“It sure did. I heard ’em shut off the power. Now we’ll hustle back to our car and continue the trip.”
“I’ll teach those Cresville cubs to come meddling after me,” spoke Noddy. “I’ll follow ’em close and make all the trouble I can. As you say, we may as well start off again. I hope Pender isn’t tired waiting alone for us in the car. How far ahead is it now?”
“Half a mile, I guess.”
As the Motor Boys knew, Noddy had made for New York after running away from home with Bill Berry. He wrote to the boys and to Pender from there, and later Pender joined the rascally pair.
Noddy was preparing for a trip with his companions, and was just about to start when Jerry spied him from the hotel window. He escaped through the tenement house and at once got ready to leave New York in a hurry.
It was by the merest chance that he passed the Cresville auto on leaving Chicago, and at once had formed the plan of annoying the three chums.
As Nestor had said, Noddy and his companions had taken a side road, allowed the Cresville auto to get ahead and then, at Berry’s suggestion, had ambushed themselves to try and do some damage as the Motor Boys passed. The chief conspirators were now on their way to where they had left their auto.
They reached it, found Pender half asleep, curled up on a seat, and started slowly off in the darkness.
By keeping to the diverging road they were on, they passed around the disabled machine, and came out into the main highway again, ahead of the three boys who were tramping toward the town.
Noddy was steering, and with a reckless disregard of the dangers of the road was going very fast. Suddenly there was a crash and the auto stopped.