Price took Bébita to Grasslands, handed her over to Annie and telephoned in to the Janneys. Then he left to rejoin Ferguson who was to go to the shore and find out the meaning of the shots. Price, missing the leading car, had decided that it had turned from the pike and scouring the side roads in a blind chase had heard the shots, agreeing with Ferguson that they came from the direction of the Sound. Ferguson went that way, driving at breakneck speed. He had almost reached the shore, felt the water’s coolness, saw the wood’s vista widen when, to avoid a deep rut, he slewed his machine to the left. The lights penetrated a thicket, revealing behind the woven foliage, a dark, large body, black among the tangled green. He drew up, peering at it—it was not a rock; its side showed smooth through the boughs. He jumped out and pushed his way through the bushes. It was a taxi, its lamps extinguished, broken branches and crushed foliage marking its track. It gave evidence of a violent flight and a hasty desertion, careened to one side, its door open, a rug hanging over the step. He went to the back, struck a match and looked at the license tag—the number was that of the motor he had followed. Covered by the darkness, driven deep among the trees, it could easily have passed unnoticed until the daylight betrayed it. The plan of escape revealed a new artfulness—the man had made off either on foot or in another vehicle. It accounted for the license—he knew his pursuers would mark it and look for a car carrying that number. In the face of such a crafty completeness of detail the young man felt himself reduced to a baffled indecision. Cogitating on the various routes his quarry might have taken, he ran out on to the shore road and here again halted. Before him the Sound lay, a smooth dark floor, along which glided the small golden glimmerings of river craft. He looked up and down the road, discernible as a gray path between the upstanding solidity of the woods and the flat solidity of the water. Some distance in front a black blot took shape under his exploring glance as a small house. He started the car and ran toward it, seeing as he approached a dancing yellow spot come from behind it in swaying passage. He stopped, the yellow spot steadied, rose, swung aloft—a lantern in the hands of a man, half dressed, who came toward him spying out from under the upraised glow. Ferguson spoke abruptly: "Did you hear shots a while ago?" The man setting his lantern on the ground, spoke with the slow phlegm of the native: "I did—close here. I bin down to the waterside seein’ if I could make out what they was." The house was skirted by a balcony along which a second light now came into view; this time from a lamp carried in the hand of a woman. She was wrapped in a bed gown, a straggle of loose hair hanging round a frightened face. "We was asleep and they woke us up. They was right off there," she jerked her head to the Sound behind her.