The Auto Boys' Vacation Part 3

"It don't go, Billy. You can't throw any bluff here," said Fobes with an air of familiarity, but shaking his head coldly, too. "You was seen on the South Fork road an' there's an automobile man lookin' for you. Guess he wants to give you a raincoat you lost somewhere."

This, of course, was just the kind of talk that Mr. Fobes himself had termed a "bluff" and, in the vernacular, nothing else. Whether the prisoner thought so or otherwise, for a few seconds he made no reply.

Then as if feeling his way carefully, he said: "Somebody lookin' for me, eh? Tell 'im where I am. Or mebbe he knows it."

"It ain't no go, I tell you," said Fobes sharply. "There's a little matter of a patent dinner basket on you straight. Swipin' grub from boys, too! Ain't you ashamed of yourself? You don't happen to remember what you left in the raincoat, do ye?"

Billy and Paul were far from approving this kind of questioning. Yet they could see the object of Chief Fobes, which was to frighten and confuse the prisoner by making him believe a great deal was known about him, thereby leading him into admissions that would pave the way toward gaining a complete confession from him.

"I don't know nothin' about a coat, boss; but who's lookin' fer me?"

called the one behind the bars as the officer and the boys started to move away.

"You'll find that out quick enough," said Fobes with a harsh laugh. But he did not pause and led the way to his own office again.

"Now," said he, "you have seen how we go about it. We've set the yeast to workin'. He'll be more ready to let out a little by the time I take his supper in to him."

Chief Fobes was evidently much pleased with himself but he was not prepared for the rather unusual incident that followed.

"Where's the kid that said might he ask me a question?" inquired the prisoner when the officer visited his cell again. "I want to see 'im if I can, boss!"

Billy was called only after Mr. Fobes had failed to extract from the man any information whatever. Cautioning the lad to tell the prisoner little or nothing, the policeman, who was also turnkey, it will have been noticed, took Worth into the lockup and left him.

"What was yer question, bub! Mebbe I might answer it," said the fellow.

He held a bar of the cell in each hand and leaned forward on his elbows.

His face, pressed between the steel rods, had a really hideous look.

"Where's the Big Six automobile that dinner basket came from? Now you tell me that and you'll make a friend. You seem to need one all right."

Billy was surprised by his own boldness in this speech. The fact was the man's manner had quite startled him.

The prisoner laughed in a coa.r.s.e guffaw. Abruptly checking himself, he said in a whisper: "You get me out o' here. Swipe the keys--any old way!

Pa.s.s me in a saw--just so's I get out to-night, an' I'll show you where you can find that automobile, good as ever she was. And--" the fellow swore venomously and wickedly--"you blab this an' I'll get ye fer it if I go to the chair!"

"Might as well be reasonable," spoke the boy, frightened by the very nature of the proposal, but scarcely showing it. "I'll help you get out if it means just paying a fine for you, if you can do all you say, but----"

"Do all I _say?_ Don't you think I couldn't?"

Billy hardly knew what to say. For a few seconds he made no answer.

"Aw, I was just a kiddin' ye," the fellow said with a coa.r.s.e laugh again, as if he had quite suddenly changed his mind.

"Oh! All right!" the boy replied indifferently. And then, moved by a sudden impulse, whose origin he could never have explained, he stepped close to the cell, "Mr. Smith, of Buffalo, has been staying at our hotel. Maybe you'd like to see _him_," he said in a low tone. "He was looking for someone and I shouldn't be surprised from what I saw of him that you are the man."

In general it was a chance shot--a random word without particular aim, such as Fobes had used in his questioning, but Billy fully believed that the remark struck home.

"Say, kid, say, on the level is he the party His Nibbs was talkin'

about? Look 'e here, bub, you play fair with the old man that's down an'

out. You won't lose nothin' by it. They's none of 'em plays fair any more or I wouldn't be here. You slip them very words to Smith fer me, and don't ye breathe it to His Nibbs."

"Where's our machine?" persisted Worth soberly.

Again a vile oath came from the dirty lips pressed between the bars. The prisoner's pleading manner had changed to anger. "Jest like 'em all, ain't ye?" he said with a vicious sneer in his tone. Then he walked away. Nothing Billy could say served to draw another word from him and that young gentleman could only take his leave. This he did with the words: "We are over at the American hotel. You may want to send for us when you get a little sense."

"How was I to know what to say to him? Wish Phil had been there," said Billy earnestly, telling Paul all about the interview later.

"Gee whizz! We're getting warm, though, I'll bet!" cried Jones with enthusiasm.

"If it wasn't just guesswork that Pickem or Smith--whatever his real name is--knows something about this man in the lockup, who in turn knows something about our car! Pickem certainly does know something about the Torpedo, but he's gone. Even if he might help us, it's too late."

The boys spent the evening trying to realize, with Willie Creek's help, some value from the day's developments. They were late getting to bed and still sleeping soundly when Phil and Dave, the following morning, were well on the road to Pittsfield. And now to return to the latter pair of eager searchers, it may be briefly stated that their day's work was without results. Except that they had made the theft of the Big Six the more widely known, they felt their efforts in Pittsfield to have been a total failure. At nine o'clock on Tuesday night they were on a Pullman, their tickets reading "Syracuse."

There is in the city named, as everyone knows, an automobile club of more than usual excellence. Whether it be in helping a pair of boys toward the recovery of a lost car, or the more general work of erecting road signs, mapping off the best detours around road construction work and informing the public of the same, nothing is too small or too large a task to receive intelligent attention. And it was a fortunate chance, therefore, that Phil and Dave chose Syracuse to be the scene of their next endeavors.

Very early Wednesday morning the two boys began their inquiries--began a day of work and developments, following rapidly one upon another, and more startling at their close than the strangest dreams may often be.

CHAPTER IV

DETECTIVE BOB RACK HAS SOMETHING TO SAY

To the police officials of Syracuse, Phil and Dave first directed their steps in that city. The result was as usual. The department had a report that such-and-such a car was stolen. The officers would be pretty likely to discover it if the machine should appear in the town.

"But you better see the Automobile club. They are a big help in everything where autos are concerned," advised the police captain.

At a centrally located garage the boys stopped to repeat the same questions they had asked so many times before. The man in charge had heard the story of a car mysteriously disappearing from the South Fork road beyond Port Greeley, but that was all. "You can't do better than see the Automobile club," he added, however. "They are the ones to get you the right dope if there's any way to get it."

Although it was still too early to expect to find a secretary or other officer present, the boys decided to visit the club headquarters at once. A pleasant-faced man was reading a motor journal as they entered.

To him they stated the purpose of their call.

"By George, that's interesting!" said the stranger thoughtfully. "Wait a minute!" Reaching for a desk phone, the pleasant-faced man was soon in touch with the person he desired. Briefly he told of the two young callers and their errand. "All right, that's the ticket!" he said, after some conversation over the wire, and hung up the receiver.

Asking the boys to accompany him, the agreeable stranger piloted them to an office in a large brick building where he introduced them to a gentleman who seemed hardly more than a boy in appearance, though his age was probably twenty-five. His name was Freeland Cape. ("A regular Cape of Good Hope to us," Phil said afterward.)

"Sit down," said Mr. Cape to the young strangers, as their escort left them. Thanking him, Phil and Dave accepted the proffered chairs. Without ado Mr. Cape was informed of the loss of the Six and the search thus far so unsuccessful.

"Queerest affair I ever heard of," was the young man's comment. "But tell me more of this Torpedo car. There was a Torpedo stolen in Harkville--(Phil and Dave exchanged glances)--an extraordinary case. And of course it is evident that the parties who, for some reason, abandoned the machine you found, grabbed your car directly afterward."

"It would seem so, but it is hardly the case," put in Phil quickly. "We have had that notion pretty well pounded out of us by different people, especially by Mr. Fobes, the policeman at Griffin. 'Two separate transactions,' were his words and he made it pretty plain. And of course we were, and are, more anxious to locate our own car than anything else.

So all along, 'two separate transactions' we have had right in mind."

Young Mr. Cape scratched the crown of his head with one forefinger while he thought for a few seconds. "There never is a theory so exclusively inclusive but some other theory can be suggested," said he. "I may be wrong. Without knowing anything about the Torpedo you found, I'd say the two separate facts const.i.tute a plausible supposition. But I _do_ know and _you_ know now, that the machine you found was probably the one stolen from Harkville. Who stole it? We do not know, but it is pretty plain that no one other than the original thieves had the car on that South Fork road, wherever they may have been with it since first it disappeared. Now that lands in the very vicinity of your car, at the time of your loss, the fellows who stole one automobile. And, having stolen one, no doubt they would just as lief take another and better one. The man who was seen with your basket may have been only a tramp.

If your suitcases were left behind, the basket was thrown out, as well, at the same place or near by."

"Any way you put it, though," suggested MacLester, his brow puckered in thought, "we are left right in the middle of it all, again. Go one way, and we might find who owned the Torpedo. Go the other way--and we stand a better chance, I should think, of finding our own Six and the thieves.

Whether they stole both cars, or simply ours, isn't a question in the case at all just yet."