CHAPTER XXVIMR. GORDON AGAIN
Once that summer Nancy plucked up courage to go in to Cincinnati from Jennie’s home, and called upon Mr. Gordon. She did not tell him to expect her, but bearded the lion as she had once before.
Jennie went with her, of course; only she remained waiting in a tea-room near the big office building where the lion had his lair. Even Scorch was amazed to see Nancy Nelson, dressed in her best and outwardly composed, walk into the outer office of Ambrose, Necker & Boles.
“Such a shock!” gasped Scorch, pretending to faint away in his chair beside the gate in the railing. “And, say! Miss Nancy, how tall you’re getting!”
“So are you, Scorch,” she told him, holding out her hand.
“And good-looking—My eye!”
“Your hair is a whole shade darker, Scorch.”
“You couldn’t say nothing handsomer, Miss—not if you tried for a week,” declared the office boy, shaking hands vigorously. “What’s turnedup? Are you going to crack the whip over Old Gordon?”
“How you talk, Scorch! You mustn’t be so disrespectful. And why should I crack any whip over Mr. Gordon?”
“You will when you get the best of him—eh?”
“I certainly shall not. He—he’s been very kind to me, as far as I know.”
“Go in and see if he’s kind now,” grinned the red-haired one.
“Oh, no, Scorch! You announce me.”
“Yah! you’re too easy on him,” growled Scorch, and went off to do as he was bid. When he came back he didn’t look very pleasant.
“He says you can come in,” snapped Scorch.
“What’s the matter?” asked Nancy, a little fearfully.
“He acts like a bear with a sore head trying to open a honey tree. He’ll eat you alive, Miss Nancy.”
“All right. The banquet might as well begin right now,” returned the girl, bound not to show how shaky she really was.
So she walked directly to Mr. Gordon’s door, knocked lightly, and without waiting for any encouragement, walked in upon the big man in the armchair before the flat table.
Again he was silent, but Nancy knew that he was looking at her in the mirror. Nancy was very glad, for a moment, that she was looking her best. She flushed a little, took another step forward, and said:
“How do you do, Mr. Gordon?”
“What do you want now?” demanded the lawyer, ungraciously.
“I want you to see me and tell me if you are satisfied with my progress, sir,” she said, boldly, as she had intended.
“Humph! I receive reports from the woman who runs that school.”
“But you don’t know how I look—how much I’ve grown.”
“Come around here, then, and let’s look at you,” he growled, although he had been staring at her, she knew, since the moment she entered the office.
His big face was quite as expressionless as it had been nearly two years before when she first remembered having seen it. If the little eyes showed any expression when she first entered it was now hidden.
“You look like a well-grown girl—for your age,” he said, with some hesitation. “What do you want?”
“To know if you can tell me anything moreabout myself—or my people—or what is to become of me when my schooling is done?”
“I can tell you nothing,” he replied, his brows drawing together.
“I have learned typewriting, and I am excellent in spelling, and Miss Meader is teaching me stenography,” she said, simply. “If—if the money should—should stop coming any time, I thought I would better know how to go about supporting myself.”
“Ha!” He stared at her then with some emotion which sent a quick wave of color into his unhealthy cheek.
“What’s that for?” he demanded, at last.
“What is what for, sir?”
“Your getting ready to earn your livelihood?”
“You say you do not know anything about the source of my income. It may stop any time.”
“Well?”
“Then wouldn’t it be necessary for me to go to work?”
“You wouldn’t want to take money fromme, then?” he snapped.
“Why, I—I—You say you’re not even my guardian. I’ve no reason to expect anything from you if the money stops coming. Isn’t that so?”
“Independent—eh?” he said, with a brief chuckle.
“I hope to be able to get along when I have to.”
“Whenyou have to?”
“IfI have to, then,” she said, nodding.
“Well! Maybe you’re right. No knowing what might happen,” he said, as though ruminating. “Say! Anybody ever talk to you about this money I have to spend on you?”
“No-o, sir. Only my chum and I talk about it,” said Nancy, slowly.
“Curious, I suppose?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Nancy, slowly. “And yet, it is more than curiosity. Suppose my—mother was alive—or, my father——”
“Ha!”
Mr. Gordon passed a big hand over his big face. He smoothed out something there—either a wry smile or a spasm of pain.
“Suppose, instead, you had a bad-tempered step-mother, or a drunken brute of an uncle, or a miser of a grandfather, or some other evilly-conditioned relative. Wouldn’t you rather be as you are than to know such relatives?”
He looked at her sharply.
“We-ell—yes—perhaps——”
“Ha! you don’t know how well off you are,” grunted Mr. Gordon. “Well! I’m busy. What more do you want?”
“No—nothing, sir,” said Nancy, disappointedly.
“Want some more money for your vacation? Those Bruce people must be very fond of you to keep you so long for nothing.”
“They are very kind.”
“There is money here for you if you want it,” said the lawyer, carelessly. “You want nothing?”
“I—I’d like to see Miss Trigg again. She was kind to me—in her way.”
“Who is Miss Trigg?” he demanded.
Nancy explained. He reached into his pocket, selected some bills, and gave her more money than she had ever had at one time before.
“Go on back there to Malden and see your old teacher, if you like. Take the Bruce girl with you. Now, good-bye. I’m busy.”
He was just as brusk and as brief of speech as he had been before. Nancy went away, again deeply disappointed. But she and Jennie went to Malden that week and visited Miss Trigg at Higbee School. Miss Prentice was with a party visiting the Yosemite; but poor Miss Trigg never got away from the Endowment.
The good, wooden, middle-aged woman was really glad to see the girl who had spent so many tedious summer vacations in her care. She triedto be tender and affectionate to Nancy; but the poor lady didn’t know how.
The girls had a nice time about Malden, however. Nancy took her chum to the millpond, where the water-lilies grew, and showed her where Bob Endress had come so near being drowned in the millrace.
Jennie grew very romantic over this place.
“Just think, Nance! Suppose, years and years from now, after you’ve finished at college, and Bob Endress has got through college, too, you should come here to see Miss Trigg, and he should come here, too, and you should meet right here walking in this path.
“Wouldn’t that be just like a storybook?”
“Nonsense, Jen!” exclaimed Nancy, laughing.
But sometimes, after all, the story books are like real life. And if Nancy had had fairy glasses that she might look ahead the “years and years” Jennie had spoken of, how amazed she would have been to see two figures—identical with her own and Bob’s—walking here in the twilight!
But girls of the age of Nancy Nelson and Jennie Bruce are usually much too hearty of appetite, and wholesome of being, to be romantic—for long at a time, anyway.
The chums were as wild as hares that summer. They ran free in the woods, and went fishing withJennie’s brothers, and “camped out” over night on the edge of the pond, and learned all manner of trick swimming, including the removal of some of their outer clothing in the water.
“We’re not going to be caught again as we were there in Clinton River, when our boat sank,” declared Nancy, and Jennie agreed.
When they went back to Pinewood Hall they were as brown as Indians, and as strong and wiry as wolves. Miss Etching complimented them on the good the summer seemed to have done them.
Now came the time when Nancy Nelson and her chum “went higher” in more ways than one. They were full-fledged juniors, and they had to give up old Number 30, West Side, which they both loved, to incoming freshies.
They drew Number 83—a lovely room, much larger than their old one and more sumptuously furnished. It had a double door, too, and the walls were almost sound-proof.
“What a lovely room to study in!” cried Nancy.
“And a great one to hold ‘orgies’ in,” whispered Jennie, her eyes twinkling.
So they determined, a week after school opened, to have “a house-warming.” Nancy had a good part of her spending money, given to her by Mr. Gordon during vacation, left in her purse. Theyinvited twenty of their closest friends of the junior class and, as Jennie expressed it, “just laid themselves out” for a fine spread.
There was to be fudge, too, which Nancy had the knack of making. The chums had a chafing dish hidden away, and this was brought forth and the ingredients made ready, while Nancy hovered over the dish like a gray-robed witch.
“Do you know what Cora Rathmore said?” chattered one of the visitors.
“Everything but her prayers!” declared Jennie, with sarcasm.
“No, no! about this racket to-night.”
“Didn’t know she knew we were going to have a house-warming,” said Jennie, looking up quickly. “I hope not!”
“Shedoesknow,” said another girl.
“Then somebody must have told,” declared Nancy, warmly. “We tried to keep it very quiet.”
“And from Cora, too!” said Jennie, shaking her head.
“Well! she said you were just too mean for anything when you did not ask her—and she right on this corridor,” said the first speaker.
“Well, wouldn’t that jar you?” commented Jennie Bruce.
“And she said she hoped you’d get caught,” pursued the other girl.
“Wow, wow, says the fox!” exclaimed Jennie. “What do you think of that, now, Nance?”
“I think if wearecaught we’ll know whom to blame it to,” responded her chum, decidedly.
“My goodness me! Do you suppose she would be so mean?” cried another of the visiting juniors.
“There’s nothing too mean for Cora to try,” answered Jennie.
“And I saw her outside her room just as I came in here!” exclaimed another girl.
“Oh, me, oh, my!” cried Jennie. “I’ve got to go and see to this.”
She dashed out of the room, leaving the other girls in a delightful tremor. She was gone but a moment.
“Oh, girls! Scatter!” she gasped, when she stuck her head in at the door again. “Cora’s out of her room and there’s somebody coming up the lower flight.”
“The Madame herself!” gasped Nancy.
The other girls grabbed handfuls of the good things, and ran. The fudge was not quite done.
“Quick! Out of the window with it!” gasped Jennie, seizing the handle of the pan.
“But she’ll smell it!” wailed Nancy.
“Will she? Not much!” declared Jennie, and grabbing a rubber shoe from the closet held it for thirty seconds over the flame of the alcohol lamp.
Nancy, meanwhile, had been hiding away all the goodies. The candy, pan and all, had gone out of the window. Nothing but the awful stench of the rubber shoe could be smelled when the lights went out, and the girls hopped lightly into bed.
“Rat, tat, tat!” on the door.
Jennie yawned, rolled over, and yawned again.
“Rat, tat, tat!”
“Oh, yes’m!” cried Jennie, bouncing up.
“Nancy Nelson! Nancy Nelson’s wanted!” exclaimed the sleepy voice of Madame Schakael’s maid, who slept downstairs.
“Oh, dear, me! What’s happened?” demanded Nancy, unable to carry out the farce now. This was not what the girls had expected.
“Wanted down in the office, Miss. Telegram. The Madame wants to see you right away.”
The maid went away.
“What do you suppose has happened?” demanded Nancy of her chum.
“It isn’t anything about fudge,” groaned Jennie. “I’m sorry I told you to throw the fudge out of the window. And I’ve spoiled a perfectly good rubber!”
“I must run down. Come with me, Jen!”
“All right,” agreed her chum, and together the two girls in their flannel robes scuttled out ofNumber 83 and down the two flights to the lower hall.
There was a light in the principal’s office. When Nancy and Jennie went in Madame Schakael was sitting at her broad desk. It was not yet midnight.
“I was sorry to break up your party, Nancy,” said the little lady, with a quiet smile. “But it seemed necessary.”
“Oh, Madame! did you know——”
“I was kindly told by one of your classmates,” said the Madame, grave again. “I am sorry it so happened. I do not encourage meannesses of any kind at Pinewood Hall. The tattler is one of the most abominable of our trials.
“As for the breaking of the rules by girls who wish to stuff themselves with goodies after hours, I have little to say. A junior who is president of her class, and on the road to being one of our most prominent pupils, knows best what she wishes to do.”
“Oh, Madame! Forgive me!” begged Nancy, greatly troubled. And even Jennie saw nothing humorous in the incident.
“You are forgiven, Miss Nelson,” said Madame Schakael, cheerfully. “I expect, however, my junior and senior girls to help rather than hinder the general deportment of the school. And‘orgies’ after hours do not set the younger girls a good example.
“However,” said the principal, kindly, “this was not my object in calling you down, as I said before. A telegram has arrived for you. I do not understand it, but perhaps you will. Here is the evening paper—it in part solves the mystery. But who, my dear, signs himself or herself ‘Scorch’?”
“Scorch!” gasped both Nancy and Jennie together.
The Madame pushed the yellow slip of paper toward the startled Nancy. She read at a glance what it contained:
“Come to Garvan’s Hotel at once. G. in bad way. See P. & O. accident.—Scorch.”
“Scorch is Mr. Gordon’s office boy,” said Nancy, trembling.
“And ‘G.’ stands for Mr. Gordon,” whispered Jennie, looking over her chum’s shoulder.
The Madame had rustled open the paper and now displayed the front page to the eyes of the girls. Spread upon it was the account of a terrible accident on the P. & O. Railroad. At the top of the list of injured, printed in black type, was:
“Henry Gordon, lawyer, Cincinnati, seriously.”
CHAPTER XXVIITHE MAN IN GRAY AGAIN
“Do you understand it, Nancy?” asked the principal, quietly.
“Oh, yes, Madame!”
“I suppose it is natural for them to send for you if your guardian is hurt?”
“Scorch would be sure to send for me,” whispered the girl, nodding.
“Scorch?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“A very peculiar name, Nancy.”
“He—he is a peculiar boy. But I know him. I have been to his home. He is my friend.”
“And Garvan’s Hotel?”
“Is where Mr. Gordon lives. He is a bachelor.”
“Ah! Then I presume it is all right. But to go to Cincinnati at night—there is a train in an hour——”
“Dear Madame Schakael!” cried Jennie. “Let me go with her. I’ll take care of her.”
“She’s better able to take care of you, I think,Miss Flyaway,” observed the Madame, with a smile.
“We’ll take care of each other, then,” said Jennie, promptly. “I’ll wire my father, or my brother John. They’ll come in to the city to meet us to-morrow morning.”
“That may be a good way to handle the matter,” said the principal, accepting Jennie’s suggestion with relief. “Miss Nelson should go at once, I believe. I’ll ’phone Samuel at the stables and have him here at the door with the light cart before you girls can possibly get ready. Each of you pack a bag—and pack sensibly. Be off with you!” commanded the little woman, handling the matter with her customary energy, once her decision was made.
Nancy and Jennie ran up to their room once more. The whole house was still now, especially on the junior floor.
Only they thought they saw Cora Rathmore’s door ajar.
“That’s the nasty cat who told!” hissed Jennie, as she and her chum began to dress.
“Never mind. We won’t do it again, Jennie. We were wrong.”
“I suppose we were. But, Nance!”
“What is it, dear?”
“I hate like time to have to be an example forthe greenies and sophs.,” wailed Jennie, cramming things into her traveling bag quite recklessly.
The girls were ready for their strange journey in twenty minutes. There was no dawdling over dressing on this occasion. When they returned to the Madame’s office Samuel was just bringing the dog-cart to the door.
“Are you warmly dressed, girls?”
“Yes, indeed, Madame.”
“Have you sufficient money?”
“I have nearly ten dollars,” said Nancy.
“And I have half as much,” added Jennie.
“Here is twenty more,” said the Madame, putting it into Nancy’s hand. “Your guardian, Mr. Gordon, has always left a sum for emergencies in my hand. It seems he has been very liberal. I hope, Nancy, that you will find him not so seriously injured as the circumstances seem to suggest.”
She kissed them both warmly and went to the hall door with them.
“Get their tickets and see them aboard the train. Speak to the conductor about them, Samuel,” she said to the under gardener.
“Indeed I will, Madame,” replied the good fellow.
As they rattled down to the lodge gates, the door of the little cottage opened and Jessie Pease hurried out in her night wrapper.
“Wait! Wait, Samuel!” she called, and held up a little basket. “You’ll be hungry on the train, girls. Some chicken sandwiches, and olives, and odds and ends that I managed to pick up after the Madame telephoned to me about your trouble.
“I hope it isn’t so bad as it looks, Nancy. And take care of her, Janie—that’s a good lassie!”
“Oh! aren’t folks justgood!” exclaimed Nancy to her chum, as Samuel drove on. “It just seems as though theydolike me a little.”
“Huh! everybody’s crazy about you, Nance! You ought to know that,” returned Jennie. “I don’t see what a girl who’s made so many friends needs of a family—or of money, either. Don’t worry.”
But Nancy wiped a few tears away. Never before had she appreciated the fact that here at Pinewood Hall she had made many dear and loving friends. “Miss Nobody from Nowhere” was just as important as anybody else in the whole school.
Samuel drove almost recklessly through the streets of Clintondale in order to make the night train that stopped but a moment at the station. They were in good season, however, and the man put them, with their bags and the basket, aboard.
It would not have paid to engage sleepingberths at that hour. The two girls had comfortable seats, and of course, were too excited to wish to sleep. Jennie proceeded to open the lunch basket at once, however.
“No knowing when we’ll get a chance to eat again,” declared Nancy’s lively chum, who was enjoying to the full the opening of this strange campaign.
What should they first do when they reached the city? Would the hotel be open so early in the morning? Would Scorch be at the station to meet them?
And this question brought Nancy to another thought. Scorch had not been communicated with.
So she wrote a reply to his message, saying that she and Jennie, were coming to Cincinnati and were then on the train, and had the brakeman file it for sending at the first station beyond Clintondale at which the train stopped.
She addressed it to Scorch O’Brien’s home, believing that it might reach him more quickly in that way. She did not suppose that the red-haired youth would be allowed to remain at Garvan’s Hotel over night.
As it chanced, it was a very good thing Nancy Nelson sent this message, and addressed it as she did. But, of course, neither she nor Jennie Brucesuspected how important the matter was at the time.
And, within a few minutes, something else gripped the attention of the girls. They were discussing Jessie’s chicken sandwiches, “and other odds and ends,” when a man walked down the aisle of the rocking coach toward them.
“Oh, look, Nance!” whispered Jennie.
Nancy looked up. The towering figure of a man dressed in a gray suit, with hat and gloves to match, stopped suddenly beside them. It was Senator Montgomery, Grace Montgomery’s father.
“Hul-lo!” he muttered, evidently vastly surprised to see the girls in the train bound for Cincinnati.
“How do you do?” said Nancy, softly.
“Yes! you’re the girl. I thought I was not mistaken,” spoke the Senator, and although he frowned he seemed to wish to speak pleasantly. “You go to the same school as my daughter?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pinewood Hall?”
“Yes, sir,” repeated Nancy.
“What is your name?”
“Nancy Nelson.”
“I thought I could not be mistaken.” The frown was gone from his face now and his slyeyes twinkled in what was meant to be a jovial way. “You girls are not running away, I suppose?”
“Oh, no, sir,” said Nancy, timidly.
“What is the matter, then?” he asked, quickly. He held a folded paper in his hand which he had evidently been reading.
“My——A gentleman who looks after me has been hurt and I am going to him,” responded Nancy, hesitatingly. “They have telegraphed for me.”
It seemed as though the Senator’s face paled. “You don’t mean to say he sent word toyou?” he demanded.
“Oh, no! not Mr. Gordon.”
The Senator’s face became suddenly animated again. He smote one hand heavily upon the chair back.
“Not my old friend, Henry Gordon—a lawyer?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I saw he was hurt. Why! I myself am going to Cincinnati for the special purpose of seeing if he really is seriously ill!”
“Indeed, sir?”
“Quite so,” declared the Senator. “And he sent foryou? I didn’t know he had a relative living, my dear.”
“No,” explained Nancy. “It was Scorch who sent for me.”
“Scorch?”
“Mr. Gordon’s office boy.”
“Humph!”
“And I am not related to Mr. Gordon,” explained Nancy, wishing to be perfectly open and aboveboard. “But Mr. Gordon has always looked after me and—and I didn’t know but I might be of some use to him if he is alone and injured.”
“Ahem!” returned the Senator, grimly. “I do not know that I quite approve. I cannot understand what your principal was thinking of when she let you two girls come off alone on such an errand. But——Ahem! I will see you when we arrive at Cincinnati.”
Jennie had not said a word during this conversation. She waited until Senator Montgomery had gone along the aisle and was out of earshot. Then she seized Nancy’s arm suddenly.
“I’ve got it!” she whispered.
“Ouch! Got what?” demanded Nancy, striving to free her arm.
“I see it all!”
“Then let me see a little of it, Jennie. And, goodness me, dear! don’t pinch so. Whatdoyou mean?”
“Do you know who that man is?” demanded Jennie, in an awed whisper.
“Of course. He’s Grace Montgomery’s father.”
“Yes!” cried Jennie, impatiently. “But who else?”
“Why—why——”
“I don’t understand why we did not see it before!” exclaimed Jennie, mysteriously. “At any rateyouought to have remembered it when Scorch was talking that day.”
“I really wish you would say what you mean, Jen,” said her chum.
“That man—that Senator Montgomery—who knows your Mr. Gordon so well and says he is hurrying to him now——”
“Well?” asked the wide-eyed Nancy.
“That fellow is the man in gray of whom Scorch told us so long ago. Don’t you remember? The man who came to Mr. Gordon and seemed to object because he had sent you to school at Pinewood Hall?”
Nancy was stricken dumb for the moment. Scorch’s description of the mysterious man who had left Mr. Gordon in tears came back to her mind now, clearly.
“The man in gray,” repeated Jennie, nodding her curly head vigorously.
CHAPTER XXVIIISCORCH “ON THE JOB”
“Oh, dear! Do you suppose that can be possible?” Nancy demanded, finally.
“You know I’m right,” Jennie returned, firmly.
“It—it might be another man.”
“Two big men, who look important, and who both dress so peculiarly?”
“We-ell!”
“It’s he, all right,” declared Jennie, vigorously. “And he knows as much about you as Gordon does.”
“Do you think so?”
“But he isn’t as kindly-intentioned toward you as even Old Gordon. I know by the look he gave you as he went away.”
“But Grace Montgomery’s father!” gasped Nancy.
“Maybe you’re related to Grace,” ventured Jennie, with a sudden chuckle. “And after all the stuff she’s said about you ’round Pinewood, too!”
“Oh, I hope not!” exclaimed Nancy.
“Don’t want Grace for a relation—eh?”
“Dear, me! No!” cried Nancy, quite honestly.
This amused Jennie immensely; but soon she became more serious and the two girls discussed the possibilities of the matter most of the way to Cincinnati.
Mr. Montgomery did not come back to them. They were free, therefore, to wonder what he would do when they reached the city.
“Perhaps he won’t want you to see Mr. Gordon,” suggested Jennie.
“But why?”
“Why is he so much interested in your affairs?”
“Do we know that heis?” demanded Nancy.
“Well! Scorch heard him——”
“If it really was the same man.”
“Dear me!” said Jennie, wearily. “You are such a Doubting Tomaso——”
“I don’t believe that’s the feminine form of ‘Thomas,’” chuckled Nancy.
“I don’t care. It’s as plain as the nose on your face——”
“Now, don’t get too personal,” begged Nancy, rubbing her nasal organ. “Let’s wait and see.”
“But he may try to stop us, I tell you.”
“Not likely. And why?”
“Oh! you’ve asked that before,” cried Jennie, petulantly.
But all they could do was to wait and see. Mr. Montgomery might not even notice them again, although he had intimated that he would speak to them when they arrived at the station.
However, the two girls got off the train at their journey’s end without at once seeing the Senator. It was very early in the morning and the big train-shed seemed all but deserted.
Nancy knew, however, that there was a cab stand just outside, and she and her chum hurried out to it. Before they could find a cabman or speak to the officer on duty in front of the building, Mr. Montgomery came bustling up.
“Are you girls going immediately to Mr. Gordon’s hotel?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” replied Nancy.
“Come right along with me, then. I have a taxi waiting.”
Jennie held back a little; yet even she did not see how they could refuse the offer. They followed him around the nearest corner, and so did not see a figure that shot panting across the square to the entrance of the station they had just left.
This was a youth whose hair, even in the early morning light, displayed all the fiery hue of sunrise. It was Scorch—but for once Scorch was just too late.
Nancy and Jennie were out of sight with the “man in gray” before the boy reached the railway station in answer to Nancy’s telegram.
Mr. Montgomery escorted the two girls to a cab standing in a dark street. It seemed to have been waiting some time, for its engine was not running and the chauffeur was pacing the walk.
Possibly Mr. Montgomery had done some telegraphing ahead, too.
“Get right in here, girls,” he said. “Lucky I was coming on the same train with you. Your folks will certainly be worried about you.”
“Now, wasn’t that a funny thing for him to say?” asked Jennie, as she stepped in after Nancy.
There was no chance for Nancy to reply, however, for Mr. Montgomery was close upon their heels. The chauffeur jumped to his seat, the door slammed, and the cab was off.
“How far is it to Garvan’s Hotel?” asked Nancy.
“It’s some distance,” replied Mr. Montgomery. “I only hope Gordon is not hurt as badly as the paper says. Of course, if he is in the hands of doctors and nurses they may refuse to let any of us see him.”
“Oh! I hope not!” exclaimed Nancy.
“We can wait till he’s better, then,” Jennie suggested. “John will be in town this morningand we’ll go to his office and then go home with him and wait until you can see Mr. Gordon.”
Mr. Montgomery snorted, but said nothing. Indeed, he seemed very glum after they were in the cab.
What a distance it did seem to Garvan’s Hotel! The cab traveled at high speed, for there was not much traffic at this hour and the few policemen paid no attention.
“This isn’t at all the part of the city I thought Mr. Gordon lived in,” observed Nancy, once.
Mr. Montgomery made no comment. Jennie squeezed her chum’s hand and sat closer to her. To tell the truth, Jennie was getting a little frightened.
The cab passed through a web of narrow streets. The girls, although they knew something about the city, were soon at sea as far as the locality was concerned.
“Wherearewe?” cried Nancy, at last.
“We have arrived,” spoke the Senator, harshly. “Jump out. I’ll take you right indoors. I have been here to see Gordon before.”
“But—but this doesn’t look like a hotel,” murmured Nancy, first to reach the sidewalk.
The houses were rows of mean-looking, three-story brick edifices. They were in a narrow street near the corner of a wider thoroughfare.
“This is the side entrance,” said the Senator, and taking the girls firmly by the arm, ushered them up the steps of the nearest house.
He did not even have to knock. Somebody must have been on watch, for the door swung open instantly.
Neither Nancy nor Jennie saw the person who opened the door. It was very dark in the hall.
“How is our patient?” asked Mr. Montgomery, rather loudly, as they stepped in.
“Not very well—not very well,” said a wheezy voice. “You can go right up to that room, sir—the sitting room. Ahem! You’ll have to see the doctor before you can speak with Mr.—Mr.——”
“Mr. Gordon,” said the Senator, briskly. “All right, girls. Hurry upstairs.”
Nancy and Jennie were quite confused. They did just as they were urged to do by Senator Montgomery. At the top of the flight he pushed open a door and the chums went into the room. The curtains were drawn. One feeble gas jet was burning. It was a fusty-smelling, cluttered room, furnished with odds and ends of old furniture and hangings.
“I’ll be with you directly,” said Mr. Montgomery, and closed the door.
“Oh!” squealed Jennie.
“Did you hear it?” whispered Nancy, seizing her chum.
The key had been turned in the lock. They tried the knob—first one shook it and then the other. The door could not be opened and there did not seem to be another door leading out of the room.
“He’s locked us in!” said Nancy, amazed.
“I knew he was a villain!” declared Jennie, with a vicious snap of her teeth. “Isn’t he just like Grace?”
“But—but howdareshe do such a thing?” gasped Nancy.
“He’s a rich man—he can do anything. Or, he thinks he can,” returned Jennie. “But you wait till my father gets hold of him!”
“Do—do you suppose he’ll dare do us any bodily harm?” queried Nancy, anxiously. “Oh! I wish I hadn’t got you into it, Jennie.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” exclaimed the more reckless Jennie. “He only wants to keep you from seeing Gordon.”
“But—what for?”
“He’s afraid Mr. Gordon will weaken and tell you all about yourself,” responded her practical chum. “That’s plain enough.”
“Oh, dear, me! do you think so? And suppose poor Mr. Gordondies?”
“Then you’ll never know who you really are, Nance. At least, you can be sure Grace’s father will never tell you.”
“If he knows.”
“If he doesn’t know, and isn’t afraid of your finding out, what does he bother with us this way for?” demanded Jennie, angrily.
“Maybe we can get out of the window?”
“It’s at the back of the house. We couldn’t get out of the yard.”
“Let’s scream.”
“Who’d hear us here? Might as well save our breath,” said Jennie.
“I—I wish Scorch was here,” declared Nancy.
“So do I—with all my heart. Bless his red head! He’d get us out of this in short order.”
As she spoke there came a tapping on one of the window-panes. Jennie and Nancy both ran to the window, drew aside the heavy curtain and raised the shade.
Only a little light filtered in. But it was sufficient to show them a pale face flattened against the glass.
The face suddenly grinned widely. Then a hand waved. They saw his red hair under his cap, and the two girls clung together with a cry of delight.
Scorch O’Brien was “on the job.”
CHAPTER XXIXALL ABOUT NANCY
The red-haired youth drew himself up to the window-sill (he had climbed a rickety arbor below) and motioned to the girls to unlock the sashes. They did so and Scorch forced up the lower one.
“Hist!” he whispered, in a tone so hoarse that it almost choked him. “Where is he?”
“We don’t know,” said Jennie, hastily. “He’s locked us into this room.”
“Of course he would,” said Scorch, airily. “Don’t they always do that? It’s the gray man; isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes!” said Nancy. “Senator Montgomery.”
“That’s the man. I got onto his name lately. And I seen him again, too. Now he’ll keep you from Mr. Gordon.”
“Is he hurt very badly?” asked Nancy, anxiously.
“You bet he is!”
“Oh, Scorch!”
“But you’re goin’ to have a chance to talk with him first. He’ll see you, too. He told me so only last evening. I was with him all night. Then I ran home for breakfast and found your telegram. Then I beat it for the station. But you’d got away before I got there.”
“Senator Montgomery came down on the train with us,” explained Nancy. “And he said he was coming right to Garvan’s Hotel to see Mr. Gordon——This is not the hotel; is it, Scorch?”
“I should say not!” returned the boy. “He fooled you. I asked among the cabmen at the station, and they all saw you and the gray man. So I knowed there was trouble afoot.
“He took you around the corner, and there a milkman saw you all getting into the taxi. So I grabs another taxi—I had money belongin’ to Old—to Mr. Gordon—in my pocket.
“That taxi-driver was a keen one, he was. He trailed your machine like he was trackin’ a band of Injuns. Cops saw you pass, and switchmen at the trolley crossin’s.
“So we got here just as the taxi was whiskin’ his nibs away——”
“Then he’s not in the house?”
“I knew he wasn’t when I asked,” said Scorch, calmly. “He’s beat it for Garvan’s. That’s where we’ll go, too.”
“Oh, Scorch!” cried Jennie. “You’re wonderful. How you going to get us out?”
“Not by the window, I hope,” murmured Nancy.
“Of course not,” the young man replied. “See here.”
He produced from either trousers leg the two parts of a jointed steel bar. It went together with a sharp click and proved to be a burglar’s “jimmy” of the most approved pattern.
“Scorch O’Brien! Where did you get that thing?” demanded Nancy. “You could be arrested with it in your possession.”
“Forget it,” advised Scorch, easily. “My next-door neighbor is a cop. He let me have it, and I’ll show you how to use it.”
The youth went to the single door of the room, inserted the point of the bar between door and frame near the lock, and the next moment the dry wood gave way, splintering all around the lock. The door came open at a touch.
“Sup—suppose they stop us?” breathed Jennie, trembling.
“Let ’em try!” exclaimed the valiant Scorch, and led the way into the dark hall.
They marched downstairs, the girls clinging together and trembling, without a soul appearing to dispute their advance. The outside door waschained; but Scorch had no difficulty in opening it. And so they passed on out into the grimy street just after sunrise.
The house was merely an old, ill-kept lodging house, the person who ran it being under some sort of obligation to Senator Montgomery. The girls never learned what street it was on.
“My taxi’s waiting,” said Scorch, proudly, hurrying them around the corner. “Come on, before it eats its head off and breaks me.”
“Oh, I’ve got money, Scorch!” cried Nancy.
“All right. You may need it later.”
The taxi-cab driver paid no attention to the girls as they got in. Scorch took his seat beside him, and they were off. In a very few minutes they stopped at Garvan’s Hotel, in a much better-looking neighborhood, and Scorch paid for the cab.
“Come on, now, and let me do the talking,” said the red-headed youth. “That gray man is ahead of us; but he isn’t the whole thing aroundthishotel. They know me better than they do him.”
Nobody sought to stop them, however. They went up in the elevator and got out at the third floor. Scorch led the way along the corridor, and suddenly turned the knob of a door without knocking. The door was unlocked.
“Here! What do you want in here, youngman?” snapped a voice that Nancy and Jennie recognized.
It was Senator Montgomery. Scorch pushed ahead.
“I must see Mr. Gordon,” he said. “I’ve been with him ever since he was brought in from the wreck. I’m takin’ my orders from him.”
“He is in no fit shape to give orders. You can’t see him——”
He broke off with a startled cry when he saw the girls.
“Where—where did they come from?” he gasped.
“Right from where you locked them in, Mister,” replied the boy, boldly. “But you didn’t count on me; did you? I was on the job. Mr. Gordon has asked to see Nancy Nelson, and he’s going to see her.”
“You young scoundrel!” exclaimed the man in gray. “I’ll have you arrested for breaking and entering.”
“All right, sir,” returned the youth, quite calmly, but walking swiftly to the window of the room. “See yonder, Mister? See that cop on the corner? Well, that’s Mike Dugan. He’s my next-door neighbor. And if you were the President of the United States, instead of a senator, Mike Dugan would be a bigger man than you.
“Understand? Nancy Nelson sees Mr. Gordon just as soon as the nurse says it’s all right. You try to interfere and I’ll call my friend up here!”
The inner door opened and a white-capped nurse appeared.
“Not so much talking, please!” she said, severely. “You are disturbing Mr. Gordon. Has the girl appeared yet?”
Nancy Nelson ran forward. Senator Montgomery tried to stop her; but Scorch was right in his path.
“Stand back!” exclaimed the red-haired youth, emulating his favorite heroes of fiction. “She’s a-going to see him!”
“Of course she is,” said the nurse, taking Nancy’s hand. “I believe it will do him more good than anything else. He is worried about something, and if he relieves his mind, the doctor says, he has a very good chance of recovering.”
“He’s mad. He’s not fit to talk with anyone,” declared Senator Montgomery, as the door closed behind Nancy and the nurse stood on guard.
The man was dripping with perspiration and showed every evidence of panic.
“Say, boss,” advised Scorch, “if Mr. Gordon is likely to tell anything that is goin’ to incriminateyou, as the newspapers puts it, take my tip: Get away while you can.”
And whether because of Scorch’s word, or for other reasons, Mr. Montgomery tiptoed from the room, and was not seen again about the hotel. Nancy and Jennie remained, however, for several days, being assigned to a room next to Mr. Gordon’s suite.
Just what passed between the injured man and Nancy Nelson nobody but the two will ever know. Nancy did not tell everything even to her chum. But Mr. Bruce likewise had a long interview with the lawyer that very day and at once went to work under the injured man’s direction to obtain certain property which might be tampered with by those who had kept Nancy out of her rightful fortune for so long.
Henry Gordon was equally guilty with his old partner, Montgomery. But the latter had benefited more largely from the crime, and Gordon had been a party to it under duress.
Years before, when he lived in California, Henry Gordon had been tempted to commit a crime. Had it become known he never could have practised law again—in any state. Montgomery knew of the lawyer’s slip and held it over him.
The Senator’s wife had a sister who was marriedto a very wealthy man—Arnold Nelson. It was supposed that Mr. Nelson’s family—himself, his wife, and little daughter—had died suddenly of a fever during an epidemic in a coast town.
With the child dead, the entire property belonging to the Nelsons came to Senator Montgomery’s wife, and he had the handling of it. But Gordon, who had known and loved, as a young man, Nancy’s mother, after the parents’ death found the deserted little girl, placed her with Miss Prentice at Higbee School, and forced Montgomery to pay, year by year, for the child’s board and education.
Where Nancy was, Montgomery did not know until he came across her at Pinewood Hall. Gordon had no idea that the Senator intended sending his own daughter to Pinewood, too.
So that, in brief, was the story the broken and injured lawyer told his charge. Later he explained more fully to Mr. Bruce, Jennie’s father, and with the aid of good counsel, Mr. Bruce made the Montgomerys disgorge the great fortune that they had withheld from Nancy’s use all these years.
In the end Mr. Gordon did not die. He remained an invalid for some time, but slowly recovered. Nancy, by that time, had become such a necessity to him that he went to Clintondale forthe weeks of convalescence when the doctors refused to let him get back into legal harness again.
He was really a changed man. He could not act as Nancy’s guardian; Mr. Bruce, Jennie’s father, did that. But there was scarcely a pleasant afternoon during the remainder of Nancy’s junior year, while Mr. Gordon was at Clintondale, that a very red-haired youth, in a smart auto outfit, did not drive up to the school entrance in a little runabout, and whisk Nancy down to the village hotel to see Mr. Gordon for an hour or so.
And Nancy learned to like Mr. Gordon better than she had ever expected to when she first bearded the lion in his den.