“Why, now yo’ speaks of it, dere was somethin’ about dat man dat look like Mr. Parker,” the colored man agreed. “Kinda de way he walked. I couldn’t see his face cause he kept it sort o’ tucked down in his collar.”
“All the same, it must have been Dad!” Penny exclaimed. “The brief case practically proves it! Tell me, which way did the cab go?”
“Straight down de road,” said Mose, pointing. “But de car’s been gone a long time now. If you figures on catchin’ dose men, you all bettah be travelin’.”
CHAPTER
20
ACCUSATIONS
Alarmed and excited by Mose Johnson’s revelation, Penny glanced about for the policeman who had been assigned to watch the Deming mansion. The officer had taken cover somewhere and was not to be seen.
“Joe, drive as fast as you can to the airplane spotting station!” she ordered the cabman. “I’ll telephone the police station from there.”
As the taxi bounced along over the frozen road, the girls kept close watch for the yellow cab Mose Johnson had mentioned. They did not expect to overtake it. If the old colored man’s story was accurate, the taxi bearing Mr. Parker had left the mansion at least a half hour earlier.
“Dad must have been spirited away immediately after I talked to him!” Penny said. “He’s been drugged or something! Otherwise he would have known me.”
“But according to Mose, your father must have gone willingly with those men,” Louise returned.
“That’s the queer part.”