“We’re going to try, anyway. There’s a train at seven o’clock, and we aim to have a talk with this fellow Jackley tonight.”
Mr. Hardy shrugged his shoulders.
“Go ahead. It means nothing to me. But if you take my advice you’ll stay away. You’ll just spoil everything. Jackley will talk when the time comes.”
“Oh, ho!” said Detective Smuff triumphantly. “Then there is something to it, hey?”
“I knew there was,” said Chief Collig. “Come on, Smuff. We’ll make this man Jackley talk yet. We’re officers of the law, we are, and I’d like to see any doctor keep us from doin’ our duty.”
He mopped his brow again, put on his hat, nodded to Fenton Hardy, and clumped out of the room. Detective Smuff, putting his notebook into his pocket, followed. The door closed behind them.
Mr. Hardy sat back with a gesture of despair.
“They’ll spoil everything,” he said. “They’re just so clumsy that Red Jackley will close up like a clam if they try to make him talk.”
“Perhaps,” remarked Frank significantly, “they’ll miss their train.”
At that moment the telephone rang. Mr. Hardy answered it.
“Hello—yes, this is Fenton Hardy—yes—oh, yes, doctor—he is—well, well—is that so?—won’t live until morning—I can see him?—fine—thank you—goodbye.”
He put back the receiver.
“There,” he said wearily, “just my luck! Red Jackley is dying, and the doctor says I can see him tonight. But Collig and Smuff will have first right to talk to him, for they are officials and I’m only a private detective. If Jackley confesses, they’ll have the credit for it.”
“They’ll just have to miss their train,” said Frank. “Come on, Joe. Let’s see what we can do.”
XV
The Chief Gets a Bomb
“What’s up now?” asked Joe, when the Hardy boys had left the house.
“Chief Collig and Detective Smuff must miss that train.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know just yet, but they’ve got to miss it. If they reach the hospital tonight they’ll interview Jackley first. One of two things will happen. They’ll either get a confession and take all the credit for clearing up the case, or they’ll go about it so clumsily that Jackley will say nothing and spoil everything for Dad.”
The Hardy boys walked along the street in silence. They realized that the situation was urgent, but although they racked their brains trying to think of some way in which to prevent Chief Collig and Detective Smuff from catching the train, it seemed hopeless.
“Let’s round up the gang,” suggested Joe. “Perhaps they can think of something.”
“The gang” consisted of the boys who had been with Frank and Joe the day they held the picnic in the woods. There was, of course, Chet Morton. Besides him were Allen Hooper, otherwise known as “Biff,” because of his passion for boxing, Jerry Gilroy, Phil Cohen and Tony Prito, all students at the Bayport high school. They were usually to be found on the school campus after hours, playing ball, and there the Hardy boys soon located them. The game was just breaking up.
“Pikers,” grinned Chet Morton when he saw the Hardy boys approaching. “You wouldn’t play ball when we asked you to, and now you come around when the game’s all over.”
“We had something more important on our minds,” replied Frank. “We need your help.”
“What’s the mattah?” asked Tony Prito. Tony was the son of a prosperous Italian building contractor, but he had not yet been in America long enough to talk the language without an accent, and his attempts were frequently the cause of much amusement to his companions. He was quick and good-natured, however, and laughed as much at his own errors as anyone else did.
“Chief Collig and Detective Smuff are butting into one of Dad’s cases,” said Frank. “We can’t tell you much more about it than that. But the whole thing is that they mustn’t catch the seven o’clock train.”
“What do you want us to do?” asked Biff Hooper. “Blow up the bridge?”
“We might lock Collig and Smuff in one of their own cells,” suggested Phil Cohen.
“And get locked in ourselves,” added Jerry Gilroy. “Be sensible. Are you serious about this, Frank?”
“Absolutely. If those two catch that train Dad’s case will be ruined. And I don’t mind telling you it has something to do with Perry Robinson.”
Chet Morton whistled.
“Ah, ha! I see now. The Tower affair. In that case, we’ll see to it that the seven o’clock train leaves here without our worthy chief and his equally worthy—although dumb—detective.” He hated Smuff, for the sleuth had once or twice tried to arrest the boys for bathing in a forbidden section of the bay.
“There is only one question left,” said Phil solemnly.
“And what is that?”
“How to keep them from getting on the train.”
“Get your brains to work, fellows—if you have any,” ordered Jerry Gilroy. “Let’s figure out a plan.”
A dozen plans were suggested, each wilder than the one before. Biff Hooper was in favor of kidnapping the chief and his detective, binding them hand and foot and setting them adrift in the bay in an open boat.
Phil Cohen suggested putting the chief’s watch an hour ahead. That plan, as Frank observed, would have been a good one but for the little difficulty of laying hands on the watch.
Chet Morton thought it would be a good idea to start a fight in front of the police station just as Collig and Smuff were about to leave for the train. The possibility that they might all land in jail as a result made this suggestion unpopular.
“If we were in Italy we could get the Black Hand to help,” said Tony Prito.
“The Black Hand!” declared Chet. “That’s a good idea!”
“We got no Black Hand society in Bayport,” objected Tony.
“Let’s get one up. Send the chief a Black Hand letter warning him not to take that train.”
“And if he ever found who wrote it, we’d all be up to our necks in trouble,” pointed out Joe. “I’d like to put a bomb under his old police station.”
“Fine idea!”
