"I can't tell you much about his looks," replied the garage man. "He wore great big green goggles that covered up half of his face. Looked just like a frog."
We looked at each other in dismay. The Frog had run off with Margery! We ran in haste to tell the news to Nyoda.
"It's queer," she said. "He must be one of her relations after all, though I surely thought he had begun to follow us from Toledo. But it might have been only a coincidence that he was behind us then, for after all he never said anything to us."
"But why did he take our car first, if it was Margery he was after all the while?" I asked.
"So we couldn't follow him," said Sahwah, with startling clear-sightedness.
Nyoda, who doesn't believe in premonitions, had one then. "I don't believe he's a relative of hers at all," she said, flatly. "I have a feeling in my bones that he isn't. I also have a feeling that something has happened to Margery which it is our business to investigate."
In less time than it takes to tell about it we had inquired the direction taken by the driver of the red roadster and had started in pursuit. The fog was closing in on us thicker than ever and the Glow-worm's eyes shone dimly through the white curtain. We could not go ahead at full speed because we had to proceed slowly and carefully. The fact that the road was exceptionally good along here was the only thing that kept us from accident, I suppose. If we had struck some of the holes that we did a distance back—
We were divided between joy over the fact that the Frog couldn't go any faster than we were going in that fog and so couldn't use his powerful car to his advantage, and the fear that he would slip off into some side road without our noticing it and so escape us. The fog naturally muffled all sounds, but we recognized at last the steady throbbing of a motor ahead of us on the road and knew that we were on the trail of the fugitives. We didn't know whether the Frog knew we were after him or not, but it seemed to us that the throbs began to grow fainter after a time as if the car were getting farther away. Finally, they stopped altogether and we began to realize that after all we had not much chance to catch up with that powerful car.
"They're leaving us behind," said Sahwah, in a disappointed tone
The next instant we crashed full into a car that was standing still in the road and which loomed out of the fog with the suddenness of an apparition. Nyoda had jammed on the emergency brake a half minute before we struck or there would have been a worse smash. As it was the Glow-worm was shaken from end to end and I can imagine what the stalled car felt like.