“Maybe he will. But you never can tell.”
That was one time when Lucile was right; in this queer old world you never can tell.
When Florence returned from the university the shades of night were already falling. There was, however, sufficient light to enable her to follow the track of the sled she had seen the night before. This track led straight across the park to the beach, then along the beach in the direction of the dry dock. A few hundred yards from the dry dock it turned suddenly to the left and was at once lost among the tumbled masses of ice, where no trace of it could be found.
“Sled might be hidden out there,” she mused.
For a time she contemplated going out in search of it. When, however, she realized that it was growing quite dark, and recalled Lucile’s unpleasant experience of the night before, she decided not to venture.
“If they come back to the beach again,” she told herself, “I can pick up their tracks in the snow farther down.”
Walking briskly, she covered the remaining distance to the spot on the beach opposite the O Moo.
“Not yet,” she whispered, and climbing over the trestle she made her way on down the beach. Her eyes were always on the ground. Now she climbed a trestle, now walked round an anchor frozen into the sand, but always her eyes returned to the tracks in the snow. Tracks enough there were, footprints of men, but never a trace of a sled leaving the ice.
She had gone a considerable distance when she became conscious of some person not far away. On looking up she was startled to note that she had reached a point opposite the great black scow where the Orientals lived.
At the end of the scow stood a man. His face disfigured by a scowl, he stood watching her. He was dressed in the black gownlike garb of the Chinese. He wore a queue. There was, however, something strange about his face. She fancied she had seen him somewhere before, but where she could not tell.