“I’ve told you everything is perfectly fair and aboveboard,” Hanleigh insisted. “Why should you try to hold me up? If I hear any more of this nonsense, I’ll hire somebody else to take me to the island.”
“Try it, and see what happens,” said Nash darkly.
“What will happen?”
“We’ll tell Jefferson.”
“Tell him. I’m not afraid.”
“That’s a pretty good bluff, Mr. Hanleigh, but it won’t work with us,” said Carson. “You have some crooked game on, and you don’t want Jefferson to know about it. Why were you so anxious to buy the island? Why won’t he sell it to you? That’s what we’d like to know.”
Hanleigh became more amicable.
“Now listen here, boys,” he said smoothly; “it doesn’t do any of us any good to quarrel like this. If you think you’re not being paid enough, I guess I can let you have a little more. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll pay you each twenty dollars to take me to the island tomorrow morning. That’s fair enough, isn’t it?”
Nash laughed scornfully.
“Now we know you have some game on,” he said. “Twenty dollars won’t be enough. We want a hundred dollars apiece.”
“A hundred! It’s an outrage. I won’t pay it.”
Nash got up. “All right. Come on, Tad. We may as well go and see Mr. Jefferson now. He’ll probably be glad to pay us well for the information we can give him.”
The young men got up and were moving toward the door when Hanleigh sprang to his feet.
“Not so fast!” he begged. “Sit down and let us talk this over.”
“What’s the use of talking when you won’t listen to reason?”
Hanleigh regarded the pair for a moment. Then he said:
“You are both very much mistaken. There is nothing crooked about my visits to the island. Still, I wouldn’t want you to be running to Mr. Jefferson and bothering him with a silly story that would only cause a lot of trouble. Now, I’ve changed my mind about going to the island tomorrow. I’ll go the day after tomorrow, instead.”
“How about our hundred dollars?”
“It’s an outrageous price. Fifty dollars—”
“No! A hundred or nothing.”
Hanleigh sighed.
“I haven’t got that much money with me. You boys seem to think I’m made of money.”
“You were willing to spend a good fat sum to buy the island,” Nash reminded him. “There’s something fishy about the whole affair. Is there a gold mine on that island?”
Hanleigh laughed uneasily.
“You’re worrying yourselves about something that doesn’t concern you in the least. Give me a day to raise the money and you shall have it.”
Nash glanced significantly at his chum.
“Now, you’re talking sense,” he said approvingly. “You pay us a hundred each and we’ll take you there.”
“The day after tomorrow.”
“Just as you say. But we must have the money before we start.”
“And you won’t say anything to Jefferson?”
“Not a word. But if you don’t come across with the money—”
“I’ll pay it to you. Meet me here tomorrow night.”
“All right.” Nash and Carson went toward the door. “You’ve saved yourself a lot of trouble, Mr. Hanleigh.”
They went away. No sooner had the door closed behind them than Hanleigh laughed sardonically.
“A hundred dollars!” he exclaimed. “The young pups! Thought they could make a fool out of me. Well, they’ll have to get up in the middle of the night to get ahead of me. By the time they get wise to themselves I’ll be at the island and back, and I won’t pay for the privilege either.”
Next morning, Hanleigh was up early. It was snowing heavily and there was a bitter wind, but he meant to go to Cabin Island that day. He knew where Tad Carson and Ike Nash kept their iceboat and he made his way down to the little building unobserved.
The door was protected by a stout padlock, but Hanleigh picked up a heavy iron bar that stood against the side of the building and attacked the lock. He smashed it with a single blow, opened the door, and went inside. He brought out the iceboat and unfurled its sails.
There was snow on the ice, but the craft moved across the surface under the impetus of a strong wind. Hanleigh sat at the tiller. Within a few moments the boat was scudding down the bay. Hanleigh chuckled to himself as he thought of the way in which he had outwitted Ike Nash and Tad Carson.
The iceboat sped on down the bay into the driving snow. The storm was increasing in fury. The wind hurtled the craft along at terrific speed. Hanleigh, although he had no experience in managing the boat, got along very well, and within a short time he saw the dark mass of Cabin Island looming out of the storm.
“A good day for it!” he chuckled. “I won’t let those boys on the island make a monkey out of me as they did the last time.”
XXI
A Cry for Help
When the Hardy boys and their chums awakened that morning they found that the storm of the night before had increased in fury to such an extent that the mainland was no longer visible.
The island was completely isolated. As far as the eye could reach, the boys could see nothing but swirling sheets of snow.
“Looks as if we’ll have to stay indoors today,” said Frank, as he lit the fire.
“A nuisance!” Chet grumbled. “I thought we could go out in the iceboat this morning.”
“We’d probably get lost out in that storm. It certainly is blowing up a fine blizzard!” Biff remarked.
Joe looked out the window.
“I wonder how our boats are faring,” he said. “With a wind like
