the
back of the seat, her eyes straining after the flying speck that seemed to
be growing smaller every second. "Oh, we must catch him,--we must! It
would be awful to lose him now!"

"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.

"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