He pointed to the floor below the telephone extension in the barn. There lay a man’s gray wig.
“The intruder’s!” Joe exclaimed.
“It sure looks so,” Frank agreed. “And something must have scared him. In his hurry to get away he must have dropped this.”
Frank picked up the wig and examined it carefully for a clue. “No identifying mark in it. Say, I have an idea,” he burst out. “That man phoned you from here, Chet.”
“You mean he’s the one who threatened me?”
“Yes. If you know how, you can call your own telephone number from an extension.”
“That’s right.”
Chet was wagging his head. “You mean that guy bothered to come all the way here to use this phone to threaten me? Why?”
Both Hardys said they felt the man had not come specifically for that reason. There was another more important one. “We must figure it out. Chet, you ought to be able to answer that better than anybody else. What is there, or was there, in this barn to interest such a person?”
The stout boy scratched his head and let his eyes wander around the building. “It wouldn’t be any of the livestock,” he said slowly. “And it couldn’t be hay or feed.” Suddenly Chet snapped his fingers. “Maybe I have the answer. Wait a minute, fellows.”