He climbed back into the police car, saying gruffly to the driver: "Get going, Philips. It was a wrong steer. We must have missed that car at the turn."
Penny waited until the cruiser disappeared around the corner. Then she crossed the street and stood staring meditatively at the tall walls of the Hamilton Plant. There was no doorway leading into the building.
"It's uncanny," she murmured. "Yet I know very well that car went in there some way." The building was entirely dark. There were no windows on the street side. Only a vast expanse of unbroken wall.
"It's too dark to see anything tonight," Penny decided after a brief hesitation. "Tomorrow I'll come back and perhaps make a few interesting discoveries!"
And with that resolution, she turned and walked rapidly toward home.
CHAPTER X
The Vanishing Car
Penny fully intended to tell her father of her experience, but she retired before he came home. She overslept the next morning. When she descended to the breakfast room at nine o'clock, Mrs. Gallup told her that the detective had been gone for nearly an hour.
"Your father wasn't in a very good mood this morning," the housekeeper informed as she served Penny with a steaming hot waffle. "He complained about the coffee. When he does that it's always because something's gone wrong with his work."