Chapter II: The Search Is Continued

It is much to be feared that three certain young gentlemen finished their dinner with unbecoming haste in order to join more quickly the fourth young gentleman summoned to the long distance telephone.

"Why, it was dad! Called up clear from Lannington!" announced Phil, coming from the telephone booth, perspiring but pleased. "They all got our letters, just a little while ago, and there must have been a general powwow all about us and the car right away. They fixed it up that dad should call us. And they're mighty interested. Think we haven't acted fast enough, and all that. Want us to offer a reward--get busy--travel around--not lose so much time just staying here. And if we can't get some news by Wednesday, they'll either come on here or send a detective from Chicago or somewhere."

"It'll cost a raft of money," murmured MacLester.

"But we've been too afraid of spending a little," Billy answered.

"Over four dollars' worth of telephoning in one morning!" ejaculated Paul, forcibly. He did not like criticism.

"Just the same, it feels good to know there's somebody back of us. Of course we knew there was, anyway, but to have them get together and then telephone clear here--it's mighty encouraging," spoke Phil. "Now we can't let them think we aren't capable of getting out of this pickle by ourselves, and we don't want them to hold a convention here. The answer is, get busy! So what are we going to do?"

"Well, what _are_ we going to do?" This from Paul, as if he would say that everything possible to do had been done.

"Why, there's one thing that seemed like a good suggestion," said Phil, "and that is that we look in other places--get on the train, get in touch with the police and the auto clubs and garages in different likely places, personally."

"It's reasonable, and the thing to do," declared Worth with emphasis. "Phil, why can't you and Dave go to Albany or Rochester this very day? Stop off at Syracuse. Go up to Pittsfield, too? Paul and I can watch and hunt around here and follow up what poor little clues we've got."

"Clues? _We_ have no clues!" spoke MacLester, moodily, "unless Hipp and Earnest are the ones. I've come to the conclusion that those fellows lied about seeing a man in a raincoat. Who else saw him? Don't we know that young Earnest can lie like a beggar? Is Hipp any better?"

"But there's the raincoat! Saw it ourselves!" Billy argued.

"Oh, that might belong to anybody! Plenty of old raincoats lying around," persisted David.

"I'm afraid you're on the wrong track, Mack," Phil Way urged quietly. Then immediately he added: "We must look up trains at once. Billy's plan may not be very promising but, goodness, we can't sit around and wait for the car to come to us!"

So the agreement was made, quite as Worth proposed. Dave and Phil had just time to catch the 1:24 train--one of the few fast trains that stopped at Griffin--and they promised to telegraph from Albany the same night, if they found anything worth reporting.

"I am glad we are making a start toward something, anyway," Worth remarked, when he and Paul had waved good-bye to the two on the train, and turned toward the hotel again.

"Tell you what, though, Bill! Let's just keep right on the job every minute, ourselves, and maybe we can surprise the fellows--get hold of something awfully important." Paul was pretty serious.

"Sure!" said Billy.

Then came the stumbling block. It was all very well to say "keep on the job," but just what to do that might be worth while was another problem.

"Funny we never heard a word from that 'A. W. Kull, Harkville, New York,' if our telegram was ever delivered there," said Worth, thinking aloud, somewhat later. "Let's ask the office here to find out what became of our message. It won't cost anything."

"Oh, gravy! That has nothing to do with us! It's the Six we're after, Bill!" But notwithstanding this objection, the Griffin telegraph office was asked for the information.

The operator kindly offered to send a service message, as it is called, desiring the Harkville office to report on the matter. Harkville replied in due time. The message to "A. W. Kull" was delivered at his residence. Why it was not answered the telegraph people did not know, of course.

During the afternoon the boys also met Chief Fobes. With his stick under his arm, he leaned against a railing at the Bank building, eating peanuts.

"Nothin' doin'," was his reply to their inquiry. "Ain't likely to be," he added, discouragingly. "It ain't our luck, somehow. It may be here or any place around here that something will happen, but of course the gentry don't stay in these smaller places, and it's always in the bigger towns that they're nabbed if they don't get away altogether."

"Oh, yes, I see," said Billy Worth, but when he and Paul had walked on, he remarked: "No, it is not Mr. Fobes' luck to catch anything. I reckon he banks more on luck than he does on work, though."

"'From the standpoint of the law,'" grinned Jones. But then lest he and Worth should fall into the same error, he said briskly, "But come on, Bill, we'll have to hustle if we're going to find anything."

Meanwhile Dave and Phil were approaching Albany. On the train they mapped out their general plan of work. Phil was to interview the police officials while Dave made inquiries at the headquarters of the automobile club. Then, together, they would visit the central garages. The outlying establishments they would call up by telephone, they decided. Surely, every automobile, stolen or otherwise, must have gasoline. Somewhere, then, it might be reasonably expected, trace of the Big Six would surely be discovered.

It seems likely, and probably is true, that the boys failed to appreciate the great number of cars constantly going and coming through all such large cities as Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland and the like. Living in a much smaller place, where tourists from a distance, especially those with licenses from other states, were quickly noticed, they did not understand that machines from far and near are so numerous upon the great motor thoroughfares that they attract scarcely passing notice.

Disappointment followed disappointment as Phil and Dave pursued their task. The fact that the police department had a perfect description of their car and the assurance of the lieutenant, with whom Phil talked, that every patrolman had the number of the stolen machine, were the only bits of encouragement they found.

"Didn't ye have insurance against theft?" asked a pleasant young fellow at a new garage not far from the capitol. "Ought to have a fire and theft insurance policy," he declared, "then you let someone else do the worrying."

"Too late to think of it now, I'm afraid," said Phil with a forlorn smile.

"That's true enough," said the other, "but I was just thinking how lucky a fellow considers himself when he does have insurance in a case of this kind. There was an illustration of it up state just this spring. Man had a new car. Used it just a little, over winter. In April it was stolen and it never was found. He got a check for pretty nearly all he paid for it because he had insurance. He didn't have to lose any sleep, you see."

"Also, you may be able to sell him another car, because he has the money to pay for one," suggested Dave, his eyes twinkling.

"Now you're trying to jolly me," returned the young man good-humoredly. "But I didn't mean it that way. Fact is, the man was away up at Harkville--'way out of our territory for Torpedoes."

"Hello, now!" exclaimed Way, eagerly. "Was there a Torpedo stolen in Harkville, recently?"

"Not lately. Two months ago," the other answered.

"Who lost it?" And again Way glanced sharply at Dave. The latter was listening to every word but taking care to betray no unusual interest.

"H--m--m--Hull, Kull--why, that's it! Kull was his name. But _your_ car was not a Torpedo, was it?"

If the young man thought that in this question he guessed the reason for Phil's wish to know more of the incident mentioned, he guessed wrong, of course. But unwilling to tell just why he was interested, until he should have had time to think, Phil gave him no enlightenment.

"No," answered Way, "the Torpedo people don't build a six-cylinder car, do they?"

"That's right, yours was a six," said the other. "Makes you so much the greater loser, with no insurance."

"What luck did the Harkville man have finding his car? Someone must have looked for it even if he did have insurance."

"Guess they _did_ look for it," said the garage man forcibly. "First Kull and the police, then the insurance people and detectives, and believe _me_, insurance companies don't care how much it costs to find a stolen car if they've had to pay for it. They do get stung though, and last I heard, Kull had his money, for his car was never found, high or low. Strange case! Never a clue to go by. A padlock pried off Kull's little garage and the machine gone and--there you are."

"Strange!" muttered Phil, but he was thinking too, that, though this was exceedingly interesting information, he must not allow it to take his thoughts from the loss that meant so much more to himself and friends, personally. So, thanking the young man, he and Dave left the garage.

"Why didn't you tell him about the Torpedo? She's the Harkville car as sure as you're born!" spoke MacLester, immediately the two were beyond hearing.

"It might have done no harm, and again--there's the trouble! I wanted to talk it over with you. It seems small and mean, but still we didn't pay out railroad fare and all that to help find the owner of that Torpedo. We wired Kull and did our part. He may be in Griffin right now to claim the property."

"More likely he doesn't care. He got insurance money, so why bother any more about it? That would explain the whole thing--the whole reason why our telegram was never answered," Dave reasoned.

"It looks that way," Phil replied. "And our chasing the Torpedo is chasing right away from the car we want to find. Blame it all! We don't seem to get anywhere. Here we go stumbling into things about the Torpedo but no clues at all to the Six!" All of which, and the disgruntled tone, were both unusual words and manner in young Mr. Way.

The day had long since closed. The boys found a comfortable hotel and went to bed, leaving a call for half-past five as the train for Pittsfield left Albany at six-thirty. The distance was not great and as several important automobile routes branched out from the Massachusetts town, it was considered a likely source of information.

Tired as they were, Phil and Dave must and did discuss at length the day's developments before they fell asleep. A sense of duty that they should report at once the apparent fact that they had found the stolen Harkville car, weighed somewhat upon their minds.

"But what if we do? What happens?" they reasoned. "We are put out just that much in hunting for the Six. We lose time being called as witnesses, and a lot of botheration, just when we need every minute, and nothing much is gained. A few days will make no difference with regard to the Torpedo, long ago given up as beyond recovery."

And so resolving to stick to the more important business first, but to report the finding of the stolen Harkville car just so soon as details of identification and the law's red tape would not be so inconvenient, they put the subject aside.

Thanks to Chief Fobes, in part, and also thanks to their own error, in part, the boys were making a costly mistake by believing the trail of the Torpedo had no connection with the theft of their own car. Or so it would seem, would it not? And yet, even if the thieves who first stole the Harkville car were the same who, later on, made off with the Big Six, what could be gained by going back along the route to deliver the one recovered machine instead of pursuing diligently the more recently stolen property?

"We'll never see our car again; that I know," said Dave MacLester, glum and despondent. He pulled on his shoes in the stuffy little hotel room next morning, as if life were to him a barren, barren waste.

"It's mostly the time of day, Mack," said Way good-humoredly. "Half-past five has a mighty blue appearance after you've been eating strange grub, and staying up till midnight the day before. You'll brighten up like the shining sun if we can only get out where there is such a thing--that and get hold of a little news to-day."

"We haven't got hold of any _yet_," asserted MacLester, not a bit more cheerfully.

And his words were the truth, cold and harsh, as the truth may sometimes be, beyond a doubt.