A moment later he took the light himself and held it close to the rods that supported the top.  I saw him reach down and pull from them a few strands of dark hair that had caught between the rods and had been pulled out or broken.

“No need of Bertillon’s palette of human hair to identify that,” he exclaimed.”  There isn’t time to study it and if there were it would be unnecessary.  She was with him, all right.”

“Yes,” agreed Lockwood.  “But where is she now—­where is he?  Could they have been hurt, picked up by some one and carried where they could get aid?”

Burke shook his head.  “I inquired at the nearest house ahead.  I had to do it in order to telephone.  They knew nothing.”

“But they are gone,” persisted Lockwood.  “There is the bottom of the bank.  You can see that they are not here.”

Kennedy had taken the light and climbed the bank again and was now going over the road as minutely as if he were searching for a lost diamond.

“Look!” he exclaimed.

Where the Whitney car had skidded and gone over the bank, the tires had dug deep into the top dressing, making little mounds.  Across them now we could see the tracks of other tires that had pressed down the mounds.

“Some one else has been here,” reconstructed Kennedy.  “He passed, then stopped and backed up.  Perhaps they were thrown out, unconscious, and he picked them up.”

It seemed to be the only reasonable supposition.

“But they knew nothing at the next house,” persisted Burke.

“Is there a road leading off before you get to the house?” asked Kennedy.

“Yes—­it crosses the line into Massachusetts.”

“It is worth trying—­it is the only thing we can do,” decided Kennedy.  “Drive slowly to the crossroads.  Perhaps we can pick out the tire-prints there.  They certainly won’t show on the road itself.  It is too hard.”

At the crossing we stopped and Kennedy dropped down on his hands and knees again with the light.

“There it is,” he exclaimed.  “The same make of anti-skid tire, at least.  There was a cut in the rear tire—­just like this.  See?  It is the finger-print of the motor car.  I think we are right.  Turn up here and run slowly.”

On we went slowly, Kennedy riding on the running-board of the car ahead.  Suddenly he raised his hand to stop, and jumped down.

We gathered about him.  Had he found a continuation of the tire-tracks?  There were tracks but he was not looking at them.  He was looking between them.  There ran a thin line.

He stuck his finger in it and sniffed.  “Not gas,” he remarked.  “It must have been the radiator, leaking.  Perhaps he ran his car into Whitney’s—­forced it too far to the edge of the road.  We can’t tell.  But he couldn’t have gone far with that leak without finding water—­or cracked cylinders.”

With redoubled interest now we resumed the chase.  We had mounted a hill and had run down into the shadows of a valley when, following in the second car, we heard a shout from Kennedy in the first.