“Why, the office of the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles is in Hartford, you know, of course, and it won’t be open till nine in the morning. I thought that you, being the president of the New Canaan Bank, might have a drag with some of the politicians up there in the capitol, and that they might arrange it so you could get the information we want tonight. If you could do that, and ’phone it on to me, then Osceola and I might be able to get the jump on them, do you see? It’s not likely the owner of the car guesses that the girls took his license number this morning, especially as we did nothing about it right away. I’ll admit that that was an error on our part, but we hadn’t any idea of what we were up against then.”
“Don’t let that worry you,” replied Dorothy’s father. “You’ve done splendidly—you’ve figured a logical why-and-wherefor to this business, and that’s a piece of constructive work. What are you doing now?”
“I’ve come over here to put on some clothes, sir. I’m still wearing pajamas—”
“I see. By the way, what’s that license number?”
Bill gave it to him.
“All right. Now go ahead and get dressed, then wait at your house until you hear from me. It won’t be long, because it happens that the State Commissioner of Motor Vehicles is an old friend of mine. We played golf together this afternoon. I’ll have the name and address of that car owner for you in short order.”
He rang off and Bill hung up the receiver. He put on a bath robe and slipped his feet into a pair of moccasins. Then he went downstairs and out to the garage. There he saw to it that the gas tank of his own car, a high-powered sport coupe, was full, drove it round to the front door and went up to his room again.
When he was completely dressed he went downstairs. He was beginning to feel hungry, and the prospect of a motor trip with no breakfast at the end of it made the idea of food all the more interesting. After he had cooked a substantial meal of bacon, eggs, and coffee, and had consumed every particle of it, he felt decidedly better and more in the mood to carry on at this early hour.
Then he went into the living room and threw himself down on a large divan, where he relaxed tired muscles and brought his mind to bear on the matter of the winged cartwheels. Perhaps a quarter of an hour had gone by, when he sprang up and went into his father’s study. The telephone bell was jangling loudly.
“That you, Bill?” He recognized the voice as Mr. Dixon’s.