CHAPTER 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 bonafide 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?”

“It looks just like some of the others that have been turned in,
although chiefly they have been dealing in tens and twenties. The man
who stepped off the train was probably one of their agents, trying to
convert as much of the counterfeit money into good cash as he could.
When he saw that you were only boys he thought there would be a better
chance of getting change for five dollars than ten. Then, of course, he
may only have been some one who had been fooled by the counterfeit and
decided to get rid of it by passing it on to some one else.”

“I wish he had asked us to change one of his counterfeit tens, instead,”
mourned Joe. “We would have been five dollars to the good.”