“I hope I’ll find the caretaker,” she thought. “I’d certainly hate to go back without seeing him.”
Not without a feeling of anxiety, she stopped the roadster at the edge of the road. To her surprise, she observed that the tracks made by the truck did not continue further. Apparently, the truck had turned in toward the bungalow. Nancy hurried up the path. As she emerged from among the trees, she stopped short and stared ahead in amazement.
The entire camp was in disorder. The front door of the bungalow had been flung wide open and the side doors were likewise ajar.
An overturned chair had been dropped carelessly on the porch, and a trail of knickknacks stretched from the house to the path. The grass had been trampled, and there were peculiar marks in the soft earth.
“There’s something strange about this,” Nancy murmured.
Quickly, she bent down to examine the marks which were clearly visible. At a glance she saw that the footprints had been caused by heavy boots and there were long lines evidently caused by dragging boxes and furniture across the lawn.
“I think I’m beginning to see the light,” Nancy told herself. “Now I know what that truck was doing on this road. Unquestionably, it was a moving van, and it came here.”
Again she examined the imprints in the soft earth.
“These marks couldn’t have been made more than an hour ago, at the latest,” she decided.
As she hurried on up the path, it appeared to Nancy that the camp was deserted. There was no sign of Jeff Tucker, the colored caretaker in whose care the bungalow had been entrusted.