Fifteen minutes passed, and Nancy began to fear that after all she had selected the wrong road at the fork. Presently, as she noticed a man with a team of horses approaching, she determined to question him.
“Have you seen a large moving van on this road?” she called out as she stopped the roadster alongside the wagon.
“A truck passed me about twenty minutes ago,” the farmer told her. “The big road hog tried to push me into a ditch!”
Highly elated at the information, Nancy thanked the farmer and drove on.
“At the rate I’m going I should overtake the robbers in a few minutes,” she thought. “Oh, if only I could get my hands on the Crowley clock before the police confiscate the stolen goods!”
Ten minutes passed and then another ten. As Nancy gazed anxiously down the road she could see no sign of the moving van.
“I’ve missed them somewhere,” she decided, in disappointment. “There’s nothing to do but go back.”
Nancy Drew recalled the fact that she had passed a roadhouse less than a mile back, and it occurred to her that possibly the robbers had stopped there.
“I’ll go back there and make inquiry,” she thought. “I haven’t gone by a single cross road since I talked with that farmer, so if the robbers didn’t stop at the roadhouse I can’t imagine what became of them. If they were on this road I am certain I would have passed them by this time.”
Dusk was approaching, and Nancy Drew knew that if she were ever to find the robbers it must be within the next hour. Skillfully, she turned the roadster around in the road. A few minutes of fast driving brought her within sight of the roadhouse.