understood, was the name by which Messrs. Pickton, Gaines and Perth had elected to style themselves. "Chosen to be hanged, if anything!" Paul Jones had ungraciously said; but that is neither here nor there. The three were in no immediate danger of meeting such a fate, and they were capable of making themselves most extremely disagreeable, without appearing to trespass beyond their lawful rights. Where one automobile was allowed, for instance, another might follow; and the public roads everywhere were built no more for one individual than for another.

"Well, I was only going to say, if you'll give me the chance, that I know the four of 'em are going on a trip and what's more I know just about where," put in Fred Perth, as Soapy concluded. "They've hired Jim Underhill to attend to a lot of the work they had engaged to do and they told him he'd have to begin next week sometime. They wouldn't tell Jim where they were going. Just said, 'Ask me no questions an' I'll tell you no lies,' when he put it straight at 'em to know what for a trip was scheduled."

"Next week, eh?" Pickton ejaculated. "We're ready now. All we've got to do is watch their old boat and when they begin to pack up it will be ditto here. Nothing much to that, eh?"

"Everything's fixed for me to leave any time," said Perth, thinking with satisfaction how, after much difficulty, he had obtained permission to accompany Gaines and Pickton on a proposed motoring expedition.

"Huh! I'll just go," spoke Soapy in that braggadocio way so common to his kind.

"Ought to get some new stuff in the touring outfit, I suppose," put in Pick, as if to himself, but really fearful that at the last moment, due to Gaines' well-known careless ways, the car would be found without one item of spare equipment.

"By George! That's right! Run down to the Park Garage, Freddy. We'll load up some stuff and I'll have 'em put it in dad's next month's bill. We'll be away by that time."

These instructions from Soapy, always willing to make purchases if they were to be charged, and the more so if he saw at hand a way to defer for a time an interview with his father in regard to them, changed the course of the Roadster away from the residence district of the city to the business center.

As the car passed the down-town entrance to the park, the machine of the Auto Boys came up behind and, gliding past, halted before the door of the automobile establishment toward which the Chosen Trio had journeyed. The Roadster drew up beside the Thirty.

"So you fellows are going to let daylight into some more mysteries, eh?" said Pick, in a tone of banter to the occupants of the other machine.

"Are we?" asked Billy Worth, with a smile.

"But you needn't tear yourselves away on that account. We haven't gone yet," Dave MacLester added as Soapy said, "Drive on!"

Perhaps it was the quiet, unruffled and yet absolutely uncommunicative tones of the Auto Boys that fired Soapy Gaines' wrath. Like a pouter pigeon he swelled up. "Aw, sure, drive on!" he said to Perth, still at the wheel. "And don't you think," he added in a low tone, still pompous but threatening, too—"And don't you think that we won't make 'em get right down on their knees to us or wish they'd never left home."

"Or both!" laughed Pickton in that unbearably rasping way.

"Yes, or both," was the response, "and some more on top of that! I'm going into this thing right, now, just for that low-down answer of Worth's if nothing else—the little two-by-four!"

"But yet—"

It was Perth who would have spoken, and it was in his mind to say that he saw nothing particularly objectionable in Billy Worth's words; that his answer to Pick's observation was natural enough.

"'But yet'? Just you keep your 'but yet' till later on. I'm talking now!" interrupted Soapy, savagely. "I'm talking now, I say!"

The fact is, indeed, that Mr. Soapy Gaines was quite apt to talk too much.

CHAPTER II

A LITTLE PRACTICE IN STRATEGY

It was a direct result of Gaines' tongue wagging much more loosely than reasonable discretion would have counseled, to say nothing of sound sense, that information concerning the scheming of himself and his fellow conspirators reached the Auto Boys.

In the first place Soapy made the boast in Knight & Wilder's garage that, when the Auto Boys set out on the tour, the object of which was shrouded in such mystery, his own car might not be so far behind but that somebody would look "about like thirty cents," when somebody arrived at somebody's very secret destination.

Again, the same afternoon, to a crowd of young fellows gathered for baseball practice he made such broad hints concerning the Auto Boys and a mysterious spot marked by stones piled near it, many years ago, that the dullest of them could not but connect the same with the journey Phil Way and his friends were known to have in prospect.

It was the most natural thing imaginable that, being very friendly indeed with Phil, Billy, Paul and Dave, and by no means an ardent admirer of the Chosen Trio, Ed Wilder improved his earliest opportunity to tell the former of Soapy Gaines' words and half-jocular, half-threatening manner. With equal promptitude, also, a half-dozen or more of the baseball enthusiasts let it be known that, whatever the well-concealed plans and purposes of the Auto Boys might be, Gaines and Pickton, and very probably Perth, as well, had obtained information in regard to them.

Thus did Soapy's exact words, in some instances, and the substance of them in others, reach the four friends at one time and another before twenty-four hours had passed.

"Hard to tell whether they think it would be just a joke to follow after us or whether they intend to be low-down, sneaking mean," said Phil Way, as the well-nigh inseparable quartette discussed the situation in the green and yellow garage.

"I don't see that that's the important thing. The main question is, how did the three of 'em find out so much," was Billy Worth's observation. "Of course we know that our intention to go on a trip is common property; but wherever could they have heard about 'three stones to mark the place'? If they've heard enough that they make hints of that kind, how much else do they know?"

"Oh, fudge! Pay no attention to 'em, I say. What's the odds whether they trail after us or don't?" put in Dave MacLester.

"Huh! Plenty enough odds!" ejaculated Paul Jones, forcibly. "If we'd wanted them tagging along we'd have told 'em when they as good as asked us. And what's more, if we're going to take them into the plan we might as well tell it to everybody and forget all about keeping our business to ourselves. But say! What's the matter with fooling 'em! Let 'em follow after us and when we've led 'em away off the real track, just slip away and go where we first intended?"

There was a general murmur of interest and some laughing over the possibilities Paul's suggestion might develop, but in the end the talk came back to Phil Way's inquiry—were the Chosen Trio bent on making serious mischief and of themselves a contemptible nuisance, or did they think merely that it would be fun to ascertain and expose the object of the contemplated journey?

"They've been spying on us some time or other or they'd never be able to drop so many hints about the Three Stones. Then again, though, that's all they have hinted at, so far as we've heard," said MacLester. "Likely they don't know about anything else. But if we are going to pay any attention at all to them, let's do as Jones says. Let's have some fun out of it."

And so began a series of moves on the checker board of events for both the Auto Boys and the three Chosen Ones which, and particularly with regard to the latter, gave all of them something to think about.

A decoy movement was the first put into execution. Its purpose was to ascertain to what extent Soapy Gaines and his