“Can we follow it?” asked Dick.
Ned shook his head. “There’s no use chasing out there in the dark. Even if it was an auto, we’d have no chance of catching up with it. We’d best try to get a little sleep and wait for daylight.”
Rolling themselves in their blankets, the boys lay for a long time, talking over the exciting events that had transpired since they first began work on the Coleson house. Instead of clearing up, the situation was growing more and more complicated, and after racking their brains in fruitless efforts to solve the puzzle, they at last fell asleep.
The sun shining through the oak leaves above his head roused Ned Blake, and sitting up, he looked at his watch. It was nearly nine o’clock.
“Wake up, Dick!” he cried, pulling the blanket from his companion’s shoulders. “It’s late! We ought to have been on the job hours ago!”
Dick struggled to his feet, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and followed Ned, who was hurrying through the bushes in the direction of the old wood-road. Quickly but thoroughly the boys examined every foot of ground between the entrance to the road and the house. Broken weeds and crushed leaves showed where some vehicle had passed along the stony way, but not until the boys were close to the house did they come upon an unmistakable sign. On the hard earth amid the scrub oaks, a black splotch caught Ned’s eye.
“Here’s where an auto was standing only a few hours ago,” he declared positively. “This is oil that dripped from the gears.”
“It’s oil sure enough,” agreed Dick, poking at the black mass with a stick, “but isn’t it possible that it came from one of the cars that were out here Saturday night?”
“If it had been here since Saturday night, that heavy thunder shower would have washed it into the ground,” objected Ned. “No, this is fresh oil and we know there was no car here up to midnight.”
“Which means it was run in here while we were watching that boat down on the shore,” growled Dick, disgustedly. “What rotten luck!”