The sneer brought a flush to Betty's face and made her eyes glow angrily.
"You ought to know that without my telling you," she said coldly. "Perhaps you will remember, if I recall it to you, the day you knocked an old woman down in the middle of the road and then rode away without finding out how seriously you had injured her."
"I really don't know what you're talking about," the man replied, with an attempt to appear frank, which made his face more sinister than before. "You must have mistaken me for some one else."
"That's impossible." Mollie's voice was crisp and clear cut, and the man glanced with surprise and a shadow of alarm at this new assailant.
Then suddenly his manner of cool insolence changed, and he shot them a look that remained quiveringly in their memories long after the man himself had passed forever out of their lives.
"Whoever you are, you're fools," he said gruffly, menacingly. "And if you don't forget all about this thing you've been spouting about, I'll make it pretty darned unpleasant for you. Get me?" And, with a quick movement, he started his motor and leaped on his machine.
Betty sprang forward and desperately clutched the handle bars, calling on the girls for assistance, but he roughly pushed her aside. At the same moment the machine leapt forward and Betty knew that he would get away again.
Then it was the first miracle happened. Sergeant Mullins, out on a hike with some of the rookies from the camp, the sound of his approach deadened by the putting of the machine, appeared around the turn in the road, coming toward them. To keep from running into the men, which would have meant a nasty spill, the motorcyclist was forced to put on his brake.
The men would have gathered to one side of the road to let him pass, but Betty's shrill cry arrested them.
"Don't let him pass," she implored them desperately. "It's our criminal, Sergeant Mullins! Don't you see? The gambler!"