Chapter 12 The Password to Larkspur Lane by Carolyn Keene
The Enemy Grows Bold
As Nancy and Effie drove up to the Drew home they were surprised to find Hannah at the door to greet them.
“Is anything the matter?” Nancy asked quickly. “Father——”
“Don’t be alarmed,” replied the housekeeper. “Nothing is the matter. I just couldn’t stay in bed any longer.”
“Hannah, are you sure you are able to be up?” Nancy asked solicitously. “You should take no chances.”
“Oh, thank you, I’ll be all right. I’m just wondering how Effie has been making out.”
“I think she has done remarkably well,” Nancy replied. “And she was a great help to me today.”
Nancy had been doing some rapid thinking while speaking with the housekeeper. She wanted to talk to Dr. Spires, but knew that his house was probably being watched. She accordingly hesitated to make the trip without some obvious excuse. Now the housekeeper served this purpose.
“Hannah,” she said, “I won’t feel right about your being up until we have the doctor’s permission. He must examine you at once to see if you have recovered entirely.”
“I’m feeling fine,” Hannah objected.
Nancy insisted that they go, however. Secretly pleased with the girl’s solicitude the woman put on her hat and accompanied her mistress to Dr. Spires’s home. From long acquaintance with the physician Nancy knew he would be at home by five o’clock in the afternoon unless called out on some emergency case.
The doctor was in his office and unoccupied. He carefully checked up on Mrs. Gruen’s condition, declaring her to be fully recovered. He cautioned her, however, against being overactive.
“Will you wait here, Hannah, while I talk over some other matters with the doctor?” Nancy requested. She followed Dr. Spires through the consulting room to his study, where he offered her a chair.
“What I have to say can be told quickly,” Nancy began. “The wounded pigeon was let free today by a neighbor’s boy, and I followed it in my car. It was still lame and flew slowly, so I had no trouble in locating its home. It came down at a beautiful big estate near West Granby, about twenty-five miles from here by back roads.”
Nancy described the Tooker mansion, and without mentioning the coarse man’s attempt to force her from the car, told the surgeon all she had learned, both at the estate itself and from the hotel keeper. She concluded her recital with the fact that no old lady had been visible.
“Now, then,” Nancy said, “do you think that is the place to which you were taken?”
Dr. Spires looked at the girl with surprise, then some amusement.
“How in the world could I tell, Nancy?” he laughed. “I was blindfolded, you remember.”
It was Nancy’s turn to look astonished. She often forgot that few people were gifted with her sense of observation and deduction.
“Why—why Dr. Spires,” she exclaimed in genuine surprise. “Couldn’t you tell from the tires on the road whether the car was traveling over asphalt or concrete or gravel?”
“We did go on a gravel driveway, as I recall,” Dr. Spires replied.
“You mentioned the driver giving the password ‘blue bells’ at a gate,” Nancy said. “Did you reach that place before or after you went over the gravel?”
“Dear me, Nancy! We came to the gate first, I am fairly sure, though not quite certain, because I did not make special mental notes.”
“What about the drive out?” Nancy asked next. “The distance is about correct. Did you sway in your seat as if the car made many turns along a crooked road, or was most of it smooth riding?”
“Nancy, I wish I could answer you, but I can only guess at it,” the doctor replied.
“Please try to remember,” Nancy urged. “I am sure that blue bells or larkspurs play a big part in this mystery, but I saw no such flowers at the Tookers. Probably we have discovered only one of the two headquarters of the crooks.”
“What makes you think there are two?”
“If they are using pigeons,” Nancy explained, “they must have two headquarters, for a homing pigeon will return only to its mate.
“Then, too, there is the airplane. That means distance to be covered. I feel confident that the place I found today is not the one to which you were taken, but I think I know where the other location is.”
“Nancy, you’re a clever girl,” Dr. Spires complimented. “You sound like a character out of a book, instead of a healthy young girl in her ’teens who was playing with dolls only a little while back. Please tell me why you believe that you know where the other hide-out is.”
“It is really quite simple, Dr. Spires, and if you were not so occupied with other people’s troubles, you could puzzle it out quicker than I,” Nancy said modestly. “Let us take River Heights as a center for a circle about twenty-five miles in diameter. Here, on the southeast rim, is the Tooker place. To reach it both the pigeon and the airplane fly over River Heights. So we judge that the other headquarters is in the northwest, on a fairly straight line from the southeast point on the circle.”
“I understand it now,” Dr. Spires cried. “Wonderful! Nancy, it would have taken me a long time to figure that out by myself.”
“You are very complimentary,” Nancy laughed. “I am so eager to test my theory that I should like nothing better than to start out at once. My goal is some hidden house about twenty-five miles northwest of here, whose surroundings suggest blue bells. I think I shall find it.”
“And that will solve everything!” Dr. Spires cried. “Wonderful!”
“I am afraid not,” Nancy contradicted gently. “That will be only the beginning. We must discover who——”
“There goes the telephone,” Dr. Spires interrupted. “Excuse me, Nancy.”
He stepped into his office, and in less than a minute was back, his face grave.
“It is your maid Effie,” he said slowly. “I fear something must be wrong.”
“Oh, I hope nothing has happened to Father,” Nancy exclaimed, darting into the other room and seizing the telephone. “Hello, Effie. What is it?”
“Miss Nancy, please come home. There was a most dreadful man here. I thought he was nice at first. He said he thought I was you. And he asked about the pigeon. He tried to force his way in——”
“I’ll be there at once,” Nancy cried. “Don’t let a soul in. Lock every door until I get there.”
Dr. Spires was at Nancy’s elbow, listening gravely to what she was saying.
“You give orders like a general, Nancy,” he said. “I admire your decision. Tell me, is there anything seriously wrong?”
“The enemy is getting bolder,” Nancy announced. “A man tried to force his way into the house and wheedle information out of Effie about the pigeon. I must go back at once.”
“Shall I go with you?” Dr. Spires asked. “It may be dangerous for you to return alone.”
“That would make my visit here look suspicious, for I am certain now our house is being watched, as well as yours,” Nancy said rapidly. “Besides, Father is due home any minute now and will probably be there by the time I arrive.”
Helping Hannah to the car, Nancy drove home quickly. Her heart leaped when in the gathering dusk she saw a man thrusting his shoulder against the front door of the Drew home, and rattling violently at the door knob.
“Great land o’ Goshen,” Mrs. Gruen exclaimed. “He’s trying to break down the door!”
Nancy halted the car in front of the house.
“What do you want?” she cried, dashing up the front steps. As the man turned suddenly to face her, the girl’s knees gave way and she sank to the top stair, her shoulders shaking.
“Father, I thought we were being attacked in full force,” she laughed. “Oh, I am so relieved. I did not recognize you. You have on a new suit and hat.”
“Yes, but why is the house barricaded? Where is Effie?” Mr. Drew demanded. “I rang and knocked, but no one appeared, so I used my latchkey. I can unlock the door but can’t push it open.”
“I’ll explain when we get indoors,” Nancy said.
Raising her voice, she called upon Effie to let them in. Presently there was a sound of something heavy being dragged over the floor. The maid, pale and trembling, opened the door.
“I put the couch from the living room against the entrance,” she said. “And then I lifted the big rocker on top of the couch.”
“Why the fortification?” Mr. Drew asked, more mystified than ever.
“Effie will tell us,” Nancy said. “Someone tried to get in while I was at Dr. Spires’s with Hannah.”
“I’m awfully sorry,” Effie began. “It was this way: I had the door locked and the screen door latched, when this man rang the bell. I opened the door but not the screen, because you told me to be very careful about letting anyone in.
“Well, the man said he heard you were very much interested in pigeons—that he was from some pigeon club. Miss Nancy, I heard you talking with a man from the pigeon club the first day I was here. This wasn’t the same man, though.
“He asked me if you had any pigeons, and before I thought I said not any more at this time. ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘did she let that one go?’ So I thought he knew all about the bird we had, don’t you see?”
“Yes,” Nancy answered dolefully. “It was just a lucky guess on his part.”
“So I told the man that the pigeon had got loose and that we had found out where it lived, and that you had tried to buy a pair but changed your mind,” Effie continued.
“What’s all this about the pigeon getting loose?” Mr. Drew demanded. “It’s news to me. Tell me about it.”
“Tommy let it go,” Nancy said. “With Effie’s help I traced it to its home. I will tell you all about that presently. Go on, Effie.”
“The man said he would like to come in and wait for you,” the girl went on. “I said I was sorry, but I had orders to let no strangers in. I said he could sit on the porch and wait for you. There were chairs and magazines there. With that he took out five dollars and showed it to me. He said he would give it to me if I would let him in, so right away I knew he wasn’t honest.”
“What did you do then?” Mr. Drew asked.
“I slammed the door shut, of course,” Effie said. “That made him mad, so he yanked at the screen so hard that the hook came out, and he jerked at the front door, too. I ran and locked the back door and slammed shut the windows on the porch, and called Miss Nancy at the doctor’s office. She said I was not to let anybody in at all until she came home, so I piled the furniture against the door and hid in the cellar until I heard Miss Nancy call. But I nearly died when I heard you stamping and pulling around, Mr. Drew.”
“I couldn’t imagine why I was locked out,” Carson Drew said. “However, you are forgiven, Effie. Run along now and give Hannah some help with dinner.”
When Effie had left the room, Mr. Drew turned to his daughter.
“Now tell me about the pigeon.”
This Nancy did in great detail, including her visit to Dr. Spires and the deductions she had made there as to the whereabouts of the mysterious building where the surgeon had been taken to treat the owner of the bracelet.
“And we know more about that bit of jewelry, too,” Nancy concluded. “It belongs to someone named Eldridge.”
Thereupon she described her trip to the jeweler, and told what she had learned from his investigation.
“As I figure out this mystery,” Nancy said later as she and Mr. Drew sat at their evening meal, “the man at Tookers’ place reported our visit on the heels of the pigeon’s arrival. Someone must have surmised that the bird, arriving a couple of days late, had been held captive. Because they suspect us of being involved in the case, they attempted to find out our connection with the mystery. Effie unwittingly gave them the information they wanted.”
When the maid entered the room with the dessert, Nancy queried her about the appearance of the person who had tried to gain admittance to the house. Effie, who always had her eyes wide open where men were concerned, gave a very complete picture of the person.
“It isn’t Adam Thorne,” Mr. Drew said, when he had heard the story. “I think, too, that whoever it was, I frightened him away.”
“And it isn’t the man with the whip,” Nancy decided. “There must be several of the crooks.”
“Let’s discuss the matter further upstairs,” Mr. Drew suggested. “I must leave in the morning for St. Louis. You will help me pack, won’t you, Daughter?”
“Gladly,” Nancy cried, linking her arm into that of her father. “I hope you win your case without having to stay away too long. I want you to be around when this mystery is solved, and to get your share of the credit.”
“You seem very confident,” Mr. Drew smiled, as they entered his rooms.
He took two big suitcases from a closet, and began to pile clothing on the bed. With deft fingers Nancy started to pack the bags.
“We seem to be dealing with a group of peculiarly vicious characters who evidently are taking great risks to conceal their actions,” commented Mr. Drew. “And I beseech you, Nancy, to be careful.”
“The more of them there are the greater the chance of their making a mistake,” Nancy laughed. “I don’t expect to come to actual combat with the criminals.”
“I hope not,” said Mr. Drew. “If I thought there was any such possibility, I should forbid you having anything more to do with the mystery.”
“This will be a battle of wits, Father, and I intend to win. Besides, I am sure that after today’s encounter with Effie and your warning to them last night, they know we are on our guard.”
“Perhaps they will keep away from the house,” Mr. Drew concluded. “Perhaps, also, the—goodness, what is that?”
A piercing scream came from below. Then a crash. A police whistle shrilled sharply.