A NIGHT ADVENTURE
The cries for help which broke upon the quiet of the night, rousing the Auto Boys as they slept, they quickly answered. With what result has been told in the Sagersgrove item appearing in the Lannington morning paper, the second day following.
Briefly, the circumstances were that, his mind overheated by his large estimate of his own importance, Marshal Wellock's imagination got the better of him. True, the four young strangers had appeared to be in a great hurry. True, one does not often see, even in larger cities than Sagersgrove, four mere youths enjoying a touring car equipped for long-distance work. Also the Sagersgrove operator had plainly hinted to the marshal the telegram the lads received looked decidedly queer. And to one unacquainted with the facts, it must be admitted, also, that such an impression was quite natural.
All in all, the bumptious officer, believing he saw a glowing opportunity to distinguish himself, enlisted one Eli Gouger in his enterprise, not so much because he desired that gentleman's assistance, as for the reason that Mr. Gouger was possessed of a motor car. He used the machine, a light runabout, in his business of ice-cream peddling, on Sunday afternoons particularly, and on various occasions when not occupied with another line of activity he pursued, namely, that of general detective.
In this connection it may as well be stated quite frankly that if Mr. Gouger had ever succeeded in detecting anything more than some small boys, whom he once caught filching cherries from his trees, the world at large had yet to learn of it. But perhaps that was the fault of people who might have employed him, but didn't. He always had said he never got half a chance in detective work, though he liked it ever so much better than the ice-cream business.
Be this as it may, Mr. Gouger, private detective, had eagerly joined Marshal Wellock in his proposal that they pursue the four mysterious youths who, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the marshal himself declared, had stolen the automobile in which they attracted so much attention in front of the telegraph office.
In some respects the two officials were well matched. Mr. Gouger was considerably the younger, but his attire had the same appearance of needing renovating that marked the marshal's outfit. In their conclusions with regard to the absolute certainty that the young strangers were automobile thieves, and that probably a reward was offered somewhere for their arrest, the two were also quite identical. Even in their private and personal opinions of each other they did not differ greatly.
Marshal Wellock secretly considered Mr. Gouger to be nothing more than a would-be private detective, whose gilded badge was worth about five cents as a novelty—nothing more.
Eli, on the other hand, had long since reached within his own confidence the certain conviction that the town of Sagersgrove needed nothing so much as a new marshal; that Mr. Wellock was a conceited old loafer and nothing more, and that a man of about Eli Gouger's age should be in his place.
The very fact that, in the recesses of their hearts, the two men had for each other a minus quantity in the matter of admiration, was to a degree responsible for the ignominious ending of their enterprise. Each secretly planning to reap the major portion of the glory, also the reward they persuaded themselves would follow the capture of the four desperate car thieves, they chugged painfully over the road the Auto Boys had taken. Darkness had come before they were fairly started. Now it was growing very late.