We peered in.  There, in the half-light of the gloomy interior, we could see a car.  Before we knew it Snedden had darted past us.  An instant later I distinguished what his more sensitive eye had seen—­a woman, all alone in the car, motionless.

“Ida!” he cried.

There was no answer.

“She—­she’s dead!” he shouted.

It was only too true.  There was Ida Snedden, seated in Jackson’s car in the old deserted building, all shut up—­dead.

Yet her face was as pink as if she were alive and the blood had been whipped into her cheeks by a walk in the cold wind.

We looked at one another, at a loss.  How did she get there—­and why?  She must have come there voluntarily.  No one had seen any one else with her in the car.

Snedden was now almost beside himself.

“Misfortunes never come singly,” he wailed.  “My daughter Gertrude gone—­now my wife dead.  Confound that young fellow Garretson—­and Jackson, too!  Where are they?  Why have they fled?  The scoundrels—­ they have stolen my whole family.  Oh, what shall I do? what shall I do?”

Trying to quiet Snedden, at the same time we began to look about the building.  On one side was a small stove, in which were still the dying coals of a fire.  Near by were a work-bench, some tools, pieces of wire, and other material.  Scattered about were pieces of material that looked like celluloid.  Some one evidently used the place as a secret workshop.  Kennedy picked up a piece of the celluloid-like stuff and carefully touched a match to it.  It did not burn rapidly as celluloid does, and Craig seemed more than ever interested.  MacLeod himself was no mean detective.  Accustomed to action, he had an idea of what to do.

“Wait here!” he called back, dashing out.  “I’m going to the nearest house up the road for help.  I’ll be back in a moment.”

We heard him back and turn his car and shoot away.  Meanwhile, Kennedy was looking over carefully Jackson’s roadster.  He tapped the gas-tank in the rear, then opened it.  There was not a drop of gas in it.  He lifted up the hood and looked inside at the motor.  Whatever he saw there, he said nothing.  Finally, by siphoning some gas from Snedden’s tank and making some adjustments, he seemed to have the car in a condition again for it to run.  He was just about to start it when MacLeod returned, carrying a canary-bird in a cage.

“I’ve telephoned to town,” he announced.  “Some one will be here soon now.  Meanwhile, an idea occurred to me, and I borrowed this bird.  Let me see whether the idea is any good.”

Kennedy, by this time, had started the engine.  MacLeod placed the bright little songster near the stove on the work-bench and began to watch it narrowly.

More than ever up in the air over the mystery, I could only watch Kennedy and MacLeod, each following his own lines.

It might, perhaps, have been ten minutes after MacLeod returned, and during that time he had never taken his eyes off the bird, when I began to feel a little drowsy.  A word from MacLeod roused me.