The afternoon was waning. He hurried over to a hangar. An aviator came out to greet him.
“Howdy, Kennedy,” exclaimed English Johnny.
“Hello, Johnny.”
“Well, I’m here. Like I promised. Thought you’d be glad to see me.”
“I sure am. You’re just in time to take a little hop.”
“How much? I might try it.”
“Nothing to you, Johnny.”
The beefy-faced man darted a look toward the group of idlers who were standing near the hangars. None of them resembled the men he had suspected in the Tube. Nevertheless, Johnny was going on with the game he had planned.
“All right, Kennedy. Let’s go.”
The two climbed into a speedy cabin job.
“I’ll take you up for about ten minutes, Johnny,” said the aviator.
The mechanic spun the propeller, the motor revved smoothly, and the plane took off and circled above the field. When the ship was in the air, English Johnny leaned forward to tap the pilot on the back. By means of an emphatic finger and with gestures, English Johnny made his wants known. Kennedy must have understood him, for the pilot nodded.
Although the group of idlers down on the field knew nothing of what passed between English Johnny and the birdman, the consequence was not unnoticed.
“That’s funny,” observed one of the hangers-on. “Kennedy must have changed his mind about that ten-minute trip. Looks mighty like he’s going some place, and in a hurry, too.”
The plane had settled to an arrow-straight course. Headed toward the north, its hum grew fainter and fainter to the neck craners at the airport.
As the monoplane became but a dot against the dusking sky, a stranger in a long overcoat quit the hangar. Only the tip of his nose showed from behind the upturned collar of his overcoat. He strode along most rapidly, weirdly laughing to himself.
Night had fallen; the hour was at hand when shadows come to life. The Shadow had clung tenaciously to English Johnny’s trail, only to lose it. Yet he still had reason for mirth.
For The Shadow, keen in every intuition, believed that the odds favored Harry Vincent’s trailing of Ezekiel Bingham. Where English Johnny had been oversuspicious, Bingham had proven disdainful.
The two, The Shadow knew, would find a common meeting point. Relying upon Harry to locate that spot, The Shadow was already making plans that could be executed promptly should Harry’s report come through.
CHAPTER XXX
TRAIL’S END
A CAR was rolling along a road not far from Long Island Sound. Harry Vincent was the man at the wheel. He was following another clew.
At Herkwell he had traced the course of Ezekiel Bingham’s car. A man had seen an automobile turn off on the side road to Winster two days ago. Very few cars went that way. The man, an idler in the corner store, had noted the car quite closely. It answered the description Harry sought.
Harry had stopped at a muddy spot along the road and had noted the mark of tires. The tread was of a peculiar design. This had been a valuable discovery. For two side roads led off from Winster. Both were muddy, but no one had seen a car go over either of them.
Harry had made a long examination and had detected the telltale marks of the tread on one of the roads. Hence he had followed it instead of keeping through the town.
This was the road that had carried him near the Sound. Now it ran into another road, and the course turned inland. The new road was well-paved.
Harry had covered nearly thirty miles since leaving Holmwood, but the poor condition of the roads and the stops that he had made consumed much time. It was now past four o’clock.
Harry stopped at a gasoline station, where he inquired if the service man had seen a car like Bingham’s.
The man laughed.
“Lots of cars go past here, friend. I can’t keep track of them all.”
“I thought perhaps this car might have stopped for gasoline.”
The man shook his head.
Harry obtained a road map and consulted it carefully. He traced the course that he had followed from Holmwood. There were several ways to reach the spot where he was now located; and he felt sure that the roads he had taken were not the best.
But if Ezekiel Bingham had been anxious to leave no trail to his destination, the course would have been logical. It was only by careful inquiry and keen observation that Vincent had managed to find the way so far.
“Looking for a stolen car, friend?” quizzed the man at the service station.
Vincent grunted in reply.
“I’m not trying to find out your business,” said the man, “but I might be able to help you.”
“How?”
“Well, if the car came along here, you’ve got to take a chance on tracking it from here on. The road forks up ahead about a mile. Either road would be a likely one. But I’d advise you to take the one to the left.”
“Why?”
“Because it goes past Smithers’s garage. He’s got big signs out, advertising good gas cheap. Pretty near everybody stops that goes by there. What’s more, Smithers has got a cute stunt of listing the license numbers of cars that go by.”
“What is the idea of that?”
“Well, he figures that cars that go by a few times must be using the road regular. He finds out who owns them, and sends them advertising circulars.”
“That is a good idea.”
“I don’t know. Seems to me like a waste of time. But it’s good for you, because if that car went by there, Smithers may have its number.”
Harry thanked the man and gave him leave to fill up the tank of the coupe.
He turned left when he reached the fork and arrived at Smithers’s garage. A stout man, evidently the proprietor, came out at Vincent’s call.
“Mr. Smithers?”
“That’s me.”
“I want to ask you something.”
Explaining that he was tracing another automobile, Vincent gave the man the number of Bingham’s license tags, and asked if he had seen the car. Smithers became suspicious.
“Why do you want to know?” he asked.
“I’ve been sent out to trace it.”
“Why are you after it?”
“I have important reasons. That’s all.”
“What makes you think I have the number?”
“Because I know you keep a record of the number of cars that go by.”
There was a positive assurance in Vincent’s voice that made the garage proprietor think the young man might represent the law. At least, he was sure that Harry had some way of getting information that was not widely known. Still he hesitated.
“What if I do keep license numbers?” demanded Smithers. “There’s no law against my doing it, is there?”
“Certainly not,” Harry replied. “And there’s no law against your giving me information from your list.”
“I guess you’re right,” admitted the garage man.
Harry produced a ten-dollar bill.
“Maybe you could use this,” he said casually.
“Wait a minute.”
Smithers went to the office of the garage. He returned in a few minutes and collected the ten-spot.
“The number is there,” he said. “Went by day before yesterday.”
Hot on the trail, Harry urged his car along the road. He was entering wooded country, and was well away from the nearest town. Five miles beyond Smithers’s place, the road curved to the right and joined a broad highway where three automobiles were passing.
This required a consultation of the road map. Harry pulled to the side of the road and studied the situation. The map showed that it would have been shorter and more convenient to have taken the right fork of the road than the left if any one had desired to reach this highway.
There would have been no reason for Ezekiel Bingham to have chosen the longer route, Vincent argued, as both roads came to the same turnpike. Why, then, had the old lawyer gone to the left?
There was but one answer to the question. Somewhere between Smithers’s garage and the turnpike, Bingham had turned off the road.