"Have you any reason to think that they know anything about it?" demanded the colonel indignantly.
"No sufficient reason," replied the judge. "Now, don't get excited," as the colonel was about to speak, "but there has been a lot of loose talk circulating, and I thought I would like to settle it."
"Loose talk!" exclaimed the colonel; "about whom?"
"About Randolph, Dick Wilson and young Blake," explained the judge; "and, by the way, where is Pepper? I don't see him here."
"We don't know where he is," replied Jack. "We have been hunting for him all the afternoon, but we couldn't find him."
"How is that?" questioned the judge.
Whereupon the story of the unavailing search was told.
"That is certainly remarkable," admitted the judge. "Perhaps we had better put this matter off until we see if we can't find him. Have you any plans, Colonel?"
"No," replied the colonel, forgetting his anger over the blundering arrest. "I am at a complete loss how to proceed. If the ground had opened and swallowed him he could not have disappeared more suddenly and more completely."
"We shall certainly have to start another search. The question is where to begin," mused the judge, and just then, catching sight of Officer Dugan, his mind reverting to the latter's inexcusable blunder, he gave the chagrined minion of the law a severe reprimand. How far the angry judge might have proceeded is not known, for just at this moment Pepper appeared in the doorway.