Joe turned.
Pursuit was futile. The heavy snow hampered his footsteps.
“No use chasing him!” shouted Frank. “Perhaps Chet and Biff will catch him. It doesn’t matter. We know that he is the fellow who had the notebook, and that’s the main thing.”
CHAPTER XVIII
The Cipher Solved
Hanleigh made good his escape.
Chet Morton and Biff Hooper, who were widely separated at the time, heard the rifle shots and returned posthaste to the cabin, but they did not meet the fugitive. By the time they reached the cabin, further pursuit was out of the question. Looking out the window, Frank pointed to a dark figure hastening across the ice toward the mainland.
“By the time we got one of the ice-boats out, he would be on the shore, and we’d never find him there,” he said. “Let him go. We learned something, at any rate.”
“What happened?” clamored Chet. “All we know is that Hanleigh was here. What did he do?”
Frank then told them of seeing Hanleigh among the trees, and of returning to the cabin to warn Joe.
“We watched him searching the place high and low. He was looking for the notebook—there’s no doubt of that. As a matter of fact, we heard him say that it didn’t really matter, because we wouldn’t be able to solve the cipher, anyway. So then Joe and I came in and asked him what he was doing. He tried to fool us with some cock-and-bull story about hunting for his pocketbook. He denied that he stole our supplies, but he was lying, of course. I threatened to turn him over to the police if he didn’t tell us what he knew about the notebook, and I guess that frightened him for he made a dash for the door.”