CHAPTER I

THE OVERTURNED AUTO

“What do you reckon it’s all about, Jerry?”

“Well, Bob, you’re as good a guesser as I am,” came the answer from the young man who was at the wheel of a touring car that was swinging down a pleasant country road, under arching trees. “What do you say it means?”

“I haven’t the least idea, unless it’s some business deal. Ned, why don’t you say something, instead of sitting there like a goldfish being admired by a tom-cat?” and Bob Baker, who sat beside Jerry Hopkins, the lad at the wheel, turned to his chum in the rear seat of the car.

“Say something!” exclaimed Ned Slade. “I’m as much up in the air about it as you fellows are. All I know is that my dad, and yours, and Jerry’s mother, are having a confab.”

“And a sort of serious confab at that,” added Bob. “Look out there, Jerry!” he cried suddenly. “You nearly ran over that chicken,” and he involuntarily raised his hand toward the steering wheel as a frightened, squawking and cackling hen fluttered from under the front wheels of the automobile, shedding feathers on the way. Then Bob remembered one of the first ethics of automobiling, which is never to interfere with the steersman, and he drew back his hand.

“A miss is as good as a mile,” remarked Jerry coolly, as he brought the car back to a straight course, for he had swerved it to one side when he saw the chicken in the path. “But I agree with you, Bob, that the conference going on at my house, among our respected, and I might as well say respectable, parents does seem to be a serious one. However, as long as we can’t guess what it’s about there’s no use in worrying. We may as well have a good time this afternoon. Where shall we go?”

“Let’s go to Wallace’s and have a bite to eat,” put in Bob.

“Why, we only just had lunch!” exclaimed Ned, with a laugh.

“Maybe you fellows did, but I wouldn’t call it a lunch that I got outside of--not by a long shot! Mother isn’t at home, it was the girl’s day out and I had to forage for myself.”

“Heaven help the pantry, then!” exclaimed Jerry. “I’ve seen Bob ‘forage,’ as he calls it, before; eh, Ned?”

“That’s right. He did it at our house once, and say! what mother said when she came home--whew!” and Ned whistled at the memory.

“I wasn’t a bit worse than you were!” cried Bob, trying to lean back and punch his chum, but the latter kept out of reach in the roomy tonneau. “Anyhow, what has that got to do with going to Wallace’s now? I’m hungry and I don’t care who knows it.”

“Well, don’t let that fat waiter at Wallace’s hear you say that, or he’ll double charge us in the bill,” cautioned Jerry. “They sure do stick on the prices at that joint.”

“Then you’ll go there?” asked Bob eagerly.

“Oh, I s’pose we might as well go there as anywhere. Does it suit you, Ned?”

“Sure. Only I can’t imagine where Bob puts it all. Tell us, Chunky, that’s a good chap,” and he patted the shoulder of the stout lad who sat in front of him.

“Tell you what?” asked Bob, responding to the nickname that had been bestowed on him because of his stoutness.

“Where you put all you eat,” went on Ned with a laugh. “You know it is impossible to make two objects occupy the same space at the same time. And if you’ve eaten one lunch to-day, and not two hours ago, where are you going to put another?”

“You watch and see,” was all the answer Bob made. “Hit her up a bit, Jerry. There’s a stiff hill just ahead.”

“That’s right. I forgot we were on this road. Well, then it’s settled. We’ll go to Wallace’s and let Bob eat,” and having ascended the hill, he turned off on a road that led to a summer resort not many miles from Cresville, the home town of the three lads.

“Aren’t you fellows going to have anything?” asked Bob. “You’ll eat; won’t you?”

“Oh, for cats’ sake, cut out the grub-talk for a while!” begged Ned. “Say, what about that conference, anyhow? Does any one know anything about it?”

“All I know,” said Jerry, “is that I asked mother to come out for an auto ride this afternoon, and she said she couldn’t because your dad, Ned, and Bob’s too, were coming over to call.”

“Did you ask her what for?”

“No, but I took it for granted it was something about business. You know mother owns some stock in your father’s department store, Ned.”

“Yes, and she deposits at dad’s bank,” added Bob, whose father, Andrew Baker, was the president of the most important bank in Cresville. “I guess it must be about some business affairs.”

“I don’t agree with you,” declared Ned.

“Why not?” Jerry demanded. “When mother said she couldn’t come out I hustled over and got you fellows, and here we are. But what’s your reason for thinking it isn’t business, Ned, that has brought our folks together at my house?”

“Because of some questions my father asked me this morning.”

“Serious questions?” Bob interrogated.

“Well, in a way, yes. He asked me what I’d been doing lately, what you fellows had been doing, and he wanted to know what my plans were for this winter.”

“What did you tell him?” inquired Jerry, slowing down as he came to the crest of another hill.

“Oh, I said we hadn’t decided yet. I didn’t tell him we had talked over making a tour of the South, for we hadn’t quite decided on it; had we?”

“Not exactly,” responded Jerry. “And yet the South is the place when winter comes. I guess we might do worse.”

“Well, I didn’t say anything about that,” went on Ned, “because, if I had, dad would have wanted to know all the particulars, and I wasn’t in a position to tell him.”

“Is that all he asked you that makes you think the conference may be about us, instead of business?” Bob inquired.

“No, that wasn’t quite all. He asked me about that trouble we got into last week.”

“Oh, do you mean about the time we were pulled in for speeding?” asked Jerry with a laugh.

“That’s it,” assented Ned. “Only it isn’t going to be anything to grin at if dad finds out all about it--that we nearly collided with the hay wagon while trying to pass that roadster. Say, but it was some going! We fractured the speed limits in half a dozen places.”

“But we beat the roadster!” exclaimed Jerry. “That fellow didn’t know how to drive a car.”

“You’re right there. And, for a second or two, I thought you were going to make a mess of it,” said Ned, referring to an incident that had happened about a week previously when the boys, out on the road in their car, had accepted an impromptu challenge to race, with what might have been disastrous results.

“It was a narrow squeak,” admitted Jerry.

“And the nerve of that farmer, setting the constable after us!” cried Bob. “Just because we wouldn’t let him rob us of ten dollars to make up for a scratch one of his horses got from our mud guard.”

“I sometimes think we might have come out of it better if we had given the hayseeder his ten,” said Jerry, reflectively. “It cost us fifteen for the speed-fine as it was. We’d have saved five.”

“And is that what your father was asking about?” asked Bob.

“Words to that effect--yes,” replied Ned.

“Wonder how he heard about it?”

“It wasn’t in the paper,” reflected Jerry. “I looked all over for an account of it, but didn’t see any.”

“No, it wasn’t in the paper,” said Ned, “but dad hears of more things than I think he does, I guess.”

“We have been speeding it up a bit lately,” observed Jerry in a reflective tone.

“Just a little,” admitted Ned, with a half smile.

The three chums were clean-cut, healthy-looking lads, and it needed but a glance into their clear faces to tell one that whatever “speeding” they had been doing was in a literal sense only, and was not in the way of dissipation. They were fun-loving youths, and, like all such, the excitement of the moment sometimes got the better of them.

“And so you think the conference may have something to do with us; is that it, Ned?” asked Jerry, after a moment or two of silence.

“I have an idea that way--yes, from what dad said, and from what he wanted to know about our future plans. We’re mixed up in it somehow, that’s as sure as turkey and cranberry sauce.”

“That sounds like Chunky!” laughed Jerry.

“Well, what’s the idea?” demanded the stout youth. “I mean--what do you think will happen, Ned?”

“Well, you know we have been going a pretty lively gait lately, nothing wrong, of course, but a sort of butterfly existence, so to speak.”

“Butterfly is good!” exclaimed Jerry. “You’d think we were a trio of society girls.”

“Well, I mean we haven’t really done anything worth while,” went on Ned. “And it’s my idea that my dad, and yours, Bob, and Jerry’s mother, who is as good a dad as any fellow could want--I think they are going to put the brakes on us.”

“How do you mean?” Jerry demanded.

“Oh, make us cut out some of the gay and carefree life we’ve been living. Settle down and----”

“Get married?” laughed Jerry.

“Not much!” cried Bob. “Not if I can help it!”

“Of course not,” put in Ned. “I mean just settle down a bit, that’s all.”

They swung around a curve in the road, and as they did so they saw a powerful roadster coming toward them, driven by a man who was the sole occupant. He was speeding forward at a fast clip.

“That fellow had better settle down!” exclaimed Jerry. “He’s going too fast to make this turn, and this bank is one of the most dangerous around here.”

The boys themselves had safely taken the turn, and come past the steep embankment on which it bordered, but the man in the roadster was approaching it.

“He isn’t slowing down,” said Ned.

“Better yell at him,” suggested Bob. “Maybe he doesn’t know the road.”

“Look out for that turn!” cried Jerry, as the man passed them.

It is doubtful if he heard them. Certainly he did not heed, for he swung around the turn at full speed. A moment later the boys, who had drawn to one side of the road, in order to give the man plenty of room to pass, looked back.

They saw the speeding roadster leave the highway and plunge down the bank, turning over and pinning the driver underneath.

“There he goes!” cried Jerry, jamming on the brakes.