A NONSENSE PLOT.
Katherine and Hazel walked past the drive, into which Attorney Langford’s automobile had turned, apparently without any concern or interest in the occupant of the machine. But after they had advanced forty or fifty yards beyond the drive, Hazel’s curiosity got the best of her and she turned her head and looked back. The impulse to do this was so strong, she said afterward, that it seemed impossible for her to control the action. Her glance met the gaze of the squint eyes of the man in the auto.
“My! that was a foolish thing for me to do,” she said as she quickly faced ahead again. “I suppose that look has done more damage than anything else since we started from Fairberry. And to think that I above all others should have been the one to do it. I’m ashamed of myself.”
“Did he see you?” Katherine inquired.
“He was looking right at me,” Hazel replied; “and that look was full of suspicion and meaning. There’s no doubt he’s on our trail and suspects something of the nature of our mission.”
“Oh don’t let that bother you,” Katherine advised. “There’s no reason why he should jump to a conclusion just because you looked back at him. That needn’t necessarily mean anything. But if you let it make you uneasy, you may give us dead away the next time you meet him.”
“I believe he knows what our mission here is already,” was Katharine’s fatalistic answer.
“If that’s the case, you needn’t worry any more about what you do or say in his presence,” said Hazel. “We might as well go to him and tell him our story and have it all over with.”
“I don’t agree with you,” Katherine replied. “I believe that the worst chance we have to work against is the probability of suspicion on his part. I don’t see how he can know anything positively. He probably merely learned of our intended departure for Twin Lakes and, knowing that the Grahams were spending the summer here, began to put two and two together. I figure that he followed us on his own responsibility.”
“And that his visit at the Graham cottage today is to give them warning of our coming,” Hazel added.
“Yes, very likely,” Katherine agreed. “I’d like to hear the conversation that is about to take place in that house. I bet it would be very interesting to us.”
“No doubt of it,” said the other; “and it might prove helpful to us in our search for the information we were sent to get.”
“Don’t you think it strange, Hazel, that your aunt should select a bunch of girls like us to do so important a piece of work as this?” Katherine inquired. This question had puzzled her a good deal from the moment the proposition had been put to her. Although she had received it originally from Mrs. Hutchins even before the matter had been broached to Hazel, she had not questioned the wisdom of the move, but had accepted the role of advocate assigned to her as if the proceeding were very ordinary and commonsensible.
“If you hadn’t restricted your remark to ‘a bunch of girls like us’, I would answer ‘yes’,” Hazel replied; “I’d say that it was very strange for Aunt Hannah to select a ‘bunch of girls’ to do so important a piece of work as this. But when you speak of the ‘bunch’ as a ‘bunch of girls like us,’ I reply ‘No, it wasn’t strange at all’.”
“I’m afraid you’re getting conceited, Hazel,” Katherine protested gently. “I know you did some remarkable work when you found your aunt’s missing papers, but you shouldn’t pat yourself on the back with such a resounding slap.”
“I wasn’t referring to myself particularly,” Hazel replied with a smile suggestive of “something more coming.” “I was referring principally to my very estimable Camp Fire chums, and of course it would look foolish for me to attempt to leave myself out of the compliment. I suppose I shall have to admit that I am a very classy girl, because if I weren’t, I couldn’t be associated with such a classy bunch—see? Either I have to be classy or accuse you other girls of being common like myself.”
“I’m quite content to be called common,” said Katherine.
“But I don’t think you are common, and that’s where the difficulty comes in.”
“Won’t you be generous and call me classy, and I’ll admit I’m classy to keep company with my classy associates, and you can do likewise and we can all be an uncommonly classy bunch of common folks.”
“If we could be talking a string of nonsense like this every time we meet Mr. Langford, we could throw him off the track as easy as scat,” said Hazel meditatively. “What do you say, Katherine?—let’s try it the next time he’s around: We’ll be regular imp—, inp— What’s the word—impromptu actors.”
“We mustn’t overdo it,” Katherine cautioned.
“Of course not. Why should we? We’ll do just as we did this time—let one idea lead on to another in easy, rapid succession. Think it over and whenever you get an idea pass it around, and we’ll be all primed for him. It’ll be lots of fun if we get him guessing, and be to our advantage, too.”
Hazel and Katherine reached the Point in time to see the motorboat containing the other members of the Fire approaching about a mile away. They did not know, of course, who were in the boat, and as it was deemed wise not to indulge in any demonstrations, no one on either side did any signalling; but they were not long in doubt as to who the passengers were. A flight of steps led from the top of the point to the landing, and the two advance spies, as they were now quite content to be called, walked down these and were waiting at the water’s edge when the boat ran up along the pile-supported platform.