"That's the very reason I'm cautioning you. Besides, who has a better right to do so than your guardian?"
They both laughed at the joke, then Elsa said: "When we talk to each other, let's telegraph. It takes longer, but not so many people can understand what we say. Since you installed our wireless telephone, everybody in the neighborhood has been getting one."
"All right, we'll telegraph. I'll call you up as soon as Arlington is done sending. Then you'll know that the bogey man hasn't got me yet. But seriously, Elsa, there isn't a particle of danger. Now I must hustle back to the Osprey or I may not get my wireless rigged up in time."
Could Alec have seen ahead through the darkness that was fast enfolding the world, he would not have felt so sure about the absence of danger. Once before he had thought himself safe when death stalked close to his heels.
CHAPTER XVIII A LONG CHASE
Not until Alec said good night to Elsa and started back to the Osprey, did he realize how dark it was becoming. He had ridden all the way home with Elsa in her car, despite her protest that it wasn't necessary. But he left her at her door and started back at top speed. He had just missed a trolley-car, and there would not be another for an hour. If he hurried, he could walk back as soon as the next trolley-car could get him there. So he tramped rapidly along. He could distinguish the light, sandy road, but that was about all he could see.
Alec had moored the Osprey at a little float some distance from the pier shed. It was much easier to get on this float from a tiny boat like the Osprey than it would have been to crawl up to the piers. The float itself was merely a small staging made of one or two large timbers with planks nailed across them to form a walk. This plank walk was only a few inches above the tide. So it was perfectly easy for Elsa to step out on the float. From the float itself, a narrow walk made of single planks laid end to end, and supported on cross-beams fastened to pilings driven in the mud, led upward from the river to the solid ground. A single rope, fastened along one side of this foot-bridge, was the only protection against falling off the planks.