"I can't understand why dad is so anxious for me to come home and do some investigating for him," he mused. "I wonder what sort of investigating it can be? Maybe he wants me to turn detective. Perhaps some persons have been demanding money from him, and he wants to find out who they are. Yet it can hardly be that, either. Let's see what he says about it." Then the young millionaire, who had been so taken up with trying for the annual prize offered for the best appearing company, that he had not had time to properly read a very important letter he had received from his father that day, set himself to the task of trying to fathom what his parent wanted him to do. He had not read more than a dozen lines, when there sounded a knock on his door, and, opening it he saw one of the janitors, Corporal Bill Handlee, standing there. "Well, what is it, Toots?" asked the lad, giving the old soldier the name bestowed on him from the fact that he was always whistling military airs. "Colonel Masterly wishes to see you, Captain Hamilton." "All right. Tell him I'll be with him at once." Dick slipped the letter into his pocket, adjusted his uniform, and hastened out. "I wonder if I'll ever get time to read my letter without being interrupted," he mused. CHAPTER II MR. HAMILTON'S LETTER Colonel Masterly's summons to the young millionaire was to give him the permission, asked for shortly after the parade, to have a spread in one of the unused rooms of the academy, and once that he was assured that everything was all right, Dick set to work to provide for the good time he anticipated. He hurried into town, and gave orders to a caterer for a "spread" such as had seldom before been given at Kentfield. Then the lad had to arrange for various details, improvising tables from boards and saw-horses, seeing to the seating arrangements, sending out his verbal invitations, in which Paul Drew helped him, for, as it was impossible to have the entire student-body at the little dinner, Dick had to confine it to his closest friends, and the members of his prize company. That he had many friends, those of you who have read the previous volumes of this series will testify, though at first, on coming to the military academy, Dick's millions had been a handicap to him. The son of Mortimer Hamilton, of Hamilton Corners, himself a millionaire many times, Dick had inherited a large fortune from his mother, who had been dead some years; but, as told in the first volume of this series, entitled "Dick Hamilton's Fortune," he was not to have the use of this money until he had complied with certain conditions of Mrs. Hamilton's will. One stipulation was that Dick must make a paying investment of some of his funds within a year. If he did not do this he was to go and live with a crabbed old uncle, named Ezra Larabee, of Dankville, and attend a boarding school of that relative's selection.