Dorothy’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “I’m so glad I got here. I wouldn’t miss the end for anything.”
“But you’re not going with us on the yacht?” I said anxiously.
“Of course she’s not,” said Tom gruffly.
“Well, I am,” said Dorothy, “and that’s all there is about it.”
Tom and I broke out in a jumble of incoherent objections, which Dorothy met with smiling assurance.
“You think ‘the man’ may be desperate if we find him,” she said. “Well, I don’t for a minute believe he will be. He’s doing too big a thing to have anything against ordinary people, and if something did happen, you’d need me to protect you.”
Ten minutes more of the drive brought ten minutes more of heated discussion, but it brought us no victory, and the end of the debate came when Tom gave in with the brotherly remark: “Well, go your own confounded, obstinate way then.” To which Dorothy, as calm and smiling as a summer morn, responded simply, “I shall.”
“Here’s our place,” said Tom, as we rattled up to a house which displayed on the stairs to the second story a sign, “Dancing Academy.” “This was the only room we could get that had incandescent wiring, and that was long enough to hold the scale of the Denckel apparatus,” he explained to Dorothy, as we crossed the bare floor to the apparatus, standing in front of the chairs whereon was wont to repose the beauty and chivalry of Folkestone, at the “assemblies” advertised below.
“The machine is working beautifully. Look at this.” He threw the switch, lighted the lamp, and lowered the green shade. The belt of metal had revolved scarcely a minute, and Tom was pulling down the last shade, as the beam fluttered and the machine stopped. “Just in time,” said Dorothy delighted. “Hurry up, Tom.” The old inherent passion of the chase was on us all, and in less than twenty minutes, the last figures made, Tom and Dorothy compared their work.
“Just there,” said Tom, making a cross with his pencil on a point on the French coast some ten miles up from Boulogne. “Come on, don’t waste a minute. It’s practically a straight run across the channel.”