“Nary a ghost,” laughed Frank, “Snackley explained everything this morning in a confession. The whole gang is locked up, even to Li Chang. Yates, the young fellow they had kept prisoner so long, told the whole story first. He turned state’s evidence and told how long the smuggling had been going on, how Snackley had made use of the house on the cliff after killing Polucca, how he fixed up the tunnels in the cliff—he told everything. It seems that Polucca had the smuggling idea in the first place and he spent years fixing up those caves and tunnels. When everything was ready, he called in Snackley, but Snackley didn’t like to share with any one who had a right to a voice in the affair, so he killed the old man, took his money, and brought the smuggling gang in there.”
“Yates told all that?”
“He told so much of it that Snackley saw there was no use bluffing any longer, so he admitted the whole story.”
“Gosh!” sighed Chet. “Just my luck! I was there in time to get scared to death by that half-wit, and there in time to get bawled out and chased off the farm by Redhead and his wife, but I missed out on all the fun at the last.”
“Not much fun about it,” declared Joe. “It didn’t seem funny to us when the smugglers caught us in the cave just as we were getting dad free.”
“And it wasn’t any fun hiding in that attic with the bullets coming through the floor, nineteen to the dozen,” added Frank. “I thought every minute was going to be my last.”
“No, I guess it wasn’t any too funny then,” admitted Chet. “You deserve every cent you get out of the reward.”
“We’ll treat the whole gang to a feed as soon as we collect,” Joe promised.
“Whee!” shouted Chet, turning a handspring. “Now you’re talking!”
The Hardy boys kept their word. Soon after they had received their share of the reward, which was presented to them with many glowing words and congratulations from the federal authorities who had long been trying to put Snackley behind the bars, they gave a dinner in the barn that eclipsed any similar “feed” in the history of Bayport.