“He was worried about you,” Sandy said finally. “Because of Barrack knowing your address here, when all we’d told his landlady was the unlisted phone number. And since your door had been found open—as if somebody might have broken in—”
“I see,” Richard Holt said slowly. “I worry about you sometimes, when I’m half the world away. It never occurred to me that you’re far more likely to get yourself into trouble when I’m at home.”
“Oh, Dad!” Ken protested. “We don’t make a habit of this—honest! No matter what Bert says, we don’t go around looking for trouble. But I just had a hunch....”
He let his voice trail away when he saw the twinkle in Richard Holt’s eye.
“Of course not,” his father said. “You don’t make a habit of it. Things just happen to you.” He leaned back in his chair. “Tell me, Sandy and Ken, do you suppose there’s any way you could prevent things from happening?”
“You’ll see,” Sandy assured him. “We’re planning to work out some kind of system for that—immediately. Aren’t we, Ken?”
“Absolutely,” Ken agreed.
“Good,” Richard Holt said. “Very good indeed.”
But he would have sounded less relieved if he had known of events that were taking place even as he spoke—events that would soon enmesh the boys in the hazardous adventure destined to become known as The Clue of the Phantom Car.