At three o’clock, Ruth and Barbara grew desperate.  For, at three, Harriet Hamlin closed the door of her bedroom and commenced to dress for her engagement.

“Try once again, Ruth,” Bab pleaded.  “It is worse even than you know.  I believe Marjorie Moore suspects what Harriet is about to do.  Suppose she publishes the story in the morning papers.  Tell Harriet I have a reason for thinking she knows about the affair.”

Bab waited apprehensively for Ruth’s return.  It seemed to her that, for the first time in their adventures, the “Automobile Girls” had met with a situation that no amount of pluck or effort on their part could control.  This was the most important experience of their whole lives, for their country was about to be betrayed!  Once Barbara stamped her foot in her impatience.  How dared Harriet Hamlin be so willful, so headstrong?  Bab’s face was white with anxiety and suspense.  Her lips twitched nervously.  Then in a flash her whole expression changed.  The color came back to her cheeks, the light to her eyes.  At the eleventh hour the way had been made clear.

Ruth had no such look when she returned to Barbara.  She flung herself despondently into a chair.  “It’s no use,” she declared despairingly.  “Harriet must go her own way.  We can do nothing with her!”

“Yes, we can!” Bab whispered.  She leaned over and murmured something in Ruth’s ear.

Ruth sprang to her feet.  “Barbara Thurston, you are perfectly wonderful!” she cried.  “Yes, I do know where it is.  Go to my desk and take that blank paper.  It is just the right size.  Fold it up in three parts.  There, it will do, now; give it to me.  Now go and command Grace and Mollie, if they love us, to call Harriet out of her room for a minute.  We can explain to them afterwards.”

Mollie and Grace feared Barbara had gone suddenly mad when she rushed in upon them with her demand.  But Mollie did manage to persuade Harriet to go into the next room.  As Harriet slipped out of her bedroom, her cousin, Ruth Stuart, stole into it, hiding something she held in her hand.  She was alone in Harriet’s room for not more than two minutes.

At a quarter to four o’clock, Harriet Hamlin left her father’s house with a large envelope concealed inside her shopping bag.  Opposition had merely strengthened Harriet’s original resolution.  She was no longer frightened.  Ruth and Bab were absurd to have been so tragic over a silly joke.

At a little after four o’clock, in a quiet, out-of-the-way street in Washington, Harriet turned over to Peter Dillon this envelope, which, as she supposed, contained the much-coveted papers which she had extracted from the private collection of the Assistant Secretary of State.

Whatever the papers were, Peter Dillon took them carelessly with his usual charming smile.  But inwardly he was chanting a song of victory.  He and Mrs. Wilson would be many-thousands of dollars richer by this time to-morrow.  He glanced into the envelope with his near-sighted eyes.  The papers were folded up inside and all was well!  Peter did not dare, before Harriet, to be too interested in what the envelope contained.