“It isn’t a joke at all!” declared Belle. “I saw two young men making off with Cora’s car. At first we thought it might be you and Wally.”
“Not guilty!” affirmed the latter, holding up a protesting hand.
“Where did all this happen?” Jack wanted to know.
“At the Spinning Wheel tea room. We stopped there,” his sister informed him.
“Which way did they go?” asked Walter Pennington.
“Down this way,” Belle said, explaining what she had seen, and how they had come along the road thinking to meet the perpetrators of the joke.
“Come on, Wally!” cried Jack. “We’ll get after those fellows. It may have been a joke, and, again, it may not. No use taking any chances. There have been several cars stolen around here lately. Maybe there’s a regular organized gang. Go on back to your tea and cakes, girls. We’ll round up the villains. Ha! Ha!” and he struck a theatrical attitude.
“We’ll wait at the tea room for you,” Cora said. “You can trace my car in the dust, Jack, by the tire-marks. There’s a big patch, where it was vulcanized. It’s on the right forward wheel, and it makes a mark like a big Z. Look for it.”
“I will, Sis. But there isn’t much chance. Too many cars pass along this road to let the dust-marks of any particular one stay in sight long. But we’ll do the best we can.”
Jack backed and turned his car around, and was soon off down the road in a clatter of exhausts, while the three girls went back to Ye Olde Spinning Wheel.