“What was the use? The roadster was there and Chet got it back.”
“No, but the man who stole the car had been there too. Perhaps he left some clue.”
Joe slapped his knee with an open hand.
“I never thought of that, Frank. Let’s go right back there now.”
“Come on.”
Eagerly, the Hardy boys dashed over to their motorcycles. In a few minutes they were speeding through the streets of Bayport, out toward the woods where Chet Morton’s roadster had been abandoned.
They were fired with enthusiasm again, in spite of the momentary setback they had received when their father squelched Frank’s plan of going around to the pawnshops. They felt now that they were on a new trail.
They came to the abandoned road that led into the woods and they brought their motorcycles as far as possible, finally leaving them by the roadside and going ahead on foot. Frank located the place where the roadster had been driven off into the woods, for the trees were still bent and broken, and the two boys plunged into the depths of the thickets.
At last the Hardy boys emerged into the little cleared space where the roadster had been found. Everything was just as they had left it. They examined the ground carefully.
“He might have dropped letters from his pocket, or something,” said Joe hopefully, as they explored the clearing.
But the auto thief had not been so careless. There was not even a footprint, for the boys had trampled the ground thoroughly after the roadster had been discovered.
“If I had only thought to look for footprints at the time!” groaned Joe, in disappointment.
“Or fingerprints. He must have left fingerprints somewhere about the car. If he was a professional crook we could have traced him easily.”
“Too late now. Chet has had the car washed since then—we didn’t think of it in time.”
Their search was without success, and the Hardy boys were about to give up in disappointment when Frank left the clearing and began to hunt about in the bushes.
“I guess we might as well go home,” said Joe. “We’ve come hunting for clues too late. If we had any sense we would have looked for fingerprints and—”
He was interrupted by a shout from his brother.
“Joe! Come here, quick! I’ve found something!”
There was no mistaking the excitement in Frank’s voice. Joe lost no time in scrambling through the bushes until he reached his brother’s side.
Frank was standing in the midst of a thicket, holding up something red and bushy.
It was a wig!
“The red wig!” exclaimed Joe, his eyes widening.
“Not only the wig,” replied Frank. “But this—” and he bent over to pick up a battered hat from the ground. “And this!” Whereupon he picked up a worn coat.
“They belong to the crook!”
“It couldn’t have been anyone else. He must have disguised himself here and left the wig and things in the bush when he abandoned the car.”
XI
Mr. Hardy Investigates
The Hardy boys looked at one another in growing excitement.
“What ought we do about it?” asked Joe.
“I’m going to tell Dad what we’ve found.”
“But didn’t he say he would be working the case on his own and that we would be opposition?”
“This is different. We have a real clue here, but we don’t know how to use it. You can bet Dad will know what to do. He’ll act fairly with us. If it leads to anything, he’ll see that we get credit for what we’ve done.”
“I guess you’re right, Frank. This is a little too big for us to handle ourselves. But imagine finding that wig! What luck!”
“There’s nothing else around, is there? Let’s look.”
Although the Hardy boys scoured the woods in that vicinity thoroughly, they found nothing more. But the wig, the hat and the coat gave promise of interesting developments. Frank hunted through all the pockets of the coat in the faint hope of finding something that would identify the previous wearer, but in this he was disappointed.
So they went back to the abandoned road and remounted their motorcycles, returning to Bayport with the articles they had found in the woods.
Their disappointment had turned to jubilation, for now they felt that they were definitely on the trail of the mysterious man in the red wig, and while ostensibly there was no connection between this fellow and the thief who had robbed Tower Mansion, Frank had, as he said, “a hunch” that the auto thief and the robber of the mansion were one and the same man.
“If we ever lay our hands on the man who stole Chet’s roadster I’m sure we’ll have gone a long way toward solving the Tower affair,” said Frank to his brother. “I may be wrong, but I have an idea that the fellow was a professional crook who first set out to rob the steamboat office. Then, when he was frightened off, he hung around the city and waited his chance to rob Tower Mansion.”
Mr. Hardy was still in the library when the boys returned home. The great detective was frankly surprised when his sons again entered the room, and he looked up with the suspicion of a twinkle in his eyes.
“What! More clues!” he exclaimed. “Surely not so soon.”
“You bet we have more clues!” exclaimed Frank eagerly. “And real clues this time. We’re going to turn them over to you.”
“But I thought the two of you were working on this case in your own way. Remember, I’m the opposition.”
“Well, to tell the truth, we don’t know just what to do with what we’ve found,” admitted Frank. “And, anyway, we know you’ll be fair with us, so it doesn’t matter. Look!”
And with that he tossed the red wig on the table. He kept the coat and hat behind his back.
Fenton Hardy leaned forward quickly and picked up the wig with an inquiring glance at his sons.
“So!” he murmured. “You found the wig?”
He examined it intently. Then he opened a drawer of his desk and produced
