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- Herausgeber: Passerino
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Sprache: Englisch
The Secret of the Old Mill is a book by
Leslie McFarlane, written under the pseudonym
Franklin W. Dixon. It is the third book in the original Hardy Boys series, first published in 1927. This series follows two teenage brothers, Frank and Joe Hardy, who solve mysteries and engage in detective work. In The Secret of the Old Mill, the Hardy Boys investigate a counterfeiting ring operating out of an old mill. The book is written in a simple, fast-paced style typical of early 20th-century children's detective fiction and is considered a classic in young adult literature. McFarlane was one of the key ghostwriters for the Hardy Boys series, contributing significantly to its early popularity.
Charles Leslie McFarlane (October 25, 1902 – September 6, 1977) was a Canadian journalist, novelist, screenwriter, and filmmaker, who is most famous for ghostwriting many of the early books in the very successful Hardy Boys series, using the pseudonym
Franklin W. Dixon.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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The Secret of the Old Mill
The sky is the limit
Table of contents
I. A Five Dollar Bill
II. Counterfeit Money
III. The Hardy Boys at School
IV. Another Victim
V. Curing the Joker
VI. The Old Mill
VII. In the Mill Race
VIII. Joe’s Courage
IX. The Rescue
X. The New Boat
XI. A Man in a Hurry
XII. Seasick
XIII. Paul Blum
XIV. Con Riley Guards a Package
XV. The Chase
XVI. A Plan of Action
XVII. What Lester Said
XVIII. Suspicions
XIX. The Rug Buyer
XX. A Note of Warning
XXI. At the Mill
XXII. Through The Roof
XXIII. The Alarm
XXIV. Trapped
XXV. The Reckoning
I. A Five Dollar Bill
The afternoon express from the north steamed into the Bayport station to the usual accompanying uproar of clanging bells from the lunch room, shouting redcaps, and a bellowing train announcer.
Among the jostling, hurrying crowd on the platform were two pleasant-featured youths who scanned the passing coaches expectantly.
“I don’t see him,” said Frank Hardy, the older of the pair, as he watched the passengers descending from one of the Pullman coaches.
“Perhaps he stopped at some other town and intends coming in on the local. It’s only an hour later,” suggested his brother Joe.
The boys waited. They had met the train expecting to greet their father, Fenton Hardy, the nationally famous detective, who had been away from home for the past two weeks on a murder case in New York. It appeared that they were to be disappointed. When the last of the Bayport passengers had left the train Fenton Hardy was not among them.
“We’ll come back and meet the local,” said Frank at last.
The brothers were about to turn away and retrace their steps down the platform when they saw a tall, well-dressed stranger swing himself down from the steps of the nearest coach. He was a man of about thirty, dark and clean-shaven, and he hastened over toward them.
“I want to pay a fellow a dollar out of this five,” remarked the stranger, as he came up to the boys. “Can you change the bill?”
At the same time he produced a five dollar bill from his pocket and held it out inquiringly.
He was a pleasant-spoken young man and he was evidently in a hurry.
“I could try the lunch room, I suppose, but there’s such a crowd that I’ll have trouble being waited on,” he explained, the bill fluttering in his hands.
Frank looked at his brother and began feeling in his pockets.
“I’ve got three dollars, Joe. How about you?”
Joe dug up the loose change in his possession. There was a dollar bill, a fifty-cent piece and three quarters.
“Two dollars and a quarter,” he announced. “I guess we can make it.”
He handed over two dollars to Frank, who added it to the three dollars of his own and gave the money to the stranger, who gave Frank the five dollar bill in exchange.
“Thanks, ever so much,” said the young man. “You’ve saved me a lot of trouble. My friend is getting off at this station and I wanted to give him the dollar before he left. Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” replied Frank carelessly, putting the bill in his pocket. “We’ll get it changed between us.”
The young man nodded, smiled at them and hastened back up the steps of the coach, with a carefree wave of his hand.
“I’m glad we were able to help him out,” observed Joe. “It was just by chance that I had that small change too. Mother gave me some money to buy some pie-plates.”
“Pie-plates!” exclaimed Frank, with a grin. “There’s nothing I’d rather see coming into the house than more pie-plates. More pie-plates mean more pie.”
“We might as well go down and get them now, before I forget. There’s a shop down the street and we can get the plates and get this five dollar bill changed. It’ll help kill time before the local comes in.”
The two lads went down the platform, out through the station to the main street of Bayport, basking in the summer sunlight. They were healthy, normal American boys of high school age. Frank, being a year older than his brother, was slightly taller. He was slim and dark, while his brother was somewhat stouter of build, with fair, curly hair. As they strolled down the street they received and returned many greetings, for both boys were well-known and popular in Bayport.
Before they reached the store they heard the shriek of the whistle and the clanging of the bell that indicated that the express was resuming its southward journey.
“Our friend can travel in peace,” remarked Frank. “He got his five changed anyway.”
“And the other fellow got his dollar. Everybody’s happy.”
They reached the store and paused outside the entrance to examine an assortment of baseball bats, discussing the relative merits and weights of each, then poked around in a tray of mitts, trying them on and agreeing that none equaled the worn and battered mitts they had at home. Finally they entered the shop, where they were greeted by the proprietor, a chubby and genial man named Moss. Mr. Moss was sitting on the counter reading a newspaper, for business was dull that afternoon, but he cast the sheet aside when they came in.
“Looking for clues?” he asked humorously, as they came in.
As sons of Fenton Hardy, and as amateur detectives of some ability in their own right, the boys were frequently the butt of jesting remarks concerning their hobby, but they invariably took them in the spirit of good-natured raillery in which they were meant.
“No clues here,” continued Mr. Moss. “You won’t find a single, solitary clue in the place. I had a crate of awfully nice bank robbery clues in yesterday, but they’ve all been snapped up. I expect some nice murder clues in to-morrow morning, if you’d care to wait that long. Or perhaps you’d like me to order you a few kidnapping clues. Size eight and a half, guaranteed not to wear, tear or tarnish.”
Mr. Moss rattled on, with an air of great gravity, burst into a roar of laughter at his own joke, then swung his feet against the side of the counter.
“Well, boys, what’ll it be?” he asked, rubbing his eyes, as the two brothers grinned at him. “What can I do for you?”
“We want some pie-plates,” said Joe. “Three.”
“Small ones, I suppose,” said Mr. Moss, then chuckled hugely as the boys looked at him in indignation.
“I should say not,” returned Frank. “The biggest you’ve got.”
Mr. Moss laughed very much at this also, and swung himself down from the counter and went in search of the pie-plates. He returned eventually with three that seemed to be of the required size and quality.
“Wrap ‘em up,” said Frank, throwing the five dollar bill on the counter.
Mr. Moss wrapped up the plates, then picked up the bill and went over to the cash register. He rang up the amount of the sale and was about to put the money in the till when he suddenly hesitated, then held the bill up to the light. Slowly, he came back to the counter, rubbing the bill between thumb and forefinger, feeling its texture and minutely examining the surface.
“Where did you get this bill, boys?” he asked seriously.
“We just changed it for a stranger on the train,” answered Frank. “What’s the matter with it?”
“Looks bad to me,” replied Mr. Moss dubiously. “I’m afraid I can’t take a chance on it.”
He handed the bill back to Frank, then indicated the package on the counter.
“What are you going to do about the plates?” he asked. “Have you any other money besides that bill?”
“Not a nickel,” said Joe. “At least, not enough to pay for the plates. But do you really think the bill is no good?”
“I’ve handled a lot of them. It doesn’t look good to me. I tell you what you’d better do. Take it over to the bank across the street and ask the cashier what he thinks of it.”
The boys looked at one another in dismay. It had never occurred to them that there might be anything wrong with the money. Now it dawned on them that there had been something suspicious about the affable stranger’s request. Had they really been victimized?
“We’ll do that,” agreed Frank. “Come on, Joe. Keep those plates for us, Mr. Moss. If the bill is bad we’ll be back with some real money later on.”
They crossed the street to the bank and went up to the cashier’s cage. They knew the cashier well and he smiled at them as Frank pushed the five dollar bill under the grating.
“Want it changed?” he asked.
“We want to know if it’s good, first.”
The cashier, a sharp-featured, elderly man with spectacles, then took a sharp glance at the bill. He pursed up his lips as he felt the texture of the paper. Then he flicked the bill across to them again.
“Sorry,” he said. “You’ve been stung, boys. It’s counterfeit.”
“Counterfeit!” exclaimed Frank.
“You aren’t the first one who has been fooled. There’s been a lot of counterfeit money going around the past few days. It’s very cleverly done and it’s apt to fool any one who isn’t used to handling a lot of bills. Where did you get it?”
“A fellow got off the train and asked us to change it for him.”
The cashier nodded.
“And by now he is miles away, probably getting ready to work the same trick at the next station. I guess you’ll have to pocket your loss, boys. It’s tough luck.”
II. Counterfeit Money
The Hardy boys left the bank, feeling at once foolish and wrathful.
“Stung!” declared Frank. “Stung by a counterfeit bill! Oh, if the fellows hear of this we’ll never hear the end of it!”
“What a fine pair of greenhorns we must have looked to that slick stranger! I’d like to lay my hands on him for about five seconds. I’ll bet he’s been laughing to himself ever since about how easily we were fooled.”
“I’ll say we were easy. We hadn’t a suspicion in the world.”
“After all,” Joe remarked, “that bill might have fooled any one. You can’t deny that it looks mighty like a real five.”
They halted on the corner and again examined the money. Only an experienced eye could have detected any difference between the counterfeit bill and a genuine one. It was crisp and new and appeared in every respect identical with any bona fide five dollar bill that had ever been legitimately issued by the Federal Government.
“If we were dishonest we could palm this off on almost any one, just as we had it palmed off on us,” said Joe. “Oh, well—live and learn. I hate to think of that fellow laughing at us, though. It’s a nice price to pay for a lesson not to be too trustful of strangers after this.”
“It cost me more than it cost you,” Frank pointed out. “It was just my luck that I had three dollars on me and you had only two.”
This phase of the matter had not occurred to Joe before, so he felt considerably more cheerful in the thought that he had not, after all, been the chief loser.
They went back to the store and dolefully reported to Mr. Moss that he had been right in his surmise about the bill.
“It was bad, all right,” Frank told him. “The cashier took one look at it, and that was enough.”
Mr. Moss nodded sympathetically.
“Well, it’s too bad you were stung,” he said. “But I’d rather it was you than me. In business, we have to be careful. As a matter of fact, I think it would have fooled me, only the bank warned me this morning that there was some counterfeit money going around and that I’d better be on my guard against any new bills. The minute I saw your five was fresh and new I got suspicious. It’s certainly a clever imitation. Whoever is putting the stuff out is a real artist at that game.”
“We’ll be back for the pie-plates later,” promised Joe. “But we didn’t want you to think we were trying to pass bad money on you.”
Mr. Moss laughed at the idea.
“The Hardy boys pass counterfeit money!” he exclaimed. “I know you better than that, I hope. I’ll keep the plates for you, or you can take them now and bring back the money later. Good money, though,” he added, wagging his finger at them.
“We’ll be back,” they told him.
They went toward the station to wait for the local train on which they expected their father to arrive, and while they waited, sitting on a platform bench, they gloomily discussed the imposition of which they had been the victims.
“It isn’t so much losing my three dollars,” declared Frank. “It’s the thought of being fooled by such a simple trick. We should have known that the fellow had plenty of time to get his money changed at the lunch counter or at the cigar stand, or even the ticket office. Instead of that we dug into our pockets like lambs—”
“Lambs don’t have pockets,” Joe pointed out.
“All the better for them. They’re so innocent they’d be fleeced of everything they put in ‘em, anyway. Just like us. We handed over all our money to a total stranger and let him give us a bad bill that we didn’t even take the trouble to look at. I wish somebody would kick me all around the block.”
While the Hardy boys are sitting on the bench, gloomily awaiting the arrival of their father and preparing to tell him of how they had been fooled by the stranger, it will not be out of place to introduce them still further to the readers of this volume.
As related in the first volume of this series, “The Hardy Boys: The Tower Treasure,” Frank and Joe Hardy were the sons of Fenton Hardy, a private detective of international fame. Mr. Hardy, who had been for many years on the New York police force and who had later resigned to carry on a private detective practice, was a criminologist of note. He knew by sight and by reputation most of the notorious criminals of his day, and his mastery over all the branches of his profession was such as to place him at the very forefront of American detectives. So great had been the demand for his services in solving the mysteries of crimes that had baffled the detective forces of other cities that he had found it much more lucrative to carry on a practice of his own than to remain attached to the service in any one city, even such a city as the great American metropolis.
Fenton Hardy, with his wife, Laura Hardy, and their two sons, Frank and Joe, had accordingly moved to Bayport, a city of about fifty thousand inhabitants, situated on Barmet Bay, on the Atlantic Ocean. There Frank and Joe had gone to school until now they were in the Bayport high school. Both boys were fully conscious of the fame of their father and were eager to follow in his footsteps, although their mother had expressed a desire that they fit themselves for some less hazardous and more conventional profession.
However, the Hardy boys had inherited much of their father’s ability and deductive talent. Already they had aided in solving two mysteries that had kept Bayport by the ears. As related in “The Hardy Boys: The Tower Treasure,” they had solved the mystery of the theft of valuable jewels and bonds from Tower Mansion, after even Fenton Hardy himself had been unable to discover where the thief had hidden the loot. In the second volume of the series, “The Hardy Boys: The House on the Cliff,” has been told how the Hardy boys discovered the haunt of a gang of smugglers who were operating in Barmet Bay. In this case they had received a substantial reward, as Federal agents had tried in vain to locate the smugglers’ base of activities for many months.
Following the adventures at the house on the cliff an uneventful winter and spring had passed, the brothers devoting themselves to their studies and to an occasional winter holiday. Christmas had come with many presents, and now warm weather was once more at hand.
Because of the pride they took in their achievements as amateur detectives, the Hardy boys felt very keenly the ignominy of being so easily fooled by the stranger who had passed the counterfeit money upon them.
“Dad will have the laugh on us now,” muttered Joe, as they heard the distant whistle of the approaching train.
“Well, we’ll tell him about it, anyway. Who knows but what a big case might arise out of this?”
The afternoon local pulled into the station, and Fenton Hardy stepped down from the parlor car, bag in hand, light coat over one arm. He was a tall, dark-haired man of about forty years of age. He had a quick, pleasant smile for his sons and he shook hands with them warmly.
“How’s mother?” he asked, after the first greetings.
“She’s fine,” replied Frank. “She said there’d be something special for supper to-night, seeing you’re back.”
“Good! And what have you two been doing? Kept out of mischief, I hope.”
“Well, we’ve kept out of mischief,” said Joe; “but we haven’t kept out of trouble.”
“What’s the matter?”
“We just got fooled by a smart stranger who stepped off the express. It cost us five dollars.”
“How did that happen?”
“He asked us to change a five dollar bill for him—”
“Ah, ha!” exclaimed Fenton Hardy, raising his eyebrows. “And what then?”
“It was counterfeit.”
Mr. Hardy looked grave.
“Have you got it with you?”
“Yes,” answered Frank, producing the bill. “I don’t think we can be blamed such an awful lot for being fooled. It certainly looks mighty like a good one.”
Fenton Hardy put down his bag and examined the bill closely for a moment. Then he folded it up and put it in his waistcoat pocket.
“I’ll take care of this, if you don’t mind,” he said, picking up his bag and beginning to walk toward the station exit. “As it happens, I know something about this money.”
“What do you mean, dad?” asked Frank quickly.
“I don’t mean that I know anything about this particular five dollar bill, but I know something about this counterfeit money in general. As a matter of fact, that is why this trip took me longer than I had thought it would. When I finished the case that originally took me away, the Government called me in on this counterfeit money case.”
“Is there a lot of it going around?”
“Too much. Within the past few weeks the East has been flooded with it, and the circulation seems to be spreading. There seems to be a central counterfeiting plant somewhere, with experts in charge of it, and they are turning out imitation bills so clever that the average person can hardly detect them. The Federal authorities are worrying a great deal about it.”
“And this is one of the bills?”
