room."
"Whatever are you talking about, Jack?" demanded Cora with some impatience. "Don"t you know I have to hurry, and you are teasing me this way?"
Jack went over to his sister, and put his bare brown arm around her neck. She looked up from the folding of her trinkets, and smiled into his face.
"Now, see here, sis," he said, "I am telling you the exact truth, and when I say exact, I mean exact. Andy told me he caught this card on a fly as it flew out the Ramsy window, when they were letting fly their opinions about the motor girls. Andy caught the card on the first bounce, stuck it in his pocket--no, let me see! He carried it against his heart, between his second and third ribs----"
"Oh, I know!" interrupted Cora. "I dropped that in the shed when I opened my purse to pay for the berries. I thought I felt something slip from my hand."
"There," and Jack made a comical effort to pat himself on the back.
"Jack, my boy, you are a wonder! If you don"t know what you want just guess it."
"And they said I gave that card to the girls? To give them a place to run away to, I suppose."
"That was it," replied her brother. "You see, old lady Ramsy has an idea you want to abduct those girls. But it was a lucky breeze that blew the card to Andy. Otherwise you might expect an early call at Clover Cottage from the honorable Mrs. R of the Strawberry Patch."
"As if there was anything strange about me dropping my own personal card," mused Cora aloud. "And what difference did it make who might pick it up?"
The clock gave the alarm that the hour was about to strike. Cora jumped up and slipped into her coat and bonnet.
"It seemed foolish for the Robinsons to hire a car to take their friends down when I am riding alone," she said, "but the girls made me promise not to offer my car, but to carry the bags in the tonneau--Bess and Belle expect to get as far as possible from the--chaperone conveyance. Well, Jack dear, I am rather a naughty sister to run away, and leave you thus, when mother specially intrusted you to my safekeeping. But you have compelled me to go, haven"t you?"
"Forced you to," admitted Jack, picking up the bag and following her to the door.
The maids were in the hall waiting to a.s.sist Cora, and to bid her good-bye. A word of kind instruction to each, and Cora jumped into the car. Jack, having cranked up, took his place beside her.
"I will go as far as the trolley line," he said. "I want to see if Andy takes that two o"clock car when it turns back."
There were many little things to be spoken of between brother and sister, and, as they drove along, Cora referred more than once to the visit of the detectives. Jack a.s.sured her that he would attend to them and then, reaching the turnpike, where the trolley line ended, he bade her good-bye, jumped out, and, for a moment, watched the pretty car, and its prettier driver, fly down the avenue.
The next moment a trolley car stopped at the switch. From the rear platform two elderly ladies alighted rather awkwardly. They were queerly dressed, and the larger, she in the gingham gown, with the brown shirred bonnet, almost yanked the other from the steps to the ground, in attempting to a.s.sist her.
"The Ramsy and the Schenk!" Jack told himself. "Cora did not get away any too soon!"
The women turned to the other side of the road. As they did, Jack felt a tug at his coat.
"That"s them," said Andy, almost in a whisper, "and there come the two detectives! If you like you can stay away from your house, and I will lay around, and find out what happens!"
"Why, they will want to see me!" declared Jack, in some surprise at the suggestion.
"Suppose they do? Let them want," answered the urchin. "If I was you I"d just lay low. My mother always says "the least said is the easiest mended," and she knows."
The advice, after all, was not unwise, Jack thought. He had other things to attend to besides talking to a pair of foolish women, and answering the questions of a pair of well-paid detectives.
"Maybe you"re right, Andy," he said. "I believe I am busy this afternoon. But take care that you don"t get in the sc.r.a.p. They will be bound to have revenge on some one."
Andy sprang back of the car to avoid being observed by the women, as they turned to see which way they should go. Jack was not afraid of being noticed by the women, and he was a stranger to the detectives.
The latter directed the women to walk over to the avenue, and then they followed at a "respectful distance."
Andy slunk out from his corner, darted off in the opposite direction, and Jack knew he would be at the Kimball homestead considerable in advance of the others.
"The Imp of the Strawberry Patch," thought Jack, in his usual way of making a story from a t.i.tle. "He"s a queer little chap, but not so slow, after all. How very much more reasonable it is for me to turn in and talk with Ed and Walter, than to go back home and jab answers at that quartette."
Then the thought of Cora"s word (that she would see the detectives) crossed his mind. For a moment he almost changed his resolution. Then he decided:
"All"s fair in love and war, and if this isn"t war, it"s a first-cla.s.s sham battle."
Andy was out of sight. The last "rays" of the two country skirts could just be made out, as their owners trudged along the avenue, and Jack Kimball took up his tune, where he had left it off, thrust his hands into his pockets, and sauntered off in the direction of the town garage.
As he antic.i.p.ated, both Ed and Walter were there, putting Walter"s machine in ship-shape for the run after the girls.
"Are you sure, Jack Kimball," demanded Ed, "that the young ladies will be in no way put out by our rudeness? I have a particular desire to please the ladies."
"Oh, you"ll please them, all right," replied Jack, taking a seat on the step of a handsome car, just in front of the one his friends were busy at. "There is nothing on earth pleases a girl so much as to run after her, when she distinctly says you shall not go."
"Hear ye! The expert!" called out Walter, as he rubbed the chamois over the bra.s.s lamps at the front of his runabout. "Jack happens to know all about the game. Don"t you remember the success of our hay-mobile run last year, when we went after the girls on their tour?
Well, take it from me, the event this year will be equally disastrous--only more so," and Walter gave a last flourish to the lamp-polisher, then did a few fancy steps, in front of the car, to see that the reflection was correct.
"What time do we start?" asked Ed.
"Soon as we are ready," replied Jack. "The girls have already gone on, and I promised Mr. Robinson that we would keep just near enough to be within call, should they need us, but far enough away to be out of danger of their--Walter, what do you call it when a girl declares she can"t bear a thing, and she just loves it?"
"Oh, that"s--that"s good taste," replied Walter, running his hands through his hair with the doubtful purpose of removing from them some of their lately acquired gasoline and polishing paste.
"Then, according to Walt, we must keep at a respectful distance from their good taste," finished Jack.
"You are sure--the ghost works all right?" asked Walter. "There is nothing more disgusting than a ghost that refuses to work."
"Oh, my ghost is a regular union man--eight hours and all that,"
replied Ed. "I"ve tried it on the chickens, and they almost turned into pot-pie from actual fright."
"And what time are we counting on getting to a putting-up place?"
Walter asked further. "If we leave here about three, will we get anywhere in time to--have breakfast, for instance?"
"Well, my machine is in fine shape," declared Jack, "and I just count on the _Get There_ beating your little _Comet_ if yours is a newer machine. With this calculation we should get to the Wayside by eight o"clock. The motor girls are going to put up there for the night, and we may be able to put _down_ there, if it appears out of good style for us to put _up_ there."
"Why didn"t they go right on--start in time to reach the beach to-night?" inquired Ed.
"Oh, just a whim. Girls want all that"s coming to them, and a night at a Wayside they count among their required experiences, don"t you know.
And the old folks being along made it particularly all right,"
declared Jack.
"But they"ll beat us by an hour now," almost sighed Walter, who was becoming famous among his chums for his keen interest in the girls and their doings.
"Not much," answered Jack. "They are going the long way "round. Do you suppose they would go over the new road? Why, the dust would blind Cora if she made a single mile of that grind and grit."
"Well, after my beauty bath, I"ll be about ready," observed Walter.
"Ed, don"t put too much witch-hazel on your locks. Makes me think of the day after fourth of July, when I went to grandmama"s."