The motor started, and the car leaped forward with a sudden uneven bound. Jane repressed a cry of terror. It turned sharply at the gate and buzzed along noisily for several minutes before Mary Louise cautiously raised the lid and looked out.
Oh, how good it was to see the lights again, and the sky—after that horrible blackness!
The car had reached the open highway which led out of Riverside, and it picked up speed until it was rattling along at a pace of about sixty miles an hour. Growing bolder, Mary Louise continued to raise the lid of the compartment until it was upright at its full height. The girls straightened up, with their heads and shoulders sticking out of the enclosure.
“Quite a nice ride after all, isn’t it?” observed Mary Louise, gazing up at the stars.
“I don’t know,” returned Jane. “It sounds to me as if there were something wrong with that engine. If we have an accident——”
“That’s just what I’m hoping for,” was the surprising reply. “Or rather, a breakdown.”
“Whatever would you do?”
“I’ll tell you. Listen carefully, so we’ll be prepared to act the minute the car stops. While Harry gets out on the left—he surely will, because his wheel is on the left—we jump out on the right. If there are woods beside the road, as I remember there are for some distance along here, we disappear into them. If not, we get to the path, and just walk along as if we were two people out for a walk with their dog. He won’t think anything about that, for he doesn’t know us, or know that we came with him.”
“But how will that help us to find out whether he is the thief?” inquired Jane.
“My plan is to grab that satchel, if we get a chance, and run off with it!”