Frank's Turn

Disclaimer: For my literary purposes, Frank and Joe Hardy are both of the legal age of consent.

Book 2, The House on the Cliff, also by Leslie McFarlane and copyright 1927; now in the public domain.

Frank and Joe Hardy's dad Fenton has been missing for a couple weeks. He disappeared after a random outing to investigate the possibility of an international dope smuggling gang operating in his home town. At the end of Chapter 11, Frank, Joe, and their chums are investigating the titular house, which they had recently seen to be unoccupied, neglected, decrepit, and possibly haunted. Now, however, there's a trio of unsavory characters hanging about and the place is all fixt up. Frank finagles a glimpse inside the house and sees what appears to be his father's cap hanging on a peg in the kitchen. Our story continues:

CHAPTER XII

Pointed Questions

Frank thought quickly. He must ascertain the truth!

The cap, he was almost sure, was the one his father had worn on the morning he had left home. But he wanted to look at it closely, because he knew he might be mistaken and that it would not do to make any accusations unless he were sure of his ground.

‘‘I’m very thirsty,’’ he said quickly. ‘‘Do you mind if I have a drink?’’

Redhead and the woman looked at one another without enthusiasm. It was plain that they wished to get rid of their visitors as soon as possible. But they could not refuse such an innocent and reasonable request.

‘‘Come into the kitchen,’’ said Redhead grudgingly.

This was just what Frank wanted. He followed the man into the kitchen of the Polucca place. Redhead pointed to a water tap. A dipper was hanging from a nail near by.

‘‘Go ahead,’’ he grunted.

Frank went over to the tap and as he did so he passed the cap on the peg. He took a swift look at the cap.

He had made no mistake. It was his father’s.

Then he received a shock that almost stunned him. For a second he almost stopped in his tracks, but then he recollected himself and moved mechanically on toward the tap.

He had seen bloodstains!

On the lower edge of the cap were three large stains, reddish in color. They could have been made by nothing but blood.

In a daze, Frank turned on the water, filled the dipper and drank. At last he turned away, conscious that Redhead had been eyeing him carefully all the time.

‘‘Thanks,’’ he said, and again cast a glance at the peg.

The cap was gone!

Redhead had undoubtedly snatched it off the hook—but he certainly had not had time, in the few seconds Frank had drunk the water, to stow it anywhere other than on his person.

Frank’s mind raced, looking for a sure course of action. He wanted keenly to retrieve that cap from Redhead to prove to his friends and family and the Bayport Police that criminal misadventure had befallen his father. But how?

And outlandish idea occurred to him and he could not shake it. ‘‘Well,’’ he told himself, ‘‘the only plan is necessarily the best plan.’’

Frank turned fully from the kitchen tap to face Redhead. ‘‘You know, mister,’’ he said quietly as he doffed his jacket and draped it over a kitchen chair, ‘‘I am still kind of thirsty.’’ He dropped his gaze slowly and deliberately from Redhead’s eyes to his fly and let it linger there. He began walking slowly toward Redhead. He licked his lips. He kicked the kitchen door closed. He unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, and then the next. ‘‘So very thirsty . . .’’

Redhead, for all his rough and tumble posturing, looked scared. ‘‘Kid,’’ he hissed as Frank continued to unbutton, ‘‘what the hell are you doing?’’ He glanced at the closed kitchen door as if afraid one of his cohort were about to open it. But Frank, whose eyes had not left Redhead’s fly, could see from the growing bulge there that his ruse was having the desired effect. Still, he needed Redhead to be fully distracted so that he could hunt about his person for his father’s cap. He pulled off his shirt, peeled his undershirt over his head, and dropped to his knees in front of Redhead.

The tough guy started as if an unexpected firework had exploded. His shoulders fell back against the wall he was standing in front of and he propped himself there. But he made no aggressive or even defensive moves against Frank. Instead, he leaned over to the kitchen door and cranked the deadbolt into place. ‘‘Well,’’ thought Frank, ‘‘here goes nothing.’’

He unzipped Redhead’s fly and deftly fished out the thug’s swelling cock. Pale and pink and lined with blue veins, the cock was fatter in the middle, like a cheap cigar. Redhead’s foreskin was forward and only the tip of the glans showed, glistening on the end with a trace of pre-cum.

Frank, who had seen very few penes up close like this, was genuinely fascinated. His mission here was wholly practical but he took a moment of aesthetic appreciation to say to himself, ‘‘This is a very pretty penis.’’

He gave it a couple gentle tugs. ‘‘Oh, Daddy,’’ he said, looking up into Redhead’s eyes, ‘‘just what I wanted for Christmas.’’ And he put the whole thing in his mouth.

‘‘Oh, Jesus, kid!’’ Redhead blurted involuntarily. His hips were already churning slightly, drawing himself out of and then pushing himself back into Frank’s mouth. He let out a soft moan. ‘‘Oh, fuck, kid, you do that so good! Oh Jesus, yes, suck that cock, boy. Oh fuck, oh Jesus, oh fuck . . .’’

He continued along that line of quiet encouragement until he was interrupted by a sudden clatter at the doorknob, followed by an angry pounding on the door. ‘‘What are you doing in there?’’ the woman shrilled.

Redhead shot a terrified glance at Frank, who, without disengaging for even a second from Redhead’s cock, met his glance and returned the most reassuring, complicit expression he could muster. He shook his head slightly as if to say, ‘‘I won’t tell if you won’t.’’ Striving for an even-keeled tone in his voice, Redhead hollered back, ‘‘I’m havin’ an important conversation with our guest here. Give me a minute, why don’t ya?’’

Frank, meanwhile, had undone Redhead’s trousers entirely and hauled them downward—backing off the cock just long enough to pull the boxer shorts down as well—but Redhead’s wide-legged stance prevented them falling farther than his knees—so inspection of the trouser pockets was a riskier proposition than had they been at Redhead's ankles.

Taking pains to keep his oral caressed in constant rhythm synchronized with Redhead’s hips, and sending one hand to explore Redhead’s inner thighs, teasing upward toward his taint and his ass, Frank used his other hand surreptitiously to palpate Redhead’s front trouser pockets for his father’s cap. It was not there. He began reaching for the back pockets, but quickly realize that reach would be awkward and obvious. He needed to diversify his distraction.

Frank pulled off of Redhead’s cock and, continuing to jack it with his hand, looked up again into Redhead’s eyes and said, ‘‘Turn around, Daddy. I have a present for you.’’

He guided Redhead’s legs, and Redhead obliged, turning toward the wall. Frank gave him no time to think, to consider this odd turn of events, but immediately reached up and pried Redhead’s buttocks apart and applied his tongue to the vicinity of Redhead’s anus.

It was not clean.

Frank repressed his gag reflex, reassured himself that this was a necessary tactic, and went—as the parlance goes—to town on Redhead’s butthole.

This time Redhead’s ‘‘Oh fuck!’’ was not even a little bit quiet, and it earned another inquiry from outside the door. ‘‘You killin’ the kid in there?’’

‘‘Mind your business! The kid’s—aaah!—fine. He’s just . . . fine.’’ After which he dropped his voice again so only Frank could hear him: ‘‘Yeah, you’re fine, kiddo . . . just fine . . . oh, Jesus, so fucking fine . . . oh, my fucking Lord and Saviour . . . Oh, sweet Jesus . . .’’

It was a profoundly strange moment when Frank realized that this likely criminal, up whose filthy butthole he was even now thrusting his tongue, was crying.

Strange as that realization was, however, there was no time to linger on it—for Frank had located the gray cap crumpled in Redhead’s back left trouser pocket, extracted it, and crushed it into his own trouser pocket. Taking stock of the scene in the kitchen around him and the likely scene outside, Frank counted to three and bolted. He grabbed his jacket and shirt in one lithe swoop—forgoing the retrieval of his undershirt as wasteful of milliseconds—and before Redhead realized what was happening he had the deadbolt unbolted and the kitchen door wide open, and he fairly flew out into the yard—shirtless, a baffling sight to all spectators—booming, ‘‘Let’s go, boys! We’re done here!’’

He ran as fast as his feet could carry him toward the motorbikes. His brother and their chums lost the briefest moment in sheer astonishment before following suit and high-tailing it away from the Polucca estate. Frank got in only one good backward glimpse of the scene he was fleeing, but it was a fine one: Redhead staggering out the kitchen door with his trousers not fully raised and his engorged cock wagging to and fro, about which attitude his female companion could say nothing but ‘‘What in the fuck?’’

‘‘We’re sorry we troubled you!’’ Joe yelled as they all fled. ‘‘Good-bye!’’

Once they had put some distance between themselves and the unknown occupants currently haunting Polucca Manor, Frank motioned for all to stop. It was at the same shed they had stopped on the previous visit when his engine misbehaved. Only now did Frank put his shirt and jacket back on. He could not help laughing to himself at the ribald awfulness of his perfectly successful scheme. The boys were beside themselves with curiosity.

‘‘So you got a long, tall drink of water, did you?’’

‘‘Are we all on the run from the law now?’’

‘‘Really, Frank, what on earth happened back there?’’

‘‘Do you know why I went into the kitchen?’’ Frank began.

‘‘Why?’’ they demanded eagerly, and Joe put in:

‘‘I thought there was something fishy about the way you asked for that drink. What did you see?’’

‘‘I saw Dad’s cap hanging on a peg!’’

This caused an immediate sensation. Phil Cohen whistled in amazement.

‘‘So he had been there! They were lying!’’

‘‘Are you sure it was Dad’s cap?’’ asked Joe.

‘‘Positive. But if you doubt it, see for yourself.’’ Frank produced the cap from his pocket, un-crumpling it as much as possible. ‘‘I’m not even going to tell you what I had to do to get it back from Redhead when he tried to squirrel it away. But look here—’’ Frank turned back the inside flap and  showed the initials F.H. imprinted in indelible ink on the leather band. ‘‘It’s dad’s cap, all right. But I knew it the second I saw it. I’d have recognized it anywhere!’’

Frank paused and his countenance dropped. ‘‘But fellas, more alarming than that, look here—there are blood stains on it. In fact, now that I see it up close, the inside of the cap makes me very worried that the wearer was severely injured. The blood stains are much more prevalent than was obvious when I saw it hanging on the hook.’’

The boys looked closely at the cap and then looked at one another in silence.

‘‘I don’t like the look of those bloodstains,’’ said Joe, in a low voice. ‘‘Dad must have been badly hurt. He may have been—’’ Joe left the sentence unfinished.

‘‘He may have been murdered,’’ Frank said firmly. ‘‘And we’re going to find out about it.’’

‘‘We can’t let them get away with this.’’

‘‘I’ll say we can’t,’’ agreed Chet. ‘‘And I’ll say this, too—that cozy trio back there is up to no good. We need to be very busy bees in their bonnets.’’

 

Shitty artwork by Rudy Nappi accompanying the 1959 revision by Harriet S. Adams: