For both were looking, or trying to look, through the darkness to a point upstream. Seeing in this inky blackness was impossible. Even their boat, the Rocket, was a slightly darkened blob against the river.
Not until the boat had been pushed into the stream and Frank had guided it away after Lanky had turned the engine over, was the silence between these two friends broken.
“What does it mean?” asked Wallace.
“It really, down to brass tacks, doesn’t mean anything, Lanky, as you will realize if you think of it for a minute. We know we haven’t done anything wrong, don’t we? So, all it can mean is that the police force has one more member on it than we thought who hasn’t all that’s coming to him.”
“But it doesn’t alter the fact that he has accused us of having something to do with this robbery.”
“He also hasn’t altered the fact that we didn’t, has he? You’ve got to battle with facts when you get after things of this kind. Now, I know a fact which I should like to place before your attention—there was an old boat tied up to the river bank just above us when we landed.”
“Yes, and I was remembering the same thing when we came through the brush. But you can’t see anything in the dark. Let’s go back and see if it’s there.”
“Sure, it isn’t there! What’s the use of going back? If the fellow had no reason whatever for being there he would have moved by this time, because it has been more than an hour, maybe nearly two hours. And if he did have something to do with it, he wouldn’t be there yet.”
“But those fellows who got into the auto when we came to the house—how about them? What connection would they have with the boat, for they had a car?”
Lanky had asked a question that meant something. What, indeed, could the car have to do with the boat?