“You can’t move your car, eh?” snapped the man in the maroon auto.
He sprang out fearlessly and strode to the side of the huge machine. As he started to climb up to the front seat one of the fellows tried to push him back.
That particular seminary student was instantly treated to the surprise of his life. The man reached out, seized the boy’s collar, and ripped him from his hold on the car. He pitched him bodily, with one fling, into the ditch beside the road.
He then vaulted into the chauffeur’s seat, seized the lever, and started the machine. The engine was still running. Instead of starting it ahead, the man deliberately backed the car into the ditch on the other side of the road, and leaped down, leaving it there with its forward wheels in the air!
Half the students had tumbled off when the car bounced into the ditch. The maroon machine was brought by the chauffeur past the disabled omnibus, and the man who had wrecked it leaped into his own machine again.
“Quick, Billy!” whispered Dan. “We’ll get after them.”
Their own car was ready. They ran right around the big machine, in the wake of the maroon auto. The latter was speeding away along the narrow road.
“We must catch them, Dan!” cried Billy, as number forty-eight began to hum again.
“We will indeed,” agreed his brother. “It’s the robbers’ car—no doubt of it. We must hang to them until we find an officer to make the arrest. Whatever happens—whether we win the race for the golden cup, or not, we must not let that maroon car escape this time!”