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"Quick !" cried Colonel Ashley. "Who was that?"

"I don't know!" answered Jack. "Must have been the person I thought I heard in the hall."

"We must find out who it was!" went on the detective. "You make some inquiries. I'll take after her."

"Could it have been Miss Viola?"

The question was answered almost as soon as it was asked, for, at that moment, Viola herself came down the front stairs.

"What is it?" she asked the two detectives. "Who cried out like that? Is some one hurt?"

"I don't know," answered Colonel Ashley. "Mr. Young and I were talking in the library when we heard the scream. Then a woman rushed out."

"It must have been Minnie Webb!" cried Viola. "She was here a moment ago. The maid told me she was waiting in the parlor, and I was detained upstairs. It must have been Minnie. But why did she scream so?"

Colonel Ashley did not stop to answer.

"Look after things here, Jack!" he called to his assistant. "I'm going to follow her. If ever there was a desperate woman she is."

And he sped through the darkness after the figure in white.

CHAPTER XXII

THE LARGE BLONDE AGAIN

The trail was not a difficult one to follow. The night was particularly black, with low-hanging clouds which seemed to hold a threat of rain, and the wind sighed dolefully through the scrub pines. Against this dim murkiness the figure of the woman in white stood out ghostily.

"Poor Minnie Webb!" mused Colonel Ashley, as he hurried on after her. "She must be desperate now - after what she heard. I wonder - "

He did not put his wonder into words then, but his suspicion was confirmed as he saw her head for the bridge that spanned a creek, not far from where the ferry ran over to Loch Harbor.

At certain times this creek was not deep enough to afford passage for small rowboats, but when the tide was in there was draught enough for motor launches.

"And the tide is in now," mused the colonel, as he remembered passing among the sand dunes late that afternoon, and noting the state of the sea. "Too bad, poor little woman!" he added gently, as he followed her. "Not so fast! Not so fast! There is no need of rushing to destruction. It comes soon enough without our going out to meet it. Poor girl!"

He went on through the darkness, following, following, following distracted Minnie, who, with the fateful words still ringing in her ears, hardly knew whither she hurried.

Colonel Ashley, in spite of the desperate manner in which the chase had begun, felt that he was safe from observation. He had on dark clothes, which did not contrast so strongly with the night as did the light and filmy dress of Minnie Webb. Besides, she was too distracted to notice that she was being followed.

"She is going to the bridge, and the tide is in," mused the detective. "I didn't think she had that much spunk - for it does take spunk to attempt anything like this in the dark. However, I'll try to get there as soon as she does."

The fleeing girl in white passed over an open moor, fleeced here and there with scanty bushes, which gave the detective all the cover he needed. But the girl did not look back, and the night was dark. The clouds were thicker too, and the very air seemed so full of rain that an incautious movement would bring it spattering about one's head, as a shake of a tree, after a shower, precipitates the drops.

And then there suddenly loomed, like grotesque shadows on the night, two other figures at the very end of the bridge that Minnie Webb sought to cross. They seemed to bar her way, and yet they were as much startled as she, for they drew back on her approach.

And Colonel Ashley, stealing his way up unseen, heard from Minnie Webb the startled ejaculation:

"LeGrand! You here? And who - who is this?"

Then, as if in defiance, or perhaps to see who the challenger was, the figure standing beside that of LeGrand Blossom flashed a little pocket electric torch. And by the gleam of it Colonel Ashley saw the large blonde woman again.

"Morocco Kate!" he murmured. "So she is mixed up in it after