Franklin Dixon - The House on the Cliff

common thought.

They would rush the king of the smugglers and overpower him!

CHAPTER XX

The Smuggler's Request

AS THE three Hardys crept forward, hoping to overpower Snattman before he saw them, they heard a

voice outside the house say, "You'll never get away with this, Snattman! You may as well give up without

any shooting!"

"I'll never give up!"

"The house is surrounded with troopers and Coast Guard men!"

"What do I care?" Snattman shouted, waving his arms out the window. "I got three hostages here, and

I've got one of the Coast Guard."

"He's in the house too?"

Snattman laughed. "Trying to catch me; eh? Well, I'm not going to answer that question."

There was silence outside the house. This seemed to worry the man. He cried out, "It won't do you any

good to talk things over! I got you where I want you and-"

Like three stalking panthers Frank, Joe, and their father pounced upon the unwary smuggler. Mr. Hardy

knocked the man's gun from his hand. It flew out the window and thudded to the ground below. The

boys pinned his arms back and buckled in his knees.

From below came a whoop of joy. "The Hardys have captured Snattman!" The voice was Chet

Morton's.

"My men will never let you in here!" the victim screamed. He snarled, twisted, and turned in his captors'

grip.

Mr. Hardy, fearful that Snattman would shout to order his men upstairs, clamped a hand over the

smuggler's mouth. By this time there was terrific confusion inside and outside the Pollitt place. State

troopers and the Coast Guard men had burst into both the front and rear doors.

Others guarded the sides of the house to prevent any escape from the windows. A few shots were fired,

but soon the smuggling gang gave up without fighting further. The capture of their leader and the sudden

attack had unnerved them.

The Hardys waited upstairs with their prisoner. In a few moments Chet and Tony appeared and behind

them, to the utter astonishment of Frank and Joe, were Biff, Phil, and Jerry.

Stories were quickly exchanged and Mr. Hardy praised Frank's and Joe's chums for their efforts.

All this time Snattman glowered maliciously.

In a few moments chief petty officers Bertram and Brown appeared in the second-floor hall with Captain

Ryder. Immediately the state trooper fastened handcuffs onto the prisoner. He was about to take him

away when Frank spoke up:

"There's someone else involved in this smuggling who hasn't been captured yet."

"You mean the man who got away from here in the truck?" Officer Ryder asked. "We've set up a

roadblock for him and expect to capture him any minute."

Frank shook his head. "Ali Singh, the crewman on the Marco Polo, has a friend who owns a small cargo

ship. Right now, it's lying somewhere offshore. Snattman was thinking of putting my dad, Joe, and me on

it and arranging things so that we never got home again."

The king of the smugglers, who had been silent for several minutes, now cried out, "You're crazy! There's

not a word of truth in it! There isn't any boat offshore!"

The others ignored the man. As soon as he stopped yelling, Joe took up the story. "I have a hunch you'll

find that your Coast Guard man is a prisoner on that cargo ship. The name of the captain is Foster."

"You mean our man Ayres is on that ship?" Petty Officer Brown asked unbelievingly.

"We don't know anyone named Ayres," Frank began. He stopped short and looked at his brother. They

nodded significantly at each other, then Frank asked, "Does Ayres go under the name of Jones?"

"He might, if he were cornered. You see, he's sort of a counterspy for the Coast Guard. He pretended to

join the smugglers and we haven't heard from him since Saturday."

"I found out about him," Snattman bragged. "That name Jones didn't fool us. I saw him make a sneak trip

to your patrol boat."

Frank and Joe decided this was the scene they had seen through the telescope. They told about their

rescue of "Jones" after a hand grenade had nearly killed him. They also gave an account of how his

kidnapers had come to the Kane farmhouse, bound up the farmer and his wife, and taken "Jones."

Skipper Brown said he would send a patrol boat out to investigate the waters in the area and try to find

Captain Foster's ship.

"We'll wait here for you," Captain Ryder stated. "This case seems to be one for both our branches of

service. Two kidnapings on land and a theft from the Marco Polo, as well as an undeclared vessel

offshore."

While he was gone, the Hardys attempted to question Snattman. He refused to admit any guilt in

connection with smuggling operations or the shipment of stolen goods from one state to another. Frank

decided to talk to him along different lines, hoping that the smuggler would inadvertently confess

something he did not intend to.

"I heard you inherited this house from your uncle, Mr. Pollitt," Frank began.

"That's right. What's it to you?"

Frank was unruffled. "I was curious about the tunnel and the stairways and the cave," he said pleasantly.

"Did your uncle build them?"

Snattman dropped his sullen attitude. "No, he didn't," the smuggler answered. "My uncle found them all

by accident. He started digging through his cellar wall to enlarge the place, and broke right through to that

corridor."

"I see," said Frank. "Have you any idea who did build it?"

Snattman said that his uncle had come to the conclusion that the tunnel and pond had been discovered by

pirates long, long ago. They apparently had decided it would be an ideal hide-out and had built the steps

all the way to the top of the ground.

"Of course the woodshed wasn't there then," Snattman explained. "At least not the one that's here now.

The trap door was, though, but there was a tumble-down building over it."

"How about the corridor? Was it the same size when your uncle found it?"

"Yes," the smuggler answered. "My uncle figured that was living quarters for the pirates when they

weren't on their ship."

"Pretty fascinating story," Tony Prito spoke up.

Several seconds of silence followed. Snattman's eyes darted from one boy to another. Finally they

fastened on Frank Hardy and he said:

"Now that I'm going to prison, the eyepieces to your telescope, and your motorcycle tools, won't do me

any good. You'll find them in a drawer in the kitchen."

"Thanks a lot," said Frank.

There was another short silence. Then the smuggler went on, his head down and his eyes almost closed,

"Mr. Hardy, I envy you. And I-I never thought I'd be making this kind of a confession. You know almost

everything about what I've been doing. I'll tell the whole story later. Since they're going to find that Coast

Guard officer, Ayres, on Foster's ship there's no use in my holding out any longer.

"I said I envy you, Mr. Hardy. It's because you brought up two such fine boys and they got swell friends.

Me-I wasn't so lucky. My father died when I was little. I was pretty headstrong and my mother couldn't

manage me. I began to make the wrong kind of friends and after that-you know how it is.

"My uncle, who owned this place, might have helped me, but he was mean and selfish and never gave us

any money. The most he would do was invite my mother and me here once in a while for a short visit. I

hated him because he made my mother work very hard around the house all the time we were here. It

wasn't any vacation for her.

"One of the times when I was here my uncle showed me the pirates' hide-out and I never forgot it. After I