They made no answer.
“Who’s there, I say? Is it you, Redhead?”
Still they did not reply. Fenton Hardy crept through the darkness in the direction of the voice.
“Speak! Quick! Speak, or I’ll fire!”
The boys heard a sudden, scrambling sound. Their father had thrown himself upon the other man. The boys rushed in on the two struggling figures.
There was a deafening roar and a streak of flame. The man of the house had been armed with a shotgun, and in the struggle it had exploded.
Fortunately, the Hardy boys were not standing in the path of the shot. But the noise had attracted the attention of the smugglers outside the house, and in a few seconds the back door was flung open.
“They’re in here!” some one yelled. “They’re in the house!”
Fenton Hardy flung to one side the man with whom he had been struggling.
“Upstairs!” he called out to the two boys and ran on into the next room.