"Ha!" exclaimed Lem Gildy that night as one of the hastily printed bills came into his possession, "so this is the wallet they are lookin' for, eh? Twenty thousand dollars! But I knowed it all the while. As if Jack Kimball an' his sister could fool me! But I'll bleed him—that's what I'll do. I'll make him whack up—or—or I'll tell!" and Lem chuckled to himself, while there was a dangerous look on his mean face.
The search conducted by Cora and Walter was, as might be guessed, as unsuccessful as the one undertaken by Jack and Lem. Cora and Walter looked carefully over the whole length of the road to New City, but saw nothing of the wallet, and came back disconsolate in the auto.
"Poor Ed!" remarked Walter. "It's tough luck!"
"Yes, I wish we could have found it for him," agreed Cora as she skillfully drove the car through the Chelton streets at dusk. "I'm beginning to believe that it was stolen."
"I think so myself," added Walter. "But if he had it when he was fixing your car, and he missed it directly after he left our crowd—"
He hesitated a moment, then continued:
"Well, maybe he thinks that some of us may have—"
"Better not jump at conclusions," cautioned Cora, and at this Walter alighted near the street that led to his home.
"I won't," he promised Cora with a laugh as she sent the car ahead. She was anxious to reach home and learn the details of Jack's search, though she and Walter knew, from an inquiry they had made at the bank in New City, that it had not been successful.
That night nothing was so important a topic of conversation in Chelton as the loss of the twenty thousand dollars. Speculation was rife, and opinion was equally divided on the question of whether it had been lost or stolen, or both, for that it might have been stolen after it was lost was possible.