“It cost me more than it cost you,” Frank pointed out. “It was just my luck that I had three dollars on me and you had only two.”
This phase of the matter had not occurred to Joe before, so he felt considerably more cheerful in the thought that he had not, after all, been the chief loser.
They went back to the store and dolefully reported to Mr. Moss that he had been right in his surmise about the bill.
“It was bad, all right,” Frank told him. “The cashier took one look at it, and that was enough.”
Mr. Moss nodded sympathetically.
“Well, it’s too bad you were stung,” he said. “But I’d rather it was you than me. In business, we have to be careful. As a matter of fact, I think it would have fooled me, only the bank warned me this morning that there was some counterfeit money going around and that I’d better be on my guard against any new bills. The minute I saw your five was fresh and new I got suspicious. It’s certainly a clever imitation. Whoever is putting the stuff out is a real artist at that game.”
“We’ll be back for the pie-plates later,” promised Joe. “But we didn’t want you to think we were trying to pass bad money on you.”
Mr. Moss laughed at the idea.
“The Hardy boys pass counterfeit money!” he exclaimed. “I know you better than that, I hope. I’ll keep the plates for you, or you can take them now and bring back the money later. Good money, though,” he added, wagging his finger at them.
“We’ll be back,” they told him.
They went toward the station to wait for the local train on which they expected their father to arrive, and while they waited, sitting on a platform bench, they gloomily discussed the imposition of which they had been the victims.
“It isn’t so much losing my three dollars,” declared Frank. “It’s the thought of being fooled by such a simple trick. We should have known that the fellow had plenty of time to get his money changed at the lunch counter or at the cigar stand, or even the ticket office. Instead of that we dug into our pockets like lambs—”
“Lambs don’t have pockets,” Joe pointed out.
“All the better for them. They’re so innocent they’d be fleeced of everything they put in ’em, anyway. Just like us. We handed over all our money to a total stranger and let him give us a bad bill that we didn’t even take the trouble to look at. I wish somebody would kick me all around the block.”
While the Hardy boys are sitting on the bench, gloomily awaiting the arrival of their father and preparing to tell him of how they had been fooled by the stranger, it will not be out of place to introduce them still further to the readers of this volume.
As related in the first volume of this series, “The Hardy Boys: The Tower Treasure,” Frank and Joe Hardy were the sons of Fenton Hardy, a private detective of international fame. Mr. Hardy, who had been for many years on the New York police force and who had later resigned to carry on a private detective practice, was a criminologist of note. He knew by sight and by reputation most of the notorious criminals of his day, and his mastery over all the branches of his profession was such as to place him at the very forefront of American detectives. So great had been the demand for his services in solving the mysteries of crimes that had baffled the detective forces of other cities that he had found it much more lucrative to carry on a practice of his own than to remain attached to the service in any one city, even such a city as the great American metropolis.
Fenton Hardy, with his wife, Laura Hardy, and their two sons, Frank and Joe, had accordingly moved to Bayport, a city of about fifty thousand inhabitants, situated on Barmet Bay, on the Atlantic Ocean. There Frank and Joe had gone to school until now they were in the Bayport high school. Both boys were fully conscious of the fame of their father and were eager to follow in his footsteps, although their mother had expressed a desire that they fit themselves for some less hazardous and more conventional profession.
However, the Hardy boys had inherited much of their father’s ability and deductive talent. Already they had aided in solving two mysteries that had kept Bayport by the ears. As related in “The Hardy Boys: The Tower Treasure,” they had solved the mystery of the theft of valuable jewels and bonds from Tower Mansion, after even Fenton Hardy himself had been unable to discover where the thief had hidden the loot. In the second volume of the series, “The Hardy Boys: The House on the Cliff,” has been told how the Hardy boys discovered the haunt of a gang of smugglers who were operating in Barmet Bay. In this case they had received a substantial reward, as Federal agents had tried in vain to locate the smugglers’ base of activities for many months.
Following the adventures at the house on the cliff an uneventful winter and spring had passed, the brothers devoting themselves to their studies and to an occasional winter holiday. Christmas had come with many presents, and now warm weather was once more at hand.
Because of the pride they took in their achievements as amateur detectives, the Hardy boys felt very keenly the ignominy of being so easily fooled by the stranger who had passed the counterfeit money upon them.
“Dad will have the laugh on us now,” muttered Joe, as they heard the distant whistle of the approaching
