“What’s all this about a letter, Garry?” asked Dick. “That is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“Same here,” said Garry. “It just struck me at the moment, however, that it would be a wise thing to do, and so I threw it at Lafe in the hopes that it might check his future actions slightly. I believe the shot went home at that.”
Arrived at Aunt Abbie’s, they found her all wrought up.
Her first words exploded like a bombshell.
“Ruth went out last night and hasn’t been home since!”
CHAPTER VI
GARRY’S CHASE
“Ruth gone?” ejaculated Garry. “Are you sure she has disappeared, or is there some place she would have gone to visit?”
“Why, she would never have gone out for any length of time without letting someone know where she was going. She dressed for a walk a little while after supper last night, and said she might drop in and see her girl friend, Nellie Crombie. When it came almost eleven o’clock her grandfather got worried and went to Nellie’s house, where they told him Ruth had left almost a half an hour before. It wouldn’t take her more than ten minutes to get home, so her grandfather got still more worried and came straight back here. At midnight she hadn’t come, and so he started out looking for her. He went to all her friends, but no one had seen her. Then he called up several people who live around the Crombie’s place to see if they had seen her, but no one had. He’s been up all night and was out this morning looking around. He is nearly frantic and so am I. I don’t know where she could have gone.”
Aunt Abbie was all of a tremble as she told the boys of the missing girl.
To the boys, here was something that demanded immediate attention. They surmised at once that it was part of the plan of the letter writers to terrorize the family. First there was the burning house, and since this had not succeeded in showing the little family that the conspirators were in deadly earnest, this last had been resorted to.