The Secret of the Soldier's Gold by Franklin W. Dixon

Author:Franklin W. Dixon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin

9 Buried Alive?

* * *

Frank decided to wait until the dogs were almost at the bushes to toss out the ground pork laced with the sleep aid. He thought that they were far enough from the automobile that the driver and the passengers wouldn’t see him throw out the meat.

There were three dogs—some of the biggest mastiffs he had ever seen. It was tempting to toss out the meat sooner, but Frank forced himself to wait. He could feel Isabel’s tight grasp on his arm. It was almost cutting off the circulation.

“Now!” Joe whispered.

Frank waited a couple more seconds before tossing the meat into the yard, out of the line of vision of the people getting out of the car.

“Look!” Joe whispered. “The driver’s coming to check out what the dogs are barking at.”

“Oh, great,” Frank said. “Now we’re in trouble.”

“What are we going to do?” Isabel whispered.

“We’ll just play it by ear,” Frank said. “If he finds us, we’ll tell him it’s a prank—our climbing over the fence—and that we’re sorry. Joe and I can act like crazy teenagers. If he ever watches any of those American television sitcoms, then maybe he’ll believe our act!”

“That might work,” Isabel said. “I’ll use my American accent.”

“Rodrigo, come back here now and help us!” a voice called from the vicinity of the car. “You’re not going to get out of carrying these bags inside.”

The driver muttered several sentences in Portuguese, stopped, scanned the area where the Hardy boys and Isabel were hiding, and then turned and started back to the car.

“What’d he say?” Joe asked Isabel.

“He thinks the dogs must have cornered some kind of animal,” Isabel replied. “He also doesn’t like these two women. He wishes Senhora Bragança would fire them.” She smirked.

When the driver was finally back at the car and listening to the rantings of the two women, Frank exhaled. “Whoa—that was close.”

For the next few minutes Frank, Joe, and Isabel watched as Rodrigo and the two women carried several paper bags into the house. They also kept an eye out for the mastiffs, who had hungrily devoured all of the ground pork.

By the time Rodrigo and the women were finished unloading the car and were finally inside Senhora Bragança’s house, the mastiffs were sleeping. They had simply lain down where Frank had tossed the meat and gone to sleep.

“It worked!” Isabel said.

“Yeah, Frank, good plan,” Joe said, “but we need to get away from the driveway before the other shift leaves for the night.”

“You’re right,” Frank said. He shone the flashlight on the map that Frau Rilke had drawn. “Let’s orient ourselves.” On the map he found the location of the driveway, which was nearby. “Frau Rilke even drew in the bushes around us,” he said. “Maybe the backyard hasn’t changed all that much.”

“It’s been almost sixty years,” Joe said. “Do you think that’s possible?”

“Yes, it’s possible because Europeans don’t change things as much as Americans do,” Isabel said. “We have buildings here in Lisbon that are several hundred years old.

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