he reached it, Chatelard had jerked open the lever, loosened the
brake, and was passing the church at half speed.

"Hey, there, quick!" called the sheriff. "He's got away!"

But Mr. Hand had already thought what was best to be done.

"Come on, here's another machine. We'll chase him!" he cried, as he
went for the white motorcar, standing farther back under the trees. It
had to be cranked, which required some seconds, but presently they were
off--Hand and the sheriff, in hot pursuit after Straker's car.

Chamberlain and Aleck, triumphantly leading the horse, came back in
time to see the settling cloud of dust.

"Mr. Chamberlain--Mr. Van Camp!" cried Agatha. "They've gone! They've
got away!"

"Who's got away?" demanded Chamberlain.

"All of them!" groaned Agatha, as she sank down on the piazza steps.

"Jimminy Christmas!" ejaculated Mr. Straker. "This beats any
ten-twenty-thirty I ever saw. Regular Dick Deadwood game! And he's
run off with my new racer!"

"What!" yelled Chamberlain. "Did that bloomin' sheriff let that
bloomin' rascal get away?"

"He isn't anybody I'd care to keep!" chuckled Straker. "But you know
that new racer's worth something."

"Did Chatelard go off in that machine?" again inquired Chamberlain
slowly and distinctly of the two women.

"Precisely," said Melanie, while Agatha's bowed head nodded.

"By Jove, that sheriff's a duffer! Here, Van, give me the horse." And
with the words Chamberlain grabbed Little Simon's best roadster,
mounted him bareback, and turned his head up the road.

"I'll catch him yet!" he yelled back.

But he didn't. Three miles farther along he came upon the wreck. The
racer was lying on its side in a ditch which recent rains had converted
into a substantial volume of mire and mud. The white machine was drawn
cosily up under a spreading hemlock farther on, but Mr. Hand and the
sheriff were nowhere in sight.

As Chamberlain stopped to gaze on the overturned car, he heard the
crashing of underbrush in the woods near by. The steps came nearer.
It was evident the chase was up; they were off the scent and obliged to
return.

"Humph!" grunted Chamberlain, and for once the clear springs of his
disposition were made turbid with satire. "We're all a pack of
bloomin' asses--that's what we are. What in hell's the matter with us!"

While he was tying the horse to a tree, Hand appeared, silent, with an
unfathomable disgust written on his countenance. As