“Suppose they don’t?”

“Well, then I’ll make a tour of the lake in my sailboat and I’ll run up to Sandport and tell dad, for he will wonder what’s keeping me.  I’ll know better next time than to leave my boat at the dock without taking out the connection at the spark coil, so no one can start the motor.  I should have done that at first, but you always think of those things afterward.”

The lad began his search again the next morning and cruised about in little bays and gulfs looking for a sight of the red streak or the arrow, but he saw neither, and a call at Andy’s house showed that the red-haired youth had not returned.  Mrs. Foger was quite nervous over her son’s continued absence, but Mr. Foger thought it was all right.

Another day passed without any results and the young inventor was getting so nervous, partly with worrying over the loss of his boat and partly on his father’s account, that he did not know what to do.

“I can’t stand it any longer,” he announced to Mrs. Baggert the night of the third day, after a telephone message had been received from Mr. Swift.  The inventor wanted to know why his son did not return to the hotel to join him and Ned.  “Well, what will you do?” asked the housekeeper.

“If I don’t find my boat to-morrow, I’ll sail to Sandport, bring home dad and Ned and we three will go all over the lake.  My boat must be on it somewhere, but Lake Carlopa is so cut up that it could easily be hidden.”

“It’s queer that the Foger boy doesn’t come home.  That makes it look as if he was guilty.”

“Oh, I’m sure he took it all right,” returned Tom.  “All I want is to see him.  It certainly is queer that he stays away as long as he does.  Sam Snedecker and Pete Bailey are with him, too.  But they’ll have to return some time.”

Tom dreamed that night of finding his boat and that it was a wreck.  He awoke, glad to find that the latter part was not true, but wishing that some of his night vision might come to pass during the day.

He started out right after breakfast, and, as usual, headed for the Foger home.  He almost disliked to ask Mrs. Foger if her son had yet returned, for Andy’s mother was so polite and so anxious to know whether any danger threatened that Tom hardly knew how to answer her.  But he was saved that embarrassment on this occasion, for as he was going up the walk from the lake to the residence he met the gardener and from him learned that Andy had not yet come back.

“But his mother had a message from him, I did hear,” went on the man.  “He’s on his way.  It seems he had some trouble.”

“Trouble.  What kind of trouble?” asked Tom.

“I don’t rightly know, sir, but,” and here the gardener winked his eye, “Master Andy isn’t particular what kind of trouble he gets into.”

“That’s right,” agreed our hero, and as he went down again to where he had left his boat he thought:  “Nor what kind of trouble he gets other people into.  I wish I had hold of him for about five minutes!”