“That is so,” admitted Mr. Pinkney, leaning over the forward seat. “But he has an appetite like a boa constrictor.”
“A boy-constrictor,” chuckled Neale. “I’ll say he has!”
“He would not likely stop anywhere along here to buy more food, then,” Agnes said.
“He could have gone off the road, however, for a dozen different things,” said the missing boy’s father. “That child has got more crotchets in his head than you can shake a stick at. There is no knowing—”
“Hold on!” ejaculated Neale suddenly. “There are some kids down there by that pond. Suppose I run down and interview them?”
“I don’t see anybody among them who looks like Sammy,” observed Agnes, standing up in the car to look.
“Never mind. You go ahead, Neale. They will talk to you more freely, perhaps, than they will to me. Boys are that way.”
“I’ll try,” said Neale, and jumped out of the car and ran down toward the roof of the old ice-house that the afternoon before had so attracted Sammy Pinkney—incidentally wrecking his best trousers.
As it chanced, Neale had seen and now interviewed the very party of boys with whom Sammy had previously made friends. But Neale said nothing at first to warn these boys that he was searching for one whom they all considered “a good kid.”
“Say, fellows,” Neale began, “was this an ice-house before it got burned down?”