Hydrofoil Mystery

PUFFIN CANADA

THE HYDROFOIL MYSTERY

ERIC WALTERS
is the highly acclaimed and bestselling author of over fifty novels for children and young adults. His novels have won the Silver Birch Award three times and the Red Maple Award twice, as well as numerous other prizes, including the White Pine, Snow Willow, Tiny Torgi, Ruth Schwartz, and IODE Violet Downey Book Awards, and have received honours from the Canadian Library Association Book Awards, The Children's Book Centre, and UNESCO's international award for Literature in Service of Tolerance.

 

To find out more about Eric and his novels, or to arrange for him to speak at your school, visit his website at
www.ericwalters.net
.

Also by Eric Walters from Penguin Canada

The Bully Boys

Trapped in Ice

Camp X

Royal Ransom

Run

Camp 30

Elixir

Shattered

Camp X: Fool's Gold

Sketches

The Pole

The Falls

 

The

Hydrofoil

Mystery

ERIC WALTERS

PUFFIN CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 1999

Published in Puffin Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2000

Published in this edition, 2008

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (OPM)

Copyright © Eric Walters, 1999

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publisher's note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual
persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Walters, Eric, 1957–

The hydrofoil mystery / Eric Walters.

ISBN 978-0-14-316861-4

1. Bell, Alexander Graham, 1847–1922––Juvenile fiction. 2. World War, 1914–1918––Nova Scotia––Juvenile fiction. 3. Baddeck (N.S.)––History––Juvenile fiction. I. Title

PS8595.A598H92 2008    jC813'.54    C2008-902537-7

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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Alexander Graham Bell was a genius—probably after da Vinci, the greatest thinker of all time. But more than a genius he was a devoted husband, a caring father and a wonderful grandparent. He was a man of integrity, honesty, honour, who still loved a good joke. He himself said his occupation was that of teacher. Thank you Mr. Bell for being both my inspiration and a teacher to me.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Mr. Jack Stephens, retired Superintendent of The Alexander Graham Bell Museum in Baddeck, N.S., for helping me to understand the greatness of Alexander Graham Bell.

The

Hydrofoil

Mystery

Chapter One

June, 1917

T
HE TRAIN JOLTED SLIGHTLY
forward and my eyes were jarred open. I looked around. We weren't going yet; we were still in the station. It was just another car being added to the train before we headed north.

I closed my eyes again. I knew I'd probably drift off. I was so tired … I hadn't slept more than a few minutes all of the previous night. I'd been too upset to go to sleep. Too upset and too angry … at my mother. What right did she have to send me away for the summer? Away from all my friends and everything I knew. About as far away as you could get from Halifax without leaving Nova Scotia entirely.

And the way she sprang it on me. No hint, no warning. She just came to me out of the blue that night and said I was being sent away in the morning to work on some estate up in Baddeck on Cape Breton Island. She told me she hadn't said anything about it before because she hadn't wanted to “get my hopes up.” She said she had just received the telegram that night confirming the arrangements. The way she talked, she tried to make it seem like a big adventure. I was going to go up to work for the
“famous” Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone. She blathered on and on about what an opportunity it was, how many young men from throughout the Maritimes wanted to have this position and how it was only through the influence of an old schoolmate of hers that I had been fortunate enough to be hired. How was it fortunate to be the servant of some rich man and his family? She worked hard to convince me it was going to be exciting.

But I knew the truth. It was excitement she wanted to get me away from. She thought I was running with the wrong crowd. She didn't seem to like any of my friends … at least not my new friends. Thank goodness she didn't know the half of it. After my mother and sister would go to bed at night I'd often sneak out. My friends would be waiting for me at the end of the street. Of course none of
them
had to sneak out. They were all older than me. Tim and John were both nineteen, but I did look a lot older than fifteen and could pass for eighteen … at least some of the time. That was good, because you had to look older to get into the places we liked to go. Once I even thought about lying about my age and trying to join the army, but the guys told me I should let other people fight the war.

All around Halifax there were places where men met and played cards and tossed dice and drank and smoked. I'd only smoked a couple of times and I didn't drink at all, but I did like being with my friends. They were showing me the ropes. Tim was a pro. He knew cards, and on a good night he could win more money than most dock workers could make in an entire week.

Besides the local men there was always a new supply of soldiers. They came to Halifax by rail and were temporarily stationed there, waiting for a ship to take them across the Atlantic Ocean to fight in the war in Europe. And of course there were always dozens and dozens of sailors present any place there was gambling. My father's a sailor, and he'd told me that gambling to sailors is like honey to a bee … irresistible. With the war on, there was no end of work for the merchant sailors working the Atlantic convoys. They'd barely make port before they'd hook up with another ship and head out again.

At least that's how it was with my father. He'd always been gone more than he was home, but for the past year he'd been gone almost constantly. It really didn't matter much to me anyway—even when he was home he really wasn't. Sometimes I'd get angry about things, but my mother would explain to me and my sister that it was just the life of a sailor. We had to understand that he'd be there more for us if he could, but he had to earn money to support us. So if he was working so much more now, how come money was tighter than ever? It was so tight Mom had to take in laundry. And of course, with her working evenings, that left me to take care of Sarah.

What my mother didn't know—what I couldn't tell her—was that I knew there were times he was back in Halifax, but didn't even bother to stop in to see us.

One night, one of those times I'd gone out without my mother knowing, I'd been in the basement of the Crown Hotel. There was always a card game going on there, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I was
sitting off in a corner watching all the activity. And then I caught sight of him.

At first I couldn't be sure. He was at the far side of the room, and smoke filled the air with a thick haze, but as I looked hard and long I realized there was no mistake. It was my father. He was playing poker, throwing chips on the pile recklessly with one hand while pouring down drinks with the other. Part of me wanted to go up and see him—after all, he'd been gone for over three months—but how would I explain what I was doing there in the middle of the night? Besides, I could see he'd been drinking. I slunk out without being seen and headed home. I figured I'd see him soon enough when he came home in the morning, but he didn't come home. Not the next day, or the next or the next.

A full month passed before we got a letter from him, from Liverpool. There was no mention in that letter of him ever having been back in Halifax. He said he'd been laid up in England and because of that he couldn't send us much money this time—he hoped we could get by for a while longer. In my mind I kept seeing him throwing away money in that card game—money that we needed to survive.

When he finally came home, mother and Sarah were so glad to see him. I didn't even want to be in the same room with him, but I had to pretend I was happy he was there. Later on that night, when mother was putting Sarah to bed, he started asking me questions. He wanted to know what was wrong with me, and wasn't I glad he was home, and why wasn't I treating my old man with respect? I just sat there and took it, not answering, just mumbling or
making up excuses—until he put his hands on me and shoved me up against the wall. I swore I'd never let him hit me again. For the first time in my life I pushed back, and I told him about seeing him in the hotel basement and what I thought of him. Then I ran out. I stayed out all night, and when I came back the next day he was gone.

More and more, I was spending time with Tim and the guys. And the more they got to know me, the better we got along. They were now trusting me enough to let me in on what was going on in the games. They weren't just good card players, they were card sharks. Tim knew some tricks—things like dealing off the bottom of the deck, stacking the cards and holding onto cards that he wanted— and he was helping me to learn as well. Whenever I had spare time I'd practise the tricks they'd shown me. And lately I'd started to do much more than just watch the games. I'd become a player, and a good player. Tim said I had “a way” about me and was doing the things they'd shown me even better than they could. Soon it wasn't just them winning money, it was me as well.

Of course, sometimes things got out of hand in those games. Nobody liked to lose money, especially if it didn't seem fair. So far, though, quick legs and quicker minds had got us out of any trouble we'd gotten into. What we couldn't talk our way out of we'd been able to run away from. Well, all except for the one time the police brought me home at two in the morning.