“They were a bunch of wild riders, all right enough,” declared Randy. “There was a big groundhog out in the road and I was just getting ready to take a snapshot when I heard the auto tearing along. The groundhog sat up to listen and I was just snapping the picture when the auto tore along and I think went right over the animal. But the groundhog limped away and out of sight in the bushes.”
“Oh, Randy, then the auto must have swept pretty close to you!” gasped Fred.
“I’ll say it did—it wasn’t more than four or five feet from me and sailing along to beat the band!”
“Do you think you got a picture of the car?” questioned Jack eagerly.
“I don’t know. Maybe I did. I know I snapped the shutter of the camera, but I was so excited over the passing of the car that I’m not sure how I had the camera pointed. The fact is, I’m afraid the film was spoiled.”
“I hope it wasn’t spoiled,” said Fred. “It might give us some chances to find out who was in the car and maybe get the number.”
“The car looked to me as if it was covered with dirt,” said Jack. “And if that’s so, then the license plate would be covered with dirt too, so the number wouldn’t show.”
Randy was anxious to see how badly his twin had been hurt, and the crowd quickly returned to where the injured lad was resting. They found Gif out in the roadway examining the surroundings carefully.
“I’ve got two bits of evidence that may help,” said Gif. “One is that the touring car used two kinds of tires, those with diamond-shaped nubs on one side and L-shaped nubs on the other. And then I picked up this and it looks as if it had just been dropped on the road because, as you can see, it’s perfectly clean and dry. If it had been there any length of time it would be wet and dirty.”