CHAPTER XA CLUE
Ned opined that they could make the train and he and Dorothy began immediately to get ready.
Dorothy stole one of the precious minutes to tell Major Dale where they were going and why, for she knew that hope, even if only temporary, would benefit him.
“I hate to leave him,” she told Ned, as they hurried down the stairs. “He seems so much brighter when I am with him.”
“And no wonder!” said Ned gallantly. Then as he stole a glance at Dorothy’s weary face, he went on: “Poor little Dot! If she could only divide herself in about six pieces every one would be happy!”
“Except Dot, perhaps,” said Dorothy ruefully.
They made the train with time to spare and settled back to endure the short trip to Scranting. Their minds were so filled with hopes and fears and questionings that they found little to say to each other.
Ned was thinking for the most part of pretty Jennie Haygood, to whom he had become engagedduring her last visit to The Cedars, and wishing that he might run down and “have a talk with her.” But with all the trouble and worry at The Cedars, he felt, and rightly, that his first duty was to those at home. He would help Dorothy to find Joe and then, he declared grimly to himself, he would see Jennie every day for at least three months!
Dorothy’s thoughts were of her father and of Joe and—of Garry. If Garry were only here to help her!
The train stopped at Scranting with a jolt and Ned helped Dorothy to alight.
“This fellow I spoke of who thought he saw Joe here works for the railroad,” he hurriedly explained, as they started along the platform. “He says the ticket agent here is an acquaintance of his and may be able to give us valuable information.”
“Then let’s hurry,” urged Dorothy, soon adding in a voice only a little above a whisper: “Oh, Ned, I am frightened!”
“What about?” asked her cousin wonderingly.
“Oh, I am so afraid he may not be able to tell us anything!”
They found the ticket agent an agreeable man, and, as this was not the rush hour with him, he obligingly came forth from the small room at the back of the station to answer their questions.
Ned explained to him about Geoffrey Hodgson, the man who thought he had seen Joe in Scranting and who had referred Ned for further information to the railroad man.
“From your description I am very sure I saw the lad,” the agent returned, and Dorothy leaned forward scarcely breathing for fear of losing his next words. “Perhaps it was his air of haste that particularly impressed itself upon my mind.”
“Did this boy come here to board a train?” asked Dorothy, and the words, the first she had spoken, sounded strange to her.
The man nodded and in his eyes were both sympathy and admiration. There was no doubt that the young lady was extremely pretty and neither was there any doubt that she was very much concerned with the actions of this particular young runaway scamp. He had a sudden and very sincere desire to help Dorothy Dale in whatever way he could.
“He took the four-fifteen for the West, Miss,” he said. “It was a flyer, and I guess that suited the young gentleman all right for he certainly seemed in a tremendous hurry.”
“The West!” murmured Dorothy, and a bright spot began to burn in each cheek. For Dorothy was suddenly possessed of an idea.
“That reminds me, I have something to show you,” said their obliging informant, rising suddenlyto his feet. “If you will wait just a minute——” and he returned hurriedly to his office.
Ned and Dorothy looked at each other and the young man shook his head ruefully.
“Not much help,” he said. “Doesn’t do us over much good to know that Joe took a train for the West.”
Dorothy pursed her lips and looked mysterious.
“I am not so sure!” she said.
Ned stared, but before he could open his lips to ask the question that trembled on them the agent was back again, holding something in his hand.
He sat down beside Dorothy and held something out to her which she found on closer inspection to be a cap.
She gave a little cry and caught it in her hands, gazing at it with misted eyes. For it was not just any cap. It was Joe’s cap!
“What’s the row?” asked Ned curiously. “What’s that you’ve got?”
Dorothy could not speak, but in silence handed the cap to him.
Ned gave a low whistle.
“Exhibit A,” he muttered. “There isn’t a doubt in the world but what this is Joe’s head gear! What do you make of that, Dot?”
Dorothy shook her head and turned to the interested railroad man.
“Do you mind telling me where you got that cap?” she said unsteadily.
“The lad left it behind in his hurry,” he replied. “I saw it lying on the bench and, thinking the boy might return for it, put it away in the office.”
“Oh, that was awfully good of you,” said Dorothy. “You don’t know how very much this means to me.”
The agent looked embarrassed, for he was one of those kind-hearted men who cannot take thanks gracefully and, as several people entered the station at that moment, he excused himself and took his place again at the window.
Seeing that they had all the information they were likely to get from this source, Ned pocketed the cap that Joe had left behind him and they crossed the tracks to the opposite platform of the station, there to take the return train to North Birchlands.
On the way back Ned was excited and talkative but Dorothy was very quiet.
“Why is it that every kid who wants to run away immediately heads west?” asked Ned of an inattentive and thoughtful Dorothy. “Sometimes they make a break for the seacoast, but more often it is the wild and woolly that tempts the youthful imagination. Say, Dot,” he added, struck by a sudden thought, “why in the worlddidn’t we ask that fellow how far west Joe was going?”
“Because we are a couple of idiots, I guess,” returned Dorothy. “However, we can still ask him—by telephone.”
“How much money did the boy have?” asked Ned, with apparent irrelevance.
“Not much,” replied Dorothy sadly. “He couldn’t have got so very far, Ned.”
It seemed only a moment before the train slowed to a stop at North Birchlands. Dorothy and Ned walked rapidly homewards, eager to share this new development with the family. But when they reached The Cedars they found so much worry and excitement rampant there that they temporarily forgot their own adventures.
Roger was gone, had disappeared as completely, it seemed, as Joe!
Dorothy sank down in a chair and covered her eyes with her hand.
“This is too much,” she said. “I don’t believe I can stand any more.”
Then she was on her feet in an instant again, her eyes bright, cheeks hot.
“No one has told Dad this?” she asked, and her Aunt Winnie replied quickly and soothingly in the negative.
“We would not have told him in any case until you returned, dear,” she said, soon adding, withattempted reassurance: “I really don’t think this is serious.”
“Serious!” repeated Dorothy. “Not serious that little Roger is lost, as well as Joe?” Then she asked, looking about her as though she had missed her chum for the first time: “Where is Tavia?”
“She and Nat have not come in yet,” replied Mrs. White, the worried lines deepening in her forehead. “I can’t imagine what can be keeping them.”
Then Dorothy remembered. Tavia and Nat had gone out in theFire Bird. Even her chum had deserted her. She felt suddenly very helpless and forlorn.
There came the sound of an automobile on the drive without, the sharp tooting of a motor horn—undeniably theFire Bird.
They all dashed to the door and flung it open just as Tavia’s glad cry rang through the darkness:
“Hello, everybody. We’ve got Roger!”