The Rocket had swung far out into the middle of the stream and under the increasingly expert hand of Frank Allen, it turned its nose toward Columbia, past the dredge which was cutting a channel close to one of the islands, and, as the golden glow of the sun fell aslant the quiet waters of the Harrapin, they were started for home, weary of the day’s picnic, but wide awake, all of them, to the new things which had opened up in this quick exchange of words.
At the bow of the boat, Paul, Lanky, and Ralph were close together, whispering exchanges about the most recent happening.
“What do you think Frank knows?” Paul was asking.
“I don’t think he knows any more than we do,” answered Lanky. “But he made a wild guess, and he seems to have struck home. This fellow Cunningham knows a whole lot more than we have been thinking he does.”
At the cockpit Frank and Minnie were standing.
“Yes,” he replied to her question, “it had something to do with the Parsons robbery, but I don’t know just yet what its real significance is.”
“Why so mysterious about it, Frank? You know I am not going to say anything.”
“Well, Minnie, you tell me what you have heard. Tell me what Cunningham has told you about me, and then maybe I can put two and two together.”
“He hasn’t talked about you, Frank. You know very well that I would never stand for anything of that kind.”
Frank had hoped that he would learn something that Fred might have said about him in an effort to hurt him in the eyes of Minnie Cuthbert, but now it appeared that he had been too careful or too shrewd to say anything, or that Minnie was hiding something from him—and he did not believe the latter.