"He might have dropped letters from his pocket, or something," said Joe hopefully, as they explored the clearing. But the auto thief had not been so careless. There was not even a footprint, for the boys had trampled the ground thoroughly after the roadster had been discovered. "If I had only thought to look for footprints at the time!" groaned Joe, in disappointment. "Or finger-prints. He must have left finger-prints somewhere about the car. If he was a professional crook we could have traced him easily." "Too late now. Chet has had the car washed since then--we didn't think of it in time." Their search was without success, and the Hardy boys were about to give up in disappointment when Frank left the clearing and began to hunt about in the bushes. "I guess we might as well go home," said Joe. "We've come hunting for clues too late. If we had any sense we would have looked for finger-prints and--" He was interrupted by a shout from his brother. "Joe! Come here, quick! I've found something!" There was no mistaking the excitement in Frank's voice. Joe lost no time in scrambling through the bushes until he reached his brother's side. Frank was standing in the midst of a thicket, holding up something red and bushy. It was a wig! "The red wig!" exclaimed Joe, his eyes widening. "Not only the wig," replied Frank. "But this--" and he bent over to pick up a battered hat from the ground. "And this!" Whereupon he picked up a worn coat. "They belong to the crook!" "It couldn't have been any one else. He must have disguised himself here and left the wig and things in the bush when he abandoned the car." CHAPTER XI MR. HARDY INVESTIGATES The Hardy boys looked at one another in growing excitement. "What ought we do about it?" asked Joe. "I'm going to tell dad what we've found." "But didn't he say he would be working the case on his own and that we would be opposition?" "This is different. We have a real clue here, but we don't know how to use it. You can bet dad will know what to do. He'll act fairly with us. If it leads to anything, he'll see that we get credit for what we've done." "I guess you're right, Frank. This is a little too big for us to handle ourselves. But imagine finding that wig! What luck!" "There's nothing else around, is there? Let's look." Although the Hardy boys scoured the woods in that vicinity thoroughly, they found nothing more. But the wig, the hat and the coat gave promise of interesting developments. Frank hunted through all the pockets of the coat in the faint hope of finding something that would identify the previous wearer, but in this he was disappointed. So they went back to the abandoned road and remounted their motorcycles, returning to Bayport with the articles they had found in the woods.