details.

The miner made it. Limp and happy, he came out of the booth, shook hands with the MC, and staggered off with an armload of books containing answers to next week's series of questions. The announcer went into the final commercial, with Barby and Scotty listening attentively. Rick didn't listen. He had a wonderful idea on which he was putting the finishing touches.

As programs shifted, Scotty reached up and turned off the set. Dismal left his place under the table and trotted off to the kitchen.

"Me for a doughnut," Scotty announced.

Barby was still spellbound by the miner's success. "It's just fantastic, utterly, how much he knows." She shook her smooth blond head. "I wish I knew that much about something."

"Want to win a million?" Rick asked.

"Who doesn't?" Barby returned dreamily. Suddenly she stared. "You have a Look on your face," she stated. "Rick Brant, you're cooking up something!"

Rick grinned. "I can win the quiz," he said casually. "It's easy. Let me know if either of you want to win. Of course you might end up in jail if you're not real careful, but I think it'll work."

Scotty looked his disbelief. "Easy, huh? What are you expert on?"

"Nothing," Rick said airily. "And anything. Of course we all know you're an expert on eating, but that's not a category, it's a capacity."

Barby gave what might be described as a lady-like sneer.

Rick shook his head. "It's terrible the way people in this house have no faith in genius. Just terrible." He sighed heavily.

Scotty watched him suspiciously. "All right, Doctor Brant. Give with the great idea."

"Okay." Rick waved at the encircling shelves of books. "Pick a subject. Any subject, so long as it is contained in a very few references. Like the life of the bee, or the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, or the Life of Dickens."

Barby said obligingly, "All right. I pick Ben Franklin. Now what?"

"We get the major books on old Ben, plus the copy of the encyclopedia we need. Then we set up an index, and we put principal categories of information on file cards. For Ben, we'd need the Sayings of Poor Richard, and the dates they appeared, and where. And we'd need a list of his inventions, plus dates. And so on. Generally, we fix things so we can find any answer in a few seconds."

Barby shook her head. "That would be awfully hard. It would take weeks, and whoever operated the file would have to know it nearly by heart."

Rick agreed. "But isn't a million bucks worth a few weeks of effort?"

Rick's famous father, Hartson Brant, walked into the library in time to hear the last comment. His eyebrows went up. "What's all this megabuck talk?"

That was a new word to Barby. "What talk?"

"In the metric system, 'meg' means million. So a megabuck is a million bucks, if you'll pardon the slang."

"Oh—well Rick is going to win a megabuck."

Rick explained rapidly about choosing a subject that could be cross-indexed for ease of reference, then went on. "After we get the subject all set, we choose the contestant. It has to be a real person. We'd need several contestants, because the gimmick could be worked on every big money quiz. Maybe more than once on each. Of course the contestants would have to be members of the Megabuck Mob, as we'll call it."

"I like that," Barby said enthusiastically. "That would make me a Megabuck Moll, wouldn't it?"

"Yep," Scotty agreed. "And Rick can be the Megabuck Mole."

"And you can be the Megabuck Moose, you big ox," Rick finished. He was warming up to his subject now. There had to be a hole in it somewhere, but he hadn't found it yet. "Anyway, we have Ben Franklin on file cards and Barby has studied carefully to be the first contestant. Then what?"

"Someone asks who Ben Franklin was, and I say that he started a chain of department stores," Barby said helpfully.

"Not you," Rick denied. "You know all the right answers. And why? Because the Megabuck Mob is behind you. The Megabuck Moose is going through the cards, and the Megabuck Mole is feeding the answers into the Megabuck Memory Machine, and the Megabuck Moll in maidenly modesty mumbles madly—"

"Help him," Scotty interrupted. "His lips are stuck together. He can't say anything but mmmmm."

But Barby was interested now. "And how does the Memory Machine madly machinate and murmur the answers?"

"Mmm," Rick murmured. "That is the secret!"

Hartson Brant threatened his son with a handy volume of the Physics Handbook. "Out with it, young man. This is no time to keep secrets, now that we're all partners in the deal."

Rick sighed. He waved at Barby. "Look at her. So young, so smart, so pretty. But the poor girl has a very slight handicap. She has to wear a hearing aid...."

Scotty got it then. "Hey! Rick, that's great! The hearing aid would be a radio receiver!"

Barby got it, too. She finished in a rush, "And the Megabuck Mob would be watching on TV, and digging out the answers, and the Memory Machine would be a radio transmitter ..."

"It wouldn't matter about the soundproof booth," Scotty chimed in, "because radio will go right through the walls!"

Hartson Brant held both hands to his head in mock horror. "To think that my only son should turn out to be a halfway criminal genius!"

Rick glanced up at his father suspiciously. "Halfway?" He knew from the word that the scientist had immediately spotted some reason why his gimmick wouldn't work.

"Never mind, son." Hartson Brant put a hand on Rick's shoulder. "The Megabuck Moll can bake you a cake with a file in it, so you can break out of jail. I'm sure you won't mind being a fugitive from justice."

A harsh growl from the doorway caused them all to whirl around, startled. "He'll never get a chance. The Megabuck Mob is pinched as of right now. The federal government is taking over this island!"

Crouched in the doorway, submachine gun cradled in his arms, was an officer of the United States Coast Guard!

CHAPTER II

The Invasion of Spindrift

Hartson Brant reacted first. He said severely, "I've tried to teach Rick that one never points a firearm at people. You're setting him a bad example." Then the scientist smiled and held out his hand. "This is an unexpected pleasure, Steve. Why didn't you let us know you were coming? And why the disguise?"

Steve Ames, a chief agent of JANIG, the Joint Army-Navy Intelligence Group with which Spindrift had so often worked, straightened up and grinned. He winked at the astonished young people. "Hi, gang."

The trio chorused, "Hi, Steve."

Steve shook hands with Hartson Brant, then explained, "I'm not really setting a bad example. If you'll look closely, you'll see that the bolt of this chopper is open, the safety is on, and there isn't a round in the chamber."

"But why carry it at all?" Barby demanded.

Rick closed his mouth. He had been about to ask the same thing. He felt a tingle of excitement. When Steve Ames showed up on Spindrift, adventure wasn't far off. The federal agent came to Spindrift only for help, and then only when his usual sources had failed.

The first time, in the case of The Whispering Box Mystery, the Spindrifters had worked with Steve in Washington. Recently, quite by accident, the boys had become involved in a JANIG case while vacationing in the Virgin Islands. As the case of The Wailing Octopus came to an end, Steve had warned them that he might see them soon. And now here he was.

"The reason for the chopper is a long story," Steve answered Barby. "But the reason for