“Gee, that’s a fact! Now, what does that mean? Does it mean that they arrived after she did? Does it mean they entered the house after she arrived home, proceeded upstairs and finished the work, and then came down and got her?”
“Doesn’t sound reasonable. Let’s see what we would have done if we had been the culprits.” Frank was reasoning it out slowly. “If I had gone in there after she returned, and I had known she was there, I would not have taken a chance on proceeding upstairs, making noise which she might have heard and reported over the telephone before I could get downstairs to quiet her.”
“How about this?” Suddenly a thought struck through Wallace’s mind. “Could not these fellows have left their car outside somewhere, out of sight, and the driver of it could have brought it up after she had returned home and after her own driver had gone away?”
The idea was a good one, and Frank turned to look fairly at his friend before he answered.
“Hey! Hold off there! What the dickens!”
The sudden cry had come from out the darkness on the river. Frank’s head was back again to the forward end of the Rocket. Squarely in his path was a dark object of considerable size!
With a wide sweep of the wheel he threw the Rocket hard over to the port side, his right hand reaching down to slow the motor so as to decrease the impact when he struck.
But the Rocket missed the object.
It was a rowboat with three men in it, and a large box or trunk-like object in the stern. Frank threw his searchlight into play and dropped it squarely on the rowboat.
But the man at the oars was pulling hard on them, getting out of range of the light.