The party emerged from the hotel and held a council as to what was best to do next.
“They must have been laying plans for this for a long time,” said Jerry. “That’s why they left here. They knew we’d trace them here and they wanted to cover up their tracks.”
“It looks so,” agreed Tinny.
Further inquiry developed the fact that Noddy and his crowd had not been hanging about Livingston for several days prior to the kidnaping. Before that they had been making general nuisances of themselves, pestering every one to get information as to the exact spot where the stage coach had gone over the cliff years before with the chest of gold.
“Then, it would seem, they gave up trying to locate the place, it appearing that Dolt Haven did not know so much as he thought he did, or as he had given Noddy and Jack to suppose,” observed Mallison.
“They just had to have Bill,” was the way Jerry expressed it.
“So they came and got him, and they didn’t use any kid glove methods, either,” added Ned.
When it became evident that no real lead in the pursuit could be obtained in Livingston, since the kidnapers did not return there after their daring exploit, several measures were proposed.
“There’s no way of sending out a general police alarm for them, as we could do if we were in a more civilized or more thickly settled region,” observed Tinny. “We can’t broadcast the fact that one of our men has been kidnaped.”
“Then what can we do?” asked Bob, making a motion as though to open one of the lunch baskets, and drawing from Jerry an admonition: