The Hardy boys arranged to have the rowboat returned to its mooring place, then took their leave of the good-hearted farmer and his wife and made their way out to the road. Then they went back to the place where they had left their motorcycles, and in a short while were speeding again on their return to Bayport.
“That fellow is certainly a queer stick,” remarked Joe, as he and his brother motored toward home.
“I’ll say he is!” answered Frank. “There’s something mighty queer about all this, and don’t you forget it!”
It was mid-afternoon when they turned their motorcycles into the driveway beside the Hardy home, and after they had put the machines in the garage they went into the house. They found their father, Fenton Hardy, in his den just off the library. He was never too busy to talk to his sons, and when they came in he put down the papers he was studying and leaned back in his chair.
“Well, what have you two been up to today?” he inquired, smiling.
“We’ve had a real adventure, this time, dad,” Frank told him. “We were out to the old Polucca place with some of the fellows.”
“That’s the haunted house, isn’t it? See any ghosts?”
The boys looked at one another. “No, we didn’t see any ghosts, exactly,” said Joe. “But—”
“You don’t mean to tell me you heard some!” Fenton Hardy threw back his head and laughed with delight.
“You may laugh; but some mighty queer things happened out there,” insisted Joe.
Whereupon the brothers told their father of the strange experiences at the deserted farmhouse. But Mr. Hardy refused to take them seriously.
“Some of your school chums playing a joke on you,” he said, dismissing the affair. “They’ll be laughing their heads off about it right now.”
“But how do you account for the tool boxes being robbed?”
“They just did that to make it a little more mysterious. Probably they will hand you back your tools at school on Monday, just to prove their story.”
This aspect of the situation had not occurred to the boys. They began to look a bit sheepish. If it had been the work of practical jokers it was only natural that they would seek something definite whereby to prove the fact that they had been at the farmhouse.
“Gosh, we’ll never hear the end of it, if that’s the case,” sighed Joe. “Oh, well, we’ll just have to take it in good part. But we didn’t tell you about what happened on the way home. Tell him about it, Frank.”
“Another adventure?”
“A real one. No practical joke about this.”
Frank thereupon told their father about the two motorboats in Barmet Bay, about the chase and the resulting explosion. He modestly underestimated their own part in the rescue of the victim of the wreck, but Fenton Hardy nodded his head in satisfaction as the story went on.
“Good work! Good work!” he muttered. “You saved the fellow’s life, anyway. And it looks as though you’ve stumbled on a mysterious bit of business in that motorboat chase. What did the man say his name was?”
“Jones,” answered Frank doubtfully.
Fenton Hardy raised his eyebrows. “Of course—there are lots of Joneses in the world. It might be his real name. But more than likely it isn’t. Would he tell you anything about the reason for the chase? Did you question him?”
“He wouldn’t tell us anything at all. We made a few inquiries, but he said he couldn’t explain.”
“Still more mysterious,” reflected the detective. “Do you think he will talk when he gets better?”
“I’m afraid not. He seemed quite determined not to tell us anything about himself or about the men who were chasing him.”
“Don’t you remember, Frank?” exclaimed Joe. “When we brought him into the house, just as he became conscious again. What was it he said?”
“Oh, yes! I had forgotten. He said, ‘Snackley got me, the rat!’ Whatever that meant.”
“Snackley!” exclaimed Fenton Hardy, starting up. “Are you sure he said Snackley? Are you sure that was the name?”
“I’m certain. Aren’t you, Joe?”
“Yes, that was the name, all right.”
“Well that does give us something to work on,” the detective said. “Probably you have never heard of Snackley, but I have.”
“Who is he?” asked Frank.
“Ganny Snackley is a noted criminal. He is a smuggler—one of the leaders of a ring of smugglers who bring in opium and other drugs from the Orient. Is it possible that he is bringing drugs into the country at Barmet Bay?”
VII
Bound and Gagged
The Hardy boys were astonished by this information. Their father, tapping a pencil quickly on the desk, leaned forward in his chair.
“You may have stumbled on some information of great value,” he said to them quietly. “I need hardly tell you that it is best to keep it to yourself. If Ganny Snackley is operating in this vicinity it will be a great feather in our cap to catch him.”
“It’s an unusual name,” remarked Frank. “I’ll bet that’s the Snackley our man meant, all right.”
“And the farmer said there was smuggling going on in the Bay,” Joe pointed out.
“Of course, there always has been more or less smuggling carried on in Barmet Bay. But it’s been on a small scale. Ganny Snackley and his gang are international smugglers. The last I heard of him he was operating up on the New England coast. But probably things grew too hot for him and he moved down here. He seems to have dropped completely out of sight for the past six months or so.”
“Perhaps this man Jones, at the farmhouse, will talk later on.”
“I’m going out there to interview him,” said Fenton Hardy. “I’ll wait a few days until he is feeling better. Of course the matter is one for the United States authorities, and as I haven’t been assigned to the case I can’t do very much. But perhaps I’ll get some information I can use at some other time.”
“Joe and I will go out tomorrow and see how he is getting
