“Look for the automobile. That’ll be a clew.”
“I don’t think so, Jimmie. They’d be foolish to leave the machine too close to the house. You stay here while I do a little quiet investigating.”
“If you need me, yell. I’ll come hotfoot.”
Leaving Fortune in the black shadow of the palm, Clancy moved off cautiously along Cerro Gordo Street, toward the right. In that direction he failed to find the house that seemed to tally with Hibbard’s roughly drawn plan.
Returning on the opposite side of the street, creeping like a wraith from the shadow of one palm to the shadow of another, he crossed Second Avenue and reconnoitered in another direction.
Here he had better success. On the other side of Cerro Gordo Street was a house with a glass conservatory jutting out. The yard was a mass of dark shrubbery which the faint glow from the electric light on the corner could not penetrate.
“That must be the place,” thought Clancy. “I’ll go down a little farther and cross over. If I’m careful, I may find out what Hibbard and Long Tom are doing.”
From palm to palm he skulked along Cerro Gordo Street, and then, suddenly, came to a halt. Ahead of him, at the curb, stood a motor car. It did not show a light.
“There’s the machine Hibbard took from the garage,” thought Clancy, “and it proves we’re on the right trail.”
He investigated the car and found that it was Pembroke’s big six-cylinder machine, the one that had figured in events earlier in the day. There was no one around the car, and this proved that both plotters were giving their attention to the house.