Authors: Franklin W. Dixon

The Yellow Feather Mystery (13 page)

BOOK: The Yellow Feather Mystery

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It was a sheet of white letter paper with rectangular cutouts!

As Frank watched, his heart pounding, Kurt placed the cutout sheet on the table. Then, with a sweep of his hands, he collected all of the other papers into one batch and dropped them into the fireplace. A flick of a match, and they were ablaze.

“What is he up to?” Frank asked himself as Kurt again picked up the cutout sheet and approached the fireplace.

Would he burn it, too?

CHAPTER XVI

An Unexpected Twist

BUT burning the cutout sheet was not Kurt's intention.

As Frank watched, breathless with excitement, the headmaster raised the top of the mantelpiece with one hand. With the other he carefully tucked the paper beneath the lid and closed it. Then he turned out the kerosene lantern.

Backing away from the window, Frank nearly ran into Joe and Chet as they came up behind him. With a motion of his hand, he stilled the questions on their lips. A second later Henry Kurt emerged from the hut and strode off into the darkness.

“Stand guard, will you?” Frank hissed to the others as he moved forward. “I'm going in!”

He opened the door and raced across the room to the fireplace. Stomping with his heavy snow boots on what remained of the flames, he snuffed them out, then recovered what he could of the papers. Relighting the lantern, he studied the scraps.

Apparently they had been torn from many kinds of large-page books, covering a variety of subjects with no significant relationships. There was only one similarity in the sheets-they were all exactly the same size.

“Kurt was probably trying to fit that cutout page over them,” the young sleuth deduced. “And since he tossed them all into the fire, none of them could have been the one he was looking for.”

Nevertheless, Frank spread the salvaged papers on the table. Then he reached into the space under the movable mantelshelf and pulled out the sheet Kurt had hidden there. The name Hardy was printed in the top left corner.

Was this the original sheet Greg had lost? There was no telling. Only Greg could answer that question.

But as Frank studied it, he noted that the size of the rectangular cutouts and the spacing between them were different from those in the other two sheets he had worked on with Greg.

“All that time spent in the Academy library for nothing,” the boy thought ruefully.

At that moment Joe burst impatiently through the hut doorway. “What's going on?” he cried.

Learning that Chet was still on guard, Frank quickly explained all that he had seen through the window and what he had just found. Joe carefully examined the cutout paper. Then he held it up to the light.

“Say, here's a mark that wasn't on the copy Kurt gave Dad,” Joe said.

Scratched on the paper, evidently with a fingernail, and visible only when looked at against the light were two letters: EW.

Elias Woodson!

“This is the real thing!” Frank exclaimed excitedly. “Kurt must have found it the night Greg lost it.”

“He has done us a great favor without meaning to,” Joe said with a grin. “We'll take this along.”

“And leave a fake copy here,” said Frank, “so Kurt won't be suspicious.”

The Hardys examined the papers Frank had rescued from the fireplace and found an undamaged blank page.

Joe took out his pocketknife and carefully marked small rectangles, then gently punched them out. In a few minutes the job was done. He added the name Hardy and rubbed his hands back and forth over it several times to give the paper a slightly mussed-up appearance, then handed it to Frank.

“Perfect!” his brother said.

He folded the sheet in exactly the same way that the original had been creased. Lifting the top of the mantelshelf, he inserted the fake document.

Then Frank threw the rest of the odd papers into the fireplace and burned them. “Kurt will never know anyone was here,” he said.

“Unless Benny Tass tells him!” Joe remarked. He reported the talk with the bully.

“Maybe Benny will reform,” Frank said hopefully. “Well, we'll soon know. In any case, we have the lost paper.”

After putting the precious sheet into an inside pocket of his jacket, he led the way outside.

When Chet was told of the discovery he whistled gleefully.

“Looks like things are closing in on our friend Kurt,” he chortled.

The three boys trudged through the snow to where their friends still waited in Mr. Kemper'a sleigh.

“Why, we expected to see you leading a gang of handcuffed prisoners!” Iola teased them.

“You didn't even bring one little crook?” Callie sighed as the sleigh ride got under way again.

Mr. Kemper, as previously arranged, drove to an old inn owned by relatives of one of the girls.

The young people spent a fun-filled evening, relishing the fine food for which the place was famous and singing and dancing to the latest records.

The Hardys thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it, but as soon as they returned to Bayport and the quiet of their room, they again discussed the subject foremost in their minds.

“I meant to tell you,” Joe reported, “that Benny says Kurt knows who the Yellow Feather is.”

“What!”

Joe repeated Tass's theory that the Yellow Feather must be under twenty-one years of age, because Kurt had once spoken of him as being a minor.

“A minor?” Frank puzzled.

“Wait a minute!” Joe cried. “I wonder if Benny misunderstood Kurt. Did he mean miner instead of minorâis there a mine mixed up in this case?”

“Elias Woodson may have owned some stock in a mine,” Frank mused.

“If the stock has any value, it would be the real reason why the Yellow Featherâand Kurtâare making such a big thing out of the inheritance,” Joe observed.

“What kind of mine could it be?” Frank reflected, “and where is it?”

“I think that cutout paper might give us the answer,” Joe replied. “I'd like to get to work on it now, but I suppose we'd better get some sleep.”

He flipped off the light switch, then moved to the window to open it for the night. As he did, a vague shifting of shadows below caught his attention.

Joe stared at the moonlit scene outside. Not one, but two figures were moving in the dark protection of the trees and hedges.

He called to Frank, who was out of bed and at his side in an instant. One figure was close to the house now, almost under their window. The other seemed to be following him.

“Out the back door!” Frank suggested.

In a flash, the boys were rushing barefoot down the back stairs.

“Joe, I'll sneak out and get the second guy,” Frank said. “When you see me tackle him, snap on the porch light and nab the first one!”

“Okay.”

They opened the door silently and Frank padded softly along the edge of the back porch in the shadows, while Joe stood poised with his hand on the light switch.

A moment later Frank made a headlong tackle for his man. Joe snapped on the light and went after the other!

CHAPTER XVII

A Startling Story

FRANK'S slashing tackle crashed the silent figure to the ground. The man rolled with the force of the boy's dive, then bounced to his feet.

“Dad!” Frank cried.

At this outburst, Joe stopped in his tracks and whirled about with a look of incredulity on his face.

“Holy crow!” he said. “What'sâ?”

“Tell you later!” his father cried. “Joe, get that snooper. Don't let him escape!”

Joe dashed toward the front of the house, where the intruder had fled. Mr. Hardy and Frank followed. But the five-second delay had been enough for the fugitive. He had vanished into the night!

“Let's spread out and search the area,” Frank said. But before he had time to race off, his father countermanded the proposal.

“Nothing doing,” Mr. Hardy said. “You boys are shivering. Go into the house. I'll try to trace the prowler alone.”

As Frank and Joe went inside they were met by Mrs. Hardy and Aunt Gertrude. Upon learning that the prowler had not entered the house, the boys' mother sighed in relief and said she would fix hot cocoa for them and Mr. Hardy.

Aunt Gertrude, however, burst into a tirade. “Burglar or no burglar,” she said sternly to her nephews. “The idea of your running out in pajamas in the middle of the night! And in bare feet!”

By the time the cocoa was ready, Mr. Hardy was back. He reported that the intruder had made a clean getaway. Then he looked at Frank.

“That was a great tackle you made, son.”

“I'm sorry, Dad. I was sure you were a prowler.”

“How did you happen to be trailing that guy?” Joe asked him.

“I was just coming home,” Mr. Hardy answered, “when I saw somebody slip across the hedge at the rear and head for the house. Naturally I followed, and was just about ready to challenge him when Frank hit me.”

“It's too bad I picked on the wrong man,” Frank said ruefully.

Mrs. Hardy served cocoa and cookies to the entire family. As they ate, Frank and Joe told the others the latest developments in the caseâ the chase after Benny and the yearbook, the clue of the miner or minor, and the recovery of the original cutout sheet.

“Tomorrow we'll go back to the Woodson library and start looking again for a clue,” Joe said.

“And in Dad's yearbook, too,” Frank added.

Suddenly the older detective's eyes lighted up. “Boys,” he said, “I believe you've solved this mystery!”

Frank and Joe stared at him in astonishment. “How?” they asked together.

“Let me see that sheet,” Mr. Hardy requested. “And bring the yearbook down with you too.”

“Sure thing.” Frank dashed from the kitchen and ran upstairs for the two objects. In a moment the detective was flipping through the yearbook's pages, with his sons looking over his shoulders. As he paused to gaze at a certain page, the boys saw a picture of Mr. Hardy in a Woodson basket ball uniform, and a short account of his prowess on the court.

“I believe,” Mr. Hardy went on, “that Elias Woodson's message to Greg is in this article. That's why he printed the name Hardy on the corner of the cutout sheet.”

Deftly he placed the sheet of paper over the page. With a pencil he drew sharp black lines around the words and parts of words that were showing. Everyone waited breathlessly to see what the message would be. When Mr. Hardy removed the sheet, the page looked as follows:

FENTON HARDY

Woodson's high-scoring forward set the pace with 26 points to help the