“How is that?” asked Frank.
“I don’t know, but such is my impression. At the time of the negotiation for the Buzzard Reade treated Barr as an equal more than if he were employed by him.”
It had grown dusk by this time and Eben Joyce’s daughter lit the lamp and set it down on the cottage table. As she did so there came a loud roar of an approaching motor car down the quiet street and the next moment through the gathering gloom a big auto approached the cottage. As it neared it it slowed down. They all went out on the porch to see who could be driving a car down that little frequented street. It was not very light, but as the car drew nearer Frank recognized it.
“That’s Fred Reade’s auto,” he cried.
But if the boys imagined that they were to get any solution of the car’s mysterious appearance they were mistaken. As it neared the house, and the group on the porch must have been plainly visible to its occupants, the big car suddenly leaped forward and shot away into the darkness.
“What did they do that for?” asked Billy.
“I guess they saw so many if us here that they thought it would be more prudent to stay away,” suggested Frank.
“What can they be after?” wondered Harry.
“The blue prints of my gyroscopic attachment and possibly my experimental machine itself,” declared the inventor, “though if they had the blue prints they could easily manufacture them themselves. Reade has been after me to sell them.”
“That is so,” mused Frank; “undoubtedly such prints would be of great value to them.”