Price took BÉbita to Grasslands, handed her over to Annie and telephoned in to the Janneys. Then he left to rejoin Ferguson who was to go to the shore and find out the meaning of the shots. Price, missing the leading car, had decided that it had turned from the pike and scouring the side roads in a blind chase had heard the shots, agreeing with Ferguson that they came from the direction of the Sound.

Ferguson went that way, driving at breakneck speed. He had almost reached the shore, felt the water's coolness, saw the wood's vista widen when, to avoid a deep rut, he slewed his machine to the left. The lights penetrated a thicket, revealing behind the woven foliage, a dark, large body, black among the tangled green. He drew up, peering at it—it was not a rock; its side showed smooth through the boughs. He jumped out and pushed his way through the bushes. It was a taxi, its lamps extinguished, broken branches and crushed foliage marking its track.

It gave evidence of a violent flight and a hasty desertion, careened to one side, its door open, a rug hanging over the step. He went to the back, struck a match and looked at the license tag—the number was that of the motor he had followed. Covered by the darkness, driven deep among the trees, it could easily have passed unnoticed until the daylight betrayed it.

The plan of escape revealed a new artfulness—the man had made off either on foot or in another vehicle. It accounted for the license—he knew his pursuers would mark it and look for a car carrying that number. In the face of such a crafty completeness of detail the young man felt himself reduced to a baffled indecision. Cogitating on the various routes his quarry might have taken, he ran out on to the shore road and here again halted.

Before him the Sound lay, a smooth dark floor, along which glided the small golden glimmerings of river craft. He looked up and down the road, discernible as a gray path between the upstanding solidity of the woods and the flat solidity of the water. Some distance in front a black blot took shape under his exploring glance as a small house. He started the car and ran toward it, seeing as he approached a dancing yellow spot come from behind it in swaying passage. He stopped, the yellow spot steadied, rose, swung aloft—a lantern in the hands of a man, half dressed, who came toward him spying out from under the upraised glow.

Ferguson spoke abruptly:

"Did you hear shots a while ago?"

The man setting his lantern on the ground, spoke with the slow phlegm of the native:

"I did—close here. I bin down to the waterside seein' if I could make out what they was."

The house was skirted by a balcony along which a second light now came into view; this time from a lamp carried in the hand of a woman. She was wrapped in a bed gown, a straggle of loose hair hanging round a frightened face.

"We was asleep and they woke us up. They was right off there," she jerked her head to the Sound behind her.

"From the water?" Ferguson asked.

"Sounded that way," the man took it up. "We wasn't sure at first what it was; then they come crack, crack, one after the other, from somewheres beyont. My wife, she said it was motor boats, said she heard 'em off across the water. But by the time we got something on and was outside it was over. There wasn't no more and we couldn't see nothing. I bin down on the beach lookin' round, thinkin' they might have come from there, but I ain't found no tracks or signs of anybody."

"I was wonderin'," said the woman, "if may be it was that patrol boat—the one they got this summer runnin' along the shore for thieves—That they caught a sight of one and went after him."

Ferguson was silent for a moment then said:

"Is there any place round here where a boat could be hidden, deep enough water for a launch?"

The man answered:

"Yes, right down the road a step there's a cove and an old dock; used to belong to the folks that lived on the bluff but the house burned down a while back and ain't been rebuilt and no one's used the dock since. A feller could hide a boat there fine; it's all overgrown so you can't see it unless you know where it is."

"I'd like to take a look at it," said Ferguson. "Come along with the lantern."

The place was only a few yards from the mouth of the wood road. Trees and shrubs sheltered it, concealing with their rank growth a small wharf, rotted and sagging to the water line. The lantern rays revealed a recent presence, scattered leaves and twigs on the wooden planking, the long marshy grasses showing a track from the road to the wharf's edge.

"Yes, sir," said the native, much impressed; "some one's been here to-night and not s'long ago either. You can see where the dew's been swep' off the grasses right to the water."

Ferguson said nothing; he now saw the whole plan of escape—the coupÉ left in the woods, a short run to the cove where a boat had been concealed, the get-away down on across the Sound. What had the shots meant? Was the woman right in thinking the police patrol had come upon the fleeing criminal? And if they had what had been the result?

Lantern in hand, the man at his heels, he crushed through the swampy copse to the shore. There his glance swept the long stretch of the water, sewn in the distance with a pattern of moving sparks. Two of them, red and green, stole over the ebony surface toward him, advancing with an even, gliding smoothness, piercing and steady, like the eyes of a stealthily approaching animal, fixing him with a meaning scrutiny. He snatched up the lantern and ran for a point that jutted out in a pebbly cape. Standing on its tip he raised and waved the light, letting his voice ring out across the stillness:

"Boat ahoy!"

The lights drew closer, their reflections stabbing down into the oily depths, gleam below gleam. The pulsing of a muffled engine came with them, a prow took shape, a shine of wood and brass above the lusterless tide. Ferguson called again:

"Who are you?"

An answer rose in a man's surly voice:

"What's that to you?"

"A good deal. I'm Ferguson of Council Oaks and I'm looking for the boat that fired on some one round here about an hour ago."

The voice replied, its tone changed to sudden conciliation:

"Oh, Mr. Ferguson; couldn't see who it was. We're what you're looking for—the police patrol. We have the launch here in tow."

"Have you got the man?"

"Yes, sir. He didn't answer our challenge and fired on us. We chased and gave it back to him—a running fight. One of us got him—he's dead."

"Go on to my wharf; I'll be there when you come."

On his way along the shore road he met Price, paused for a quick explanation, and the two cars ran at a racing clip to Ferguson's wharf. The men were standing on its end when the police boat glided into the gush of light that fell from the high electric lamps at either side of the ship. Behind it, lifted and dropped by the languid wavelets, was a launch, a covered shape lying on the floor.

The story of the police was quickly told. The night, dark and windless, was the kind chosen by the water thieves for their operations. The men had been on the watch faring noiselessly with engine muffled and hooded lamps. It was nearly the end of their run, a length of shore with few estates, when they saw a boat glide from a part of the beach peculiarly dark and deserted. The craft carried no lights, a fact that instantly roused their suspicions, and they waited. As it drew out for the open water they challenged. There was no answer, but a sudden acceleration of its speed, shooting by them like a streak for the mid reaches of the Sound.

They started in pursuit, repeating their challenge and then an order to lie to. Again there was no response and they clapped on top speed and raced in its wake. They were gaining on it when, in answer to a louder hail, the man fired on them, the bullet passing between two of them and burying itself in the gunwale. They replied with a return fire, there was a fusillade of shots, and the two boats sped in a darkling rush across the Sound. They knew something was wrong with their opponent; his launch headed in a straight line swept through the wash of steamers, cut across the bows of tugs and river craft, rocking like a cockleshell, menaced by destruction, shouts and objurgations following its mad course. They were up with it, almost alongside on the last lap. He made no answer to their hails, sat upright and motionless, sat so when his bow crashed against the rocks of the Connecticut shore. They found him dead, a bullet in his brain, the wheel still gripped in his hands.

Ferguson dropped into the launch and drew down the coat that had been thrown over the body. The face, the false beard gone, was handsome, the body large and powerful, the hands fine and well kept—it was not the type he had expected to see. He felt in the pockets and found the money still in its envelope, clasped by the rubber bands. There were no other papers, no means of identification. After a short colloquy with the men, he and Price drove back to Council Oaks.

Price left the next morning. His presence was necessary in the city, he said, and he seemed preoccupied and anxious to go. He hinted at forthcoming revelations which would clear up what was still unexplained, but declared himself unable at present to say more.

When he had gone, Ferguson walked to Grasslands where he found the family recuperating in a relief too deep for words. BÉbita was in bed still asleep. The doctor, sent for the night before, said she was suffering from the effects of a drug, but that rest and quiet would soon restore her.

They collected on the balcony to hear his story. When it was over, questions answered, amazement and horror vented in various forms, Mr. Janney said he would like to walk over to the wharf and have a talk with the police himself. Ferguson decided to go with him; there would be a lot of business to be gone through, an inquest with all its unpleasant detail.

As they rose to leave, Suzanne announced that she wanted to come too. She looked a wreck, in her hysterical jubilation forgetful of her rouge and powder; a worn little wraith of a woman whose journey to the heart of life had stripped her of all coquetry and beauty. They tried to dissuade her, but, as usual, she was insistent; she wanted to see the men herself, she wanted to hear everything. On this day of thanksgiving no one had the will to thwart her, so they accepted with the best grace they could and she walked through the woods with them.

There was a group of men on the wharf, the local police, the coroner, some of Ferguson's employees. The body had been put in the boathouse, laid on a table under a sheltering tarpaulin. Ferguson and Mr. Janney drew off to the end of the dock in low-toned conference with the officials. They were relieved to see that Suzanne had no mind to listen, but stayed by herself in the shade of the boathouse wall.

She leaned against it, looking out over the sparkling reaches of the Sound. Her thoughts were of the dead man, close behind her there, on the other side of the wooden partition. She wondered with an awed amaze at his wild act and its dark ending. She wondered what manner of man he was, what he was like—a human creature, unknown to her, who could want only to cause her such anguish.

She shot a glance over her shoulder and saw that the door of the boathouse was half open—the coroner had been in and had neglected to close it. She looked at the men at the end of the wharf; they stood in a little cluster, backs toward her, heads together in animated discussion. She moved from the wall, advanced on tip-toe through the slant of shade, and slipped through the open doorway.

The place was very still, its clear, varnished brownness impregnated with the sea's salty tang, through its windows the golden gleam of the waves reflected in rippling lights that chased across its peaked ceiling. She stole to the table where the grim shape lay and lifted the tarpaulin with a trembling hand. The other shot suddenly to her mouth, strangling a scream, and she dropped the heavy cloth as if it burned her. Both hands went up over her face, flattened there until the nails were empurpled, and she stood, bent as if cramped with pain, for the moment all movement paralyzed.

Ferguson, informed of all he wanted to know, turned from the others to join her. She was not where he had left her, and moving down the wharf he looked about and, seeing no sign of her, decided that she had gone home. He was passing the boathouse doorway when she came through it almost upon him.

"Good heavens!" he said angrily, "have you been in there?" Then, seeing her face, he caught her arm and held her. Would there ever be an end to her willfulness!

"Come home," he said, sharply, and led her away. She tottered beside him, drooping and ghastly. As they crossed the road to the path up the bluff he could not forbear an exasperated:

"What in the name of common sense did you do that for? Didn't you know it was not a thing for you to see?"

Her hands locked on his arm; she leaned against him lifting a haggard glance to his face. Her voice was a husky whisper:

"It's not that, Dick. It wasn't just the dead man. It was—it was—he was my detective—Larkin!"