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CHAPTER XXIV


BACK AT RANDALL


"This is the limit!"

"Where could he have gone?"

"He smelt a rat all right—he's sure mixed up in this business."

"And the quiet way he sneaked off! Let's find out if anyone saw him go."

Thus the chums exclaimed as the queer situation dawned upon them. Mr. Farson, too, was surprised, and did not know what to make of it.

"I think I will devote all my efforts to locating the pawnbroker," he said. "If I get the stuff back that belongs to other persons, I don't care so much about an arrest."

"But we'd like to solve the mystery, seeing that we had a hand in it," said Tom. "I wonder where Mendez could have gone?"

But no one knew—no one had seen him go. Later that evening, when the young men, after the jeweler had gone to his store, made inquiries of the owner of the cottage where the Mexican had

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