"The information in the letters I received from the attorney in charge of the case is that they came here from New York, not directly but by some roundabout way."
"Did this attorney ever inform you why he wanted the boys found?" asked Tommy. "Are we all working in the dark?"
"He never told me why he wanted the boys found. For all I know, they may be wanted for some crime, or they may be heirs to an immense property. My instructions are to find them. That's all!"
"Where did these boys lodge?" asked Will.
"They didn't have any regular room," was the reply. "They slept in the breaker whenever the watchman would permit them to do so, and when he wouldn't, they threw stones at him and slept in the railroad yard somewhere. But the strangest part of the whole business is the way they disappeared from sight."
"You didn't tell us about that!" exclaimed Sandy.
"I meant to," the caretaker answered. "The last seen of them here they were at work on the breaker. It was somewhere near the middle of the afternoon, and the cracker boss had been particularly ugly. The two boys were often caught whispering together, and more than once the cracker boss had launched such trifles as half pound block of shale at them. I happened to be on the outside just about that time."
"The boys didn't go up in the air, did they?" asked Sandy with a chuckle. "They haven't got wings, have they?"
"To all intents and purposes, they went up into the air!" answered the caretaker. "One moment they were on the breaker sorting slate and stuff of that kind out of the stream of coal which was pouring down upon them, and the next moment they were nowhere in sight!"
"Had any strangers been seen talking with them?"