“He’s found something!” cried Frank, as he led the boys across the lawn of Mrs. Parsons like hounds in full chase.
Mrs. Parsons, her eyes having never left the boys from the time they passed her on the lawn, now watched this strange thing—four of them running at full speed toward a point on the river to which one of them had gone a few minutes before.
“Henry,” she said to the hired man, “go down there at once and see what those boys are doing. There is something here that needs watching.”
Henry started away as he was told, but his pace was not calculated to get him there too soon, for Henry did not know what he was expected to do when he found what the boys should be doing, and Henry remembered, as burly as he was, that there were five of these live young fellows.
“Look, Frank!” Lanky cried as quickly as the other boys came to the river bank, Frank well in the lead. “This must be the spot where the rowboat was tied the other night.”
“I rather think it is. Let’s study it all very carefully,” Frank looked downstream to where the Rocket was riding the current of the Harrapin. “First, are we the right distance above the Rocket, because, if you remember, we had time to throw our searchlight before we heard the scream.”
Lanky called Frank’s attention to the fact that they were not abreast the rowboat when they first saw it, nor even when they were searching for it through the heavy darkness with the electric spotlight.
“All right, let’s agree on that point to start with. Now, Lanky, you know as much as I do about the happenings on that night. If we agree that this lunch-box, this empty tobacco bag, and the piece of rope are indications that the rowboat was here, what other reason is there? I want to see if you are getting to the same conclusion that I have reached.”
Lanky had it in his mind, however, for he, too, had been thinking of the same thing Frank had when Frank first spied the opening through the trees and the shrubbery to the river’s bank.
“Remember the match that was lighted in the rowboat that night, and how it stood out above everything?”