“It’s so black we can’t see anything!” grumbled Dave, who nevertheless made no further objection but followed Ned, as the latter, after hazarding a single brief gleam from his flashlight, succeeded in locating the entrance to the old road and crept silently beneath the tangle of vines close to the trunk of the great oak. Hardly were they settled in this new hiding-place when the pale gleam of dimmed lights came into view.
“Here she comes!” rasped Dave in his froggy whisper. “She’s feeling her way and taking no chances of hitting a tree. My guess is that she’s about where the tire-tracks leave off. Now we’ll soon see if she takes to the air—or what she does!”
Even as he spoke, the vehicle, which had been slowly but steadily approaching, came to a halt and her lights winked out. Sounds of cautious movement came through the darkness and at irregular intervals a flashlight spat fitfully, revealing shadowy forms which seemed bent to a crouching position as they crept forward. The faint throb of the motor told that the truck was again in motion but, to the deep chagrin of the watchers, no ray of light showed. The threshing of foliage indicated that the curtain of vines was being pulled aside. Then came another halt followed by a muttered order and the jolting of a heavy vehicle as it forced its way past the obstruction and gained the highway beyond. Quiet for several minutes, broken only by the same cautious movements as before and the sound of some heavy object apparently dragged along the ground. Soon the scrape of a boot told that somebody was boarding the truck; its lights flashed full, and with a quick-grinding of gears it was off, heading along the road toward Cleveland.
As the sound of the motor died in the distance, Ned burst from his covert beside the big oak, and jerking the flashlight from his pocket, played its white rays to-and-fro along the narrow way. Except for flattened blades of grass, which in a few hours would recover their former position, there was nothing to suggest that a vehicle had passed but a few moments before. On the hard soil between the curtain of vines and the edge of the macadam road no single mark of rubber tires was visible.
“Well, by jiminy! This beats me!” exclaimed Dave. “How? And also why? That’s what I’m asking the water-soaked world!”
“That’s what Dick and I wanted to know—also Red and Fatty,” answered Ned. “How and why. We didn’t get any satisfactory answer and neither will you and I by standing here. Let’s go home.”
Without a word, Dave led the way to his car and backing it out of the thicket headed back for town. “Not much to show for a night’s hard work—not to mention being half drowned in the bargain,” he croaked, as he let Ned out of the car at the Blake cottage.
“Not much, that’s a fact,” agreed Ned. “See you tomorrow.” But as he crept quietly up to his room and struggled out of his wet clothing, Ned Blake found himself faced with the problem of just how much he had best reveal to his companions regarding what he had discovered in that brief instant when the headlight of the truck had shone upon the faces of the two men.
Like a flashlight picture had come the remembrance of a short, thick-set figure muffled in a great fur coat, and of a tall, red-faced man called “Miller.” Yes, one of the men had been the mysterious passenger on the Frost King, but this time recollection had gone farther back to a day when, instead of a glistening wet raincoat, the man had been enveloped to the chin in the streaming rubber suit of a diver. There was no room for doubt. The man was Latrobe. And with this discovery there had come to Ned Blake the realization that behind the mysterious happenings out at the Coleson house there was something sinister; something fraught with real danger to whosoever might stand in its way. Ghosts! Latrobe was more to be feared than a whole houseful of ghosts! With the possible exception of Wat Sanford, none of the fellows took any stock in ghosts, but every one of them knew Latrobe by reputation. How would they react to the knowledge that they were dealing with this man? As for Ned himself, he was ready to pit his nerve and wit against anybody in defense of what he knew to be his right. Would the others support him against such an enemy as Latrobe? Should he risk the abandonment of their project out at Coleson’s by telling them what he had discovered? Morning dawned while Ned still wrestled with his problem.
“I’ll wait awhile anyhow,” he muttered, as he at last dropped into an unquiet sleep.