“What—a signal?” cried Ralph West, while Paul and Buster stood with mouths open, listening.
“Precisely,” replied Frank Allen. “I believe there was a signal that night from this boat to some one on that road. Why was this boat tied at the only actually open space along this part of the river?”
“That seems to answer our question about the automobile,” Lanky slowly reasoned things out.
“That’s it! The automobile was in the road back of the house, instead of standing by the garage, and it received a signal from this rowboat! Now here comes our next question: When and why did the fellow in the rowboat signal to the fellow in the automobile?”
Ralph, Buster and Paul, not having been there, could only picture the scene in imagination, but Frank and Lanky were revisualizing what they had seen that pitch-dark night on the river.
“Gee, this is getting exciting!” cried Buster.
“I’ll say it is,” added Ralph.
“Regular detective story,” put in Paul.
“Well, we—ll—” Lanky was thinking hard over another point, and he was drawling to gain plenty of time to think before replying—“Frank,” he looked suddenly at his good friend, his forehead wrinkling in a frown, “if my memory serves me rightly, we heard the scream of Mrs. Parsons about a minute or two after we saw the flare.”
Frank agreed that the time might be right.