“Yes. She did,” said Julian. “She must have thrown it down when she got here to the car — to show us she was taken here — hoping we would find it. And look, what’s that?”

It was a handkerchief hanging on a gorse bush. Julian ran to it. It had the initial G on it in blue.

“Yes, it’s George’s,” he said. “She’s got six of these, all with different-coloured initials. She must have thrown this out too. Quick, Dick, look for anything else she might have thrown out of the car, while they were trying to turn it. They would probably put her in the back, and she would just have had a chance to throw out anything she had in her dressing-gown pocket, to let us know she was here if we came along this way.”

They searched for a long time. Timmy found one more thing, again embedded in a car-rut — a boiled sweet wrapped in cellophane paper.

“Look!” said Dick, picking it up. “One of the sweets we all had the other night! George must have had one in her dressing-gown pocket! If only she had had a pencil and bit of paper — she might have had time to write a note too!”

“That’s an idea!” said Julian. “We’ll hunt even more carefully!”

But although they searched every bit of ground and every bush, there was no note to be found. It was too much to hope for!

“Let’s just follow the car-tracks and make sure they reached the road,” said Julian. So they followed them down the wide woodland path.

At the side, a little way along, a piece of paper blew in the wind, hopping an inch or two each time the breeze flapped it. Dick picked it up — and then looked at Julian excitedly.

“She did have time to write a note! This is her writing. But there’s only one word, look — whatever does it mean?”

Julian and Dick frowned over the piece of paper. Yes, it was George’s writing — the G was exactly like the way she always wrote the big G at the beginning of her signature.

“Gringo,” read Julian. “Just that one word. Gringo! What does it mean? It’s something she heard them say, I suppose — and she just had time to write it and throw out the paper. Gringo! Timmy, what does Gringo mean?”

Chapter Sixteen

Jo!

Dick and Julian went back to Kirrin Cottage with the two disconsolate dogs. They showed Anne the things they had found, and she too puzzled over the word Gringo.

“We’ll have to tell the police what you have discovered,” she said. “They might trace the car, and they might know who or what Gringo is.”

“I’ll telephone them now,” said Julian. “Dick, you go down to the garage with this sketch of the tyre-mark, and see if it’s an American design.”

The police were interested but not helpful. The sergeant said he would send his constable up to examine the place where the car had stood in the clearing, and gave it as his opinion that the bit of paper wasn’t much use, as the boys had found it some way from the turning-place of the car.