Evidently Checkers had started away in it, using it as a swift means of escape, but it had stopped, and, as he could go no farther in it, he had abandoned it in the road.

Ted examined the machinery carefully, but could find nothing wrong with it until he discovered that it had exhausted its supply of gasoline.

But he learned that the grocer at the village, half a mile away, had gasoline for sale, and two young fellows volunteered to go after some while Ted overhauled the car.

In half an hour he was ready to start.  He made Scrub get into the seat, and, shaking hands with the constable and shouting a merry good-by to the others, he started for St. Louis.

It was past midnight when he drew up in front of the Stratford Hotel, hungry and tired.  Scrub was fast asleep, and, taking him in his arms, Ted entered the hotel.

As he stepped inside, the clerk stared at him as if he had seen a ghost.

“How’s everything?” asked Ted of the clerk.

“Great Scott, where did you come from?” asked, the clerk, and added hastily:  “Better hurry upstairs to your room.  Everybody is crazy about your disappearance.”

Ted went up in the elevator with the boy still sleeping in his arms.  There was a light in his room and a confused murmur of voices.

Without the formality of a knock he opened the door and entered.  As he appeared in the doorway there was silence for a moment, then such a bedlam of shouts and laughter burst forth that every one on the floor was aroused.

“It’s Ted!  It’s Ted!” they shouted, and crowded around him.

The place was full of them.  Across the room he saw the shining face of Stella, smiling a welcome at him.  Ben and Kit, Carl, Clay, and all of them were there, and sitting at the table was the chief of detectives.

“Hello!  Holding a post-mortem over me?” asked Ted.

“It comes pretty near that,” said Bud.  “Dog-gone you, what do you mean by goin’ erway an’ hidin’ out on us that way?  What in ther name o’ Sam Hill an’ Billy Patterson hev yer picked up now?” Bud was looking curiously at the bundle of rags in Ted’s arms, for the boy still slept.

“This is a new pard,” said Ted.  “If it hadn’t been for this kid you’d probably never seen me again.”

“Erlucerdate,” demanded Bud.

“Not until some one goes out to the nearest restaurant and orders up a stack of grub for Scrub and me.  I haven’t had anything to eat or drink for thirty-six hours, and I’m almost all in, and this kid has been living on apples and water for a couple of weeks.  Now, hustle somebody and let me put this kid on the bed—–­my back’s nearly broke—­or maybe it’s my stomach, they’re so close together now I can’t tell which it is that hurts.”

While Ted was laying the boy on the bed he woke up, and, finding himself in a strange place, and a finer room than he had ever been in before, surrounded by a lot of rather boisterous young men, he leaped to the floor and started to the door.  But Ted caught him by the arm and drew him back.