. Their father, Fenton Hardy, a former New York police detective, was now a private investigator in the coastal town of Bayport. His success in cracking difficult cases had won him a nationwide reputation. Frank and Joe often helped on his assignments and also had solved several baffling cases on their own, starting with
The Tower Treasure.
“Look,” Joe proposed. “You don't suppose this could have been left by one of Dad's enemies—maybe as a warning the house is being watched?”
“It's possible,” Frank said doubtfully.
Mr. Hardy had flown to Europe on a secret government assignment, and the boys' mother was away visiting relatives. In their absence, Aunt Gertrude was keeping house for her nephews.
“Now don't you two go looking for trouble with dangerous criminals,” she warned. “You've been mixed up in enough mysteries. Mark my words, you'll bring on a real calamity one of these days!”
Though fond of making dire predictions, their Aunt Gertrude was secretly thrilled over the family's detective exploits.
“Okay, we'll watch our step,” Joe promised.
“Speaking of mysteries, Joe,” said Frank, “let's see if we can pick up any more of that scrambled broadcast.”
As the boys headed for the hall stairway, Miss Hardy's scolding voice followed them. “And take this nasty fake ape with you—or at least get it out of the dining room!”
Grinning, Joe went back to retrieve the gorilla. In the attic, the boys heard only light static trickling from the speaker. Both hunched over the short-wave rig as Frank played the dial back and forth.
The boys' radio gear for their station—a separate unit from the set in Mr. Hardy's study—was arrayed on a long table. It included a receiver, a transceiver with VOX hookup, a signal generator, and a phone patch. The transmitter for the main rig was mounted on a relay rack next to the table. On the wall above hung two framed General Class licenses, several award certificates, and a flag-pinned world map. Another wall was papered with rows of colorful QSL cards—acknowledgments of the boys' contacts with hams all over the world.
“Guess we've lost it,” Frank said, after trying vainly to bring in the scrambled broadcast.
“I'd sure like to know where that came from,” Joe said. “No ordinary ham would have any reason for using a scrambler.”
“Or any
right
to, for that matter.” Frank, who was twirling the dial, paused in surprise as a grim, rasping voice blurted out of the speaker:
“Apeman calling the Hardys! Apeman calling the Hardys! Do you read me?”
Frank flashed a startled look at the stuffed gorilla, then grabbed the microphone. “Apeman from WB2XEJ! ... What is all this?”
BOOK: The Short-Wave Mystery
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