“Yuh. That’s what I thought. So I ordered one for you—a touring-car. Now who talks like a little green wagon?” The detective smiled infernally.
While hastily dressing in the rough coat, trousers and shirt of his “disguise,” Poodle reflected that he hadn’t the best of it, for once. So he loved the detective. Poodle was built that way—he liked people who could do things better than he.
Poodle was in the tonneau of his car, waiting in front of the hotel, when Mr. P. J. Jolls pompously came down and entered a second automobile. Poodle was wilted down in the corner, with a large steamer-rug concealing nearly all of him except an extra large and ferocious pair of goggles, and the tip of his merry upturned nose.
He ordered his chauffeur to follow the Jolls car; and away they hustled, out through old Georgetown, across the Aqueduct Bridge into Virginia, then northeastward, through little towns and past farms, in which Poodle took about as little interest as a sailor would in a horse. For he was attending strictly to this question: did Mr. P. J. Jolls know that his car was being followed?
At first, so many cars were touring that Jolls noticed nothing. But as Poodle’s car kept on taking the same turns as he did, even after they had left the highroad, Jolls began to look back, anxiously. Finally, they reached a hilly country, and from hilltops Jolls looked down on the pursuing car anxiously.
They approached a great hill, and Jolls’ car slowed down.
Poodle ordered his chauffeur, “Pass that car, and take me just over the top of the hill. I’ll jump out there, but you go ahead, and wait for me at the next town. You may have to wait all day.”
The chauffeur had been told by the detective that this lad was really a great young sleuth, and there was keen respect in the “Yes, sir” with which he answered Poodle.
They shot by the Jolls car, Poodle keeping way down in the tonneau. As soon as the car passed the top of the hill, where it was hidden from the Jolls car for an instant, Poodle sprang out. He looked like a jolly country-boy, certainly not like a motorist who followed other people’s cars. He strolled to the top of the hill, and over it, toward the approaching Jolls car, without attracting the slightest attention from Jolls.
He ambled down till he was just behind the Jolls car, which was taking the hill very slowly. Poodle was sure that Jolls would never go to his real destination, where Hike was, unless he got rid of the car that seemed to be pursuing him. He had been sure that Jolls would slow up, to let the other car get ahead. He chuckled cheerfully to find that he had guessed right.