"Did he see you?" Katherine inquired.
"He was looking right at me," Hazel replied; "and that look was full of suspicion and meaning. There's no doubt he's on our trail and suspects something of the nature of our mission."
"Oh don't let that bother you," Katherine advised. "There's no reason why he should jump to a conclusion just because you looked back at him. That needn't necessarily mean anything. But if you let it make you uneasy, you may give us dead away the next time you meet him."
"I believe he knows what our mission here is already," was Katherine's fatalistic answer.
"If that's the case, you needn't worry any more about what you do or say in his presence," said Hazel. "We might as well go to him and tell him our story and have it all over with."
"I don't agree with you," Katherine replied. "I believe that the worst chance we have to work against is the probability of suspicion on his part. I don't see how he can know anything positively. He probably merely learned of our intended departure for Twin Lakes and, knowing that the Grahams were spending the summer here, began to put two and two together. I figure that he followed us on his own responsibility."
"And that his visit at the Graham cottage today is to give them warning of our coming," Hazel added.
"Yes, very likely," Katherine agreed. "I'd like to hear the conversation that is about to take place in that house. I bet it would be very interesting to us."
"No doubt of it," said the other; "and it might prove helpful to us in our search for the information we were sent to get."
"Don't you think it strange, Hazel, that your aunt should select a bunch of girls like us to do so important a piece of work as this?" Katherine inquired. This question had puzzled her a good deal from the moment the proposition had been put to her. Although she had received it originally from Mrs. Hutchins even before the matter had been broached to Hazel, she had not questioned the wisdom of the move, but had accepted the role of advocate assigned to her as if the proceeding were very ordinary and commonsensible.