All of the boys looked so determined that the man let his whip alone.
"Get out o' my way! I got to be goin'," he growled.
"Well, after this you be more careful," said Frank.
The driver grumbled, but the boys were not disposed to remain and argue the rights and wrongs of the matter. It had been an accident, pure and simple, with a certain amount of blame on both sides, so they mounted their motorcycles and drove on.
Because of the spill, the boys realized that their chances of overtaking the car thieves were correspondingly lessened, but they decided to continue the pursuit.
"At the rate they're going," said Chet, hopefully, "they may have an upset themselves."
While the Hardy boys and their chum are speeding along the Shore Road on the trail of the stolen sedan, it will not be out of place to introduce them more fully to new readers.
Frank and Joe Hardy were the sons of Fenton Hardy, a famous detective who had made a national reputation for himself while on the detective force of the New York Police Department and who had retired to set up a private practice of his own. Frank Hardy was a tall, dark lad, sixteen years old, while his brother Joe was a fair, curly-headed chap, a year younger. Both boys were students at the high school in Bayport.
When Fenton Hardy retired from the metropolitan force, owing to the great demand for his services in private investigations, he had moved with his family to Bayport, a thriving city of fifty thousand, on Barmet Bay, on the Atlantic seaboard. Here the two boys attended school and here it was that they met with the first adventures that strengthened their resolution to follow in their father's footsteps and themselves become detectives when they grew older.
Fenton Hardy was one of the greatest American criminologists, and his sons had inherited much of his ability. From their earliest boyhood it had been their united ambition to be detectives but in this they had been discouraged by their parents, who preferred to see them inclined toward medicine or the bar. However, these professions held little attraction for the lads, and when they eventually had an opportunity to display their ability as amateur detectives they felt that they had scored a point toward realizing their ambition.