Jo Ann shook her head. “Not yet. Maybe later. I believe we’d better hunt up the mystery man and tell——” She halted abruptly. “But maybe he’s left the city already. I hope not. I want to tell him our car’s license number, so he can follow it—especially since the smugglers might’ve discarded their car entirely. But maybe one of them might drive ours and the other one their car. Come on. We’ll plan what to do as we walk.” She caught Florence with one hand and Peggy with the other.
“But where’re we going?” queried Peggy.
“Anywhere so we can get away from this crowd,” Florence whispered, eying the curious onlookers, who were waiting to see what the Americanas were going to do.
No sooner had the girls started off down the street than Florence remembered about the two little boys carrying their packages. She glanced around and saw them following close behind, the packages piled up in their arms almost as high as their chins. “Gracious!” she exclaimed. “We can’t have them following us everywhere. We’d better have them take the packages back to the market and leave them there for a while. Walk slowly, and I’ll catch up with you in a shake.”
She wheeled about, gave a quick order in Spanish to the boys, and then accompanied them to the market. After leaving the packages at the same booth where they had waited before and paying the boys a few centavos, she flew back to the girls.
“I’ve decided to go to the telephone exchange first,” Jo Ann announced to her quickly. “Where is it?”
“One block down, then turn to the right and go about a block and a half.”
“Let’s step on it.” Jo Ann strode off in what Peggy always called her “long-legged gallop,” which meant that both she and Florence had to take two or three steps to Jo Ann’s one.
Having caught up with Jo Ann by running, Florence asked, “Why—are you—going to the exchange?”
“’Cause I feel sure that he was going to do some long-distance phoning—and he started off in this direction.” With that she galloped off faster than ever.