"We have," cried Charley, leaping to his feet in sudden excitement. "Lumley left his thumb-prints in the putty he stuck in his window-sash. I never thought of them until this moment."
"Excellent!" cried the forester. "I suspect we can find the duplicates for this third set of prints only when we lay hands on Henry Collins. But I have a strong suspicion we'll have a chance to make that comparison very soon."
"How?" asked Charley eagerly. "What do you mean? Have the police made any arrests?"
"I don't know," replied the forester. "But this is the situation. Lumley will never dare hang around in the forest, for he will know that every man in the Forest Service is looking for him. Then, too, he can't have much food with him."
"Only what he took from me, I suspect."
"That makes it certain that he must leave the forest soon. It's a good many miles from the lumber camp to this neighborhood, so the three fugitives must be traveling in this direction. If they keep on for fifteen or twenty miles further, they will come out of the mountains near Pleasantville or Maple Gap. They can board a train at either place. The state police already are watching both stations. If Lumley and his fellows went straight on after they started the fires, and Goodness knows they wouldn't hang around here, they could reach the railroad in six or eight hours. That means they would be there by this time. There is a train that reaches Pleasantville about eleven o'clock. They would have time to make it. I should not be at all surprised, when I get back to the office, to find a message saying that the police had caught them."
"Let us hope you do," said Charley.
The forester arose. "Would you like to go see?" he asked.
"Surest thing you know," replied Charley.
"Then we'll hike back to the road and slip out to Lumley's house in my car. We can get that window-sash and put it in a safe place in my office and be back here before Jim brings his gang out."