The Tower Treasure

“After the help we gave Dad on that forgery case I guess he’ll begin to think we could be detectives when we grow up.”

“Why shouldn’t we? Isn’t he one of the most famous detectives in the country? And aren’t we his sons? If the profession was good enough for him to follow it should be good enough for us.”

Two bright-eyed boys on motorcycles were speeding along a shore road in the sunshine of a morning in spring. It was Saturday and they were enjoying a holiday from the Bayport high school. The day was ideal for a motorcycle trip and the lads were combining business with pleasure by going on an errand to a nearby village for their father.

The older of the two boys was a tall, dark youth, about sixteen years of age. His name was Frank Hardy. The other boy, his companion on the motorcycle trip, was his brother Joe, a year younger.

While there was a certain resemblance between the two lads, chiefly in the firm yet good-humored expression of their mouths, in some respects they differed greatly in appearance. While Frank was dark, with straight, black hair and brown eyes, his brother was pink-cheeked, with fair, curly hair and blue eyes.

These were the Hardy boys, sons of Fenton Hardy, an internationally famous detective who had made a name for himself in the years he had spent on the New York police force and who was now, at the age of forty, handling his own practice.

Just then, above the sharp put-put of their own motors, they heard the high humming roar of an automobile approaching at great speed. The car was not yet in sight, but there was no mistaking the fact that it was coursing along with the cutout open and with no regard for the speed laws.

“What idiot is driving like that on this kind of road!” exclaimed Frank. They looked back.

Even as he spoke the automobile flashed into sight.

It came around the curve behind and so swiftly did the driver take the dangerous turn that two wheels were off the ground as the car shot into view. A cloud of dust and stones arose, the car veered violently from left to right, and then it roared at headlong speed down the slope.

The boys glimpsed a tense figure at the wheel. How he kept the car on the road was a miracle, for the racing automobile swung from side to side. At one moment it would be in imminent danger of crashing over the embankment, down on the rocks below; the next instant the car would be over on the other side of the road, grazing the cliff.

“He’ll run us down!” shouted Joe, in alarm. “The idiot!”

Indeed, the position of the two lads was perilous.

When the boys went into his office they found the chief painfully writing in a huge notebook and confronted by three excited figures. One of these was Ike Harrity, the old ticket seller at the city steamboat office. The others were Detective Smuff, of the police force, and Policeman Con Riley, both trying their best to look important and composed.

Ike Harrity was frankly frightened. It was plain that something very much out of the ordinary had happened. Harrity was a timid and inoffensive old chap who had perched on a high stool behind the wicket at the steamboat office day in and day out for as many years as anyone in Bayport could remember.

“I was just countin’ up the mornin’s receipts,” he was saying, in a frightened and high-pitched voice, “when in comes this fellow and he sticks a revolver in front of my nose⁠—”

“Just a minute,” interrupted the chief grandly, as the boys entered. He dipped his pen in the inkwell and poised it in the air, as he peered at the lads over his spectacles.

“What are you boys doing here? Can’t you see we’re busy?”

“I came to report a theft,” said Chet Morton. “My roadster has been stolen.”

“Why, it was a roadster this fellow drove up to my office in!” cried Ike Harrity. “A yellow roadster.”

“Ha!” said Detective Smuff. “A clue!” He immediately fished a notebook out of his pocket and began rummaging around for a pencil.

“Never mind, Detective Smuff,” observed the chief heavily. “I’ll take any notes that are needed.”