"Huh," Artie snorted, "the tide's been in. Even if he had walked, we wouldn't see his footprints. Those we made ourselves before lunch are all washed out."
This shrewd observation was disconcerting, even to a detective of Fred's ability.
"He couldn't drag the raft very far on land," he argued. "I know he couldn't drag it as far as the bungalow. That's more than a mile from here."
"Yes, I know," replied Artie. "But I don't believe he came in a boat. Look!" and he swooped down upon something in the sand.
He held up a long splinter—an ugly, jagged strip of wood from which a rusty nail protruded.
"He chopped it!" Artie cried, his voice shaking with rage. "He went and chopped it up. And now the fence is gone!"
The loss of the raft would have been serious enough, but far more tragic was the double crime of destroying Mrs. Meeker's fence. And, as Ward said, the first thing their fathers would notice when they came home would be the gap in the boards.
"Perhaps it would have fallen down anyway," said Ward, trying to say something comfortable.
"I shook it—just a little," Artie confessed.
Now that they guessed the raft had been chopped up, it was easy enough to find more evidence. There were numerous splinters lying on the sand and a few feet past the piling a tangled wreckage of boards and rope floated on the water.