Phil nodded sympathetically. "Who brought the car back to you?" she asked. "Was it Mr. Holt?"
Roy Dennis shrugged his heavy shoulders. "No, indeed! He sent it back by a chap who wouldn't say a word about himself, Holt, or from which direction he had come."
"Is the man still in town?" asked Phil, her voice trembling, "and would you mind Tom Curtis's asking him some questions? We are so awfully anxious."
Roy Dennis rose quickly. "I believe the fellow is around yet, and I'll get hold of him and take him to Tom at once. I don't think that Philip Holt has had anything to do with the kidnapping of the little girl, but his whole behavior looks pretty funny. We will make the chauffeur chap tell us where Philip Holt was when he turned over my car to him." Roy was off like a flash.
Phyllis and Lillian were making their apologies to Ethel for being obliged to hurry off at once to the houseboat when Mabel Farrar took hold of Phil's hand. Her usually haughty expression had changed to one of the deepest interest. "I am _so_ sorry about the little lost girl," she said. "I hope you will soon find her. She is a queer, fascinating little thing. I have watched her all summer, and she certainly can dance. I can't believe that Philip Holt has actually stolen her, yet I don't know. Roy Dennis just told Ethel Swann and me something awfully queer. He says he found a bright scarlet ribbon, like a bow that a child would wear in her hair, in the bottom of his motor car when the chauffeur brought it back to him to-day."
Phil's black eyes flashed. "If I ever needed anything to convince me that Philip Holt stole Tania away from us that would do it," she returned indignantly. "Little Tania slept every night with her hair tied up with a scarlet ribbon so as to keep it out of her eyes. When we find where Philip Holt is we shall find Tania, and if I have any say in the matter he shall answer to the law for what he has done."
It took the united efforts of the Cape May police, Tom Curtis, and Roy Dennis to make the chauffeur who had come back with Roy's car say where he had met Philip Holt, and when Philip had turned over the automobile to him to be brought back to Roy.
The chauffeur was frightened; he finally broke down and told the whole story. Philip Holt had driven from the farmhouse where he left Tania to the nearest village. There he had hired the chauffeur and the man had taken Philip within a few miles of New York. In the course of the ride, Philip had told the automobile driver the same story about Tania that he had told the old man in the tumbled-down farmhouse: