Puzzled
The clouds were black overhead and the rain was pouring steadily as the
Hardy boys hastened back up the path toward the picnic grounds. Once
under the trees they were partly sheltered from the rain but in the open
spaces they were thoroughly drenched. Thunder rolled continuously,
lightning flashed, and the rain came in sheets.
“This ends the picnic,” panted Joe, as they ran back.
“It sure does. Everybody will be soaked.”
The trees were threshing and sighing in the wind. There was a vivid
flash of lightning followed immediately by a crash and a clap of
thunder.
“Must have hit a tree,” said Frank.
When they came in sight of the picnic grounds, Frank saw that he had
guessed correctly. Only a few yards away from the cook-house, a great
oak lay prone on the ground, a jagged fragment of the trunk sticking up
out of the earth. The trunk had been sundered by the lightning and the
great tree had been struck to earth.
Inside the cook-house, the boys and girls of the graduating class were
huddled together. Many of them were badly frightened, for the lightning
flash had come unpleasantly close, and the falling tree had missed their
refuge by a scant few feet.
As Frank and Joe came racing across the sloppy ground, a cheer went up.
“Here they are!”
“Here come the Hardy boys!”
“At last!”
“Where have you two been?” shouted Chet Morton, as they dashed up onto
the veranda, their clothes dripping wet. “We’ve been worried sick.
Thought you’d got struck by lightning.”
“Looks as if you people were nearer to being struck than we were,”
replied Frank, looking ruefully at his drenched garments.
“We’ve been awfully worried,” said Callie Shaw, pressing forward. “When
the storm began, everybody gathered here except you and Joe, and we had
no idea where you were.”
“Oh, we were just exploring around,” said Frank. “No harm done, except
that we’re mighty wet.”
“No harm done!” exclaimed Iola Morton. “How about our nice picnic? It’s
all spoiled now!”
“Well, we were nearly ready to go home anyway,” observed Chet. He turned
to the Hardy boys. “Well, you two chaps missed the best display of
fireworks I’ve seen since last Fourth of July.”
“Looks as if you had a mighty narrow escape,” said Joe.
“We certainly had. There was a flash of lightning that seemed to miss us
all by about two inches, then the loudest crash of thunder I ever heard
in my life, then a tearing and crackling, and we saw that big tree
topple over.”
“It seemed to be coming right down on top of the house,” said Callie.
“We thought we were done for. If that tree had ever hit the roof we
would have been crushed to death. And that _would_ have spoiled the
picnic for sure,” added Chet.
The very real danger they had been in and the storm had dampened the
spirits of the graduating class, and when the rain finally began to die
down there was not a dissenting voice when Frank Hardy suggested that
they make a dash for the cars. Hastily packing up the baskets, they left
their refuge and ran across the grass to the cars parked out by the
gate. Everyone found a place, and within a few minutes the picnic
grounds were deserted.
The lull in the storm had been only temporary. Rain came down in
torrents before they had gone more than half a mile along the Shore
Road, and some of those in open cars who had not taken the precaution of
putting up the tops, received a second drenching. Frank and Joe, in
their roadster, accompanied by Callie Shaw and Iola Morton, were more
fortunate, and they soon arrived on the outskirts of Bayport without
mishap.
The picnic party broke up without further ceremony, the cars scattering
in various directions as the boys of the class drove the girls home.
Frank and Joe drove Callie to her aunt’s store in Bayport and Iola
decided that she would wait there for Chet, who was to drive her home
that evening. In their wet clothes, the picnickers presented a sorry
sight, but all in all they agreed that they had had a good time which
even the thunderstorm could not spoil.
When Frank and Joe Hardy reached home and changed their clothes, their
mother was sympathetic.
“It’s too bad,” she said, as she prepared a hot supper for them. “You
had all been counting on that picnic.”
“Well, we had half a picnic, at any rate. We can be thankful for that
much,” Frank observed. And then, when their mother was in the kitchen,
he added to his brother: “I don’t call the day wasted.”
“You mean Ducroy?”
“Yes. We learned that he’s up to some funny business. I’d like to know
what it’s all about.”
“Something crooked, I’ll be bound,” declared Joe.
“Ten thousand dollars apiece, he said. That’s a lot of money. I’m sure
Giles Ducroy and his two precious friends could never earn that much
money honestly.”
“It must be crooked. The big reason Ollie Jacobs and Newt Pipps objected
to the scheme was because there was danger in it and they might be
shot.”
“Maybe they intend to rob a bank,” ventured Frank.
“I wish we knew. Still, perhaps it was all just talk. They were half
drunk, you know.”
“Yes, I thought of that.” Frank shook his head. “Still, now that Giles
Ducroy is out of work, he might be turning his hand to some kind of
thievery.”
“Do you think we ought to tell dad?” Joe suggested.
“Not yet. After all, those men were drinking and it might have been
nothing more than drunken chatter. Perhaps Ducroy was only bragging and
trying to make a big fellow of himself by telling them he could help
them make so much money. We don’t know what they were talking about in
the first place. We’d just look foolish if we went to dad with our story
and nothing came of it.”
“He couldn’t do anything, anyway. No more than we can.”
“All we can do,” said Frank, “is to watch and wait.”
“We’ll watch, all right. We’ll try to check up on Giles Ducroy and find
out what he’s up to. We have one big advantage—he doesn’t know we
overheard what they were saying in the cabin.”
“He doesn’t know we were within miles of the place.”
“I’m puzzled about that conversation. If there was nothing in it,” said
Joe, “why did they pick such an out-of-the-way spot to have their
meeting?”
“It may have been because of the liquor. It’s against the law to have
it,” Frank pointed out. “Perhaps we were only listening in on a drinking
party after all.”
“I don’t think so. I have a pretty strong belief that there was more
than that behind it. Giles Ducroy and that other pair are a bad
combination. When you see those three together it means there is some
trouble being hatched.”
Their mother came in just then with the tea things, so the boys turned
the conversation to other matters. Mrs. Hardy wanted to know what was
next on their program, now that school was over and the class picnic a
thing of the past.
“Graduation exercises,” said Frank promptly. “Next week, at the high
school.”
“I must get a new dress,” Mrs. Hardy declared.
“You’ll certainly have to get all dolled up to come and see your sons
step up for their diplomas,” agreed Joe laughingly. “It only happens
once in a lifetime, you know.”
“I’m glad to see you graduate, but in a way I’m sorry,” confessed their
mother. “It means you’re growing up and you soon won’t be my boys any
longer.”
“We’ll always be your boys, even if we live to be a hundred,” declared
Frank, putting an arm about his mother’s waist.
“Have you decided what you want to do after the holidays are over?” she
asked. “You know I’ve been counting on having you both go through
college.”
The boys looked serious.
“We’ll have to think about that,” Joe said. “Still, there’s lots of
time. A whole summer ahead of us.”
“Be sure and think seriously about it,” their mother warned. “It is a
serious matter. Your whole future will depend on your decision.”
“Maybe by the end of the summer we’ll feel different about going to
college,” said Frank. “Just now I’m so glad to be out of school that I
never want to see another study book again as long as I live.”
“Me, too,” declared Joe.
Their mother smiled indulgently, and the matter of the boys’ future
plans rested at that.