"You mean you do not wish to be driven," said the other, with sarcasm. "But he will reach you." "Let him try." "You make my duty very unpleasant," said the dark man, in a different tone. "You know that what I am told to do I must do." "Yes. I know your kind," returned Bassett, not without a sneer. "If the lion hunts, the jackal follows the trail." "Is that the best word you have for a man who would be your friend, Mr. Bassett?" exclaimed the secretary, with anger. "I think it is," Bassett said coldly. "I doubt your friendship, Inness. I have always doubted it. And I don't feel like being driven from pillar to post by anybody. If I suffer him to do this to me now, he'll do it again if he feels so inclined. If he is going to hound me, let him begin it here--around New York, where he is known and I am known. You can give him that word, if you like." "I tell you right now," Inness returned warmly, "that if you try to establish yourself in any way on this island, for instance, he will ruin you, and whoever you are in partnership with." "It was quite unintentional, I assure you, that I selected this island to live on. He never used to come here. With half a dozen summer homes to select from, what brings him to Block Island, I wonder?" "It is his wife, I believe. She doesn't care for the old places," said the secretary. "Oh!" and Bassett turned away his face that the other should not see its expression. After a moment Inness said: "I'd like a straight answer, Mr. Joe. Will you take this chance I--_we_--offer you?" "You have had a straight answer. It is, 'No.'" Bassett turned on his heel and pushed on along the patrol path toward the Ball cottage. The secretary and René stood for a minute whispering and looking after him before they moved in the opposite direction. The seafog was now trailing in long whisps over the edge of the bluff. The night was falling. Not until the two were quite hidden in the mist did Carolyn May come out of hiding. She had not heard much of what passed between the secretary and Joe Bassett, and she had not understood what it signified at all. But she felt that she could not join Baby Laird's father on the way home. Besides, if the baby's father was mixed up with that dark-complexioned man whom she so disliked, she felt that she could speak to nobody regarding this meeting on the patrol path. It did not, however, cause her to forget the ten thousand dollars she had heard the secretary and René talking about earlier in the day. To Carolyn, who loved to play the game of "If I Were Rich," ten thousand dollars opened a vista of possibilities that fed her imagination for several days. She had gained the impression from what the two men had said that her friend at the Orowoc House had lost the ten thousand dollars. She wondered if he knew he had lost it. Perhaps he had so much money that he couldn't count it all, and he had not yet missed the ten thousand in question.