"What did you tell him?" he asked.
Dickie laughed.
"I told him I wasn't any more anxious to receive callers at my home than he was at his."
Gregory wondered if the caustic answer to Bandrist might have been retailed for his own benefit. He reflected suddenly that Dickie Lang had never so much as intimated that he would be a welcome guest at her home. Well, there was no use dwelling on it now. He had never bothered the girl, and never would.
"Bandrist is no ordinary sheep-man," she went on. "And I know it. He's working some kind of a game over there that he doesn't want people to butt in on." She paused abruptly and her eyes narrowed. "I wonder," she began, but left her sentence unfinished as she noticed that Gregory was regarding her curiously.
"What?" he prompted.
"Nothing," she said. "Maybe some day I'll tell you. But not now."
Gregory knew her well enough to know that nothing could be gained by urging. During the silence that fell upon them the minds of both were working in parallel grooves, groping for a way of light to lighten the darkness of an unsolved mystery. When they reached the albacore banks and sighted the vanguard of the fishing fleet, both came back sharply, back from the maze of doubt and intangible suspicions which clouded their brains as the fog had clouded the island that held their thoughts.
Making the rounds of the albacore fishermen the truth of the girl's pessimistic prophecy became strik