"I did. I told her I was lost and asked her where I had come down. She told me, after a while. That is, she gave me a general idea in what direction Danbury lay and about how far away from town we were. But I thought at the time that she was awfully cagy and tight with her information."
"In other words, she didn't seem especially glad to see you?"
"That's it. Instead of inviting me ashore and up to the house for a meal, she wanted to know how long I was likely to be on the lake--and then she beat it back to the house. Naturally, I thought it queer she should be so inhospitable and stand-offish. People are usually interested anyway, when a plane arrives unexpectedly in their neighborhood--too darn interested, if anything. Still, I didn't think much about her, then. I had the information I wanted, and after changing a couple of sparkplugs, I took off and made New Canaan via Danbury without any more trouble."
"Did you see anyone besides the girl with the red hair?"
"Not a soul."
"And you've been back since the robbery, I think you said?"
"Several times. But the place has been deserted and the house locked up tighter than a drum."
There was a long pause.
"Why do you think the gang are there now?" asked Dorothy. "Simply because we saw the lame man take the Ridgefield road?"
"This is the way I figured." They had passed through the little town of Brewster, heading north, some minutes before. Now Bill turned the car off the state highway and on to a winding dirt road full of deep ruts that he knew ran far into the wooded hill country to the northeast. "It is my idea," he continued, slowing down to a bare twenty-mile pace, "that after the robbery, that gang scattered and laid low for a while. They didn't go to the house, that I do know. After you went to bed that night, I drove up here to have a look-see. Nobody home, as I've told you. But they couldn't have a better place for headquarters. There isn't a house anywhere round that neck of the woods. Sooner or later, they're bound to meet there. The loot has got to be divided. Seeing our lame friend headed in that direction this evening makes me doubly certain. I've kept it to myself, because if that army of detectives who are on this case started camping out near the house on a watchful waiting spree, those crooks would be sure to spot them and never show up."