pncolor">28 on the seacoast. That was his impressing requirement. So McKay sold him the Brownell place.

“Afterward, said McKay, he learned the new owner had put up signs all around the property, warning away trespassers. McKay said he even understood guards were to be employed to keep out intruders.”

“On the landward side of that old Brownell place, Dad, they’ve built a high fence of heavy strands of wire on steel poles,” said Bob. “I bumped into it the other day. They haven’t quite reached the shore with it, however, although I suppose they intend to.”

“Well, this is interesting,” said Mr. Hampton. “I wonder––”

He paused, looking thoughtful.

“What, Dad?” asked Jack.

“Oh,” said his father. “New York undoubtedly is the center of powerful groups of men seeking to evade the prohibition law by bringing liquor illicitly into the country. Much of the liquor is brought by ship from the Bahamas and the West Indies, and then smuggled ashore in various ways. Perhaps, the old Brownell house, built by a pirate of yesterday, is the home of a modern pirate, who directs activities from this secluded spot.”

After a rather late breakfast next morning for, it being vacation, the boys were under no necessity to rise early and being healthy lads took full measure of sleep, Jack appeared at the Temple home, and the three went into conference. Mr. Temple, head of a big exporting firm, had left early for the city by automobile. Mr. Hampton, reported Jack, had done likewise with his guest.

“Fellows,” said Jack, “when I got up this morning, it was with the feeling that this mystery was too good to be overlooked.”

Frank’s eyes brightened.

“Just the way I feel about it,” he declared. “I told Bob when we were dressing that we were in luck, because right at the moment it was beginning to look as if we were in for a dull summer, Fortune went and put an exciting mystery on our doorstep.”

Big Bob yawned.

“Oh, you fellows don’t know when you have a 30 good thing,” he said. “I suppose you want to go and stir up a lot of trouble as you did last summer. Why can’t you let well enough alone?”

They were in the sitting room shared by Bob and Frank, and the latter picking up a handy pillow promptly smothered his big chum with it and then sat on him.

“Don’t mind him, Jack,” he panted, in the resulting tussle. “He’s always like this when he gets up in the morning.”

A spirited engagement followed, from which Jack discreetly kept apart. Presently, when the couch was a wreck and Bob had Frank over his knees and was preparing to belabor him, Jack interfered.

“Listen to reason, you fellows,” he pleaded. “I’ve got a proposal.”

“Shall we listen to the proposal, Frank?” asked Bob, now fully awake, and grinning broadly. “Or shall we muss him up a bit?”

“’Ark to his Royal ’Ighness,” shouted Frank, his equilibrium restored. “’Ear. ’Ear.”

“Very well,” said Bob, addressing Jack with mock solemnity. “My friend says you are to be spared. But, mind you, it must be a good proposal. Now, out with it.”

Jack, ensconced in a deep easy chair, uncrossed his knees and leaned forward. 31

“You remember what was said last night about the operations of the liquor smugglers in and around New York?” he inquired.

The others nodded.

After the conversation the previous night had been directed by the revelations of the boys regarding their mysterious neighbors, and by Mr. Hampton’s comments on the operations of liquor smugglers, the boys had learned from the older men surprising facts regarding the situation.

Since the adoption of prohibition, they had been told, liquor-smuggling had grown to such an extent that a state of war between the smugglers and the government forces practically existed. Single vessels and even fleets were engaged by the smugglers to bring liquor up from the West Indies and land it on the Long Island and New Jersey coasts, and to combat these operations the government had formed a so-called “Dry-Navy” comprising an unknown number of speedy submarine chasers. A number of authentic incidents known to Colonel Graham and to Mr. Hampton and Mr. Temple had been related in which the daring of the smugglers had discomfited the government men, in one case a cargo of liquor having been landed at a big Manhattan dock by night and removed in trucks while a sub chaser patrolling the waterfront passed the scene of operations 32 several times, unsuspecting. There were other stories, too, of how the tables were turned, an occasion being cited when a sub chaser put a shot across the bow of what appeared to be a Gloucester fishing schooner which thereupon showed a clean pair of heels and tried to escape but was run down and captured inside the three-mile limit and proved to contain a $30,000 cargo of West Indian rum.

Some of these facts, of course, had appeared in the newspapers. Others had not been made public. But, far from New York City as they were and not interested in reading about news events, for they had their own interest to engage their attention, the boys were not familiar with the situation. What they had been told came as a tremendously interesting revelation.

“Very well,” continued Jack, as Bob and Frank prepared to listen; “remembering what we heard last night about the liquor smugglers, it certainly seems likely, doesn’t it, that the man who has bought the haunted Brownell house, built a secret radio plant and introduced a radio-controlled airplane into our exclusive neighborhood, may be involved with the smugglers?”

“Righto, Jack,” Frank declared. “But what’s your proposal?” 33

“Simply that we do a little investigating on our own account.”

“If you intend to propose that we go nosing around the Brownell place, trying to spy and snoop, I vote against it,” declared Bob. “I ran away yesterday, after discovering that radio plant, because I felt danger in the air. With a wire fence built to keep out intruders and with New York gunmen posted in the woods, I have a feeling it wouldn’t be healthy to do any investigating. If I were tiny as Frank here”—reaching over to rumple his chum’s hair—“it might do. They couldn’t hit me. But, as it is, I’d make a fine target.”

Jack smiled and nodded agreement.

“Agreed on that,” he said. “Dad always tells me it is only a foolhardy idiot who puts his head into danger unnecessarily. But that isn’t the kind of investigating I had in mind.”

“Then what?” asked Frank.

“Well, first of all, this is a fine day for flying,” answered Jack, pointing out the open window, to where warm sunshine lay over the country and the sparkling sea in the distance. “You fellows lie abed so long. You haven’t had a chance yet to see what an ideal day it is; warm, cloudless, and with hardly a trace of wind.”

“What’s flying got to do with it?” asked Bob. 34 “We saw yesterday about all we can see from the air. Any more flying over there will make somebody suspicious.”

“I was thinking of a little trip to Mineola,” said Jack. “Then we can leave the old bus on the flying field there and motor into the city in an hour. Once in the city we might ask Mr. McKay, your father’s real estate friend, who the fellow is who has bought the old Brownell house.”

“Then what, Hawkshaw?”

“Oh, Bob, don’t be such a grouch,”