Quickly Tom and Jack joined him, about fifteen feet from the ground.
“Now do you see?” he asked, throwing the rays about him.
In many places twigs had been broken from the branches, evidence that someone had been there before them.
“And look at this,” Bob continued, pointing to a piece of string which had caught on a branch. “And here’s a piece of cloth which tore off when he pulled the ghost in,” he declared, picking a bit of white cheese cloth from where it had caught on a broken stub. “Do you know that fellow must have been hiding right here all the time we were hunting round down there.”
“Be jabbers, an’ yer right all right,” Tom declared, as he stared at the evidence.
“But how did he get away?” Jack asked, as though certain that he had him stuck at last.
“That wasn’t hard,” Bob replied. “He just waited here till we had all gone back and then he crept along that limb to the next tree. You can see that he could do it all right. Then he dropped into that thick clump of bushes there and made off. I’ll bet we’ll find his tracks there all right, you see if we don’t.”
Bob was right, for when they had climbed down and gone around to the other side of the bushes there were tracks a plenty.
“And to think that we never thought of looking here,” Jack groaned as he gazed at footprints.
“You see he had that thing on a string which was tied to that tree opposite and all he had to do to make it dance was to pull on the string a bit and a harder pull would make it bounce up higher in the air. Then all he had to do when he wanted it to disappear was to give a yank and break the string near the other tree and pull it in. Of course he had phosphorus smeared on the eyes,” he explained, as they made their way slowly back to the office.