The Disappearing Floor

Title card for 'The Disappearing Floor'

**The Disappearing Floor** is the fifth episode of the first season of *The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries*. It premiered on March 6, 1977.

## Synopsis

The Hardy Boys, while doing some legwork on a case of their father's involving a missing scientist and stolen equipment, see a UFO that leads them to a mysterious mansion full of illusions, where floors disappear and rooms change size.

## Cast

* Shaun Cassidy as Joe Hardy
* Parker Stevenson as Frank Hardy
* Lisa Eilbacher as Callie Shaw
* Ed Gilbert as Fenton Hardy
* Edith Atwater as Aunt Gertrude
* Marj Dusay as Dr. Janice Craddock
* Robin Chesler as Marcia Collins
* Howard Platt as Sidney Tabor
* David Opatoshu as Professor Desmond
* Sam Gilman as Mr. Hodges
* Alex Rodine as Russian Attaché
* Henry G. Sanders as AlphaTech Security Guard
* Jack Schultz as Lt. Oates
* Michael A. Salcido as Technician

## Plot

Joe and Frank are playing chess at home when Fenton comes home. He tells them that he's working on a case of industrial espionage, that might be more because Professor Desmond, one of the top scientists in the United States, has disappeared. The company that hired him, AlphaTech, wanted him to look into equipment that has been stolen from their Project K. However, the project is so classified that he is hardly allowed to know anything about it, which is making his investigation difficult. Fenton wants Joe and Frank to help him with the case and follow Sidney Tabor.

Joe and Frank follow Tabor out of town. As they follow him into a more and more isolated area, they see a UFO flashing in the sky. It comes right at them, so they stop and jump out of their van. Joe manages to take a picture before they have to duck and it disappears.

At home, they develop the film but the photo doesn't come out. Reluctantly, they tell Fenton, Aunt Gertrude, and Callie what they saw, but are met with disbelief.

The next day, Joe and Frank go to AlphaTech to meet Fenton and Tabor. They ask Tabor if he saw the UFO too, but he says he did not.

At home, Frank calls to see if what they saw could have been a weather balloon, but is told there weren't any in the area. He finds that it also could not have been a meteor or Aurora Borealis. Fenton decides to keep Frank and Joe on the case anyway.

Outside the house, two men are watching the house from a van.

Early the next morning, Frank and Joe go back to the place they saw the UFO. Frank finds no signs of jet exhaust or a landing. They see a man in the trees; Joe takes a picture and the man runs away before they can catch him. As they chase him, they find a house.

As they are looking at the house, the two men who had been watching the Hardy home find their van.

The door of the house is unlocked and they go inside. The house is furnished with fancy antique furniture. The door closes behind them. They go upstairs and into a bedroom. When Frank leaves, everything seems to grow around Joe. He runs out and tells Frank to take a look, but when they go back in the room, everything is back to normal.

Joe wants to leave but Frank wants to keep looking. They go through another room and find themselves outside in a forest, which is impossible since the room is on the second floor. A wolf comes after them and they run back through the door and close it.

They go into another room and Frank falls through the floor. Joe manages to pull him back up. Upon careful investigation, they find the floor isn't there, it only looks like it is. They decide to leave and tell Fenton what they found. When they drive away, the two men follow them in a car.

At home, Aunt Gertrude tells Frank and Joe that Fenton is at AlphaTech, where they should have been an hour ago. Frank and Joe hurry there and split up to find Dr. Craddock's office.

In Dr. Craddock's office, Fenton tells her and Mr. Hodges that he needs to know more about Project K if he is to investigate properly. He asks if there could be a demand for the stolen equipment outside the scientific community. He points out that the equipment only went missing after Professor Desmond went missing. When he suggests espionage or defection, both Mr. Hodges and Dr. Craddock (who is Professor Desmond's protégé) are outraged by the suggestion.

Frank is wandering the halls where he meets Marcia, who offers to drive him to Dr. Craddock's office in her cart. She was going there anyway because she has to drop off some test results. A security guard stops them on the way and asks for their passes. Frank's pass is only for public areas, so the guard makes a call to Dr. Craddock's office. Fenton and Mr. Craddock go the the security office to pick up Joe and Frank, and the Hardys leave.

Frank and Joe take Fenton to the house and tell him about the man they saw. But when they go into the house, the furniture is all gone and the empty rooms are covered in dust and cobwebs. In the room where Frank almost fell through the floor, there is a ledge that goes down to the first floor.

Fenton says he will go check up on some things and tells Joe and Frank to met him back at the house. Once he has left, the boys notice that the back door of the van has been left open. They sneak up to the van and find two men going through their things inside the van. The men get away in a car, but Joe takes a picture of the licence plate.

At home, Callie tells them that the licence plate of the car was a diplomatic one, belonging to an embassy. Joe remembers that the man they heard speak in the van had a Russian accent.

In Fenton's office at home, Mr. Hodges and Dr. Craddock tell Fenton they are not satisfied with his investigation and fire him.

Later, Callie and Joe find Frank in the basement looking at a hologram of a dancing couple. Frank thinks that the Russians were after hologram technology. They explain to Callie that holograms use light and lasers to preject a 3D image. Frank shows them that regular film cannot take pictures of holograms, which was why none of their pictures were coming out. The technology it could take to make a moving hologram like the ones they saw would be very valuable to any military. The picture of the old man, however, did come out, so he was not a hologram.

They explain everything to Fenton, and wonder why, if what everything Joe and Frank saw was AlphaTech's work, Fenton was fired at all. Joe thinks that maybe they hired Fenton as a front for something else, then fired him when he got too close to the truth. They conclude that someone inside AlphaTech is involved in Professor Desmond's disappearance. Frank wants Fenton to confront AlphaTech, but Fenton decides to go to the Pentagon.
Callie leaves and Fenton calls to book a flight. Even though Fenton told Frank and Joe to stay put, they decide to figure out who owns the house while he's gone.

The next day, Callie helps them look for it and observes that someone went through a lot of trouble to cover their ownership of the house. They find out that Marcia is a part owner of the house.

They meet her at a pizzeria and find out that Professor Desmond is Marcia's grandfather, and Dr. Craddock is her aunt. Marcia doesn't know anything about the house and takes them to Dr. Craddock's home to ask her about it.

Dr. Craddock does not seem to be home and while they are there, Joe recognizes a picture of Professor Desmond as the man they saw near the house. Marcia goes upstairs to see if her aunt is in bed, but finds the two men who had been following Joe and Frank going through drawers. Joe and Frank trap them in the house until police arrive. One of them turns out to be a Russian attaché, and since they both work for the embassy, they have immunity.

Marcia stays to talk to Dr. Craddock when she gets home while Frank, Joe, and Callie go back to the house. From the van, they call Aunt Gertrude to tell her where they're going and aks her to tell Fenton that Professor Desmond is the man they saw.

At the house, they leave Callie in the car to keep an eye out and to signal if Fenton calls.

Frank thinks there must be another way in the house, since there's no other way Professor Desmond could have lost them so fast. They find what looks like the entrance to an old well or cistern and climb down a ladder. They go down a tunnel and come to a cave of crates and barrels. Through a grate, they see Professor Desmond and another technician talking about the development of the holograms.

Fenton calls Callie and tells her to call the police and get Frank and Joe out of the house, since they're in danger. She calls the police.

Frank and Joe are caught by Dr. Craddock, and find out that she has Professor Desmond here against his will because she wants control of the technology - and the money. They manage to get away and into the house.

Callie goes into the house and calls out for Frank and Joe. They can hear her and decide to jump through the disappearing floor to get to the entryway. They hear sirens and go to get Professor Desmond. The men chasing Frank and Joe are caught as police enter the house.

Dr. Craddock tries to hustle Professor Desmond out of the house, telling him that he is in danger.

Frank, Joe, and Callie get to the basement and find a hologram of Dr. Craddock, which stalls them for a bit since it looks so real. They chase after Professor Desmond and tell him that Dr. Craddock has been deceiving him.

Police officers come across the hologram and think it's real.

Professor Desmond was under the impression that all of the secrecy and the disappearance was to protect him from foreign agents.

In the Hardy home, Professor Desmond explains that the hologram of Dr. Craddock was voice-activated, which was how it seemed like she was actually talking to them. Joe tells Marcia that he's interested in science and shows her his lab in the basement.

## Locations

* Bayport
	+ Hardy Home
* AlphaTech Building
* The House with the Disappearing Floor
* Dr. Janice Craddock's Home

## Trivia

* The Hardy Boys book "The Disappearing Floor" was written in 1940. In the book, Frank and Joe are looking for a notorious jewel thief.

## Quotes

**Frank:** *"How are we gonna prove to Dad what we saw?"*

**Joe:** *"You'll just have to tell him the truth."*

**Frank:** *"Why me?"*

**Joe:** *"You're the oldest."*

**Frank:** *"This is crazy, it's like a funhouse."*

**Joe:** *"Not for me."*

**Fenton:** *"I can't very well find a thief unless I know what it is he's supposed to have been stealing."*

**Frank:** *"Test results?"*

**Marcia:** *"Biochemical unit substitution - DNA transferrence. What field of research are you in?"*

**Frank:** *"Detection."*

**Mr. Hodges:** *"Security wants to know how many sons you have."*

**Fenton:** *"Just two."*

**Mr. Hodges:** *"Yes, captain, you have them all.*

**Joe,** about **Frank:** *"I knew this case would get to him sooner or later."*

**Callie:** *Frank, if you like dancing dolls, I have several boxes at home in the attic.*

1. ↑ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0597040/trivia/?ref\_=tt\_trv\_trv