On the river road, near its intersection with the lane leading to the Simpkins' dock and the hill road stood an abandoned automobile. It was the car in which Bailey and Swazey had planned to make their escape and from which Peter Grimes had leaped when it was halted by bullets. Its tires were now riddled, its windshield wrecked and its radiator a-leak. The gasoline that dripped to the ground sullied the fragrance of the air with its heavy fumes. Just across, and headed directly toward it, from the incline of the hill road stood another car. It was the one in which Harris Wayne and the detectives had sought to reach the Grimes farm in time to apprehend the kidnappers and recover his little girl. They had failed, but from the crest of the hill they had recognized the men they sought and had speeded to intercept them. The tall, lank, crooked frame of Peter Grimes, clinging, hatless, to the side of the car, his long coattails waving with the speed at which it was going, would have been recognizable at an even greater distance than across the corner of a field. Wayne had begged the detectives not to shoot. He feared his child might be in the kidnapper's car, but when the tires were riddled and the car halted it was seen that none of the occupants who took to their heels was carrying a baby. "They haven't got her," shouted the Chief, springing from his own car and running in pursuit. "Shoot to kill if necessary. Don't let one of them escape." But the men on the lower road had the advantage. Shielded by their car, which blocked the road between them and their pursuers, they were able to disappear into the bushes and seek shelter aboard the boat which they had known was waiting. Grimes, however, not knowing about the boat and thinking only of concealment, had gone in the opposite direction. As they reached the end of the little dock the detectives saw the launch making for the open water. "The Mary Ann will over-haul her," said the Chief, chagrined at the turn affairs had taken. "The crooks had their boat all ready. The child must be back at the farm." They supposed, naturally enough, that Grimes had accompanied the kidnappers in their mad dash for the boat and had sailed away with them. Disappointed, but by no means hopeless, the chief led the way back to where they had left his car. The driver was not there. The car was empty. There was nothing to indicate how, where or when he disappeared. They waited a few moments for him to reappear and, when he did not, commenced a search of the bushes that lined the fences along the side of the road. Then they saw him coming up the river road from the direction the kidnapper's car had come. He was running and, as he drew near, they observed that he looked somewhat alarmed. "You-all went down on the dock," he observed. "The geezers didn't all go that way. That tall fellow--the guy that was hanging on the side of the car--made a bee line in that direction."