Penny Nichols Finds a Clue Part 16

The officers did not wait to hear more. With a roar, the cruiser was off again. It reached the end of the street and halted because it could go no farther.

Penny, bent upon missing nothing, followed as fast as she could.

By the time she reached the radio cruiser one of the officers had alighted. He was looking carefully about. Sighting Penny, he walked over to her.

"Say you! I thought you told us that car came this way."

"It did," Penny maintained staunchly. "I saw it go to the very end of this street. The lights flashed on for an instant. Then the car seemed to vanish. I think it must have gone into that building."

She indicated the Hamilton Manufacturing Plant. The officer surveyed it briefly.

"Don't kid me!" he snapped. "Only a Houdini ever went through solid walls!"

He climbed back into the police car, saying gruffly to the driver: "Get going, Philips. It was a wrong steer. We must have missed that car at the turn."

Penny waited until the cruiser disappeared around the corner. Then she crossed the street and stood staring meditatively at the tall walls of the Hamilton Plant. There was no doorway leading into the building.

"It's uncanny," she murmured. "Yet I know very well that car went in there some way." The building was entirely dark. There were no windows on the street side. Only a vast expanse of unbroken wall.

"It's too dark to see anything tonight," Penny decided after a brief hesitation. "Tomorrow I'll come back and perhaps make a few interesting discoveries!"

And with that resolution, she turned and walked rapidly toward home.

CHAPTER X

The Vanishing Car

Penny fully intended to tell her father of her experience, but she retired before he came home. She overslept the next morning. When she descended to the breakfast room at nine o'clock, Mrs. Gallup told her that the detective had been gone for nearly an hour.

"Your father wasn't in a very good mood this morning," the housekeeper informed as she served Penny with a steaming hot waffle. "He complained about the coffee. When he does that it's always because something's gone wrong with his work."

"You mustn't mind Dad," Penny smiled. "We couldn't get along without you."

Mrs. Gallup sniffed.

"I do the best I can. The coffee does taste all right, doesn't it?"

"It's perfect."

"When your father's working on a hard case he always likes it strong as lye," the housekeeper complained. "But I know he was worried about something this morning."

"What makes you think so?"

"I heard him muttering to himself. Something about the stupidity of the police. It seems they let some crook get away last night after your father had laid careful plans to catch him."

"Not Rap Molberg?"

"I think that was the name. Mr. Nichols didn't tell me anything, I just heard him talking it over with himself."

"It's the only person he will discuss his business with," Penny chuckled.

After Mrs. Gallup had gone back into the kitchen she mulled over the information which the housekeeper had given her. It struck her as probable that the car which she had seen vanish down the dead-end street had been driven by Rap Molberg or one of his confederates.

"I wish I could have talked with Dad about it before he left the house," she thought.

Penny had not forgotten her resolution to visit the Hamilton Plant by daylight. As soon as she had helped Mrs. Gallup with the dishes, she left the house, walking directly to the scene of the previous evening's adventure.

The street was deserted. No one questioned her actions as she made a careful inspection of the old building which had housed the Hamilton Manufacturing Company until its failure. She examined the walls inch by inch, but although she was convinced it was there, she could find no hidden entrance.

Regardless of her failure to find evidence, Penny was unwilling to give up her original theory. She remained unshaken in her belief that the mysterious automobile had disappeared into the Hamilton building.

"There's no other place it could have gone," she reasoned. "I'll talk it over with Dad and see what he thinks."

When she stopped at his office, Mr. Nichols was not there nor could Miss Arrow tell her when he might return.

The detective did not come home for luncheon and late in the afternoon telephoned to say that he would take dinner downtown. Rather than spend an evening alone Penny called Susan, arranging that they should go to the library together.

The girls spent an hour in the reading room, but for some reason Penny could not interest herself in the magazines. She kept turning through them and laying them aside. She felt unusually restless.

Presently an electrical magazine attracted her attention. She glanced over it carelessly until she came to a particular article which dealt with photo-electric cells and the clever purposes for which they were used.

"Why, these 'magic-eyes' are almost human," she commented in an undertone to Susan. "They turn lights on and off, cook meals, and open doors, when a beam of light strikes the cell----"

"I've heard of them before," Susan interrupted in a tone which clearly implied that she was not in the least interested.

Penny took the hint and dropped the subject. But she became absorbed in the article. When she closed the magazine a half hour later, her face was flushed with excitement.

"Susan, let's get away from here," she proposed in a whisper. "I've just had an inspiration!"

Grumbling a little at being forced to leave a fascinating story before she had finished it, Susan followed her friend from the building.

"What about this inspiration of yours?" she demanded as they walked to Penny's parked roadster.

"It's this way, Susan. I knew there was a logical explanation for the mysterious disappearance of that car Rap Molberg was driving. Let's go over to the Hamilton Factory this minute and test out my new theory."

"You may know what you're talking about, but I'm sure I don't, Penny Nichols."

"That's because you wouldn't let me tell you about that article I was reading," Penny laughed. "But I'll explain everything as we go along."

Without pausing to consider that it might not be safe to investigate the abandoned manufacturing plant at such a late hour, the girls drove directly into the hilly section of Belton City. Penny turned into the familiar dead-end street and was relieved to find no sign of other vehicles.

She halted her roadster at the very end of the pavement in such a position that the bright headlights played upon the ma.s.sive walls of the Hamilton building.

"It must be located higher up," Penny murmured to herself.