“The fact that he didn’t put the secret sign underneath his name makes me anxious. What other object could any one have in sending us a note like that, if not to keep us from starting a search for him?”
“Well, whether he wrote that note or not, we will start a search for him,” declared Frank firmly. “He merely said not to worry about him. He didn’t order us not to look for him. If he really did write the note he can’t say we were disobeying instructions. And then, the absence of the secret sign makes it all different.”
“I’ll say we’ll look for him!” cried Joe. “Vacation starts next week, and we’ll have plenty of time to hunt for him.”
“Wait until then, at any rate,” Mrs. Hardy advised. “Perhaps he will return in the meanwhile.”
But as she glanced at the note again and once more regarded the signature, strangely lacking its secret sign, her forebodings that Fenton Hardy had met with foul play increased.
CHAPTER X
The Vain Search
Fenton Hardy was still missing when the summer vacation began.
There had been no word from him. Never, in all his years of detective work, had he vanished from home so completely and for such a length of time. He was an intensely considerate man and his first thought was always for his wife and boys. Occasionally it was necessary for him to leave home suddenly on trips that would keep him away for some length of time, sometimes it seemed wiser to keep the knowledge of his whereabouts to himself. But he always managed to communicate with Mrs. Hardy to assure her of his safety.
But this time, with the exception of the dubious note, there had been no such assurance. From the moment he had left the house on the morning after the kidnapping at the Kane farmhouse he had vanished as utterly as though the earth had swallowed him up.