"It'll give us something to do," Frank said cheerfully.
"Keep you out of mischief, I guess," agreed Smuff, as though this were some consolation at any rate. He nodded to the boys and the car sped off toward Bayport.
"Dumb but good-hearted," said Chet.
"He isn't a bad sort," Joe remarked. "He's no great shakes as a detective, that's sure, but there are lots worse."
The boys crossed the road and struck off down a narrow trail that led through the undergrowth into the woods on the sloping land between the Shore Road and Barmet Bay. For the most part there were steep bluffs lining the bay, but at this point the declivity was more gradual.
"I think he's right about searching down through here," said Jack Dodd dubiously. "A car could never get down into this bush."
"A car mightn't but the car thieves might," Frank pointed out. "It seems mighty queer that none of the stolen cars have been traced at either end of the Shore Road. Those automobiles stolen the other night should have been picked up in one of the three towns on the branch roads. Smuff said the thefts were discovered in plenty of time to send out warning."
"It does seem strange. Out of so many cars, you'd imagine at least one or two would have been traced outside Bayport."
"I have a hunch that this whole mystery begins and ends right along the Shore Road," said Frank. "It won't hurt to scout around and see what we can find. Maybe there's a hidden machine shop where they alter the appearance of the autos."
"I was reading of a case in New York City not long ago," remarked Joe, as they pushed along. "The auto thieves got cars downtown and drove them to some place uptown. The police followed half a dozen gangsters for two weeks before they got on to their trick, which was to drive into an alleyway that looked as if it came to an end at the back of a barn. They found that a section of the side of the barn went up like a sliding door. The thieves would drive in with a stolen car. Inside the old barn was an elevator running down to a cellar. In the cellar was a machine and paint shop and five or six workmen down there could so alter a car in a few hours that the owner himself couldn't tell his own machine."