more accidents. You take it on to the next town and tell 'em you didn't
find it till you got there, see?" Half angry and half amused at this
dauntless representative of the law we went back to the girls, with the
mysterious scarab still in the pocket of Nyoda's coat. If only we had
followed Sahwah's joking advice and stuck it on an ornamental shrub
near us to startle passers-by and left it there!

"Something must have happened to the Striped Beetle," said Nyoda in a
worried way, when we had exhausted our patience with waiting. "I don't
know but what it would be a good idea to set out in the direction of
Indianapolis and try to find them. We will surely come upon a trace of
them somewhere."

"What strikes me queer," said Sahwah, "is, if Gladys knows our address
and wired that she would be here at noon, why she didn't wire again
when she found she couldn't get here. She might know we would begin to
tear our hair when she didn't appear."

Nyoda began to look uneasy. "That's what makes me think something has
happened to her," she said. "Somehow I always have visions of the
Striped Beetle lying smashed up somewhere and our girls being carried
to a hospital. I can't get it out of my mind. Something has happened to
Gladys which has kept her from wiring and it is our duty to find out
what it is."

"Maybe she did wire and they didn't deliver it to us," suggested
Sahwah. Nyoda and I promptly went up to the telegraph office and
inquired if any later message had come for us. Nothing had, we were
told.