“Their camp is just over there,” she told herself, nodding toward the little island that lay across the bay. “But if I find them; if they meet Jeanne face to face, what then?”
Who could answer this question? Certainly it was beyond her. There were times when she felt certain that this gypsy band had come to America for the purpose of revenge; that they had somehow secured possession of a speed boat, had perhaps stolen it, and that it had been they who tipped over the rowboat and had come near drowning Jeanne on that other night.
Just now she was not so sure of this. “If they stole a speed boat they would not dare remain so long in one place,” she thought. “But, after all, what other motive can they have for remaining in this vicinity?” What, indeed? They were not to be seen at the village, nor along the shore selling baskets and telling fortunes as gypsies are accustomed to do. Yet they did not go away.
“If they did not run us down, who did?” she asked herself for the hundredth time. She all but hated herself for clinging so tenaciously to this question.
She thought of the rich people who lived on Erie Point. At first she had blamed them for the near catastrophe—had thought of it as a cruel prank. The lady cop’s opinion of rich young people had cast a deep shadow upon this theory. Still she had not wholly abandoned it.
Then, of course, there were the people on Gamblers’ Island. The lady cop had said she believed someone had mistaken their boat for hers. “That would mean that they know she is after them, and they wish to destroy her,” she reasoned. “And yet she hides from them as if they knew nothing about her. It’s all very puzzling.”
She recalled her latest visit to the lady cop’s cabin. They had been seated by the lady cop’s fire when Tillie said, “O-oo! How thrilling to be the friend of a lady detective!”
“It may be thrilling,” Miss Weightman had replied, “but you must not forget that it is dangerous, too.”
“Dangerous!” Tillie had stared.
“The crook, the lawbreaker is sought by the detective,” the lady cop had continued soberly. “Too often the tables are turned. The detective is hunted by the crook. There is an age-long war between the law and the breakers of the law.”