The Prime-Time Crime by Franklin W. Dixon Page A

control the van. He felt as though he had inhaled some kind of poison gas.
    Frank leaped out of the passenger door and gulped down breaths of fresh air. Then he ran around the van and yanked open his brother’s door. The younger Hardy tumbled out of the van into his arms.
    â€œHey, are you kids out of your minds?” a man shouted angrily.
    Frank turned to see a nearby driver jump out of his car and run toward the Hardys. He was about to yell something else when he saw Joe slumped unconscious in Frank’s arms.
    â€œSomething’s wrong with my brother,” Frank explained. “He collapsed while he was driving.”
    Frank dragged Joe’s limp form to the curb in front of the van, out of the way of traffic. After a few seconds, Joe began to stir groggily.
    â€œWant me to call an ambulance?” the driver asked. “Sorry I yelled at you. I thought you were one of those reckless drivers.”
    â€œNot usually,” Frank said. “I think my brother’s starting to wake up. Thanks for the offer, though.”
    After the man had left, Frank leaned into the cab of the van and looked around the driver’s seat. He smelled the same acrid odor he had smelled earlier. He looked under the seat and saw the corner of a metal canister.
    Frank reached under the seat and pulled out the canister. Holding it at arm’s length, he placed it on the pavement some distance from where Joe was lying. The canister was open, and there was a foul-smelling liquid inside. The label on the outside of the canister was covered with chemical names that Frank didn’t recognize.
    He remembered how Joe had noticed earlier that the door of the van was unlocked. Someone must have jimmied the lock and placed the canister under the seat.
    â€œW-What happened?” Joe asked groggily, pulling himself up on one elbow.
    â€œYou got a noseful of whatever’s in that jar,” Frank said, pointing at the canister. “I’ve got a feeling it’s not something that human beings are supposed to breathe.”
    â€œWhy am I lying on the side of the road?” Joe asked, looking around.
    â€œGravity, mostly,” Frank said. “You passed out while you were driving.”
    Joe’s eyes opened wide. “Passed out? While I was driving? I could have been killed!”
    â€œI think that was the idea,” Frank said quietly.
    â€œHow did it happen?” Joe asked as he slowly got to his feet. “Where did that jar come from?”
    â€œI’m not sure,” Frank answered. “But I think we’ll be asking a few people back at WBPT about that tomorrow morning. Right now, we need to air out the van.”
    The Hardys pushed the van to the side of the road and opened all the doors. Frank found a plastic bag in the back of the van and fastened it around the mouth of the canister with a rubber band to keep the gas from escaping again. Then he and his brother headed straight for home.
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    The next morning, Frank and Joe entered the WBPT studios by the back door and walked down the hall to Marcy Simons’s office.
    â€œDo you know what this is?” Frank asked Marcy, placing the canister on her desk.
    Marcy recoiled at the sight of the canister. “Get that stuff away from me!” she exclaimed. “That’s poisonous. Breathe too much of it and you’ll be out like a light.”
    â€œWe know,” Joe said. “We found out the hard way.”
    â€œThe engineers use that stuff for really tough electronic cleaning jobs,” Marcy said, “but only under carefully controlled conditions. They keep it under lock and key in a storage room. Where’d you get hold of it?”
    â€œSomebody stuck it under the driver’s seat in our van,” Frank said, “knowing that one of us would breathe the stuff. Joe was the lucky one who got to try it out—and almost got both of us killed when he passed out at the