"Oh, you lost it, did you?" said the detective unpleasantly. "That's very likely. You lost it in that car."
"I didn't! I've never seen the car. I left my fishing rod out by the front fence about a week ago and when I came to look for it the rod was gone."
The other detective snickered incredulously.
"It's true," protested Mr. Dodd. "Jack told me at the time that he had lost his rod."
"You'd back him up, of course. But that story won't go down. If he never saw the car before, how does his fishing rod happen to be in it?"
Jack and his father looked blankly at one another. Clearly, they were utterly astounded by this unexpected development, and at a loss to account for it.
"I think this pretty well clinches it," declared the trooper. "The rod couldn't have got there unless the boy was in the car—that's certain."
"But I wasn't in the car. I lost the rod a week ago."
"You'd say that, anyway," declared one of the detectives roughly. "Bring the car back to town, Jim." He turned to Mr. Dodd. "This isn't the end of the matter. There's not much doubt in my mind that you and your boy took that car. You certainly haven't been able to give us much of an explanation of how it came to be on your property, and the boy has told a pretty thin story to explain away that fishing rod."
"You're not going to arrest me!" exclaimed Mr. Dodd.