“Don’t go at him too hard,” Penny pleaded. “After all, there is a chance I was mistaken about the license number. In my excitement the night of the explosion, I may have remembered a wrong figure.”
“That’s so,” Salt acknowledged gloomily. “Well, we’ll see.”
“Why not pretend we’re here to get a feature story for the Star?” Penny suggested impulsively. “That way, I could ask him all the questions I like about the secret ray machine.”
“Any way you want to do it,” Salt agreed amiably.
He locked the car and they walked to the farmhouse. Learning that the professor and his wife were at the lake, they trudged down the lane.
“Wait!” Penny suddenly warned in a whisper.
Clutching Salt’s arm, she drew him into the shadow of a tree. At first he could not understand the need for caution. Then as Penny pointed, he saw a hunched figure with a lighted lantern, walking along the lake shore away from the cabin where Professor Bettenridge’s ray machine was kept.
“There goes Webb now!” Penny whispered. “He’s evidently going to the shack where the mines are stored.”
“What’s he carrying?” Salt inquired.
Although too far away to see plainly, they thought that he had a small satchel tucked under his arm. As he drew closer they discerned that it was leather, and apparently used as a container for a long cylinder-shaped object.