ASP.NET REST service without escape characters in JSON results

ASP.NET REST service without escape characters in JSON results

I'm calling a REST service searchFavoriteCompany that in turn calls
another service A. Service A already returns JSON. But since my return
type of searchFavoriteCompany my search results are then returned with
escape characters:
"{\"responseHeader\":{\"status\":0,\"QTime\":2,\"params\":{\"facet\":\"false\",\"fl\":\"id,title,friendlyurl,avatar,locpath,objectid,objecttype\",\"indent\":\"off\",\"start\":\"0\",\"q\":\"title_search:*castle*\",\"wt\":\"json\",\"fq\":\"userid:\\\"C325D42C-A777-4275-BDD2-D7810A8AB9AB\\\"\",\"rows\":\"10\",\"defType\":\"lucene\"}},\"response\":{\"numFound\":2,\"start\":0,\"docs\":[{\"title\":\"Castle
A\",\"objecttype\":1,\"friendlyurl\":\"castle-a\",\"avatar\":\"6_887_castle-a.JPG\",\"objectid\":6},{\"title\":\"Castle
B\",\"objecttype\":1,\"friendlyurl\":\"castle-b\",\"avatar\":\"794_360_13j-Castle-by-night.jpg\",\"objectid\":794}]}}\u000a"
I don't know how to make sure my JSON results are returned without these
escape characters.
Imyservice.vb
Namespace RestService
<ServiceContract()>
Public Interface Imyservice
<OperationContract()> _
_ Function searchFavoriteCompany(ByVal q As String, ByVal uuid As String)
As String
End Interface
End Namespace
iservice.svc.vb
Namespace RestService
Public Class iservice
Implements Imyservice
Public Function searchFavoriteCompany(ByVal q As String, ByVal uuid As
String) As String Implements Imyservice.searchFavoriteCompany
Dim req As HttpWebRequest =
HttpWebRequest.Create("http://localhost/getjson") <---- this
service already returns JSON data
Dim Resp As HttpWebResponse = req.GetResponse()
Dim reader As StreamReader = New StreamReader(Resp.GetResponseStream)
Dim responseString As String = reader.ReadToEnd()
Return responseString
End Function
End Class
End Namespace