been in to-day, and so I couldn't give it out: Right back of us
here is a railroad station. There's an eastbound train through here at
seven-thirty every morning. She was just pulling into the station this
morning as I was unlocking the office door, and I heard a chugging
behind me. I looked up, and here came the car with only one man in it.
He pulls up short, picks up a bag, which was very heavy, for it was all
he could do to stagger along with it.

"The bell on the engine was ringing for the start when he runs through
the arcade there as fast as he could with the heavy bag, and just
catches the rear of the train as it comes along. He manages to hoist the
bag onto the rear platform steps, and is running along trying to get on,
and the train picking up speed with every revolution of the wheels. I
thought sure he would be left, or killed, for he wouldn't let go, when
the conductor came out on the rear platform, saw him, and jerked him
aboard by the collar."

"Didn't he say anything about his machine?" asked Ted.

"Not a word. That's what I thought so strange about it. But, thinks I,
some one will come for it after a while. Perhaps, thinks I, he was in
such a hurry to make the train that he left home without a chauffeur,
who will be along when he wakes up."

"And no one has appeared?"

"There she lays, just as he left her. When my partner came down, I spoke
to him about it. He's a fan on motoring. That's his car over there; that
white one. When I spoke to him about it, he went out and looked it over.

"'That car don't belong here,' says he. 'There's no number of the maker
on it, and everything that would serve to identify it has been taken
off. Besides, I don't think the license number is on the square.'

"That excited my curiosity, and I called up the license collector's
office and asked him whose motor car No. 118 was. In a few minutes he
calls me and says it belongs to Mr. Henry Inchcliffe, the banker. I gets
Mr. Inchcliffe on the phone and asks him if his car is missing, and he
says he can look out of the window as he is talking and see it beside
the curb with his wife sitting in it. 'What is the color of your car?'
says I. 'Dark green, picked in crimson. Why do you ask?' says he. I
tells him that an abandoned car is standing in front of our place with
his number on it. But he says he guesses not, for his number looms up
like a sore thumb, hanging on the axle of his car in front of the bank,
and I rings off. Th