The man raised an eyebrow. “You know Dimitri, then?” he asked.
“Yes, indeed,” Sim answered. “We’re good friends.” She felt justified in saying that.
“I am a friend, too,” their caller replied as he got into the boat. “I’ll take very good care of your skiff and tie it up very carefully when I return.” He pushed off and began rowing easily down the bay. “Good-bye,” he called to the girls. “And thank you, a thousand times!”
“Good-bye,” Terry answered, while the others mumbled something.
They waited until he was out of sight, and then began the flood of “What do you think’s” and “Maybe’s.” But of course they all agreed on one thing. That he was very charming and well mannered and that perhaps all foreigners were that way. But they decided it was indeed queer the way Dimitri’s friends all came to them for advice on reaching the old houseboat. The newest caller gave rise to plenty of speculation, but the girls retired earlier than usual, and it was, perhaps, for this reason that Arden awoke sometime near morning, although it was still dark. Deciding she could not get back to sleep, she lay tossing restlessly.
The events of the day marched before her now active mind. The gold snuffbox, Olga, Tania, Dimitri, the man who had come that evening. It was all very puzzling. She turned over and looked at Sim, sleeping peacefully. Nothing bothered her. Arden sighed and then started. What was that noise? Another mysterious visitor? She strained every nerve to listen. Then she smiled as she realized it was the motor of an auto purring along. Going to the window, she saw the stranger’s car move slowly as it was started and disappear as it gathered speed. She looked at her wrist watch. The dial showed four-thirty, and he was just coming back from the houseboat!
“‘Curiouser and curiouser,’” Arden said to herself as she climbed back to bed. “Alice in Wonderland had nothing on me. I wonder, too.”
CHAPTER XII
A Friend in the Deep
“Well, Sim,” said Arden, stretching luxuriously, “I feel merry as a grig this morning.”
“You don’t say,” Sim replied with sarcasm. “I guess you haven’t looked outside then. I think we’re in for a storm. What is a grig, anyway?”