After all, no matter what might come, she would not be utterly unprepared.  She was expecting trouble of some sort, and she knew that the worst blows are those that are unexpected, just as the worst lightning is that which flashes from a clear sky.

Suddenly, as the car approached a little country store, at a crossroads, and looking as though no one ever went there to buy anything, Holmes slowed up again.

“This isn’t the place you mean, is it?” asked Dolly, smartly.  “If it is, I must say I think those stores you wouldn’t stop at are much nicer!”

Holmes laughed back at her.  He seemed to have taken a great fancy to her, spoiled and pert though she was.

“No, indeed,” he said, “but I happened to see by that blue sign that they have a telephone inside, and I just remembered, after we passed through that last village, that I ought to telephone a message to a friend of mine in the city.  So, if you don’t mind, I’ll leave you in the car while I run in and telephone.  It won’t take me a minute, then we’ll be on our way again.”

Then he got out, and cutting off the motor, stepped into the store.  In a moment Bessie was ready to take advantage of the opportunity that chance and his carelessness offered her.

“You keep perfectly still, Dolly,” she said, earnestly.  “I know it isn’t supposed to be nice to listen to what you’re not meant to hear, but I think this is a time when I’ve got a right to try to find out what I can.  I may not be able to do it at all, but I’m going to do my best to listen to Mr. Holmes while he’s sending that message and find out all I can about it.  Do you see that window at the side of the store?  Well, there’s just a chance, I believe, that the telephone inside may be near the window.  If it is, I may be able to find out what he’s doing.”

And, without giving Dolly a chance to protest, or even to voice her surprise, Bessie slipped from the car and ran lightly to the side of the ramshackle old building that served as a store.  Crouching down there, she was able to hear what Holmes, inside, was saying, as she had hoped.  And the very first words she heard sent a thrill through her, and banished any lingering regrets she might have had at playing the part, usually so dishonorable, of eavesdropper.

“Hello!  Hello!” she heard him saying.  “What’s the matter, Central?  I want Hedgeville—­number eight, ring five.  Can’t you get that!”

Bessie did not know the number, but very few people in Hedgeville had a telephone, and that in itself was suspicious.  She waited while Holmes, expressing his impatience volubly, amid sympathetic chuckles from the audience inside the store, got his connection.

“Hello!  Hello!  Is that you, Weeks?” she heard him say, at last, and it was all she could do, when she heard the name of the man who had proved himself such a determined enemy to Zara and herself, to keep from betraying herself with a cry.  “Yes, yes, this is Holmes!  Where am I?  Oh, ten miles from nowhere!  You wouldn’t know the place if I were to tell you.  What you want to know is where I’m going to be an hour from now.  What?  Tell you!  Well, that’s what I’m trying to do!  Listen a little and don’t ask so many questions.  I’m going to be in an automobile at Jericho.  Know where that is?”