The Shore Road Mystery/Chapter 2

For a moment Frank Hardy lay in the thicket, stunned by the shock of his fall, with the breath knocked out of him. Gradually, he recovered himself and managed to scramble to his feet. His first thought was for the other boys, but a quick glance showed that both Chet and Joe were unhurt, beyond a few bruises.

Joe was sitting in the ditch, looking around him in bewilderment, as though he had not yet realized exactly what had happened, while Chet Morton was picking himself up out of a clump of undergrowth near the fence. In the road, the driver of the hay wagon was trying to calm his startled horses, who were rearing and plunging in fright.

"Any bones broken?" asked Frank of his two companions.

Chet carefully counted his ribs.

"Guess not," he announced, cheerfully. "I think I'm all here, safe and sound. Wow! What a spill that was!"

​Joe got to his feet.

"Good thing this is a soft ditch," he said. "It's lucky somebody didn't get a broken neck."

"Well, nobody did, and that's that. How about the bikes?"

Frank examined his own motorcycle, righted it, and found that the machine was not damaged beyond a bent mudguard. He had managed to slow down sufficiently before careering into the ditch, so that much of the shock had been averted and the motorcycle had simply turned over into the spongy turf.

"My bike's all right," announced Chet. "It's bent a little here and there, but it's good for a few more miles yet."

"Same here," said Joe Hardy, looking up. "I think we're mighty lucky to get off so easily."

"You mighta run me down!" roared the driver of the hay wagon, now that he had recovered from his fright. "Tearin' and snortin' down the road on them contraptions—"

"Why don't you watch the road?" asked Frank. "You heard us coming. We couldn't see you. You might have killed the three of us, driving out like that. You didn't have anything to worry about."

"I didn't, eh?"

"No."

​"What if I'd been killed?"

"You could hear our bikes half a mile off—unless you are deaf," put in Joe.

"It ain't my business to listen for them contraptions," growled the man on the hay wagon. "I got my work to do."

"Well, don't blame us," said Frank. "And the next time you drive out of a side road like that, stop, look and listen."

"Say, who do you think you're givin' orders to?" and now the man reached for his whip and acted as if he meant to get down and thrash somebody.

"None of that—if you know when you are well off," cried Joe, his eyes blazing.

Chet stepped forward.

"If you say the word, we'll give you all that is coming to you," he put in.

All of the boys looked so determined that the man let his whip alone.

"Get out o' my way! I got to be goin'," he growled.

"Well, after this you be more careful," said Frank.

The driver grumbled, but the boys were not disposed to remain and argue the rights and wrongs of the matter. It had been an accident, pure and simple, with a certain amount of blame on both sides, so they mounted their motorcycles and drove on.

​Because of the spill, the boys realized that their chances of overtaking the car thieves were correspondingly lessened, but they decided to continue the pursuit.

"At the rate they're going," said Chet, hopefully, "they may have an upset themselves."

While the Hardy boys and their chum are speeding along the Shore Road on the trail of the stolen sedan, it will not be out of place to introduce them more fully to new readers.

Frank and Joe Hardy were the sons of Fenton Hardy, a famous detective who had made a national reputation for himself while on the detective force of the New York Police Department and who had retired to set up a private practice of his own. Frank Hardy was a tall, dark lad, sixteen years old, while his brother Joe was a fair, curly-headed chap, a year younger. Both boys were students at the high school in Bayport.

When Fenton Hardy retired from the metropolitan force, owing to the great demand for his services in private investigations, he had moved with his family to Bayport, a thriving city of fifty thousand, on Barmet Bay, on the Atlantic seaboard. Here the two boys attended school and here it was that they met with the first adventures that strengthened their resolution to follow in their father's footsteps and ​themselves become detectives when they grew older.

Fenton Hardy was one of the greatest American criminologists, and his sons had inherited much of his ability. From their earliest boyhood it had been their united ambition to be detectives but in this they had been discouraged by their parents, who preferred to see them inclined toward medicine or the bar. However, these professions held little attraction for the lads, and when they eventually had an opportunity to display their ability as amateur detectives they felt that they had scored a point toward realizing their ambition.

In the first volume of this series, "The Hardy Boys: The Tower Treasure," the lads cleared up a mystery centering about a strange mansion on the outskirts of Bayport, recovering a quantity of stolen jewelry and bonds after the police and even Fenton Hardy had been forced to admit themselves baffled. Thereafter, their father had made but mild objections to the pursuit of their hobby and was, indeed, secretly proud of the ability displayed by his sons. Further mysteries were solved by the boys, the stories of which have been recounted in previous volumes of this series, the preceding book, "Hunting for Hidden Gold," relating their adventures in the far West, ​where they faced a bandit gang and went after a fortune in hidden gold in the depths of an abandoned mine.

Chet Morton, who was with the Hardy boys this afternoon, was one of their high school chums, a plump, good-natured lad with a weakness for food "and lots of it," as he frequently said. He lived on a farm about a mile outside Bayport and, like the Hardy boys, was the proud owner of a motorcycle. Frank and Joe also owned a motorboat, the Sleuth, which they had bought from the proceeds of a reward they had earned by their work in solving a mystery. Tony Prito, an Italian-American lad, and Biff Hooper, two other high school chums of the Hardy boys, also owned motorboats, in which the boys spent many happy hours on Barmet Bay and in which they had, incidentally, experienced a number of thrilling adventures.

"Often wished I owned a boat," said Chet, as they sped along, "but now I'm just as glad I have a motorcycle instead. I'd have missed all this fun this afternoon if I hadn't."

"You have a queer idea of fun," Joe remarked. "Getting dumped out on my head into a wet ditch doesn't make me laugh very hard."

"Better than studying algebra." Chet's aversion to school work was well known.

For a while they sped on without talking. ​There was no sign of the stolen automobile, but the boys did not entirely give up hope of catching up with it. When they had gone about three miles, however, even Frank was forced to admit that the fugitives had doubtless given them the slip.

"What's going on over there?" said Frank suddenly. "There's a state trooper and three men over in that farmyard."

"And a big car, too," said Chet.

"Why, I know this place," Joe declared. "This is Dodd's farm."

"Not Jack Dodd? The chap who goes to Bayport High."

"Sure. This is where he lives. I remember the place was pointed out to me once."

"I knew Jack Dodd lived on a farm but I didn't know it was this far out," said Chet. "Let's drop in and see what's up."

With Frank in the lead the three boys turned down the lane leading in to the Dodd place.

"I wonder what that trooper is here for," he said. "They all seem to be having an argument over something."

"Perhaps the trooper met the auto thieves!" conjectured Chet.

When they drove into the barnyard they saw a boy running toward them and they recognized him as Jack Dodd, a quiet, likable lad who was in their class at the Bayport high school.

​"Hello, fellows!" he called to them, but they saw that there was a worried expression on his face. "What brings you away out here to-day?"

"Hunting trip," said Chet, with a curious glance toward the state trooper, who was standing over by the fence with Mr. Dodd and two burly strangers. Their voices were raised in a loud argument, in which Mr. Dodd appeared to be opposed to the others.

"Hunting trip?"

"Hunting for auto thieves," Frank explained. "Isaac Fussy's car was stolen a little while ago. When we saw that trooper here we had an idea that perhaps he might know something about it."

"What's that?" shouted the trooper, a broad-shouldered young chap. "A car stolen?"

"Yes, sir. We were chasing it. A big Cadillac."

"Didn't see it," replied the trooper. "It didn't pass this way, I'm sure of that. We've just found one stolen car, anyway."

"I tell you I didn't steal it!" declared Mr. Dodd heatedly. "I haven't the least idea how that car got there."

"That's all right," interposed one of the other men gruffly. "You can tell that to the judge, The fact is, we've found the car be​hind your barn and it's one of the cars that were stolen in the past couple of weeks."

The chums glanced questioningly at Jack Dodd.

"These men are detectives," he said, in a low voice. "They came out from the city with the trooper a little while ago."

"Did they really find a stolen car here?" asked Chet.

Jack nodded.

"They found one all right, but how on earth it got here, I don't know. It's a Packard and somebody must have driven it in and left it among the bushes behind the barn. We never noticed it."

"Well," the state trooper was saying, "I'm going to drive the car back to Bayport and return it to the owner. You don't claim it's yours, do you?" He gestured toward a splendid touring car near by.

"Of course it isn't mine," said Mr. Dodd. "I've never seen it before and I never want to see it again—"

"I guess you don't," growled one of the detectives.

"How it got here, I can't tell. I certainly had nothing to do with stealing it."

"People don't leave perfectly good cars hidden behind other people's barns," said the ​other detective. "You'd better tell us a straight story, Dodd. It'll be easier for you."

"I've told you all I know about it."

"Well, then, if you don't know any more about it, perhaps your son does."

"I don't know any more than Dad," declared Jack stoutly. "I've never seen the car before."

"Never?"

"No."

One of the detectives stepped swiftly over to the automobile and produced an object from the back seat. He held it out toward the boy.

"What's this?" he asked.

Jack gasped.

"My fishing rod!"

"It's yours, is it? How did it get there if you've never seen the car before?"