The Firebird Rocket (17 page)

Frank edged past them and went down the rope after the fugitive. Young headed for the woods behind the warehouse, and Frank followed at top speed. Joe, meanwhile, flew down the stairs, hoping to head Young off. The others followed.

The prisoners were being loaded into police cars in front of the warehouse. The constable paused to explain the latest turn of events to the sergeant, while Mr. Hardy and Chet followed Joe around to the rear of the building, just in time to see Frank disappear into the woods.

“Young must be ahead of him!” Joe said as they hurried after the young detective.

Frank lost sight of Young among the trees, but a path led him through the underbrush and he went forward until he came to a fork, where he had to guess which way Young had gone. He decided to take the left branch. A hundred yards in he caught sight of the fugitive.

Young, glancing over his shoulder, noticed Frank. Puffing from exertion, he darted from the path into the underbrush. He stumbled and tripped in the thick shrubbery, but he refused to slow down because he could hear his pursuer forcing his way through after him.

Young reached the right-hand path, looked around, and then ran back toward the fork, hoping to confuse Frank.

Joe, meanwhile, had taken the right-hand path, his father and Chet the left. The boy ran until he reached a towering tree, where he paused to get his bearings. He heard a rustling sound and looked up.

The rocket scientist hit the younger Hardy between the shoulders, and the pair went down amid leaves, vines, and plants. Stunned by the collision, Joe felt Young's hand closing around his throat and choking off his breath. Grimly he struggled to break the hold. The man had a strategic advantage over him, and Joe gasped convulsively. The branches of the tree above him seemed to swing wildly as if whipped about by a heavy storm; then everything darkened and Joe went limp.

Suddenly he felt a hand pull him by the shoulder. He seized a wrist with his last bit of strength.

“Hold it,” Frank said. “It's me!”

“Where's Young?” Joe croaked.

“He ran off when he saw me coming—back toward the warehouse. We've got to get him. Think you'll make it?”

“Sure, now that I can breathe again!” Joe rubbed his throat and the boys raced up the path. They reached the open space behind the warehouse and spotted Young jumping into the gang's pickup. Two policemen hurried around the corner, but Young got the truck going and roared straight at them, forcing them to spring out of the way.

The man powered toward a side road near where the Hardys emerged from the woods.

“Don't get in front of him!” Frank warned his brother. “He'll run you down!”

“I won't,” Joe replied, “but this will! Give me a hand, Frank!”

Together, they levered up a fallen log from the ground and hurled it under the front wheels of the speeding truck. The vehicle struck the log with a thump, careened wildly to one side, and jolted to a halt in the underbrush.

The Hardys pounced on Young and dragged him out of the driver's seat. Realizing he could not escape again, he surrendered without a struggle. He too was loaded into one of the police cars in front of the warehouse, where Frank and Joe rejoined their father and Chet.

The Australian police detective complimented the Hardy boys on their quick thinking and fast action. “Now we have the whole gang,” he added with satisfaction.

Young gave Fenton Hardy a venomous stare. “What made you suspect me?” he rasped.

“Frank and Joe asked me to check out Smoky Rinaldo. He'd found all the clues at the Aerospace Lab that seemed to incriminate Dr. Jenson, and he could easily have planted them himself. But he turned out to be clean, as far as I could tell. Then I realized you could have planted the clues just as easily. What's more, you were the only person who could have kept the gang tipped off about Frank and Joe's moves. For that matter, you were probably the one who stole that pass Stiller used to get into the Aerospace Lab.”

“So Stiller followed us around the lab,” Frank commented. “And, on orders from Young, he shadowed us at the Nassau Club.”

Joe looked at Young. “You put on an act at the Princeton Library! You told me Stiller got out of the elevator and ran upstairs. Instead, you probably warned him to leave through the front door while you sent us on a wild-goose chase!”

Young glared at him but said nothing.

Frank spoke up. “And you told Stiller that we would be flying to Sydney so he could resume his job in Australia. By the way, was it you who phoned us at Sydney Airport and threatened us after we'd returned there with Mike Moran and Dr. Jenson?”

“What do
you
think?” Young snapped.

“I think he's right,” Chet broke in. “I also think it was you who made that phone call to the hotel here in Port Augusta to keep Frank and Joe busy while your gang kidnapped Dr. Jenson from our room.”

“Right,” said Joe. “By that time, his private pilot was probably already flying back to Woomera to pick him up and bring him here.”

“And later,” Chet said to Young, “you tried to push me out of the warehouse window. If you weren't handcuffed, I'd punch you right in the nose!”

Dr. Jenson spoke up with indignation. “Arthur, why did you go through that miserable play acting up in the warehouse loft just now?”

“Because I needed the last Firebird equations you'd been working on. That's why. So I pumped you for the information in order to handle the project on my own.”

“But I don't understand. Why was that so important to you?”

“I can answer that,” Mr. Hardy said. “In case you didn't realize it, Young's been working for a foreign power. When their intelligence agents picked up news of the Firebird's development, they approached Young and paid him to eliminate you, Dr. Jenson, so
he
would be the one controlling the project. He was then to devise a scheme to foul up the launching in such a way that it would take NASA a long time to find out what went wrong. Young was supposed to turn over all our plans to this power so they could build a Firebird rocket of their own before we could recover from the foul-up and thus be ahead of us in this area of our space program.”

Frank shook his head in disgust. “It's a good thing we prevented him from going through with his scheme,” he said. Frank was proud that he had had a part in solving the case, but also felt the familiar emptiness he always experienced when a case was finished. Would there ever be another mystery for the Hardy boys? Frank did not realize at this moment that their help would soon be needed in
The Sting of the Scorpion.

“Well, Dr. Jenson,” Joe said, “now the tables are turned. You'll be in charge of the rocket launching.”

“And it'll be right on schedule!” Chet added enthusiastically. “I'm sure it'll be a great success!”

Frank nudged his friend and grinned. “Not like yours at Bayport Meadow, Chet!”