CHAPTER I

AGAIN THE LONELY SOUTH FORK ROAD

“You can’t hide anything from the chief,” observed Willie Creek, when Chief Fobes had left his garage, the scene of the mystery related in The Auto Boys’ Big Six.

“Well, he didn’t seem to be a whole lot interested to find out who broke in here—who killed our dog,” replied Billy Worth, severely.

“You don’t know him,” returned Mr. Creek. “You just show him the fellow that done the deed and he’ll arrest him mighty quick.”

“Maybe if we’d see a man robbing a bank here, then called Fobes so he could see, too, that the man was robbing the bank, he’d do something,” remarked Billy, as the lads returned to the hotel.

“I’ll tell you what he’d do,” growled Paul Jones. “He’d say—‘now from the standpoint of the law, maybe that man is going to commit a crime. From the standpoint of the law, he better go a little careful or I’ll tell his mother on him.’”

All of which might be taken to indicate that Chief Fobes was not as great a man in the minds of the four boys as he was in his own. Still, something might be said on both sides