“You have a plan, then?”
Jack nodded.
“Not much of a one, though,” he hastened to say, “but it’s the best I can think of right now. Those fellows must have gone a short way up this wood road after putting up that sign to fool us. Maybe they watched us from the bushes. At any rate, we know that, wherever they have gone, they must have taken the wood road.”
“You mean to follow them up along the same road, then?”
“No, we’d stand no chance of overtaking them. My plan is to stick to the main road. I’ve an idea the wood road joins it again further on. At any rate, the main road will bring us to the vicinity of a telephone and we can notify the authorities to be on the lookout for that yellow auto.”
“I guess that’s about all we can do,” agreed Tom ruefully.
The Flying Road Racer was started again, and after about half an hour’s run the boys found themselves in a small town called Old Bridge. There they learned that the yellow auto which they were pursuing had passed through about half an hour ahead of them. The men in it had inquired the road to Boston. The storekeeper, who gave the boys this information, declared that he had seen no boy in the machine with the two men. “They were going like blazes,” he volunteered. “That’s a clue, at any rate,” declared Jack, as they set off for the police station to which the storekeeper had directed them; “we know that the men are bound for Boston.”
“A whole lot of good that does us,” grumbled Tom; “we might as well expect to find a needle in a haystack as find two men, who wish to remain concealed, in a large city.”
The Old Bridge police force—which consisted of three men and a captain, was notified of the happening on the road, and the chief promised to have a thorough search of the woods in the vicinity made, and notify the boys in Boston if he came across any clues. For Jack had made up his mind to keep on to the city and lay the whole case before Mr. Bowler, the lawyer.
“He will know better what to do than we do,” he said, “and may be able to suggest some plan for recovering the model and poor Ralph.”