They came to the railroad—the Barnegat & Montrose Branch of the R., V. & D.—and halted long enough to speak to the flagman. He had seen the flying car, too. They were on the right track.
But a mile beyond the pursuing party came to a place where the highway branched in three directions. There was no house in sight. The escaping car might have taken any one of the roads.
“We’re stuck!” ejaculated Mr. Polk. “We might as well take one at random and see if we can run down a clue upon it.”
“Wait!” urged Dan Speedwell. “Perhaps I can do better than that.”
He got out of the machine and ran into the first road at the right. He had noticed that these highways here were not so well made as those nearer the river. There was a chance that he might find some trace of the passing of the strange car which they followed.
And he was right in this surmise, although he did not find it in this first road. Marks of the tires of an automobile—and fresh marks—were visible in the middle road. As far as Dan could see no other machine had passed this way.
He leaped back beside the chauffeur and they drove on again at top speed. A mile beyond they halted at a farm house to inquire. The passing of an automobile in a cloud of dust had been noticed less than an hour before; but the sight was too common to have attracted much attention, and the occupants of the house had been too far from the road to note the color of the machine, or the number of men in it.
Mr. Briggs’ car was certainly fast, and Mr. Briggs’ chauffeur was the most marvelous manipulator of an automobile that Dan Speedwell had ever seen. And to sit directly beside the Frenchman and observe the skill and art with which he handled the levers and the wheel was a sheer delight to the boy.
He thought to himself:
“Ah! if Billy and I only owned an auto! If we could only take part in this endurance test that Mr. Briggs is going to arrange! If we could handle an auto half as well as this Frenchman!”