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“The Gorgon stare,” murmured her sister.
“When he was turning those bolts of cloth the second time,” went on Bess, disdaining to dignify the interruption by noticing it, “and while he was fumbling them with one hand, I saw him bring up the purse from beneath the counter with the other hand and slip it under the cloth. Then, before I could say anything, he called out that he had found it. I could have shaken you when you thanked him so sweetly, Cora Kimball.”
The girls looked at each other aghast.
“Did you ever?” gasped Belle.
“He ought to be exposed!” exclaimed Cora indignantly.
“I suppose he ought,” agreed Bess placidly. “But after all, the proof wouldn’t be strong enough. It would be simply my word against his, and he’d swear black and blue that I was mistaken. We’d only get mixed up in an ugly mess, and nothing would come of it after all. I fancy that that young man will get to the end of his rope soon enough without our having anything to do with it. Thank your lucky stars, Cora, that you’ve got your money back, and let it go at that.”
“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 was looking back.”
“I did see some one waving a handkerchief,” admitted Belle. “But it looked as though some ill-bred person was trying to flirt with us, and of course we didn’t pay the least attention.”
“No,” said Bess primly, “we’d die before we’d flirt.”
“If we’d wanted to flirt we had a perfectly good chance to-day while we were eating lunch,” said Cora. “He had a perfectly lovely necktie, too, a good deal brighter than any of yours.”
Jack threw up his hands with a gesture of despair.
“No use, fellows!” he exclaimed. “You can’t pin them down to anything.”
“But what did you have to wave your handkerchief for anyway to make us stop?” asked Cora demurely. “All you had to do was to put on more speed and catch up to us. That car of yours is so fast, you know. At least that’s what you’ve always said.”
The boys looked at each other a little disconcertedly.
“W-well,” stammered Jack, “the oil – the sparking wasn’t working just right – ”
“Tell the truth, Jack,” spoke up Walter, with a fine assumption of candor. “The real reason, girls, was that we were afraid of bumping into you – ”
“And we didn’t want to spill you all over the road,” finished Paul.
A groan went up from the girls.
“Oh, Ananias!” exclaimed Bess.
“Ananiases, you mean,” corrected her sister. “One’s just as bad as the others. They all hang together.”
“We’re like Ben Franklin when he signed the Declaration of Independence,” laughed Paul. “He said they’d all have to hang together or they’d hang separately.”
“I’ll admit that you have a good car, sis,” said Jack.
“And if that isn’t enough to take us back into favor, we’ll do anything else you say,” said Walter, wringing his hands in pretended agitation.
“We’ll put on sackcloth and ashes, jump through a hoop, roll over and play dead,” chimed in Paul. “No one has anything on us when it comes to humility.”
“It almost affects me to tears,” said Belle, pretending to reach for her handkerchief.
“They say cruel and unusual punishments are prohibited by the Constitution,” laughed Cora, “so we won’t deprive you of the refining influence of our society. Heaven knows you need it badly enough. We’ll let you trail along with us if you’ll promise to be very, very good.”
“We will,” promised Jack.
“There’s one thing yet that needs to be explained, fellows,” remarked Walter, as they climbed into their automobile. “What about that fellow with the iridescent necktie? I feel the demon of jealousy gnawing at my vitals.”
“Come, girls, ’fess up,” admonished Jack.
“He was just charming,” said Cora promptly.
“Perfectly lovely,” agreed Belle.
“Such soulful eyes!” exclaimed Bess languishingly.
“That I should ever have lived to hear this!” groaned Walter.
“I guess our cake is dough,” said Paul.
“Eftsoon and gadzooks!” cried Jack, striking an attitude, “lead me to him, and sooth it shall go hard with me if my trusty sword drink not the caitiff’s blood.”
“I guess you don’t need to go as far as that,” laughed Cora. “Leave him alone and the police will take care of him.”
“A-ha, a criminal!” cried Walter.
“That only makes him the more romantic,” declared Paul.
“It doesn’t help our case one bit,” said Jack. “Haven’t you heard of how women will deck a murderer’s cell with flowers?”
“I don’t think he’d have the nerve to be a murderer,” remarked Belle. “His specialty is stealing purses.”
And while the boys listened intently and threw in occasional indignant exclamations, the girls told of the young man’s attempt to scrape acquaintance, and of how later he had almost succeeded in getting possession of Cora’s purse.
“The cur!” growled Jack. “I wish I’d happened along when he was trying to get fresh!”
“You helped me out just the same, even if you weren’t there,” replied Cora. “You ought to have seen how he made tracks for his buggy when I said my brother would be along shortly.”
“You see,” said Jack, throwing out his chest, “how the terror of my name has preceded me.”
“It’s comforting anyway,” chimed in Walter. “It proves that we men are good for something.”
“And that the girls ought to have us with them all the time as trusty knights and vassals,” added Paul.
“You’re too ready to jump to conclusions,” rebuked Cora. “But now we’d better be hurrying along. It’s getting towards dark, and we’ll have all we can do to get to Aunt Margaret’s in time for dinner.”
“Dinner!” exclaimed Jack. “Where have I heard that word before? Lead me to it!”
