Boda nodded as she walked past him toward the Bartlett house next door. The light, she now saw, came from a motorcycle. A man in a checked mackinaw with a hat pulled over his eyes was sitting in the saddle with one hand resting on the empty sidecar. After she had passed into the darkness she had the uneasy feeling that the men were following her. But there were no steps behind her as she turned up the Bartletts’ driveway. To her relief, the lights in the house were still on downstairs. One of the Bartlett children let her in. Over the hall telephone, in a voice barely under control, she told the operator to get through to the police. For the moment that was all she could think of to say. West Bridgewater then had no police force, only two part-time policemen. The operator connected her with the house of one of them, Warren Laughton, who was also fire chief and water commissioner. Laughton had just stepped out, his wife said, but she took the message that the Johnsons had agreed on with Stewart: “Boda has come for his car.” Johnson dressed slowly. When he finally stepped out of his house the first thing he noticed was Boda walking toward him from the bridge. Farther off he saw the motorcycle with the indeterminate outlines of the driver and the two other men. The usually dapper Boda was wearing a crumpled brown suit and an old slouch hat. He said he wanted to take the Overland away at once. Johnson asked him if he had brought license plates. Boda said he had not. Johnson told him he could not drive without plates. “I will take the chance,” Boda said. Johnson said that when his wife got back, they would go down to the garage. Boda, watching Mrs. Johnson return, said he guessed it was too late for the car now, that he would send someone with plates for it next day. He said good night and turned away. The man in the mackinaw kicked the motorcycle’s starter pedal and the other two men stepped back. Ruth Johnson, as she passed, sensed that they were watching her and she thought she caught the word _telephone_ mixed in their foreign speech. Boda stepped into the sidecar, squatted down, and the motorcycle spluttered off north toward Brockton. The taillight was out, but Johnson had already noted the license plate: _871_. As the motor echoed away, the two strangers, the man in the derby and the man with the drooping mustache, started back over the railroad bridge. The Johnsons watched them hesitate, turn, and disappear in the direction the motorcycle had taken. Along empty North Elm Street they trudged for a mile, following the Bridgewater-Brockton trolley line. Meeting a solitary woman, they asked her where the car stop was. She pointed just beyond them to a white-striped pole on the corner of Sunset Avenue. They thanked her. A few minutes later the electric car from Bridgewater hummed along the track. It was 9:40 when the two men stepped aboard it.