"I—I—don't know what we're running after him for!" gasped Mollie. "We haven't got a chance—in the world—of catching—him."
"Look," panted Betty, pointing to a machine at the side of the road with a man in chauffeur's uniform sitting behind the wheel, "maybe we can get him! Quick—"
Betty's action always followed hard upon the heels of impulse, and before any of the girls had time to realize what she was going to do she had darted across the road, had said a few excited words, and was tumbling into the tonneau.
Without stopping to question, the girls followed, jumping in beside her, and the chauffeur, after one surprised look, touched his cap and the machine leapt forward like a wild thing.
Mollie had time, even in her excitement, to wonder how Betty had managed it.
"I think she hypnotizes them," she muttered to herself.
And all Betty had really said to the man was, "Please follow that motorcyclist! We mustn't lose sight of him!" and the man, obeying that impulse for adventure that is in all of us, had complied.
The motorcyclist had sped around the corner and darted into one of the side streets. A few minutes later the chauffeur turned the same corner with a recklessness that made them gasp, turned it just in time to see their quarry disappearing round another corner.
"Gosh, that fellow can coax some speed out of that machine of his!" cried the man at the wheel. "But if you young ladies don't mind a little danger, we may catch him yet."
"Oh, please don't think about us," cried Betty, her hands clutching the back of the seat, her eyes straining after the flying speck that seemed to be growing smaller every second. "Oh, we must catch him,—we must! It would be awful to lose him now!"