"A criminal?" he repeated with interest. "May I ask what kind?"
"A murderer," cried Mollie fiercely, adding, as the man started and the girls looked at her in surprise: "Well, he might just as well have been. He didn't even stop to see whether he was or not, which is about the same thing."
There was a sound from the front seat that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle, but not being quite sure, the girls could do nothing whatever about it.
"But look—he's getting away from us!" wailed Amy suddenly, and once more all their attention was focused on the chase.
And, quite suddenly, while they watched, the motorcyclist disappeared from view as if the earth had opened and swallowed him up.
A few seconds later, with a grinding of brakes, the car stopped at the spot where he had disappeared, and the girls looked at one another despairingly.
The path that he had taken seemed no more than a broad foot path through the woods, so narrow that no machine could follow him, and of course there was no chance of catching him on foot.
"He got away from us!" cried Grace, voicing a rather self-evident fact.
"I'm afraid so, miss," said the man, and he seemed so genuinely disappointed that they looked at him gratefully. "The man must be rather much of a dare-devil, your criminal," he added, eyeing the bumpy path thoughtfully. "An ordinary rider wouldn't be able to go two yards along that path without coming to grief."
"Do you know where this path leads to?" asked Betty, struck with a sudden inspiration. "If there's another road we might circle round and head him off."