Jack was rubbing his sister’s hands, while Walter held her in a reclining position.

“There’s a spring over by that tree,” spoke Walter.  “One of you get some water.”

“I will—­in my hat!” answered Parks, starting off on a run.

“Here’s a cup,” called Elizabeth, producing a collapsible one from a pocket in the tonneau of the touring car.

The lad took it, and came hurrying back with it half full of liquid, having spilled the rest on his hasty trip.  Jack managed to get a little between Cora’s lips, and it revived her.  She opened her eyes, noted that Walter was holding her, and her face flushed slightly.

“I’m—­I’m all right now,” she declared as she tried to stand upright.

“Better get in the car and sit down,” advised Jack.

She assented, and rather limply got into the tonneau of her machine.  She drank some more water, and presently was herself again.

“How silly of me to nearly faint,” she said with a wan smile.  “But when I saw the pocketbook—­empty—­it was enough—­”

“I should say so,” interrupted Belle.  “Who would ever have thought of finding it in your toolbox, Cora?”

The words seemed fraught with strange import.

“Was it really in the tool-box, Walter?” Cora asked.

“On top of the tire pump and the lifting-jack,” replied Walter.

“And empty—­that’s the queer part of it,” commented Belle.  “I guess that’s what shocked you as much as anything, Cora.  Now, if it had had the twenty thousand dollars in it—­”

“It’s strange that the wallet should have been there—­in my tool-box—­at all,” murmured Cora.

“It certainly is,” added Jack.  “What can it mean—­to find it in Cora’s car?”

“Is this the one Ed Foster lost?” asked Diddick.  “We heard something about it.”

“The same one,” answered Walter as he picked the wallet from the road where it had fallen.  “See, it has his name on it.”

“I feel creepy—­almost as if something supernatural had put it into my tool-box,” said Cora in a curiously quiet voice.

“More likely some unnatural person did it,” spoke Jack quickly.  “Yet who in the world would do it?  If I had seen—­”

He stopped suddenly, leaving the sentence unfinished.

“And it was on top of the pump and jack,” mused Cora, after a quick look at her brother.  “I haven’t used the pump since—­let me see—­”

“Since the day of the collision—­the day when the pocketbook was lost,” interrupted jack.  “You pumped up a tire just before the race, so that the pocketbook must have been placed there right after the robbery.”

“Or loss,” added Walter.  “Some one may have found the wallet, taken out the money and bonds, and then thrown the empty pocketbook away.”

“That some one threw it in a curious place,” remarked Elizabeth dryly.

“Indeed, they did,” observed Cora.  “It looks—­”