“Once they get them into circulation they’ll go from hand to hand until the banks check them up. Somebody is bound to lose in the end, and usually it’s the honest person who finds out that the money is bad and won’t pass it any further. The crooked ones will just try to get rid of it as quickly as they can.”
When they reached home Frank told his father about Pollie Shaw and handed over the counterfeit bill.
“So they’re dealing in fifties now!” exclaimed Fenton Hardy, as he looked at the money.
“Do you think it’s made by the people who turned out that bad five that we got stung on?” Joe asked.
Mr. Hardy drew a magnifying glass from his vest pocket and make a close scrutiny of the bill. “It seems to have been printed on the same press but I’m not sure,” he announced at last. “These things are so cleverly done that it would take an expert to notice any differences.” He proceeded then to examine the five dollar bill, comparing it closely with the fifty, and at last he put the glass back into his pocket.
“I’m practically certain that these bills were issued from the same press. The paper seems to be of the same kind, just a shade lighter than the paper used in genuine money, and there are certain little differences in the engraving that are almost identical on each bill. Miss Shaw won’t mind if I keep this, will she?” he asked Frank.
“She asked me to give it to you.”
“I’ll send both these bills to an expert in the city and we’ll get his opinion on it.”
Mrs. Hardy, a pretty, fair-haired woman, sighed.
“I’m sure I don’t know what the world’s coming to,” she said, “when men will make bad money and know that poor people are going to lose by it. It’s a shame.”
“There’s nothing some of them won’t stop at when it comes to filling their own pockets,” declared her husband. “But perhaps when the expert sends me his report on these bills I’ll have something more to work on. If it turns out that there is one central gang circulating this money we’ll all have to be on the lookout.”
V
Curing the Joker
Hard work in school occupied the attention of the boys for the rest of the week, for examination time was near, and even Jerry Gilroy was obliged to dismiss baseball from his mind in a frantic attempt to catch up with his geometry and Latin, that somehow appeared to keep perpetually ahead of him. Frank and Joe sweated over the ablative absolute and grumbled over the heroic exploits that could be resurrected from the deathless lines of Caesar and Virgil if one could but distinguish verbs from nouns, and wondered, as schoolboys have wondered from time immemorial, why they should be obliged to concern themselves with things that happened two thousand years ago and more when they might better be outside playing.
When Friday night came they emerged from the haze of declensions and vocabularies, axioms and theorems, equations and symbols in which they had been engulfed all week and decided that Saturday should see them as far away from school as possible.
“Let’s get out of the city altogether,” suggested Frank, as the Hardy boys left the classroom on Friday afternoon. “What say we all go for a hike out into the country?”
“Suits me,” agreed Chet. “No motorcycles either. Let’s walk.”
“Good idea,” Jerry Gilroy approved. “Unless,” he said hopefully, “you fellows would rather come up to the campus and have baseball practice.”
“Another smart remark like that out of you and I’ll practise my famous left hook on your jaw,” warned Biff Hooper, squaring off in a pugilistic attitude. “We don’t want to see or hear of this school again until Monday morning, and that’ll be too soon.”
“All right, all right,” said Jerry placatingly. “I just thought I’d mention it.”
“And I just think you’ll forget about it,” said Chet. “You’ll come along on this hike with us. Here, have an apple and keep quiet.”
He dug into the inexhaustible recesses of his pockets and produced a slightly shopworn apple, which he thrust into Jerry’s hands. “There, see if that’ll keep you quiet for a while.”
Jerry, who could never resist anything in the nature of food, accepted the donation eagerly.
“Where shall we go on this hike?” he asked, raising the fruit to his lips.
“I was thinking we could go up to Carl Stummer’s farm,” suggested Joe. “Mother was saying she wondered if Stummer would let her have any cherries to can this year. This would be a good time to ask him.”
“Suits me,” said Jerry, taking a prodigious bite of the apple.
Then an expression of pained surprise crossed his face to be replaced by a look of ghastly realization. Tears spurted to his eyes and his jaws worked convulsively. Then he emitted a gurgle of agony, spluttered, spat out the apple and began to dance around on the pavement, waving his arms in the air.
“Indian war dance!” commented Chet gravely, clapping his hands. “Fine work, Jerry. Do it again.”
“Pepper!” spluttered Jerry. “I’m burning up! Water!”
“Call the fire brigade,” advised Chet, bursting into a shriek of laughter.
The other lads gazed at their companion in amazement until his wild antics became too much for them and they all roared as Jerry continued his frantic splutterings. Wildly, the victim turned toward the school again. There was a water fountain near the front door and he headed toward it, but his eyes were so full of tears from the mouthful of red pepper that he had gulped when he bit into the hollow apple that he did not see a flowerbed in his path.
Jerry stumbled over the wire border and sprawled full length among the flowers.
The janitor, a cantankerous
