A moment later the overwrought girl staggered and almost fell into Walter"s arms.
CHAPTER X
SUSPICIONS
"h.e.l.lo!" cried Jack, springing forward to his sister"s aid. "I never knew Cora to do that before. Is she hurt, Walt?"
"No; only shocked, I guess."
"Help her into the car and put her on the rear seat," directed Belle.
"No; keep her head up," advised Bess.
"Somebody get water!" exclaimed Didd.i.c.k, turning around in a circle to look for a spring.
Jack was rubbing his sister"s hands, while Walter held her in a reclining position.
"There"s a spring over by that tree," spoke Walter. "One of you get some water."
"I will--in my hat!" answered Parks, starting off on a run.
"Here"s a cup," called Elizabeth, producing a collapsible one from a pocket in the tonneau of the touring car.
The lad took it, and came hurrying back with it half full of liquid, having spilled the rest on his hasty trip. Jack managed to get a little between Cora"s lips, and it revived her. She opened her eyes, noted that Walter was holding her, and her face flushed slightly.
"I"m--I"m all right now," she declared as she tried to stand upright.
"Better get in the car and sit down," advised Jack.
She a.s.sented, and rather limply got into the tonneau of her machine.
She drank some more water, and presently was herself again.
"How silly of me to nearly faint," she said with a wan smile. "But when I saw the pocketbook--empty--it was enough--"
"I should say so," interrupted Belle. "Who would ever have thought of finding it in your toolbox, Cora?"
The words seemed fraught with strange import.
"Was it really in the tool-box, Walter?" Cora asked.
"On top of the tire pump and the lifting-jack," replied Walter.
"And empty--that"s the queer part of it," commented Belle. "I guess that"s what shocked you as much as anything, Cora. Now, if it had had the twenty thousand dollars in it--"
"It"s strange that the wallet should have been there--in my tool-box--at all," murmured Cora.
"It certainly is," added Jack. "What can it mean--to find it in Cora"s car?"
"Is this the one Ed Foster lost?" asked Didd.i.c.k. "We heard something about it."
"The same one," answered Walter as he picked the wallet from the road where it had fallen. "See, it has his name on it."
"I feel creepy--almost as if something supernatural had put it into my tool-box," said Cora in a curiously quiet voice.
"More likely some unnatural person did it," spoke Jack quickly. "Yet who in the world would do it? If I had seen--"
He stopped suddenly, leaving the sentence unfinished.
"And it was on top of the pump and jack," mused Cora, after a quick look at her brother. "I haven"t used the pump since--let me see--"
"Since the day of the collision--the day when the pocketbook was lost," interrupted jack. "You pumped up a tire just before the race, so that the pocketbook must have been placed there right after the robbery."
"Or loss," added Walter. "Some one may have found the wallet, taken out the money and bonds, and then thrown the empty pocketbook away."
"That some one threw it in a curious place," remarked Elizabeth dryly.
"Indeed, they did," observed Cora. "It looks--"
She hesitated.
"Oh, you might as well say it--before some one else does," put in Jack. "It looks mighty suspicious, Cora."
There was a vindictive air about him. He seemed to challenge an accusation against his sister.
"I"m sure there was no need to say that," spoke Walter. "It may be a mere--er--"
"Coincidence," finished Cora.
"A queer coincidence," quoth Jack. "Incidentally, some one got the money, all right. We must hurry home and tell Ed."
"I wonder what he"ll think?" asked Cora.
"What can he think?" demanded her brother. "Only that some one found or stole his wallet and threw the empty pocketbook into your tool-box."
"And I found it," added Walter. "Which might mean--"
He, too, hesitated.
"Well, what?" asked Jack.
"That I put it there, and only pretended to find it," finished Walter with a laugh.
"Nonsense!" exclaimed Cora. "But come, let"s hurry back to Chelton.
I want to be the first to tell Ed."