“Well, we’ll tell him about it, anyway. Who knows but what a big case might arise out of this?”
The afternoon local pulled into the station, and Fenton Hardy stepped down from the parlor car, bag in hand, light coat over one arm. He was a tall, dark-haired man of about forty years of age. He had a quick, pleasant smile for his sons and he shook hands with them warmly.
“How’s mother?” he asked, after the first greetings.
“She’s fine,” replied Frank. “She said there’d be something special for supper tonight, seeing you’re back.”
“Good! And what have you two been doing? Kept out of mischief, I hope.”
“Well, we’ve kept out of mischief,” said Joe; “but we haven’t kept out of trouble.”
“What’s the matter?”
“We just got fooled by a smart stranger who stepped off the express. It cost us five dollars.”
“How did that happen?”
“He asked us to change a five dollar bill for him—”
“Ah, ha!” exclaimed Fenton Hardy, raising his eyebrows. “And what then?”
“It was counterfeit.”
Mr. Hardy looked grave.
“Have you got it with you?”
“Yes,” answered Frank, producing the bill. “I don’t think we can be blamed such an awful lot for being fooled. It certainly looks mighty like a good one.”
Fenton Hardy put down his bag and examined the bill closely for a moment. Then he folded it up and put it in his waistcoat pocket.
“I’ll take care of this, if you don’t mind,” he said, picking up his bag and beginning to walk toward the station exit. “As it happens, I know something about this money.”
“What do you mean, dad?” asked Frank quickly.
“I don’t mean that I know anything about this particular five dollar bill, but I know something about this counterfeit money in general. As a matter of fact, that is why this trip took me longer than I had thought it would. When I finished the case that originally took me away, the Government called me in on this counterfeit money case.”
“Is there a lot of it going around?”
“Too much. Within the past few weeks the East has been flooded with it, and the circulation seems to be spreading. There seems to be a central counterfeiting plant somewhere, with experts in charge of it, and they are turning out imitation bills so clever that the average person can hardly detect them. The Federal authorities are worrying a great deal about it.”
“And this is one of the bills?”
“It looks just like some of the others that have been turned in, although chiefly they have been dealing in tens and twenties. The man who stepped off the train was probably one of their agents, trying to convert as much of the counterfeit money into good cash as he could. When he saw that you were only boys he thought there would be a better chance of getting change for five dollars than ten. Then, of course, he may only have been someone who had been fooled by the counterfeit and decided to get rid of it by passing it on to someone else.”
“I wish he had asked us to change one of his counterfeit tens, instead,” mourned Joe. “We would have been five dollars to the good.”
III
The Hardy Boys at School
If the boys had any lingering hopes that their school chums would not hear of the manner in which they had been fooled, these hopes were quickly removed next morning.
Scarcely had Frank and Joe ascended the concrete steps of Bayport High than Chet Morton, a stout chubby boy of about sixteen, one of their closest friends, a lad with a passion for practical jokes, came solemnly toward them with a green tobacco coupon in his hand.
“Just the fellows I’m looking for,” he chirped. “My great-grandmother just died in Abyssinia and I’m trying to raise the railway fare to go to the funeral. How about changing this hundred?”
There was a roar of laughter from about a dozen boys who were standing about, for Chet had evidently acquainted them all with the affair of the previous day. How he had learned of it, Frank and Joe could not imagine. They grinned good-naturedly, although Joe blushed furiously.
“What’s the matter?” asked Chet innocently. “Can’t you change it? You don’t mean to tell me you can’t change my hundred dollar bill? Please, kind young gentlemen, please change my hundred dollar bill, for if you don’t I’m sure nobody else will and then I won’t be able to go to my great-grandmother’s funeral in Abyssinia.” He wiped away an imaginary tear.
“Sorry,” said Frank gravely. “We’re not in the money-changing business.”
“You mean you’re not in it any more,” pointed out Chet. “You were in the business yesterday, I know. What’s the matter—retire on your profits?”
“Yes, we quit.”
“I don’t blame you.” Suddenly Chet struck an attitude of exaggerated surprise. “Why, bless my soul, I do believe this bill is bad!” He peered at the flimsy tobacco coupon very closely, then whipped a small magnifying glass from his pocket and squinted through it. At last he raised his head, with a sigh. “Yes, sir, it’s bad. It’s counterfeit. One of the cleverest counterfeits I ever saw. If it hadn’t been for the fact that there is no hundred dollar mark on it and if it hadn’t been that there is a picture of the president of the El Ropo Tobacco Company instead of George Washington, I’d have been completely fooled. Isn’t it lucky that you boys didn’t change it for me? Isn’t it lucky? Congratulations, young sirs. Congratulations!”
He shook Frank and Joe warmly by the hand, in the meantime keeping a very solemn face, while the other lads surged about in a laughing group and joined in the “kidding.”
They jested unmercifully about the incident of the counterfeit five dollars, but the Hardy boys took it all in good part. The news had leaked out through Mr. Moss, who had told Jerry Gilroy, one of the Hardy boys’ chums, about the affair just a short while after they had left the store the previous afternoon.
