AN ABDUCTION
The ride in Helen’s car was enjoyable, especially for Aunt Alvirah. How that old lady did smile and (as she herself laughingly said) “gabble” her delight! Being shut inside the house so much, the broader sight of the surrounding country and the now peacefully flowing Lumano River was indeed a treat.
Helen drove up the river and over the Long Bridge, where she halted the car for a time that they might look both up and down the stream. And it was from this point that Ruth again caught a glimpse of the motor-boat she had before spied near the roadside inn.
There was but one man in it now, and the boat was moored to the root of a big tree that overhung the little cove. Not that there was anything astonishing or suspicious in the appearance of the boat. Merely, it was there and seemed to have no particular business there. And the girl of the Red Mill recalled that Mr. Horatio Bilby’s motor-car was backed into the bushes near that spot.
Had Mr. Bilby, who had announced that his business in this vicinity was to obtain possession of Wonota, anything to do with the men in the boat? The thought may have been but an idle suggestion in Ruth’s mind.
Intuition was strong in Ruth Fielding, however. Somehow, the abandoned car being there near the inn where Totantora was staying and to which Wonota had gone to see her father, and the unidentified motor-boat lurking at the river’s edge in the same vicinity, continued to rap an insistent warning at the door of the girl’s mind.
“Helen, let’s go back,” she said suddenly, as her chum was about to let in the clutch again. “Turn around—do.”
“What for?” asked Helen wonderingly, yet seeing something in the expression of Ruth’s face that made her more than curious.
“I—I feel that everything isn’t right with Wonota.”
“Wonota!”