“That certainly is strange,” said Ted.  “How does it come to be standing out there?”

“It was this way, and it’s a good story, but none of the newspaper boys have 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.  That’s the story of the car.”

“Since it belongs to no one in particular, I’ve a mind to borrow it, and put it in a garage over on the other side.  It’ll be ruined if it stays out here in the weather,” said Ted.

“I don’t care,” said Mr. Truax.  “It wasn’t left in my care, and I haven’t got much use for the blamed thing, anyhow.  Take it along.  If the owner comes and proves property, I suppose you’ll give it up?”