III
A Strange Note
Had it not been for Frank Hardy’s coolness and presence of mind, there would have been a disastrous collision.
His quick hand at the tiller averted the crash by a hairbreadth. How he did it, he could not later explain. At the time, Chet and Joe could see no possible chance of escape. But, just as the collision seemed imminent, their craft veered off to one side and the other boat went booming past at terrific speed, the two iceboats so close together that their sides almost touched.
It was a narrow escape. Frank had swung the nose of his boat around just in the nick of time.
He brought the craft around in a circle, for the boys were in no mind to let the affront pass. Then they saw that the other boat had overturned. The boy at the helm, frightened by the imminence of peril, had lost his nerve, had swung the boat too far over, and it had gone on its side. The mast had snapped. The boat was wrecked.
The Hardy boys and Chet Morton went back to the scene. Tad Carson and Ike Nash were just crawling out from under their capsized craft.
“What’s the big idea?” roared Nash, in an ugly humor. “Now see what you’ve done. You might have killed us!”
“Take some of that for yourself,” rejoined Frank, walking over. “It was your own fault. You tried to run us down.”
“Run you down! I like that! You head straight for us and then say we tried to run you down. You’ve smashed our boat, so you have, and you’ll pay for it.”
“Try to collect!” advised Chet airily. “By rights, we ought to have you up in court. Trying to be smart, weren’t you?”
Both the other boys were bigger than Chet, but this never bothered that boy—as long as someone was with him.
“Absolutely deliberate, wasn’t it, Tad?”
“You bet!” said Carson. “The young brats drove right at us. If they had hit us we might have been killed.”
Their cool effrontery amazed the Hardy boys.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” snapped Joe. “Trying to lay the blame on us. It serves you right to have your boat smashed up. You would have smashed ours if we hadn’t been lucky. After this, watch where you’re going.”
“Look here!” said Ike Nash truculently, doubling his fists and stepping forward. “I won’t stand talk like that from you.”
“No?” said Frank, edging over to Joe’s side, and doubling his fists as well. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Yes,” added Chet, trying to achieve a threatening expression, “what are you going to do about it?”
Ike and Tad surveyed the three lads who stood facing them, with fists ready. Like most bullies, they were cowards, and now that their bluff had been called they were not anxious to risk a battle that might prove the worse for them.
“You’ll find out what we’ll do about it,” growled Ike. “As for me, I wouldn’t waste my time thrashing you, although you need it mighty bad—”
“Sure,” agreed Tad Carson quickly. “I wouldn’t lower myself to lick you. Just a pack of babies, that’s all. You oughtn’t to be allowed out on the bay when you can’t handle a boat.”
“It’s your boat that got smashed,” Chet reminded them cheerfully. “How was that for handling?”
“Come on,” said Ike. “Don’t talk to the brats, Tad. What’s the use wasting time on them?”
“That’s what I say,” agreed his companion, and they returned loftily to their smashed boat, trying to conceal their chagrin.
“Want a ride back?” chirped Chet.
“You clear out of here, or we’ll smash your boat too.”
“Let’s go,” advised Frank. “They’re in a bad humor. It wasn’t our fault. I think we were lucky to escape so easily. If our boat had been smashed they would have just laughed at us.”
The lads scrambled back into their iceboat and in a few minutes they were sailing up the bay again, past the wreckage of the other craft. Ike Nash and Tad Carson were clumsily trying to put it to rights.
“That’ll teach ’em to go around scaring people,” observed Chet Morton virtuously, as they flashed by. He waved ironically at the marooned sportsmen, and was rewarded only by a shake of the fist from Ike Nash.
In a short time, the lads were back at Bayport, and, having placed the iceboat in its berth, they walked up the snow-covered street toward the Hardy home. This was a fine brick residence on High Street, with a garage where the boys kept their motorcycles and the decrepit auto they had bought with their savings and which had been of so much value in solving the Shore Road mystery of the stolen automobiles, as recounted in the volume of that title. At the rear was a barn, which had been fitted up as a gymnasium, where the Hardy boys and their chums spent many happy hours on rainy and stormy Saturdays.
When the Hardy boys said goodbye to Chet Morton and entered the house they were greeted by Aunt Gertrude, a peppery, dictatorial lady of certain temper and uncertain years, who was again with the Hardys for a visit of indeterminate length. Aunt Gertrude could never reconcile herself to the idea that the boys were growing up and persisted in treating them as though they were still infants, or, as Joe expressed it, “as if we were half-witted.”
“Go back and stamp the snow off your shoes!” she ordered, as they tramped into the hall. “It’s a disgrace, the way you two boys track up this house just as soon as I’ve got everything all cleaned up.”
There was very little snow on the boys’ boots, and Aunt Gertrude never, under any circumstances, assisted in the house cleaning, but it was her nature to give orders. The boys knew better than to disobey, so they meekly returned to the vestibule and stamped their shoes, then came back into the hall.
“That’s better,” said their aunt grudgingly. “Now go into the library. Your father is waiting for you. You should have been home hours ago. I declare I don’t know where you spend your time. Just gallivanting around when you should be at home doing your studies.”
The boys went on into the library. The door was open and when they entered they found their father, Fenton Hardy, the noted detective, perusing an imposing grist of legal documents at his desk. He glanced up and smiled at them.
“Hello, sons! Been out on the bay?”
“Yes, sir,” returned Frank. “Out in the iceboat.”
“Good, healthy sport. Have a good time?”
“Oh, yes. We went away down as far as Cabin Island.”
“Cabin Island, eh? That’s strange. I’ve had Cabin Island in my mind for the past hour or more. There has been a message here, waiting for you.”
“A message?”
Mr. Hardy reached into his desk and produced an envelope.
“A man called here this afternoon and left this message for you boys.”
“But why should it remind you of Cabin Island, Dad?” asked Joe.
“Because the man who left the message here was Elroy Jefferson’s chauffeur.”
“Elroy Jefferson!” exclaimed Frank. “Why, he is the man who owns Cabin Island.”
“So I believe. Well, there’s the note, at any rate. Better read it and find out what he has to say.”
Frank tore open the envelope and removed a folded slip of paper. There were a few typewritten words. He and Joe read them with growing amazement.
“Well, what do you know about that?” exclaimed Frank finally.
“I wonder what’s the idea?” said his brother.
Frank handed the note over to their father.
“What do you make of it, Dad?”
Fenton Hardy read the note. He looked puzzled. Then he handed it back to the boys.
“I can’t say, I’m sure,” he said. “It’s a strange note. Still, I suppose you had better do as he asks, and then you’ll know more about it later.”
“We certainly will!” said Frank.
Then he read the note over again.