“With the Hardy boys on their tail, those Counterfeiters won’t have a chance!” (36)
The Hardy Boys track down a counterfeiting ring in Bayport! Originally written in 1927 by Franklin W. Dixon (the nom de plume of Leslie McFarlane) and later rewritten in 1962 by Alistair Hunter, the third book in the original Hardy Boys series –The Secret of the Old Mill—is another charming, classic young adult adventure novel. The setting is summer and eighteen-year-old, dark-haired Frank and his blond-haired younger brother Joe are waiting at the train station for their father, world-renowned detective Fenton Hardy, to return from a big case in Detroit so he can reveal to the boys a big surprise he has in store for them. The boys are joined by their plump school chum, Chet Morton, who randomly makes change for a bum waiting at the station, gaining a $20 bill in return. But then at the train station, they witness a strange stocky man rush onto the last car in the moving train –the same man Chet exchanged money with (the man has a sharp nose, sunglasses, and a slouch hat). This is highly suspicious, and things seem even more ominous when Fenton Hardy does not show up on the return train.
The Hardys shrug it off for now and decide to depart with Chet Morton in his yellow jalopy “The Queen” as Chet, ever the hobbyist, leads them back to Mr. Reed’s Scientific Specialties Store where “a twin-lensed, high-powered microscope” is waiting for him. We can be sure Chet’s newest hobby will have something to do with solving the mystery in this book. However, when Chet hands Mr. Reed a $20 bill to pay for his microscope (the very same one he exchanged on the train platform), Mr. Reed notices it is actually a counterfeit bill.
This leads to a wild adventure all over town for the boys as they encounter some familiar faces like Oscar Smuff, the goofy boy who desperately wants to be a member of the police force, as well as the girls Callie Shaw and Chet’s sister Iola Morton (Joe’s “favorite date”), along with the local police like Officer Roberts and, of course, Chief Ezra Collig. Nearby, Frank and Joe spot a sedan with tampered brakes that nearly strikes an strange new boy named Ken Blake riding a bicycle he says was made in Belgium. Ken is working a summer job at a new employer in town and carrying a mysterious confidential envelope addressed to Victor Peters, Parker Building. The boys track this information.
Later, when Fenton Hardy finally returns, he surprises the boys with a brand new motorboat, called “The Sleuth,” which the boys use to help solve the mysterious events happening about town. Along the way, they bump into their school chum Tony Prito (whose boat The Napoli previously played a heavy role in the book The House on the Cliff). As it turns out, Tony’s father is a building contractor and he owns a construction supply yard which also recently received a counterfeit bill, this one delivered by a man in a green truck. This leads to more clues.
In an effort to pay back Mr. Reed for Chet’s microscope (which has proved handy at analyzing the counterfeit bills), the boys track down Chet’s father, who typically runs a real estate office, but on this day they find him out fishing in celebration of closing out a big business year. Why was it such a successful year for Mr. Morton? Well, as it turns out he closed a big land deal, the sale of the old Turner flour mill property to a large company called Elekton Controls Limited, “a company that makes top-secret control parts for space missiles in a modern building right next to an ancient, abandoned gristmill.” There are apparently secret experiments being conducted out there, and at this point, we are told that the old Turner Mill will be reconstructed as employee accommodations. Though it was once a historic place that was built by settlers when the area was first inhabited by Native American Indians –this little detail struck me as important. All throughout The Secret of the Old Mill, there are thematic reminders of America’s early settler colonialist history, from the boys being fired at with arrows, to the secrets underlying the old mill that were left behind by the early settlers, The Secret of the Old Mill offers another fantastic piece of Americana that almost seems to spring forth from a legendary pioneering past. Also of note is the introduction of the boys’ Aunt Gertrude (the unmarried sister of Fenton Hardy) who has a penchant for baking apple pies. She visits the Hardy household only to find herself fussing over a barrage of threatening notes the family starts receiving as the investigation intensifies.
With many of the kids in Bayport searching for a summer job in the novel, Chet Morton applies for a job at Elekton Controls (he is rejected the first time by Mr. Markel, the apparent yardman of the facility, but he is later accepted for a job in the cafeteria). After investigating a unique watermark on a threatening note attached to an arrow (featuring the watermark of a five-point star perhaps manufactured by a company in Bridgeport), and accidentally discovering an unusual cave near Willow River, eventually, the boys spy on the Elekton plant where they witness a sudden explosion in the factory. Is there treachery afoot?
Among the many twists and turns in this story, the Hardy Boys find themselves knocked unconscious and even attacked, at one point they are stranded in their boat “The Sleuth,” and in need of rescue. They also investigate the suspicious young boy named Ken Blake and his Belgium-made bicycle, but Ken is promptly fired from Elekton Controls (apparently for talking to the Hardys), and so he decides to help the Hardy’s investigation.
The climax of the novel comes with a dramatic nighttime infiltration of the old mill wherein the boys (joined by Chet and Tony) climb up and over the old water wheel and inside the ramshackle building through an open window where, among the many scattered old tools, the boys at last find the secret room where the counterfeit operation is being run. However, with little time to spare, they are quickly chased out and find themselves trapped in the old farmhouse garage before discovering a most unusual tunnel, originally built by the early settlers which leads out to the cave by Willow River (the settlers apparently constructed this tunnel in case they ever needed to escape from attacking Indians). Here, the boys are cornered by two men –Markel and Docker (later revealed to be brothers), the leaders of the counterfeit operation. And they are joined by two other men, Victor Peters and Paul Blum, who are all in on the counterfeit scheme. They amusingly explain their whole operation to the boys, before a scuffle ensues and Paul Blum is actually revealed to be a saboteur!
The Bayport police arrive and we learn that the federal government has also been working on the case (as has Fenton Hardy). Markel, Docker, and Victor Peters are all taken in for running a counterfeiting ring under the shadow of a top-secret military-grade factory. But in yet another surprising twist, it turns out that Paul Blum’s criminal sabotage operation has actually been Fenton Hardy’s mysterious case this whole time (the sabotage project has been run in several different cities in addition to Bayport). Thus, both investigations –Fenton’s and his sons’– are shown to be (un)surprisingly intertwined. After being caught, along with a confederate named Jordan, Paul Blum declares: “Several countries that want to stop the United States progress in missiles are paying me.” It was actually Paul who detonated the dynamite in the factory, a separate project from the counterfeit scheme, which was part of a coordinated plot against the United States… it is all a total farce but it works! The Secret of the Old Mill is another superb early Hardy Boys adventure, and it comes highly recommended, even if the additional b-plot in the revised edition is a bit convoluted.
Dixon, Franklin W. The Secret of the Old Mill. New York, Grosset & Dunlap, 1959.