The Crowning Terror

"MR. HARDY!" THE headwaiter called. "Your table is ready for luncheon."

Frank Hardy blinked lazily, shaking his head to toss his brown hair away from his eyes. He had almost fallen asleep, sitting in the Club Kiev's waiting room.

"Finally," Frank's brother, Joe, who was seated beside him, said. Energized by the thought of food, Joe sprang to his feet. He stood six feet tall, and though Frank was an inch taller still, Joe's springy blond hair made him seem the same height. Joe was burlier than his brother and looked as if he could hit hard. A natural on the football field, he looked out of place in the Club Kiev.

Frank stood up, too, very aware of the glances from the other men waiting for tables. Those older gentlemen fit the restaurant's image perfectly. They blended in with the dim lighting and aging furniture. Frank and Joe were the youngest people in the room—by about forty years.

It was weird, Frank had to admit. Here he was in New York City, where an eighteen-year-old could find the most hip restaurants on earth. Instead, he was in the stodgy Club Kiev. He sighed. It hadn't been his choice. They moved toward the white-haired headwaiter, who stood next to the dining room. Nothing ever seemed to change at the club, not since it had opened in the 1920s. Its style and menu hadn't changed in all the intervening years, nor, seemingly, had its personnel. As Frank approached the headwaiter, he thought he caught a hint of disapproval in the old man's eye.

Teenagers were common in most restaurants in the city, but at the Club Kiev they clung to a long-dead past and found any change hard to tolerate. Teens had their place, but it was obvious the headwaiter believed that place was elsewhere.

"Good evening," Frank said in Russian, and the older man's face brightened.

"You speak my language?" the headwaiter asked.

"Not much and not well, I'm afraid," Frank replied. "But it's a beautiful language. I'm Mr. Hardy."

For a moment the headwaiter squinted with confusion. "Ah!" he said and smiled. "You are Fenton Hardy's boy. You have his eyes. For you, we will make a perfect meal." He pulled two menus from his podium. "Lunch for two?"

"Three, actually," Frank said. "We're waiting for a family friend. I'm Frank, by the way, and this is my brother, Joe."

"Good, very good," the headwaiter said as he pushed into the dining room. The boys followed, crossing the brightly lit room until they reached a small booth on the side wall. The elderly Russian swept a hand over it, waving them in, and Frank and Joe slid along seats on opposite sides of the table. With a slight bow, the man handed them menus and before leaving, he asked, "You will be following in your father's footsteps?" Joe glanced up, puzzled. "Excuse me?" "As detectives," the headwaiter said. His eyes were wide with excitement. "Your father is a great detective. He saved this restaurant many years ago. It would be a shame if such greatness were not handed down."

Frank checked a grin. "We haven't decided," — the Russian's smile faded — "but we're considering it."

Pleased, the white-haired man nodded and turned away. As he looked across the room, he stiffened.

A man was strolling toward the booth, white curls spilling on his forehead and highlighting his dancing green eyes. Though well on in years, the man was lean beneath his business suit, and Frank's age.

"M - Mr. Hunt," the headwaiter stammered. "I'm sorry I wasn't at the door to greet you." It was evident from the smile on the other man's face that the Russian took the situation far more seriously than he did. "Let me find you a table."

"It's all right," Joe said. "He's with us. How are you doing, Uncle Hugh?"

"Just fine, Joe," Hugh Hunt replied, sliding into the booth next to Frank. He wasn't really their uncle, but only a good and older friend of Fenton Hardy's. When they were younger, the boys had begun calling him "uncle," and the name stuck.

They had never been sure of the exact connection between him and their father. They knew the two men had known each other in the army, but then they had moved in different directions. Fenton Hardy became a detective, and Hugh continued in the insurance business, eventually starting his own company, Transmutual Indemnity, and retiring just a couple of years before. ; The two men had less and less in common as they grew older, but Hugh was always there for the Hardys. Fenton Hardy never missed a chance to see him, sometimes even taking time off from a vital case to meet with him. It was something Frank and Joe accepted but never really understood.

"I'm sorry your father couldn't be here," Hugh said.

"Dad's in England with Mom and Aunt Gertrude," Frank said. "He told us to extend his apologies, but Mom's been bugging him to take a vacation for a long time, and his schedule finally opened up, and ... well — "

"I understand perfectly," Hugh said with a wink. He flipped open the menu and ran his finger down the listings. "They have a great borscht here, if you like beets. For a main course, the chicken Kiev is—" He squeezed the fingertips of his right hand together, pressed them to his lips, and kissed them with a loud smacking sound. "There's nothing better than great Russian food, and nowhere is it better than here."

A waiter appeared at the end of the table. In a thick Russian accent, he asked, "Would you like anything to drink before your meal?"

"A round of your best Russian tea," Hugh replied, looking at the boys for their approval.

"None for me, thanks," said Joe. As much as he liked his uncle Hugh, the man's tendency to make decisions for everyone always annoyed him a little. Joe's small acts of rebellion helped keep the peace between them, gently reminding Hugh that not everyone shared his tastes. Curiously, Frank never contradicted his uncle.

When the waiter had left, Joe said, "You're looking good, Uncle Hugh." Blushing, the older man flexed his arm so the bicep bulged beneath his jacket. "You mean this? Keeps my insurance rates down. You look in great shape, too. What have you two been doing with yourselves?"

Joe inhaled deeply, weighing his answer. What could they tell him? That Joe's girlfriend, Iola Morton, had been killed by a mad terrorist group called the Assassins, and as a result the boys had decided to devote themselves to bringing dangerous criminals to justice? "Oh, you know. We go to school, and still help out our dad on his cases—" "Actually," Frank cut in, "we don't spend that much time in Bayport anymore. Most of the time we're fighting supercriminals and terrorist organizations. So we spend a lot of time traveling. We get help sometimes from a government agency called the Network, but they don't really like independents like us getting in their way. All in all it's interesting work."

Joe's jaw dropped. Their parents didn't even know what Frank had just revealed to their uncle Hugh. He couldn't believe, after all they had done to keep their work secret, that Frank had just blown it.

Hugh stared at Frank for a long moment, studying the boy's face. Finally, a smile crept along his lips, widening into a grin until Hugh burst into laughter.

"Sounds like you need a good insurance policy," Hugh sputtered between laughs. "That's a good one, Frank. You're developing quite a sense of humor in your old age."

Frank began laughing with his uncle, and Joe giggled nervously. Hugh didn't believe Frank. Joe realized then what Frank had known all along, and Joe felt a rush of new respect for his brother. It was a gambit worthy of Joe himself.

The waiter reappeared with two heavy white cups and a china teapot on a tray. He poured a cup and set it in front of Hugh, and then poured one for Frank. The spicy steam rose off the cup and wafted into Joe's nostrils, and he wished he had ordered tea after all. "So what have you been doing lately, Uncle Hugh?" Joe asked.

"Oh, this and that," Hugh said, lifting the cup to his lips. "I do a little freelance insurance advising now and then." He closed his eyes and drained the cup, and with a look of satisfaction, he set it back into its saucer. Glancing down, he began, "You should become a tea drinker, Joe. You don't know what you're mi — "

He stopped suddenly, and his face went a sickly white. His eyes locked on the cup. "Where's that waiter?"

"He went back to the kitchen," Frank said. "Why?" He received no answer. Without another word, Hugh scrambled from the booth and dashed toward the kitchen. "Joe, go after him," Frank ordered.

Nodding, Joe followed his uncle, who had already disappeared through the swinging steel doors to the kitchen. Frank picked up the teacup and looked into it. At the bottom of the cup were black indelible marks. Cyrillic, Frank realized with a start. Letters in the Russian alphabet.

Anxiously, the Russian headwaiter appeared. "You are not pleased with the service?" he asked.

"You read Russian," Frank said and thrust the teacup at him. "What does this say?"

Puzzled, the older man took the cup and squinted at the letters. His mouth fell open in horror, and his eyes bulged. "No! No!" he shouted, hurling the cup to the ground. "What is it?" Frank demanded. Trembling, the headwaiter replied, "It says, 'You have just been poisoned.'"

JOE CRASHED THROUGH the swinging doors. It looked like an ordinary restaurant kitchen, all sleek, bright chrome to contrast with the dark wood of the restaurant itself. The dozen chefs, waiters, and busboys spun to look at him and all motion froze for a second. Not surprising—he had just invaded their territory. But it didn't explain the fear in their eyes.

And suddenly they were moving again, ducking to the floor and scrambling for cover among the stoves and cabinets. Then Joe saw what they were running from. At the far end of the kitchen, next to a closed fire door, two men dressed in black suits had Joe's uncle Hugh by the arms and were forcing him toward the door.

The taller of the men had a dark beard, and a blackpatch covered his left eye. In his hand he held a Mauser with a silencer screwed on to the end of its barrel.

The gun made a sound like two cupped hands clapping gently together, and Joe hurled himself to the floor as the shot spattered against the swinging steel door behind him. It was the silencer that had saved him, he knew. At a distance of a few feet a gun with a silencer meant instant death, but over several yards a silencer would throw off the bullet's trajectory. For Joe, that fraction of an inch had been the difference between life and death.

"Joe!" he heard his uncle Hugh shout. "Get out of here!" Joe popped his head up over a counter to see the shorter man clamp a black-gloved hand over his uncle's mouth. A bullet sponged across the chrome counter near Joe's ear, and he ducked back down.

He rolled across the floor, trying to figure the odds against him. It was at least forty feet to the back door, and he realized there was no way he could get there, moving on hands and knees, before the men in black forced his uncle out the door and got away.

Let Frank worry about odds, Joe decided. Keeping low, he dashed past a line of counters and rounded a refrigerator. On each side of him, the restaurant employees were cringing, not believing that he would keep heading for the murderous pair. Joe turned the corner of an oven, where the smell of searing meat choked him. How far? he wondered. Were they still there?

At first he saw only a foot in his way. Cautiously he looked up, and above him stood the bearded man, his lips parted by a cruel smile. He said something that Joe didn't understand, but the motion of the gun made the meaning clear. Up it jerked, ordering him to his feet. Joe considered rushing the guy. But he knew the bearded man would have a clear shot at him. And this time, Joe knew, the silencer wouldn't alter the bullet's path. Joe stood up, hands raised to shoulder height.

No one else in the kitchen moved. The bearded man's smile widened as he pressed the tip of the gun barrel to Joe's forehead. Joe's breath caught in his throat as the bearded man chuckled softly and slowly began to squeeze the trigger.

With a muffled cry, Hugh bit into the gloved hand covering his mouth. The shorter man shrieked in pain and loosened his grip on Hugh. The bearded man turned slightly to see what was wrong.

That was when Joe swung his fist up, knocking the bearded man's arm aside. The gun went off, and the bullet lodged harmlessly in the ceiling. The man recovered instantly and jabbed out, clipping Joe on the chin with the gun butt.

Joe fell back in a haze of pain. Across the room his uncle Hugh struggled with the shorter man, who called to his companion for help. Ignoring Joe, the bearded man sprinted over and planted a fist in Hugh's stomach. As Hugh doubled over, the shorter man slammed him against the door. It opened, and the three of them vanished through it.

"Joe?" asked Frank Hardy as he pushed through the kitchen doors. "Where's Uncle Hugh?"

"In big trouble, I think!" Joe shouted. He dashed for the back door. "Two men just dragged him out this way."

"There's a narrow passageway behind the club," Frank said. "It spills directly out onto Fifty-third Street. Try to catch up to them. I'll head out front and we should have them surrounded." Without another word, Frank darted back through the swinging doors.