"Well, here goes," responded the man behind the wheel, and under his skillful touch the machine leapt forward like a spirited horse at the touch of the lash.
"That's it, that's it!" cried Mollie, almost beside herself with excitement. "Just hear that engine purr! He can't get away from us now!"
"Oh, if we could only take him back to Camp Liberty with us!"
"I thought so," said the chauffeur, and even in their excitement they had time to look in surprise at his back.
"Wh-what did you think?" stammered Betty.
"That you were the girls up at the Hostess House that everybody is talking about," he told her, while the girls fairly gasped with surprise at this proof of their widespread fame. "That's why I didn't ask questions but just did as I was told," he added. And somehow they knew, though they could not see his face, that he was grinning. "You see, I'd always heard that you most always got what you set out to get, and I didn't waste time arguin'," he finished.
The girls laughed hysterically, and Betty said, with a funny little inflection:
"Sounds as if we were very strong-minded. But we don't care about that," she added, once more fixing her gaze anxiously on the road before them, "if we can only catch that man."
"May I ask who he is, miss?" asked the man.
"He's—he's a—criminal!" returned Betty, her little fists clenched fiercely.