CHAPTER XXIX

THE KEY TO A HARD LOCK

The young people had planned to spend that next forenoon at a skating rink, where the ice was known to be good; but Nan ran away right after breakfast to meet her father's train, intending to join the crowd at the rink later.

"I'll take your skates for you, Nan," Walter a.s.sured her, as she set forth for the station.

"That's so kind of you, Walter," she replied gratefully.

"Say! I'd do a whole lot more for you than _that_," blurted out the boy, his face reddening.

"I think you have already," said Nan, sweetly, waving him good-bye from the taxi in which Mrs. Mason had insisted she should go to the station.

She settled back in her seat and thought happily for a few minutes. She had been so busy with all sorts of things here in Chicago--especially with what Bess Harley called "other people's worries"--that Nan had scarcely been able to think of her hopes for the future, or her memories of the past. She had been living very much in the present.

"Why," she thought, with something like a feeling of remorse, "I haven't even missed Beautiful Beulah. I--I wonder if I am really growing up? Oh, dear!"

Mr. Sherwood thought her a very much composed and sophisticated little body, indeed, when he met her on the great concourse of the railway station.

"Goodness me, Nan!" he declared, when he had greeted her. "How you _do_ grow. Your mother and I have seen so little of you since we came back from Scotland, that we haven't begun to realize that you are a big, big girl."

"Don't make me out _too_ big, Papa Sherwood!" she cried, clinging to his arm. "I--I don't _want_ to grow up entirely. I want for a long time to be _your_ little girl.

"I know what we'll do," cried Nan, delightedly. "You have plenty of time before your business conference. We'll walk along together to see how Jennie Albert is--it isn't far from here--and you shall buy me a bag of peanuts, just as you used to do, and we'll eat 'em right on the street as we go along."

"Is that the height of your ambition?" laughed Mr. Sherwood. "If so, you are easily satisfied."

Nan told her father all about the search for the runaway girls, and about little Inez and Jennie Albert. She wanted to see how the latter was. The comforts she and her friends had left the sick girl the day before, and the ministrations of the physician, should have greatly improved Jennie's condition.

Nan left her father at the entrance to the alley leading back to Jennie's lodging; but in a few minutes she came flying back to Mr. Sherwood in such excitement that at first she could scarcely speak connectedly.

"Why, Nan! What is the matter?" her father demanded.

"Oh! come up and see Jennie! _Do_ come up and see Jennie!" urged Nan.

"What is the matter with her? Is she worse?"

"Oh, no! Oh, no!" cried the excited girl. "But she has got such a wonderful thing to tell you, Papa Sherwood!"

"To tell me?" asked her father wonderingly.

"Yes! Come!" Nan seized his hand and pulled him into the alley. On the way she explained a little of the mystery.

"Dear me! it's the most wonderful thing, Papa Sherwood. You know, I told you Jennie was working for a moving picture company that was making a film at Tillbury. She had a boy's part; she looks just like a boy with a cap on, for her hair is short.

"Well! Now listen! They took those pictures the day before, and the very day that you came back from Chicago to Tillbury and that awful Mr. Bulson lost his money and watch."

"What's that?" demanded Mr. Sherwood, suddenly evincing all the interest Nan expected him to in the tale.

As they mounted the stairs Nan retailed how the company had gone to the railroad yards early in the morning, obtaining permission from the yardmaster to film a scene outside the sleeping car standing there on a siding, including the entrance of Jennie as the burglars' helper through the narrow ventilator.

"Of course, the sleeping car doors can only be opened from the inside when it is occupied, save with a key," Nan hastened to say; "so you see she was supposed to enter through the ventilator and afterward open the door to the men."

"I see," Mr. Sherwood observed, yet still rather puzzled by his daughter's vehemence.

Jennie Albert, however, when he was introduced to her by Nan, gave a much clearer account of the matter. To take up the story where Nan had broken off, Jennie, when she wriggled through the window into the car, had seen a big negro man stooping over a man in a lower berth and removing something from under his pillow.

The man in the berth was lying on his back and snoring vociferously.

There seemed to be no other pa.s.senger remaining in the car.

Jennie did not see what the colored man took from the sleeping pa.s.senger, but she was sure he was robbing him. The negro, however, saw Jennie, and threatened to harm her if she ever spoke of the matter.

The director of the picture and other men were outside. The girl was alarmed and more than half sick then. She had the remainder of the director's instructions to carry out.

Therefore, she hurried to open the sleeping car door as her instructions called for, and the negro thief escaped without Jennie's saying a word to anybody about him.

Mr. Sherwood, as deeply interested, but calmer than Nan, asked questions to make sure of the ident.i.ty of the sleeping pa.s.senger. It was Mr. Ravell Bulson, without a doubt.

"And about the negro?" he asked the girl. "Describe him."

But all Jennie could say was that he was a big, burly fellow with a long, long nose.

"An awfully long nose for a colored person," said Jennie. "He frightened me so, I don't remember much else about him--and I'm no scare-cat, either. You ask any of the directors I have worked for during the past two years. If I only had a pretty face like your Nan, here, Mr. Sherwood, they'd be giving me the lead in feature films--believe me!"

The mystery of how the negro got into the locked car was explained when Mr. Sherwood chanced to remember that the porter of the coach in which he had ridden from Chicago that night answered the description Jennie Albert gave of the person who had robbed Mr. Bulson.

"I remember that nose!" declared Mr. Sherwood, with satisfaction. "Now we'll clear this mystery up. You have given me a key, Miss Jennie, to what was a very hard lock to open."

This proved to be true. Mr. Sherwood went to his conference with the automobile people with a lighter heart. On their advice, he told the story to the police and the description of the negro porter was recognized as that of a man who already had a police record--one "Nosey" Thompson.

This negro had obtained a position with the sleeping car company under a false name and with fraudulent recommendations.

These facts Nan, at least, did not learn till later; she ran off to the skating rink, secure in the thought that her father's trouble with Mr.

Ravell Bulson was over. She hoped she might never see that grouchy fat man again. But Fate had in store for her another meeting with the disagreeable Mr. Bulson, and this fell out in a most surprising way.

When Nan was almost in sight of the building where she expected to join her friends on skates, there sounded the sudden clangor of fire-truck whistles, and all other traffic halted to allow the department machines to pa.s.s. A taxi-cab crowded close in to the curb where Nan had halted, just as the huge ladder-truck, driven by its powerful motor, swung around the corner.

Pedestrians, of course, had scattered to the sidewalks; but the wheels of the ladder-truck skidded on the icy street and the taxi was caught a glancing blow by the rear wheel of the heavier vehicle.

Many of the onlookers screamed warnings in chorus; but all to no avail.

Indeed, there was nothing the driver of the cab could have done to avert the catastrophe. His engine was stopped and there was no possibility of escape with the car.

Crash! the truck-wheel clashed against the frail cab, and the latter vehicle was crushed as though made of paper. The driver went out on his head. Screams of fear issued from the interior of the cab as it went over in a heap of wreckage and the ladder-truck thundered on.

Nan saw a fat face with bulging eyes set in it appear at the window of the cab. She was obliged to spring away to escape being caught in the wreck. But she ran back instantly, for there were more than the owner of the fat face in the overturned taxi.

With the sputtering of the fat man there sounded, too, a shrill, childish scream of fear, and a wild yelp of pain--the latter unmistakably from a canine throat. Amid the wreckage Nan beheld a pair of blue-stockinged legs encased in iron supports; but the dog wriggled free.