Frank was silent, thinking, as was Lanky.
The steady put-put of the exhaust broke the silence, and Frank steered a course well toward the farther side of the Harrapin, thinking to skirt close to the next island, for in doing so at the wide bend of the river below he would gain a short distance.
Wallace was standing close to Frank in the cockpit, and their words were not spoken, when they did speak, very loudly. The submerged exhaust did not bother them greatly.
“Wish we could have got some idea of the shape of that car,” muttered Frank Allen. “When he flashed on the lights to get away we might have had gumption enough to have noticed the license tag.”
“I did,” replied his mate. “There wasn’t any.”
“What? Are you quite sure?”
“Well,” and Lanky drawled his reply to the question, “maybe I oughtn’t to have said that. As I recall the impression on my mind when they started off, the red light did not show any license tag beneath it.”
“We didn’t even notice whether they turned up the road or down, either, so there’s that much information that we lost. Instead, we dashed up those steps and into the house.”
“They must have had a lot of time to do what they did.” Lanky spoke suddenly after another period of silence. “They could not have done all that after they bound her in the pantry.”
“That’s what I think. They probably were already in the house before she got home. But that brings up this question, Lanky—if their car was standing at the spot where we saw them get in at the time she came home, why didn’t the driver of her own car notice it and tell them?”