The Secret of the Old Mill (Part One)

I got a copy of this book—which is an Applewood Books reissue, Facsimile Edition, original text—at the used bookstore in the Milwaukee airport for $9.00. It had been a present to “Max” from “Mom & Dad.” “Wishing you a wonderful year in 3rd Grade.” It was originally published in 1927, following The Tower Treasure and The House On The Cliff, the third in the series.

Frank and Joe Hardy are waiting at the train station for their dad, but he doesn’t show up—not an uncommon theme with the Hardy Boys over the years. In the meantime, a man asks them to change his five dollar bill for five ones, and between them they scrounge up four ones and some change. This is 1927 mind you; an inflation calculator tells me this is 70 clams by today’s standards. These guys are flush!—though part of that money is from their mom, to buy pie plates. Next stop is a general store where the proprietor, Mr. Moss, makes numerous, unrelenting jokes about the Hardys being detectives. When they pay for the pie plates, the man tells them that the bill is counterfeit, which they then confirm at the bank. When their father, famous detective Fenton Hardy, finally arrives at the train station later that afternoon, he informs them that he is indeed working on a counterfeiting case. What are the odds? And that is the beginning of a new mystery for the Hardys.

Then there’s this description of Callie Shaw, in school: “Callie, a brown-haired, brown-eyed miss with a quick, vivacious manner, was one of the prettiest girls attending Bayport high school. She was Frank’s favorite of all the girls in the city, and each morning he glanced over at her desk and never failed to receive a bright and fleeting smile that somehow made the dusty classroom seem a trifle less drab and monotonous, and when she was not there it always seemed that the day had gotten away to a bad start.” It is not explained why she is sometimes “not there” but on this day she is “not there” as in paying no attention to Frank, which causes him distress. Come recess, he asks what the problem is, and she apologizes for being distant, saying she’s worried about her cousin, Miss Pollie Shaw, the proprietor of a beauty salon. It is explained that Callie’s parents live in the country, but Callie stays in the city with her cousin in order to attend school. Which is interesting; I wonder if it was common for people to do that? I suppose the quality of the schools was profoundly different, or maybe there was no option at all for going to school where her parents lived in the country.

A woman had come into Pollie Shaw’s salon and had purchased $12 worth of beauty preparations, but only had a fifty to pay with. Pollie had changed the bill, which turned out to be counterfeit. It seems to me that’s a lot of money to pay for hair care products in 1927, which is some 50 years before Aveda, and ten years before Paul Mitchell was even born. But women were serious about their hairstyles; maybe they spent relatively more, at that time, than they do now. Anyway, it’s pretty interesting, this cousin Pollie being an independent businesswoman, and cool that Callie’s living with her. It’s impressive that she was able to change a fifty dollar bill. A lot of people won’t accept bills that large these days, even. Also, I think it’s funny that a beauty salon is the object for such a large counterfeit sting. Some years back I worked at a collection agency, dealing with bad checks, and it seemed that a disproportionately large amount of checks were written to hair salons for beauty products, or by salons to product suppliers.

So at this point of the book, both the Hardy Boys and Callie Shaw’s cousin have been “stung” by the counterfeiters. That is the word they use—a common slang expression, first used in 1812—though I’m certain I didn’t hear the word used in that way until the movie, The Sting, from 1973. The Hardys discuss it with their father, who exclaims, “So they’re dealing in fifties now!” Mrs. Hardy is saddened. “I’m sure I don’t know what the world’s coming to,” she says, “when men will make bad money and know that poor people are going to lose by it.”

...to be continued.