The course of their boat soon suggested to her that they were to visit the small island that held the summer cottage. Yet, even as she reached this conclusion, she was given reasons for doubting it. Their course altered slightly. They were now headed for the end where the growth of cedar and birch reached to the water’s edge and where there was no sign of life. The cottage was many hundred feet from this spot.
“When one visits a place by water at night, one goes to the dock,” she told herself. “Where can we be going now?”
A rocky shoal extended for some little distance out from the point of the island. The light craft skirted this, then turned abruptly toward shore. A moment later it came to rest on a narrow, sandy beach.
“If you will please remain here for a very few moments,” said the lady of the island, “I shall be very grateful to you. Probably nothing will happen. Still, one never can tell. Should you catch a sound of commotion, or perhaps a scream, row away as speedily as possible and notify Deputy Sheriff Osterman at Rainy Creek at once. If I fail to return within the next half hour, do the same.”
“Why—er—”
Florence’s answer died on her lips. The mysterious one was gone.
“Who is she? Why are we here? What does she wish to know?” These and a hundred other haunting questions sped through the girl’s mind as she stood there alone in the dark, waiting, alert, expectant, on tiptoe, listening to the tantalizing lap-lap of water on the sandy shore.
A moment passed into eternity, another, and yet another. From somewhere far out over the dim-lit waters there came the haunting, long drawn hoot of a freighter’s foghorn.
Something stirred in the bush. She jumped; then chided herself for her needless fear.
“Some chipmunk, or a prowling porcupine,” she told herself.