"Well, if counterfeiters work here, where are they, and where is some of the false money?" asked Bob. "I'd like to see some."
"Pooh! You don't s'pose they'd leave it around loose; do you?" asked Sammy. "They go out to spend it. That's probably where they are now. We'd better hurry and look around, and then we can go back to town and tell the police!"
Frank looked as though he did not quite agree with Sammy. It was often this way with the excitable small chap. He saw some things and imagined the rest. But in this case it was different. He had really discovered a secret room, and this was more than his chums had done. Perhaps, after all, he was right about the counterfeiters.
The boys advanced farther into the room. A nearer view of the strange tubes, with the glass in the ends, showed the latter to be large and bulging, like the lens of a bull's-eye lantern, or an automobile lamp. Attached to the tubes were black boxes, with a number of springs and levers fastened to them.
"Ha! I know what these are!" cried Frank. "They're telescopes, that's what they are. This isn't a counterfeiters' place at all. It's where one of those men live who look at the stars—astro—astor— Oh, you know what I mean," he added quickly.
"Astronomers," said Bob. "That's what it is, Sammy."
"It is not!" declared Sammy, quickly, bound not to give up his sensational idea. "Those may be telescopes all right, but if they are, the counterfeiters use them to look and see if the police are coming."
"Say, maybe that's right," agreed Frank, with a look of admiration at Sammy. "I never thought of that."
"Pooh! I did!" exclaimed the lad who had found the secret room. He was not going to lose any chance of showing
