Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1923-04-20

He Kissed Her Again.
nounced Alexander. And he kissed her
again.
Inspector at Stanhoe never tumbled to.
That there were two motorcycles, and
not one, at the place where Jack the
Climber got ditched. If they were to
track up the Sphinx now it would be
mighty awkward. They'd soon con-
meet her with Aimee and me. But l
guess it's an outside chance"
The slight impression of a tire mark,
a little to the right of the path, caught
his eye. 1t had passed over a soft
mole hill, and was clearly defined.
Billy paused, and inspected it with a
new interest. The fashion of his
c%ountenance changed; he went down
on hands and knees, and looked very
closely indeed.
Snakes !" exclaimed Billy. He rose,
and quartered the ground carefully for
a considerable distance in either d.
rection. The ground was too hard to
show any continuous track. But mole
Hills NCIC plCllliIulj dId oO1hC way a
Their on he found another one, also
showing the print of a tire.
Its the same. And not the SphinX's
tire, by a mile! !" said Billy, knitting his
brow. "This one was s~teel-studded."
With growing perplexity he made a
close examination of the soil, and pres
emily discovered other traces. There
were a few footprints and, faint though
they were, they bore some very marked
characteristics.
Billy stood up straight and gave a
liquid whistle. The burrows in his
brow %deepened. He carried his inves-
legations still farther afield, but to-
ward the healthy common the soil was
light, wind-blown sand that shifted
with every fresh breeze. There were
no tracks left. The seeker was at a
loss.
Billy stopped and reflected rapidly.
"It came this way, whatever it was"
he said. But why on earth did it
and how? Let's start from the begin
ming"
He struck across country and, break
ing through a hedge, came out into the
blind lane where Jack the Climbers
machine had crashed on the fateful
night; the spot where he had recov-
cred the emeralds, and made acquaint-
ance with Calamity Rates
fulness.
The muddy lane still showed slight
traces, very much mixed up and tram
pied, of the place where the thieves
dried and hard. Billy also recognized
what were evidently the hoof marks of
the Stanhoe police.
"a herd of steers wouldn't have
made more mess" said Billy. "And
Panke found nothing after all, or he'd
have Well, l can't blow much, either.
I've been here twice since, but never
got wise to it till now"
He turned back down the lane to-
ward the highway, his eyes noting the
smallest details of the ground.
Here's my track; pretty near
washed out. And here's the others.
That cycle was a big Indian, by what
little 1 saw of it. And likely it was
half crippled when it got away. And
here it got on the high road, and head
ed straight on past JervaulX again.
That's mighty queer. | always reck-
oned they'd have gone the other way.
Something must have turned them"
He passed along the wider lane in
49, lsa1;- N ~, a-nd
scanning the ground and the ditch. A
little distance short of the gate
through which Billy had wheeled the
Sphinx when lodging the police, he
stopped quickly and picked up a scrap
of metal. 1t was the broken end of an
exhaust silencer.
II was right! !" calculated Billy.
Here they crashed again-or the en-
CINE gave u for good. And they
came the very way l did myself. And
one of the two was lame-dead lame.
One sure thing-they couldn't have got
far that night. And if they weren't able
to ride the thing, what did they do
with it?"
He hurried to the far end of the
field, where the last of the tracks had
failed. He hesitated, and glanced to-
wards the distant crag-pits.
"What should 1 have done myself
If I hadn't known the groundT' he
thought. "Ill try here first"
Less than a hundred yards to the
right was a clump of brushwood,
growing alone, a little oasis on the
bare field.
The bushes masked a narrow clay
pit, twenty feet deep, that had been
delved In times past to bring up the