“To think of Bess playing sleuth and tracking crime to its lair!” cried Belle. “I didn’t think she had it in her.”
“Oh, I’m some little bright-eyes, if you ask me,” remarked Bess complacently, as she reached out for the last of the lemon drops.
“We’ll have to work this up into amateur theatricals when the boys join us,” laughed Cora.
“Yes,” agreed Belle, “we’ll stage a one-act play and call it: ‘The Greed of Gold; or, Bess Robinson, the Girl Detective.’”
CHAPTER IV
THE STERNER SEX
“Talking of the boys – ” began Bess.
“Out of the fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh,” drawled her sister.
Bess flushed.
“You think of them just as much as I do, Belle Robinson, and perhaps more!” she countered. “But what I was going to say when I was so rudely interrupted was to wonder when they were ever going to catch up with us.”
“Jack said they’d surely overtake us before night,” replied Cora. “Walter and he were all ready, but Paul had had some things to wind up for his firm before he started in on his vacation. He had telegraphed, though, that he would be in Chelton before noon, and Jack said he’d show us just how fast that car of his could travel. He’s awfully proud of that car, but between us, girls, I don’t think he has anything on this car of mine in the matter of speed,” and she patted the wheel affectionately.
“Let’s hope they don’t get arrested for speeding,” said Belle.
“Or run over any babies,” put in Bess, with a lively recollection of the thrilling episode of the afternoon.
“I guess there’s no danger of that,” said Cora. “Jack’s keen on speed, but he’s a careful driver for all that. I tell you what we’ll do, girls. You keep a sharp lookout in the rear, for they may come into sight at any minute now, and the minute you see them coming you let me know. Then I’ll let out a little and we’ll try to tease them by keeping just far enough ahead of them to drive them crazy.”
“That’ll be dandy!” said Belle eagerly. “It’ll do them good to take some of the conceit out of them. I suppose they think we’ve been pining to have them with us.”
“Well, haven’t you?” asked Bess mischievously.
“No, I haven’t,” declared Belle, but in a tone that somehow failed to carry conviction.
“That looks like their car now!” cried Bess excitedly, as she caught a glimpse of an automobile that had just swung around a curve in the road about half a mile in the rear.
Belle craned her neck in the same direction.
“I guess it is,” she confirmed. “I can make out three people in it, but they’re too far away to see their faces.”
“We’ll let them get a little nearer so we can make sure,” said Cora, settling herself in her seat and taking a tighter grasp on the wheel, “and then we’ll let them take our dust and see how they like it.”
Belle knelt upon the seat to get a better view.
“Sister Anne, Sister Anne, do you see a man?” chanted Bess.
“Three of them,” replied Belle, “and they’re coming like all possessed. I’m almost sure it’s Jack that’s driving. There, one of them has taken out a handkerchief and is waving it!”
“It’s them,” pronounced Belle a moment later, forgetting her grammar in her excitement, and scrambling back into her seat again. “Now, Cora, it’s up to you to show them what the Motor Girls can do.”
“See that your hats are on tight, girls,” laughed Cora. “We’re going to stir up some little breeze.”
They had a long stretch of road in front of them at the time, with no house or vehicle in sight. The conditions could not have been better for a race, and Cora increased her speed gradually until the car was going like the wind.
The car behind had taken up the challenge at once and was also coming along at a tremendous rate. But Belle, venturing sundry peeks behind, announced gleefully that it was not gaining an inch.
“But that isn’t enough,” Cora flung back. “We want to make them actually drop farther behind. When we’ve once done that I’ll be satisfied. Then we’ll slow up and let them catch up to us.”
Two minutes later, Belle clapped her hands in delight.
“We’ve done it! We’ve done it!” she cried. “They’re a quarter of a mile farther back than they were when we started in.”
“Oh, how we’ll rub it into them!” gurgled Bess.
“Well, enough is as good as a feast,” laughed Cora, in great satisfaction. “Now we’ll give the lords of creation a chance to explain how they came to let mere girls run away from them.”
“It will take some explanation,” remarked Belle.
“They’re great little explainers, though,” said Bess. “They’d rather die than admit we had the faster car.”
Cora gradually slackened speed until the car, while still running swiftly, had reached a more reasonable rate. Belle’s glances behind told her that their pursuers were overtaking them by leaps and bounds.
A moment later there was a wild chorus of shouts, and Jack’s car drew up alongside. His two friends, Walter Pennington and Paul Hastings, were with him, both tall, athletic young fellows, with frank, pleasant faces.
The girls looked up with well simulated surprise, and pleasure that was not at all simulated.
“Why, it’s the boys!” they cried in chorus.
Both cars had by this time come to a full stop, and the masculine contingent, deserting theirs, came round to the girls’ car to greet them and to shake hands. Jack went further and gave his sister a hearty kiss, a proceeding which brought a look of envy to the faces of his companions.
“Where in the world have you slowpokes been?” asked Belle.
“Not much of a compliment, keeping away from us so long,” pouted Bess in a way to show a most bewitching dimple.
“I guess they’ve been glad enough to be rid of us for a while,” chimed in Cora.
Looks full of reproach and denial greeted this onslaught.
“That’s pretty good!” remarked Paul.
“Rich!” assented Walter.
“Just as if we hadn’t been breaking speed laws all day long in order to overtake you,” mourned Jack.
“What’s the use of living when you’re so misunderstood?” groaned Walter.
“After all the ice-creams and sodas we’ve blown in on these girls, too!” wailed Paul.
“Let’s find a hole somewhere and crawl away and die,” suggested Jack.
“It seems to me that the shoe’s on the other foot anyway,” said Walter, becoming accuser in his turn. “It’s you who didn’t want us. Who was it just now that was trying to run away from us?”
“Run away from you?” repeated Cora innocently. “What do you mean by that?”
“You know perfectly well, you little minx,” said her brother with mock sternness. “There we were, waving handkerchiefs at you and hustling the old machine along to beat the band. I know you saw us, for one of you