“Oh! So they were,” agreed Agnes. “Oh, Neale!”
“Crickey! It might be, I suppose. I never thought of that,” admitted the boy.
He was carefully running the car while this talk was going on. He soon drove past the Poole place and later stopped at a little house where the constable lived.
Mr. Ben Stryker was at home. It was not often that automobile parties called at his door. Usually they did not want to see Mr. Stryker, who was a stickler for the “rules of the road.”
“What’s the matter?” asked the constable, coming out to the car. “Want to pay me your fine, so as not to have to wait to see the Justice of the Peace?”
He said it jokingly. When he heard about the missing Kenway children and of the reason to fear Gypsies had something to do with it, he jumped into the car, taking Mr. Pinkney’s place in the front seat beside Neale.
“I’ve had my eye on Big Jim Costello ever since he has been back here,” Stryker declared. “I sent him away to jail once. He is a bad one. And if he is mixed up in any kidnapping, I’ll put him into the penitentiary for a long term.”
“But of course we would not want to make them trouble if the children went to the camp alone,” ventured Agnes. “You know, they might have been hunting for the two women who sold them the basket.”
“Those Gypsies know what to do in such a case. They know where I live, and they should have brought the two little girls to me. I certainly have it in for Big Jim.”
But as we have seen, when the party arrived at the spot where the Gypsies had been encamped, not a trace of them was left. That is, no trace that pointed to the time or the direction of their departure.