“I don't know,” answered Colonel Ashley. “Mr. Young and I were talking in the library when we heard the scream. Then a woman rushed out.”
“It must have been Minnie Webb!” cried Viola. “She was here a moment ago. The maid told me she was waiting in the parlor, and I was detained upstairs. It must have been Minnie. But why did she scream so?”
Colonel Ashley did not stop to answer.
“Look after things here, Jack!” he called to his assistant. “I'm going to follow her. If ever there was a desperate woman she is.”
And he sped through the darkness after the figure in white.
CHAPTER XXII. THE LARGE BLONDE AGAIN
The trail was not a difficult one to follow. The night was particularly black, with low-hanging clouds which seemed to hold a threat of rain, and the wind sighed dolefully through the scrub pines. Against this dim murkiness the figure of the woman in white stood out ghostily.
“Poor Minnie Webb!” mused Colonel Ashley, as he hurried on after her. “She must be desperate now—after what she heard. I wonder—”
He did not put his wonder into words then, but his suspicion was confirmed as he saw her head for the bridge that spanned a creek, not far from where the ferry ran over to Loch Harbor.