“Is there a garage anywhere near his place?” I asked, as it was a safe enough question in view of my earlier story that I had broken down.
The doctor laughed. “Queer thing your asking,” he grunted. “They do a lot of talking about that garage.”
“Why? What do they say?”
“Oh, there’s a lot more cars come there than there are people in the neighborhood, and the folk about here believe that there’s some sort of smuggling going on from there. The town constable went and looked the place over, though, and it seemed all right.”
I asked him where it was and he laughed again. “That’s a funny thing too,” he said. “For it isn’t on the main road at all. It’s on a side road. Funny place for a garage, the people about here think, but it seems to have plenty of business.” And he told me exactly where it was. Here’s a health to that doctor, and may he graduate to a large practice in the city entirely composed of wealthy hypochondriacs.
When I got to the station I decided that matters were too serious to take any further chances by going it alone. When I had said good-bye to the doctor I found the ticket office and woke up the night clerk. He stared at me as if I were a ghost, but the sight of a bill changed the tenor of his thoughts and he consented readily enough to let me use his telephone, while he yawned and stretched behind me.
And then began the most maddening half hour of my life. I had a telephone before me and I got the first operator almost at once, and gave her the number Captain Peters had told me to call in case of emergency. But that’s all the good it did me. I must have sat there for half an hour, prodding the operator and listening in despair for an answer from beyond.
It came finally, however, and it was Captain Peters himself who answered. The fates were with me at last, I thought.
“Hello, Peters. This is Clayton——” I began.
“Thank God!” came a bellow over the wire. “Where are you and where is Pride? I tell you, the town has been turned upside down looking for the two of you.”