“Anywhere for the good of a child. Come on.”
Florence was away after the woman and child at a rapid rate.
“We’ll get the child free. Then we’ll get out,” breathed Florence. “We don’t want any publicity.”
Fortune favored their plan. The woman, still dragging the child, who was by now silently weeping, hurried into a narrow dismal alley.
Suddenly as she looked about at sound of a footstep behind her, she was seized in two vises and hurled by some mechanism of steel and bronze a dozen feet in air, to land in an alley doorway. At least so it seemed to her, nor was it far from the truth. For Florence’s months of gymnasium work had turned her muscles into things of steel and bronze. It was she who had seized the woman.
It was all done so swiftly that the woman had no time to cry out. When she rose to her feet, the alley was deserted. The child had fled in one direction, while the two girls had stepped quietly out into the street in the other direction and, apparently quite unperturbed, were waiting for a car.
“Look,” said Lucile, “I’ve still got it. It’s the child’s lunch basket. There’s something in it.”
“There’s our car,” said Florence in a relieved tone. The next moment they were rattling homeward.
“We solved no mystery to-night,” murmured Lucile sleepily.
“Added one more to the rest,” smiled Florence. “But now I am interested. We must see it through.”