"He must have come home, and Ma sent him here to help capture me!" she thought. "If I swim out now, I'll certainly be caught."
Crouching down so that her nose was just above the water, she waited. Claude Harper rowed on, resting upon his oars when perhaps ten yards away.
"Joe!" he called.
There was an answering shout from the center of the grass patch.
"That gal's somewhere close by!" Sweeper Joe shouted in warning. "She upset our boat. Stay where you are, and see that she doesn't slip past you!"
Thus warned, Claude Harper began to survey the grass patch intently. He looked hard at the place where Penny stood. She was certain he had seen her, but after a moment, he turned slightly, and his eyes roved on.
As she hesitated, not knowing what to do, Sweeper Joe and Clark Clayton, who had bailed out their boat, came paddling out to meet Harper. Wet and plastered with mud, they had lost one of the paddles.
"If you ain't sights!" Harper cackled upon seeing them. He slapped his thigh in glee. "You look like a couple o' stupid mud turtles!"
"Fool!" rasped Sweeper Joe. "Don't you have sense enough to figure what will happen if that girl gets away from us?"
"You ain't goin' back to no job at the Gandiss factory. Nor Clayton neither!"
"It's a lot more serious than that!" Joe snapped. He guided the boat alongside Harper's craft. "Why do you think I took that job in the first place, and spent better than two years studyin' the Gandiss factory layout? I lined up the employes we could get to go along with us, got everything organized--and now this gal has to bust up the show just as the profits begin to roll in!"
"Better pipe down," Harper warned curtly. "She can hear you, and so can everyone else on the river."
"What's the difference?" Joe argued in disgust. "We're through. I'm gettin' out of this town tonight!"
"Me with you," added Clark Clayton. "Ever since Gandiss put detectives on the job, I figured the game was gettin' too dangerous."
Now it was Claude Harper who lost his temper. "Hold on," he said warningly. "It's all right for you guys to blow town, but what about me and the wife?"
"You can do what you please," Joe retorted.
"We got your brass cached in our basement. If the cops should find it there, we'd take the rap."
"Get rid of it."
"That's a lot easier said than done. Besides, that brass is worth a tidy sum o' money."
"Then why not sell it tonight?" Joe proposed suddenly. "If we can get it to the junkman who has a place across from the factory, he'll pay us a good price. We can complete the deal, and still get out of town before midnight."
"That's okay for you," Harper argued, "but Ma and I own property here, and we got a good business."
"It was your stupid wife's stocking business that got us into this jam!" Clark Clayton snarled.
"I ain't talkin' about that. I mean our dance hall. We clean up about a hundred bucks every Saturday night."
"You should have thought about that before you went in with us," Joe retorted. "You knew the risks you were taking. Anyway, this mess was your wife's making."
A silence fell, and then Clark Clayton said: "We ain't gettin' nowhere. We got to decide what we're goin' to do, and we got to make sure that gal don't get out o' this weed patch until we've arranged our escape."
In whispers, the men conferred. Though Penny strained her ears, she could not catch a single word. However, a plan satisfactory to the three seemed to have been formulated, for presently, the two boats separated.
Sweeper Joe and Clark Clayton paddled off, heading for the pier at the Harpers'. The other man remained in his rowboat, unquestionably detailed to keep watch of the grass patch and prevent the girl's escape.
To amuse himself, he began to call out to her, though he could not see her or know where she was.
"You think you're a clever one!" he taunted. "But you jest wait! We'll get you out o' there, and when we do, you ain't goin' to like it!"
