"I'm laying the cards face up, madam," repeated Kendrick solemnly. "My name is Kendrick—Philip Kendrick. I was on my way home when you—well, shanghaied me. Won't you meet me half way by equal frankness, so that we may avoid—well, any unpleasantness?"
"You mean—?" She had stopped laughing.
"That unless you answer legitimate questions I shall be forced to hand you over to the police."
"I warn you that you would regret it," she said quietly.
"Very much," agreed Kendrick readily. "I would be sorry to cause you any inconvenience; but surely you see how impossible it is for me to avoid being inquisitive under the circumstances. Are you going to be frank with me or not?"
She did not answer him immediately and he smiled to himself as he paddled in silence. For, if the truth must be told, Mr. Philip Kendrick was enjoying himself immensely. He had only the sound of her voice from which to draw deductions; but the cultured tones of it and the lilt of her low laughter bespoke an education and refinement with which he failed to reconcile the idea that she was a lady burglar. Yet——
He stopped paddling to listen intently. Several times now he had thought he heard a sound off in the darkness behind him. It came again—a slight hollow sound, as of a paddle scraping against a canoe. They were being followed. Had the girl heard it, too? He waited for the wail of the fog-horn to die away—and found her speaking.
"—frank with you, Mr. Kendrick," she was saying. "The circumstances are less extraordinary than they appear to you. My—husband and I were at a party at a friend's house on the Island. We paddled over in a canoe and Joe went ahead of me to locate it. In the dark I must have missed the spot where he was waiting for me and when you came along so silently and so close to the bank I naturally thought it was Joe. Ridiculously simple, you see."
"You have forgotten the launch," prompted Kendrick severely.
"I know nothing about the launch," she denied with resentment. "When I heard those people coming I thought it was some of the guests from the party who had said they would race us home. Will you please paddle on, Mr. Kendrick. It is damp and chilly in this fog and I am naturally in a hurry to get home."