The place was only a few yards from the mouth of the wood road. Trees and shrubs sheltered it, concealing with their rank growth a small wharf, rotted and sagging to the water line. The lantern rays revealed a recent presence, scattered leaves and twigs on the wooden planking, the long marshy grasses showing a track from the road to the wharf's edge.
"Yes, sir," said the native, much impressed; "some one's been here to-night and not s'long ago either. You can see where the dew's been swep' off the grasses right to the water."
Ferguson said nothing; he now saw the whole plan of escape—the coupé left in the woods, a short run to the cove where a boat had been concealed, the get-away down on across the Sound. What had the shots meant? Was the woman right in thinking the police patrol had come upon the fleeing criminal? And if they had what had been the result?
Lantern in hand, the man at his heels, he crushed through the swampy copse to the shore. There his glance swept the long stretch of the water, sewn in the distance with a pattern of moving sparks. Two of them, red and green, stole over the ebony surface toward him, advancing with an even, gliding smoothness, piercing and steady, like the eyes of a stealthily approaching animal, fixing him with a meaning scrutiny. He snatched up the lantern and ran for a point that jutted out in a pebbly cape. Standing on its tip he raised and waved the light, letting his voice ring out across the stillness:
"Boat ahoy!"
The lights drew closer, their reflections stabbing down into the oily depths, gleam below gleam. The pulsing of a muffled engine came with them, a prow took shape, a shine of wood and brass above the lusterless tide. Ferguson called again:
"Who are you?"
An answer rose in a man's surly voice:
"What's that to you?"
"A good deal. I'm Ferguson of Council Oaks and I'm looking for the boat that fired on some one round here about an hour ago."