“We’ll come back in a day or so and see how he is getting along,” Joe promised. “He’ll have the best of care here. Whether it’s smugglin’ or not that he’s been mixed up in, it doesn’t matter. My wife and I will look after him.” The Hardy boys arranged to have the rowboat returned to its mooring place, then took their leave of the good-hearted farmer and his wife and made their way out to the road. Then they went back to the place where they had left their motorcycles, and in a short while were speeding again on their return to Bayport. “That fellow is certainly a queer stick,” remarked Joe, as he and his brother motored toward home. “I’ll say he is!” answered Frank. “There’s something mighty queer about all this, and don’t you forget it!” It was mid-afternoon when they turned their motorcycles into the driveway beside the Hardy home, and after they had put the machines in the garage they went into the house. They found their father, Fenton Hardy, in his den just off the library. He was never too busy to talk to his sons, and when they came in he put down the papers he was studying and leaned back in his chair. “Well, what have you two been up to to-day?” he inquired, smiling. “We’ve had a real adventure, this time, dad,” Frank told him. “We were out to the old Polucca place with some of the fellows.” “That’s the haunted house, isn’t it? See any ghosts?” The boys looked at one another. “No, we didn’t see any ghosts, exactly,” said Joe. “But—” “You don’t mean to tell me you heard some!” Fenton Hardy threw back his head and laughed with delight. “You may laugh; but some mighty queer things happened out there,” insisted Joe. Whereupon the brothers told their father of the strange experiences at the deserted farmhouse. But Mr. Hardy refused to take them seriously. “Some of your school chums playing a joke on you,” he said, dismissing the affair. “They’ll be laughing their heads off about it right now.” “But how do you account for the tool boxes being robbed?” “They just did that to make it a little more mysterious. Probably they will hand you back your tools at school on Monday, just to prove their story.” This aspect of the situation had not occurred to the boys. They began to look a bit sheepish. If it had been the work of practical jokers it was only natural that they would seek something definite whereby to prove the fact that they had been at the farmhouse. “Gosh, we’ll never hear the end of it, if that’s the case,” sighed Joe. “Oh, well, we’ll just have to take it in good part. But we didn’t tell you about what happened on the way home. Tell him about it, Frank.” “Another adventure?” “A real one. No practical joke about this.” Frank thereupon told their father about the two motorboats in Barmet Bay, about the chase and the resulting explosion. He modestly underestimated their own part in the rescue of the victim of the wreck, but Fenton Hardy nodded his head in satisfaction as the story went on.