The Secret of the Soldier's Gold (3 page)

“That must have been a very difficult time for everyone,” Frank said.

“It was. Well, here's your hotel,” Inspector Oliveira said. “I think you'll find it quite comfortable.”

“It looks lovely,” Mrs. Hardy said.

“That's a nice little park across the street too,” Aunt Gertrude added, pointing out the window. “It'll be a good place to get some fresh air.”

“I plan to get my fresh air on the beach, as soon as possible!” Joe said.

•   •   •

As it turned out, getting to where Frau Rilke had once lived wasn't very easy. After the Hardys checked in to their hotel and unpacked, Frank and Joe stopped by a newsstand just off the lobby and picked up a more detailed tramline map. Joe discovered that they would have to change trams a couple of times. With Frank navigating, though, the trip went without a hitch.

“This thing is proving to be much simpler than I'd thought it would be,” Joe said.

“Well, so far it is,” Frank said. “Remember, though, our mission's just begun.”

When they finally arrived at 22 Rua de Francisco de Almeida, Joe said, “I think I might have spoken too soon.”

The house was more a mansion than a house. A high, wrought-iron fence topped with dangerous-looking spikes surrounded the huge backyard. Guard dogs patrolled the perimeter of the property inside the fence.

“I wonder who lives here now?” Joe whispered.

Frank shrugged. “It must be somebody important,” he said. He shook his head in dismay. “I certainly never expected this.”

“Me neither,” Joe said. “How do we talk to the person who lives inside?”

“Well, I guess we just walk up to the front door and ring the bell,” Frank suggested, starting toward the house.

Frank had taken only a couple of steps when a guard with a machine gun jumped out from behind a shrub.

“O que quer?”
he demanded in Portuguese.

“I don't remember learning that from Catarina,” Joe said.

“What do you want?” the guard repeated in English.

“We're from the United States,” Frank said. “A friend of ours lived here in 1943.”

“We need to talk to the person who lives here now,” Joe added. “It's kind of complicated, but it's very important to our friend.”

The guard looked, Frank thought, as if he were trying to translate what they had just said and make some sense of it. After a minute he said, “Do you have any identification?” He positioned his machine gun so that it was pointing directly at them.

“Here,” Frank said. He offered his passport to the guard.

The guard took it, studied it carefully for a moment, and then returned it.

“You?” the guard said to Joe. “Let me see your passport.”

Joe handed over his passport, and the guard studied it just as carefully as he had studied Frank's.

Finally satisfied that neither Frank nor Joe meant harm to whoever lived in this house, the guard said, “Senhora Bragança is here now. You may ring the bell.”

Frank and Joe walked up the steps to the porch. Behind them they heard a clicking sound, and they knew that the guard still had his machine gun aimed at them.

Frank pushed a button and they heard a chiming inside the house. Within a few seconds the front door opened, revealing an elderly woman.

“We're Frank and Joe Hardy, and we're from the United States,” Frank said. “Would you please tell
Senhora Bragança that we'd like to speak to her?”

“I'm Maria Bragança,” the woman said. “What is it that you wish?”

For just a few seconds both Frank and Joe were taken aback. After their encounter with the guard, it hadn't occurred to them that Senhora Bragança would actually open the door herself.
She must have been watching through the window,
Joe thought.
Probably she had already been informed by another guard that two Americans wanted to talk to her.

“We're here on behalf of the woman who used to live in this house back in 1943. Her name is Brigette Rilke, but her last name was Fleissner back then,” he said. “She sent us on a very important mission to bring back something that belongs to her family.”

Maria Bragança's face turned pale. “Leave at once!” she shouted at them. “Never come back to this house!” With that, Senhora Bragança slammed the door in their faces.

Frank and Joe looked at each other.

“I think we struck a nerve,” Joe said. “She knew exactly what we're looking for, didn't she? And we didn't even mention the gold.”

“I think so,” Frank agreed.

Joe turned around and looked at the guard who was now staring coldly at them. “Now what?” he whispered to Frank.

“Well, we can't just stand here—that's for sure,” Frank said.

The Hardy boys started back down the steps.

The guard followed them with the barrel of his gun.

Just as Frank and Joe reached the street the guard was distracted by an approaching automobile. A large metal gate at the side of the house swung open and the automobile drove through it. The guard stood at the gate to make sure that it closed again, and then he resumed his duties near the shrubs at the front of the house.

Out of the corner of one eye Frank watched as people climbed out of the automobile. He saw two women dressed in uniforms—they looked like they might have been maids. Frank noted the time on his watch.

“Senhora Bragança must be really wealthy to have so many people working for her,” Joe said.

Frank stopped. “Maybe that's it, Joe—maybe that's the reason she looked so frightened when we mentioned Frau Rilke,” he said. “What if
she
found the suitcase with the gold bars? That could be the source of her fortune.”

“You're right, Frank,” Joe said. “And if that's the case, there's probably nothing we can do about getting the gold back.”

Frank started walking down the sidewalk, away
from Senhora Bragança's house. “This whole neighborhood is suspicious,” he whispered. “There's a woman watching us from that house across the street. I think we should get out of here.”

Joe stopped. “Wait a minute, Frank. Frau Rilke said the only other person she had told about the suitcase was a little girl who lived across the street,” he said. “Maybe that woman who's looking at us knows something about Frau Rilke's friend. Let's go and talk to her.”

Just as Frank and Joe started toward the front door of the house across the street, the woman who had been watching them moved away from the window.

Frank stopped, but Joe continued walking.

“We've come this far, Frank—I think this is worth a try,” Joe said. “Maybe she thinks we're door-to-door salesmen, and that's why she left the window?”

“Maybe—okay,” Frank said. He hurried to catch up with Joe.

When they reached the front door, Joe rang the bell. Both boys were surprised when the woman who had been watching them immediately opened the door and looked right at them.

“Sim?”
she said.

“Fala inglês?”
Joe asked.

“Sim,”
the woman said. “Yes, I speak English.”

“We're Frank and Joe Hardy,” Joe said. He nodded across the street to Senhora Bragança's house. “A friend of ours in the United States used to live over there when she was a little girl, and we . . .”

Frank noticed the woman giving them a puzzled look.

“Well, Frau Rilke is really a friend of a friend,” he explained.

The woman nodded.

“When she lived here back in 1943, her name was Brigette Fleissner,” Joe said. “She . . .”

The woman gasped. “Brigette! My dear friend, Brigette!”

Frank and Joe looked at each other, surprised.

“Are you Rosa Santos?” Frank asked.

“Yes, yes I am. My married name, however, is de Feira,” Senhora de Feira said. “This was my childhood home. I inherited it from my parents after they died.” She stood aside. “Oh, please come in and tell me all about Brigette! This is such a wonderful surprise.”

Joe couldn't believe their luck. Maybe his initial feeling on their way to Senhora Bragança's house—that this mission would be easier than they had thought—had been on target after all.

Frank, on the other hand, was having second thoughts. As Senhora de Feira led them into the
interior of her house he felt a chill—not just from the unusually cold air around him, but from the house itself. Very little light entered the house, and the dark, heavy furniture created a very somber setting. This was not the house of very happy people, Frank observed to himself.

Finally in the back of the house they reached a room with a huge fireplace, which, though full of burning logs, gave off very little warmth until Frank and Joe were standing right in front of it. The teens both wondered why the woman had a fire burning with such nice weather outside, but they let it go.

Senhora de Feira sat in a straight-backed side chair on the left of the fireplace. A small, round reading table, topped by an ornate lamp, stood to the right of the chair. “I'm sorry if the house seems chilly to you,” she apologized. “This house is always a bit cold.”

“It's fine,” Frank said hurriedly, realizing his and Joe's slightly cautious behavior might have seemed rude to Senhora de Feira. “This is just such a beautiful fireplace—I couldn't resist looking at it more closely.”

“Thank you. Won't you please join me?” Senhora de Feira motioned to a sofa that faced her chair. “I'll have some good Portuguese coffee sent in.” She pulled a cord at the side of the table. “Actually, we use Brazilian coffee, but Brazil was settled by
the Portuguese—as I'm sure you know—so I still refer to it as Portuguese coffee.”

Senhora de Feira smiled, though Frank thought her smile seemed forced. She then turned to face the fire, and for several moments she seemed totally lost in her own thoughts.

Frank was beginning to feel even more uncomfortable than before, and was thinking that he and Joe should come up with an excuse to leave, but he knew that if they were going to succeed in finding Frau Rilke's suitcase with the gold bars, they'd probably need Senhora de Feira's help. He took a deep breath and tried to calm down.

For once in his life Joe had nothing to say either, so the three of them sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the crackling fire. Finally a maid walked in with the coffee and broke the quiet.

The arrival of the coffee seemed to break Senhora de Feira's trance. “Oh, wonderful, wonderful!” she said.

The maid set the coffee service on a buffet, poured three small cups of coffee, and served everyone.

“Un garoto,”
Senhora de Feira said. “With milk. I hope you don't mind. It's a wonderful treat, I think.”

“It looks delicious,” Frank said.

Joe nodded.

They both took a couple of sips. It was much
stronger than either one of them liked, but they were determined to finish it to be polite.

“Now then, tell me all about my dear Brigette,” Senhora de Feira said. “Please don't leave anything out.”

Joe started the story. He told her how they had asked Catarina Otero to teach them some Portuguese and how when they went to her birthday party to hear some of the language being spoken, they had heard Frau Rilke's story.

“We told her we'd try to find the suitcase with the gold bars so she could help her family through their financial problems,” Frank finished. “That's why we . . .”

“Ah, yes, the suitcase with the gold bars,” Senhora de Feira said, her eyes gleaming. “I remember that story as if Brigette had told it to me yesterday.” She paused for several seconds, turned to stare at the fireplace, then turned back to look at the Hardys. “Her father buried it in a park, but there are so many parks in Lisbon that it would be impossible to dig them all up.” She smiled. “Did she perhaps tell you in which park we—I mean,
you
—should look?”

The question took Joe by surprise. He glanced over at Frank, who was still looking at Senhora de Feira. “Well, no, she didn't,” he said. “I think—”

“As a matter of fact,” Frank interrupted him, “we
were sort of hoping that you might have an idea about which park we should check out.”

Senhora de Feira's face sagged noticeably. It was obvious to Joe that she had been hoping to find out that information from them.

For several minutes she said nothing, alternately staring at the fireplace and the two boys.

All of a sudden she rose from her chair. “It just occurred to me that I was supposed to call a friend of mine about dinner tomorrow,” she said. “Please excuse me. I shan't be long.” With that Senhora de Feira left the room.

“What do you think?” Joe whispered to Frank.

“I don't feel good about any of this,” Frank replied.

“Me neither,” Joe said. “But what are we going to do?”

Frank shrugged. “Did you notice when I mentioned the problems that Frau Rilke's family is having, Senhora de Feira didn't even respond?” he asked. “All she seemed concerned about was the gold.”

Joe nodded. “She said she could remember the story very well,” he said, “but I think she remembers it because it's been on her mind all these years.”

“I think you're right, and that bothers me,” Frank agreed. “She almost seemed, well,
greedy
about it.”

“We did learn one thing,” Joe said. “Senhora
de Feira doesn't know that the gold is buried in the backyard across the street. She really does think it's buried in one of Lisbon's parks. Do you think we should tell her that it's not?”

Frank thought for a minute. “If we put ourselves in her place, maybe we'd want some of the gold too.” He looked around. “At first I thought this place was really elegant, but now I think it's probably seen better days. It's beginning to look kind of shabby.”