“Don’t ask me to help you. I’ve got a bad knee. Anyway, I just received some new stamps this afternoon. You interrupted me when I was sorting them. I must get back to my work.”
The man reached a corridor that was heavily covered with dust. It apparently had not been in use for a long time and was bare and unfurnished. At the end was a heavy door. It was unlocked, and when Mr. Applegate opened it, the boys saw a square room. Almost in the center of it rose a flight of wooden stairs with a heavily ornamented balustrade. The stairway twisted and turned to the roof, five floors above. Opening from each floor was a room.
“There you are,” Mr. Applegate announced. “Search all you want to. But you won’t find anything-of that I’m certain.”
With this parting remark he turned and hobbled back along the corridor, the sheet of stamps still in his gnarled hand.
The Hardy boys looked at each other. “Not very encouraging, is he?” Joe remarked.
“He doesn’t deserve to get his stuff back,” Frank declared flatly, then shrugged. “Let’s get up into the tower and start the search.”
Frank and Joe first examined the dusty stairs carefully for footprints, but none were to be seen.
“That seems queer,” Frank remarked. “If Jackley was here recently you’d think his footprints would still show. Judging by this dust, there hasn’t been anyone in the tower for at least a year.”
“Perhaps the dust collects more quickly than we think,” Joe countered. “Or the wind may get in here and blow it around.”
An inspection of the first floor of the old tower revealed that there was no place where the loot could have been hidden except under the stairs. But they found nothing there.
The boys ascended to the next floor, and entered the room to the left of the stair well. It was as drab and bare as the one they had just left. Here again the dust lay thick and the murky windows were almost obscured with cobwebs. There was an atmosphere of age and decay about the entire place, as if it had been abandoned for years.
“Nothing here,” said Frank after a quick glance around. “On we go.”
They made their way up to the next floor. After searching this room and under the stairway, they had to admit defeat.
The floor above was a duplicate of the first and second. It was bare and cheerless, deep in dust. There was not the slightest sign of a hiding place, or any indication that another human being had been in the tower for a long time.
“Doesn’t look very promising, Joe. Still, Jackley may have gone right to the top of the tower.” The search continued without success until the boys reached the roof. Here a trap door which swung inward led to the top of the tower. Frank unlatched it and pulled on the door. It did not budge.
“I’ll help you,” Joe offered.
Together the brothers yanked on the stubborn trap door of the old tower. Suddenly it gave way completely, causing both boys to lose their balance. Frank fell backward down the stairway.
Joe, with a cry, toppled over the railing into space!
Frank grabbed a spindle of the balustrade and kept himself from sliding farther down the steps. He had seen Joe’s plunge and expected the next moment to hear a sickening thud on the floor five stories below.
“Joe!” he murmured as he pulled himself upright. “Oh, Joe!”
To Frank’s amazement, he heard no thud and now looked over the balustrade. His brother was not lying unconscious at the bottom of the tower. Instead, he was clinging to two spindles of the stairway on the floor below.
Frank, heaving a tremendous sigh of relief, ran down and helped pull Joe to the safety of the steps. Both boys sat down to catch their breaths and recover from their falls.
Finally Joe said, “Thanks. For a second I sure thought I was going to end my career as a detective right here!”
“I guess you can also thank our gym teacher for the tricks he taught you on the bars,” Frank remarked. “You must have grabbed those spindles with flash-camera speed.”
Presently the boys turned their eyes upward. An expression halfway between a grin and a worried frown crossed their faces.
“Mr. Applegate,” Joe remarked, “isn’t going to like hearing we ruined his trap door.”
“No. Let’s see if we can put it back in place.”
The boys climbed the stairway and examined the damage. They found that the hinges had pulled away from rotted wood. A new piece would have to be put in to hold the door in place.
“Before we go downstairs,” said Joe, “let’s look out on the roof. We thought maybe the loot was hidden there. Remember?”
Frank and Joe climbed outside to a narrow, railinged walk that ran around the four sides of the square tower. There was nothing on it.
“Our only reward for all this work is a good view of Bayport,” Frank remarked ruefully.
Below lay the bustling little city, and to the east was Barmet Bay, its waters sparkling in the late afternoon.
“Dad was fooled by Jackley, I guess,” Frank said slowly. “There hasn’t been anyone in this tower for years.”
The boys gazed moodily over the city, then down at the grounds of Tower Mansion. The many roofs of the house itself were far below, and directly across from them rose the heavy bulk of the new tower.
“Do you think Jackley might have meant the new tower?” Joe exclaimed suddenly.
“Dad said he specified the old one.”
“But he may have been mistaken. Even the new one looks old. Let’s ask Mr. Applegate if we may search the new tower, too.”
“It’s worth trying, anyway. But I’m afraid when we tell him about the trap door, he’ll say no.”
The brothers went down through the opening. They lifted the door into place, latched it, and then wedged Frank’s small pocket notebook into the damaged side. The door held, but Frank and Joe knew that wind or rain would easily dislodge it.
The boys hurried down the steps and through the corridor to the main part of the house.
Adelia Applegate popped her head out of a doorway. “Where’s the loot?” she asked.
“We didn’t find any,” Frank admitted.
The woman sniffed. “I told you so! Such a waste of time!”
“We think now,” Joe spoke up, “that the stolen property is probably hidden in the new tower.”
“In the new tower!” Miss Applegate cried out. “Absurd! I suppose you’ll want to go poking through there now.”
“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”
“It would be too much trouble, indeed!” she shrilled. “I shan’t have boys rummaging through my house on a wild-goose chase like this. You’d better leave at once, and forget all this nonsense.”
Her voice had attracted the attention of Hurd Applegate, who came hobbling out of his study.
“Now what’s the matter?” he demanded. His sister told him and suddenly his face creased in a triumphant smile. “Aha! So you didn’t find anything after all! You thought you’d clear Robinson, but you haven’t done it.”
“Not yet,” Frank answered.
“These boys have the audacity,” Miss Applegate broke in, “to want to go looking through the new tower.”
Hurd Applegate stared at the boys. “Well, they can’t do it!” he snapped. “Are you boys trying to make a fool of me?” he asked, shaking a fist at them.
Frank and Joe exchanged glances and nodded at each other. They would have to reveal their reason for thinking the loot was in the new tower.
“Mr. Applegate,” Frank began, “the information about where your stolen stuff is hidden came from the man who took the jewels and the bonds. And it wasn’t Mr. Robinson.”
“What! You mean it was someone else? Has he been caught?”
“He was captured but he’s dead now.”
“Dead? What happened?” Hurd Applegate asked in excitement.