On one of these occasions he found himself unexpectedly in the rear of Lucy's cottage. As he retained lingering suspicions of the Jamaica colored woman it seemed to Forrester an opportune time to pay her another visit. He walked around the end of the building through the neglected, weed-grown clearing to the door and knocked. No noisy dog greeted him this time, and in the quiet and gloomy woods the place seemed to exhale an atmosphere of insidious mystery. He knocked twice before Lucy opened the door and stood as he remembered her before—silent, distrustfully observant, her peculiar eyes with their oddly drooping lids vaguely suggestive of furtive evil.
"Good afternoon," Forrester greeted her, cheerfully.
"You here again?" and a scowl added to the forbidding aspect of her face.
"Yes; after more news," replied Forrester.
She smiled sneeringly, and Forrester suspected that she was now well aware that he was not connected with a newspaper.
"Well, what sort of news do you want this time?" she snapped.
An inspiration came to Forrester. Perhaps if aroused and angered she might let something slip. "Your opinion of the detectives and police," he answered.
The effect was contrary to his anticipations. She smiled, her face assuming a more cheerful expression than he had ever seen upon it.
"Stupid fools!" she said, briefly, emphasizing in two words of similar import, the depth of her contempt for the representatives of the law. It was a revelation to Forrester, which, more than anything else, influenced some of his subsequent actions.
"What has become of your dog?" he asked. "I missed his friendly reception."