“And they didn’t see the cars?”
Fenton Hardy shook his head.
“Not the slightest trace of either of them.”
Frank and Joe looked at one another blankly.
“Well, if that don’t beat the Dutch!” Frank exclaimed.
“You’re quite sure of the time?”
“Positive. I had just looked at my watch.”
“Well,” said Fenton Hardy, “since the cars haven’t been seen in any of the other towns and since there aren’t any other roads, the Shore Road must hold the solution. I think I’ll do a little prospecting around the farms out that way tomorrow.”
“We’ve been doing a little prospecting ourselves,” admitted Joe, “but we haven’t been very successful so far.”
“Keep at it,” their father said encouragingly. “And good luck to you both!”
XV
The Suspect
It was late before the Hardy boys got to sleep that night.
The events of the evening, culminating in the discovery that the auto thieves had been at work in Bayport while they were lying in wait for them on the Shore Road, gave the lads plenty to talk about before they were finally claimed by slumber.
In the morning, it required two calls to arouse them. They dressed sleepily and had to hurry downstairs in order to be in time for breakfast. This did not escape the notice of ever-watchful Aunt Gertrude.
“When I was a girl,” she said pointedly, “young people went to bed at a reasonable hour and didn’t go gallivanting all over the country half the night. Every growing boy and girl needs eight or nine hours’ sleep. I’d be ashamed to come down to breakfast rubbing my eyes and gaping.”
“It isn’t very often they get up late,” said Mrs. Hardy. “We can overlook it once in a while, I suppose.”
“Overlook it!” snorted Aunt Gertrude. “Mark my words, Laura, those boys will come to no good end if you encourage them in coming in at all hours of the night. Goodness knows what mischief they were up to.” She glared severely at them.
Frank and Joe realized that their aunt was curious as to where they had been the past two evenings and was using this roundabout method of tempting them into an explanation. However, as Joe expressed it later, they “refused to bite.”
Instead, they hastily consumed their breakfast, drawing from the good lady a lecture on the dreadful consequences of eating in a hurry, illustrated by an anecdote concerning a little boy named Hector, who met a lamentable and untimely death by choking himself on a piece of steak and passed away surrounded by weeping relatives.
The boys, however, were evidently not impressed by the fate of the unfortunate Hector, for they gulped down their meal, snatched up their books, and rushed off to school without waiting for Aunt Gertrude’s account of the funeral. They were crossing the school yard when the bell rang and they reached the classroom just in time.
“I feel like a stewed owl,” was Joe’s comment.
“Never ate stewed owl,” returned his brother promptly. “How does it taste?”
“I said I felt, I didn’t say I ate,” retorted Joe. “Gee, but your eyes do look bunged up.”
“What about your own?”
“Oh, if only I had had just one more hour’s sleep!”
“I could go two or three.”
“Aunt Gertrude was onto us.”
“Yes, but she didn’t get anywhere with it.”
“Hope I don’t fall asleep over my desk.”
“Same here.”
The morning dragged. They were very sleepy. Once or twice, Joe yawned openly and Miss Petty, who taught history, accused him of lack of interest in the proceedings.
“You may keep yourself awake by telling us what you know of the Roman system of government under Julius Caesar,” she said.
Joe got to his feet. He floundered through a more or less acceptable account of Roman government. It was dreary stuff, and Frank, listening to the droning voice, became drowsier and drowsier. His head nodded, and finally he went to sleep altogether and had a vivid dream in which he chased Julius Caesar, attired in a toga and with a laurel wreath on his head, along the Shore Road in a steamroller.
Miss Petty left the Romans and began comparing ancient and modern systems of government, which led her into a discourse on the life of Abraham Lincoln. She was just reaching Lincoln’s death when there was a loud snore.
Miss Petty looked up.
“Who made that noise?”
Another snore.
Joe dug his brother in the ribs with a ruler and Frank looked up, with an expression of surprise on his face.
“Frank Hardy, are you paying attention?”
“Yes, ma’am,” replied Frank, now wide awake. In his dream he imagined Julius Caesar had turned on him and had poked him in the ribs with a spear.
“Do you know who we were talking about?”
“Oh, yes, ma’am.”
“Do you know anything about his death?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Frank, under the impression that the lesson still dealt with Caesar.
“How did he die?”
“He was stabbed.”
“He was stabbed, was he? Where?”
“In—in the Forum. He was murdered by some of the senators, led by Cassius and Brutus, and Marc Antony made a speech.”
The class could contain itself no longer. Snickers burst out, and these welled into a wave of laughter in which even Miss Petty was forced to join. Frank looked around in vast surprise.
“This,” said the teacher, “is an interesting fact about Lincoln. I don’t remember having heard of it before. So he was stabbed to death by the senators and Marc Antony made a speech?”
“I—I was talking about Caesar, Miss Petty.”
“And I was talking about Abraham Lincoln. Will you be good enough to stay awake for the remainder of the lesson, Hardy?”
Frank looked sheepishly at his book, while Chet Morton doubled up in his seat and gave vent to a series of explosive chuckles that soon brought the teacher’s attention to him and he was required to recite the Gettysburg Address, stalling completely before he had gone a dozen words. By the time the teacher had
