"He's the man we saw," said Alex Hipp, when with Chief Fobes they all had reached the refreshing outer air. "At least I think so." "Thinkin' don't go much from the standpoint of the law," the officer answered. Neither Hipp nor Alfred Earnest could state positively that Coster was the person they had seen on the lonely road that rainy afternoon. Billy and Paul drove them to their respective homes in the Torpedo. "So we are knocked out of all we thought we had found yesterday," observed Jones, droopingly, on the homeward way. "Maybe not," Worth returned, deep in thought. "Do you see how the clutch pedal of the car has pressed against the side of the sole on my shoe till the leather is curved in half an inch or more?" Paul said he did. Looking at Worth's shoes, then his own, he added: "That's nothing new. Mine is the same way." "I know it is," said Billy. "And the sole of Coster's left boot is marked in the same way, too." Paul saw at once the significance of this fact, the evidence that Chief Fobes' prisoner was an automobile man. "Billy," he said earnestly, "we are gettin' some warm!" Try as they would to "get busy," Worth and Jones found themselves accomplishing nothing as the afternoon wore away. Mr. Fobes was becoming quite impatient over their inquiries and they thought best not to visit him. Willie Creek was busy with some urgent repair work. There appeared no course to pursue--nothing to do--but wait. Impatient for word from Phil or Dave, restless in their inactivity, the two boys sat for a long time at the large open window of the hotel. A stranger entered. As the young man--he seemed to be twenty-one or two, perhaps--sat down near the boys, he remarked that he was waiting while his car was undergoing some repairs at the garage. A conversation concerning automobiles was the most natural result imaginable. Put two or more motor enthusiasts together and invariably they will soon be talking. The newcomer was from Texas, he said, touring through to New York. His brother was with him but had remained at the garage. The substance of the Auto Boys' story was told the stranger as the conversation progressed. "Look here," said the young man in his flippant, breezy fashion, "you fellows are too easy by half. You've let that garage keeper and his friend, the town policeman, pull you all around. The garage man--Creek, you call him--sends you on a wild goose chase here and there. The village cop steers you off with no help worth speaking of. Seems mighty suspicious, don't it? I just might mention that there was a garage in a town near us that made a business of changing over stolen cars. Would switch 'em all around, in an old barn behind their shop, change wheel sizes, change engines, fix 'em up so no man could tell his own car if he saw it. Then they slipped 'em off to the big cities and sold 'em. Now, right there, you've got a real tip, you take it from me!"