A BIT OF ADVICE FROM A STRANGER
"Is there no way you can _make_ that man talk?" Billy Worth asked Chief
Fobes. The boys and the officer were again in the latter's office.
"I suppose I can if you leave it to me, but I can't if you don't," Mr.
Fobes answered. "Look 'e here now. That fellow's in here for ten days.
Plenty of time yet to make him loosen up, but it ain't goin' to do no
good. What could he have had to do with swipin' your car? Nothin',
that's all. Might as well think he picked it up and shoved it in his
pocket! There's nothin' to it. He's a bum, that's all, an' is havin'
some fun tryin' to make us believe he does know something about your
automobile."
The two boys looked downcast. "Says his name is Coster," the officer
went on. "Belongs nowhere in particular. So much he told me when he
first was in here. Yer basket he picked up in the road, he now says, an'
he don't deny eatin' yer lunch an' sleepin' in the preacher's barn. An'
that's all he does know about your automobile. What's more, it stands to
reason, too. From any standpoint of the law ye can pick or choose, if he
took your auto, what could he have did with it?"
"Why has he been so interested, part of the time, anyway, in finding out
if there's a man named Smith, or anybody, looking for him?" Billy asked.
"They all act that way, pretty much. It's only once in a while that they
give up anything by makin' 'em believe as there's a party lookin' for
'em; and of course every tramp knows other tramps."
"Maybe so," replied Worth, thoughtfully, "but I do believe your Mr.
Coster is not what exactly you call a 'bum.' Even if he doesn't know
anything about our car, there's some other matter on his mind and he is
a lot more worried about it than he wants us to guess. What he has been
trying to do was to pump me, without saying anything that would give me
his reasons for doing it, and without telling me anything of any
consequence. Why, he's an _awful liar!_"
Billy's show of wrath in his closing sentence made Chief Fobes laugh
boisterously. "Liar?" said he when he could catch his breath. "Did you
expect he'd be anything else? I tell ye both," and his eye took in both
Billy and Paul, "you might just as well forget this man. We'll have most
ten days yet to make a charge of larceny against him for stealin' the
basket. If there's anything to be had out of him we'll get it. All's you
can do is have them East Side fellers (Hipp and Earnest) come around
here sometime and see if they can identify this Coster as the man they
seen on the South Fork."
"We might run out and see him right now," Paul suggested.
Billy agreed and the two were soon at Creek's garage. It was a
delightful day for driving. The car's motion was cool and pleasant
though the sun beat down with unusual warmth even for June.
At the home of Alexander Hipp it was learned that he and Alfred Earnest
were picking cherries at a farm three miles beyond the Forks, on the
main road. Without trouble Billy and Paul found them. The work with the
cherries was nearly over for the day and the Auto Boys gave a hand that
it might be finished quickly. Glad of a chance for an automobile ride,
Hipp and Earnest had readily agreed to visit the Griffin lockup.
Alfred had the seat beside Billy, who was driving. "My brother," said
he, "thought you fellows made a mistake when two of you went away to
Albany to look for your machine. I told him about your plan, last night.
He wished he had seen you to talk it over because he figures you ought
to have gone toward Buffalo."
"That so? Why?" Billy asked.
"Because he says it's fairly certain the people who had this Torpedo
just switched to your car. They came from the east and was headed west
to begin with. Naturally they wouldn't go back the way they had just
come from."
"We thought of that, but our car didn't go through Griffin," Billy
answered. "Willie Creek is sure of that. It must have turned back east
again at the Forks."
Earnest argued to the contrary but, seeing there was nothing to be
gained by the discussion, Worth simply let him talk. It was strange how
many people had advanced theories regarding the car's disappearance.
Indeed so much discussion and gossip had come to the ears of the boys,
and so little real help had been given them, save by Mr. Creek, that it
is little wonder mere talk was becoming annoying.
Coster, the only occupant of the village prison, was not a little
surprised when he once more answered Chief Fobes' "Here, you! Step up!"
upon seeing four boys confronting him. He leaned with hands upon the
steel bars as he had done the day before.
"Good, honest automobile grease on your hands, mister," remarked Billy
Worth, noticing the fellow's fingers and especially his black nails.
Coster quickly put his hands down but volunteered no remark. Then, as if
he feared being suspected of a desire to conceal something, he seized
the bars again as before.
"He's the man we saw," said Alex Hipp, when with Chief Fobes they all
had reached the refreshing outer air. "At least I think so."
"Thinkin' don't go much from the standpoint of the law," the officer
answered. Neither Hipp nor Alfred Earnest could state positively that
Coster was the person they had seen on the lonely road that rainy
afternoon. Billy and Paul drove them to their respective homes in the
Torpedo.
"So we are knocked out of all we thought we had found yesterday,"
observed Jones, droopingly, on the homeward way.
"Maybe not," Worth returned, deep in thought. "Do you see how the clutch
pedal of the car has pressed against the side of the sole on my shoe
till the leather is curved in half an inch or more?"
Paul said he did. Looking at Worth's shoes, then his own, he added:
"That's nothing new. Mine is the same way."
"I know it is," said Billy. "And the sole of Coster's left boot is
marked in the same way, too."
Paul saw at once the significance of this fact, the evidence that Chief
Fobes' prisoner was an automobile man. "Billy," he said earnestly, "we
are gettin' some warm!"
Try as they would to "get busy," Worth and Jones found themselves
accomplishing nothing as the afternoon wore away. Mr. Fobes was becoming
quite impatient over their inquiries and they thought best not to visit
him. Willie Creek was busy with some urgent repair work. There appeared
no course to pursue--nothing to do--but wait. Impatient for word from
Phil or Dave, restless in their inactivity, the two boys sat for a long
time at the large open window of the hotel. A stranger entered.
As the young man--he seemed to be twenty-one or two, perhaps--sat down
near the boys, he remarked that he was waiting while his car was
undergoing some repairs at the garage. A conversation concerning
automobiles was the most natural result imaginable. Put two or more
motor enthusiasts together and invariably they will soon be talking.
The newcomer was from Texas, he said, touring through to New York. His
brother was with him but had remained at the garage. The substance of
the Auto Boys' story was told the stranger as the conversation
progressed.
"Look here," said the young man in his flippant, breezy fashion, "you
fellows are too easy by half. You've let that garage keeper and his
friend, the town policeman, pull you all around. The garage man--Creek,
you call him--sends you on a wild goose chase here and there. The
village cop steers you off with no help worth speaking of. Seems mighty
suspicious, don't it? I just might mention that there was a garage in a
town near us that made a business of changing over stolen cars. Would
switch 'em all around, in an old barn behind their shop, change wheel
sizes, change engines, fix 'em up so no man could tell his own car if he
saw it. Then they slipped 'em off to the big cities and sold 'em. Now,
right there, you've got a real tip, you take it from me!"
It is the meanest kind of wickedness to direct suspicion against any
person without good cause. Also it is criminal. Paul Jones and Billy
Worth realized this. Yet was it not true, as the stranger said, that
Willie Creek and Chief Fobes were great friends? And had not Mr. Creek
more than once suggested that it would be much cheaper for the boys to
take a train home and conduct their search from there, paying no hotel
bills while awaiting developments?
"I've always thought Willie was our friend," muttered Worth when he and
Paul were alone again, "and I shall think so; but one thing is sure,
we've got to keep our eyes open."
Mr. P. Jones, Esquire, as Paul sometimes referred to himself, was of the
same opinion. Also he added: "It looked mighty funny to me the way old
Fobes paid so little attention when Scottie was shot. Willie Creek
didn't seem to mind it, either, so much as I'd think he would."
Oh, it is a sad, bad business to sow seeds of suspicion! It is but all
too likely they will grow! Always there is something which seems to
confirm the suspicious thought. And yet, on the other hand, it must be
admitted that dishonesty and falsehood are not infrequently concealed by
an appearance of friendliness on part of those who practice them.
And now, whether Willie Creek was a true friend or a false friend, we
soon shall see for another night has passed and another day has come--a
day to test the endurance and the courage of the Auto Boys almost to the
breaking point. And even while Phil and Dave were making themselves
known in the Automobile club of Syracuse, Billy and Paul were planning a
careful inspection of Mr. Creek's garage and its surroundings, as they
sat at breakfast.