"I know he is free; I have it on the best possible authority. The detectives who are searching for him have been here to see me—or, at least, one of them has."
The hunted one laid hold of the partial reprieve with a mighty grip and drew himself out of the reactionary whirlpool.
"To see you? Why should they trouble you?"
"On general man-hunting principles, I suppose," was the calm reply. "Since I gave the necessary information once, they seem to think I can give it again. It is very annoying."
"It is an outrage!" declared the listener warmly. And afterward, with only the proper friendly emphasis: "I hope it is an annoyance past."
His companion leaned forward in her chair and cautiously parted the leafy vine screen.
"Look across the street—under those trees at the water's edge: do you see him?"
Griswold looked and was reasonably sure that he could make out the shadowy figure of a man leaning against one of the trees.
"That is my shadow," she said, lowering her voice; "Mr. Matthew Broffin, of the Colburne Detective Agency, in New Orleans. He has a foolish idea that I am in communication with the man he is searching for, and he was brutal enough to tell me so. What he expects to accomplish by keeping an absurd watch upon our house and dogging everybody who comes and goes, I can't imagine."
"You have told your father?" said Griswold, anxious to learn how far this new alarm fire had spread.