Free Disaster for Hire by Franklin W. Dixon Page B

named him."
    Frank guided the boy to his front door and rang the bell. "Good luck, Sean."
    He and Jenny hurried away into the night.
    A block away a battered Jeep came roaring up, jerking to a stop across the street from them.
    A husky man in a plaid mackinaw grabbed up a medical bag and jumped from the vehicle.
    He was running up across the lawn when the front door was yanked open.
    "Doc, hurry! She's hardly breathing," cried a thin man framed in the light. "She's dying, she's dying."
    "Easy, Andy. We'll save her."
    The thin man was sobbing. "But she's hardly breathing."
    The doctor hurried in, the door was shut and the light cut off.
    "This is worse than I figured," said Frank.
    "It's exactly what my father was afraid of," whispered Jenny.
    Frank and Jenny continued toward the three-story wooden mansion, climbing around the hillside to hit it from the rear. The night wind grew stronger. Dry leaves swirled down from the scratching tree branches.
    "No signs of guards," said the girl.
    Frank carefully scanned the shadows. "They might figure the sheriff's keeping all strangers out of town."
    They reached the edge of the woods. The large old house, with its towers and slanting shingle roofs, rose up about a hundred yards away.
    "Not many lights showing at the back here," Jenny whispered.
    "So we ought to be able to get across the lawn unnoticed," said Frank. "Then we can try that door at the top of those back steps."
    Jenny took in a deep breath. "Ready?"
    "Let's go."
    They stepped free of the woods, and side by side ran through the overgrown lawn.
    Up the stairs they skipped silently. Frank was just reaching for the doorknob when the sound of shouting broke out from upstairs.
    Then the window above him shattered, raining down jagged shards of glass.

Chapter 12
    JOE HAD BEEN CARRIED to a second floor bedroom about an hour earlier. Washburn had dumped Joe on a swaybacked four-poster bed.
    "Doc's pretty sure he's got a cure this time," he'd said to Joe. "So you probably won't die after he infects you." Then he left.
    It took Joe nearly five minutes to roll to the edge of the bed and elbow himself up to a sitting position.
    There was a carved-wood nightstand next to the bed. Bouncing along, he turned his back to it and tugged its drawer open with his bound hand.
    He pulled too hard and the drawer came all the way out. Falling to the floor, it spilled its contents.
    Joe turned, looking down at the stuff scattered over the faded Persian rug.
    He saw a small pair of scissors among the many contents. They were only small silvery nail scissors, but they might work to cut through the ropes.
    Grunting, Joe worked himself to a standing position. Then he lost his balance, teetered, and fell over on the floor. He landed on the empty drawer, cracking one of its sides. Great. Lots of noise, he thought.
    But apparently no one heard it.
    Twisting and rolling, Joe groped around on the floor, his hands still tied securely behind his back.
    "Ouch!" he said into his gag when his palm closed on a pincushion.
    He did better on his next try, locating the scissors.
    Because of the way his hands were tied Joe couldn't use the scissors in the usual way. He worked one blade as a saw and started slicing through the plastic line.
    There was a gilded clock on the mantelpiece across the room. It chimed every fifteen minutes. Joe knew he'd been working on the cord for half an hour.
    Just after the chimes died, he heard footsteps approaching outside the room. If someone came in here now it would spoil everything. But the steps passed on.
    When the clock chimed again, Joe's hands were free. Sitting up, he massaged his wrists for a moment, undid the gag, and started on his ankles.
    After he was completely free, Joe stood up and walked back and forth a few paces until his legs began to feel fairly reliable.
    Scanning the room, he settled on an old straightback chair against the wall. He turned it upside-down on the bed, then twisted off a sturdy leg. It would make