Chapter 15 The Password to Larkspur Lane by Carolyn Keene
New Clues
Nancy looked up, horrified. A forty-foot mahogany launch which plied the lake was rushing in toward the float, its engine cut off, its deck thronged with persons who had been gay and laughing a moment before, but who now stood transfixed with terror as they saw little Marie’s curly head bobbing in the path of the boat.
Without rising, Nancy rolled off the float into the water. She saw the bow of the speedboat looming overhead as her hands found Marie. Then, with a powerful thrust of her limbs, she plunged.
Down, down, down—the little girl squirmed in Nancy’s grasp, kicking convulsively and beating the water with her hands. Nancy turned, and looked up through the green water to see the black keel of the speedboat slipping past in a froth of bubbles a few feet overhead.
She kicked downward vigorously, and shot toward the surface. Her lungs were at the bursting point, for she had not had time to take a deep breath before her plunge.
A terrible roaring sounded in her ears, and she feared her eardrums had burst from the pressure before she realized that it was the sound of a hundred persons cheering her in a frenzy of enthusiasm. As the blond heads of Nancy and Marie appeared on the surface, a score of canoes shot toward them, and rescuer and rescued were hauled aboard.
“How—how is the little girl?” Nancy gasped, dashing the water from her eyes.
“Fit as a fiddle,” a deep voice assured her. “Just as soon as she gets some of the water out of her system, she will be none the worse for the experience.”
Nancy sat up, and looked at the canoe where little Marie was slowly recovering from her excitement. In a second the two canoes grated against the beach, and Marie was carried to her sobbing mother and frantic nurse.
Helen was swimming from the float to the shore. Upon reaching land she elbowed her way through the cheering throng to Nancy’s side.
“You darling,” she exclaimed. “That was the quickest thinking anybody ever did!”
“Let’s get to the house,” Nancy whispered.
“Let Miss Drew pass, please,” Helen cried, and the two girls scampered from the watchers and over to the Corning cottage. There Nancy flung herself on the roomy, waterproofed porch glider, and relaxed.
“That was wonderful, Nancy,” Helen declared. “You ought to get a medal for it. You——”
“Oh, Helen, I was the person closest to little Marie and am really to blame for the little girl’s accident,” Nancy said. “Please don’t talk about it.”
The matter was not to be dismissed, however, for the child’s mother suddenly appeared on the Corning porch.
“Where is the young lady who—oh, there you are! How can I ever thank you?” and the woman seized both Nancy’s hands. “You saved my baby’s life, and anything in the world I can do for you will not be enough,” she wept.
Nancy was overcome with embarrassment.
“Please don’t thank me,” she insisted. “Besides, there is something I particularly want to ask you, Mrs. Eldridge.”
“You know my name?” the woman asked. “Perhaps I should know you—we are strangers here. Please excuse me for not having introduced myself, but I was so upset——”
Regaining some of her composure, the little girl’s mother seated herself in a rocking-chair. Helen excused herself and left the porch before Nancy could stop her, leaving Mrs. Eldridge and her chum alone.
“What was it you wished to ask me?” she inquired. “Anything that I can do for you within my power shall be done.” Her voice quavered with emotion, and it seemed that the shock of her child’s near-drowning had unnerved her considerably.
“I heard little Marie’s name called. She told me she lived in St. Louis,” Nancy explained. “I am interested to know if you are a member of the Eldridge family that settled in Missouri years ago, coming there from New York.”
“Yes. That is, my husband, John Eldridge, is,” the child’s mother said, a puzzled look coming over her face. “The family is a very old one. My husband could tell you more about its history, but he is not here. He is—engaged in some family matters. Much of his time is taken up that way.”
“I wonder if it—well, never mind now,” Nancy said. “Under rather unusual circumstances I came into possession of an old-fashioned gold bracelet with a coat of arms which I traced to the Eldridges.”
“A gold bracelet?” the woman asked in amazement, her eyes brightening and her cheeks flushing. “Was there any inscription on it?”
“Yes,” Nancy said. “It is inscribed inside, ‘To my darling Mary from Joe.’ ”
Mrs. John Eldridge suddenly turned pale. She clutched at her throat and gasped.
“Where is this bracelet now?” she asked breathlessly.
“In a safe in my home in River Heights,” Nancy replied in reassuring tones, attempting to compose the excited woman.
“It must be Aunt Mary’s,” Marie’s mother cried, clasping her hands. “Oh, how did you get it?”
Nancy thought things over in her mind before answering the question, a steady look in her fine blue eyes.
“A surgeon who is a friend of my father was called to treat a patient,” she said. “He was blindfolded and taken to a house to set a dislocated arm for an elderly lady who seemed to be in a semiconscious condition from causes other than the fracture. The doctor was refused information as to the identity of either the invalid or those who had engaged him, so he slipped this bracelet from her arm, convinced that she was being held captive, and hoping it might prove to be a clue by which she would be released. Nobody knows where the house is, although the police have been searching for it for days. It is a most mysterious situation.”
Mrs. John Eldridge listened intently.
“I shall telegraph my husband at once,” she said. “He can reach here by tomorrow noon if he is still in Richmond, where he is searching for a clue as to the whereabouts of Aunt Mary. She has been missing since early spring. She is a very wealthy woman, rather eccentric at times. She disappeared suddenly from her home, leaving only a letter saying she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and was going to a sanatorium for a long rest, and wanted no one to disturb her or even try to look for her.”
“She is not far from here,” Nancy said. “It looks as if she had been made the dupe of some unscrupulous fortune-hunting crook.”
“I always suspected that to be the case,” Marie’s mother said. “It has been our amazing good fortune to meet you at Sylvan Lake. You have been our great benefactor twice today—and I do not yet know your name. It’s strange how one forgets mere formalities when big issues are at stake, isn’t it?”
“My name is Nancy Drew,” the girl replied simply. “My father is Carson Drew.”
“The name is familiar, but I can’t exactly place it,” Mrs. Eldridge said, rising. “I must hurry and telegraph Mr. Eldridge. Oh, about the bracelet. I believe Aunt Mary has had it on her arm since the day her fiancé clasped it there more than sixty years ago. She has a necklace to match it which she always wears. I shall see you soon again, Miss Drew.”
After bidding Mrs. Eldridge good-by, Nancy entered the house, where she found Helen dressing.
“Heigh-ho,” her chum said heartily. “We have the whole house to ourselves, except for the cook. Mother and Dad have gone over to the club to help decorate it for the dance. Cook is a peach, and anything we might want to eat, she’ll prepare it for us. You should taste her lemon meringue pies!”
“I’m glad she is here, because I’m hungry as the three bears put together,” Nancy laughed. “And I shouldn’t want just porridge, either. By the way, is there a telegraph office nearby, Helen?”
“Down in the village, next to the post office,” Helen replied. “I’ll show you the way.” Although she was naturally a bit curious about Nancy’s interest in a telegraph office, she did not question her friend about this new angle, knowing that her chum always had a definite and worth-while purpose in every maneuver she made.
“I can hardly wait to drive my new car again,” Nancy said happily. “We’ll go down right after luncheon. I surely do like the hum of the motor. Its rhythm is perfect.”
She took five whole minutes to walk around the powerful black and green roadster when the girls were ready to leave, admiring its sleek lines and mirror-like finish. Then, settling back in the luxurious leather cushions with Helen beside her, she drove off.
It was less than half a mile to the village of Sylvan Lake. Arriving there, Nancy sent a long telegram to Mr. Jordan of the Pigeon Association, telling him exactly how to find the Tooker estate where the birds with the fraudulent registration numbers were employed to carry code messages. Then she telephoned to Dr. Spires, telling him of her conversation with Mrs. John Eldridge.
“Do you know of any sanatorium around here?” she asked him. “It may be that the aged lady is mentally unbalanced, which may explain the secrecy, although I doubt it. Personally, I believe that she is at the mercy of some crooks who are trying to inveigle her into turning over her money to them.”
“There is no private sanatorium within thirty miles of here,” Dr. Spires replied thoughtfully, “and I know the location of every one in the state. They must be licensed by law, you know. If there is such a place, it is not registered, and hence is illegal and will bear investigating.”
“Then I am off on the trail to locate just such a place,” Nancy announced determinedly. So, with the doctor’s “Good luck to you, my dear” ringing in her ears, she rejoined Helen.
That young lady was sitting in the car blissfully enjoying the sensation of occupying the luxurious vehicle even while it was motionless. Helen loved comfort, and Nancy’s car was the very acme of that particular quality.
“By the way, Helen, do you feel like taking a long ride?” Nancy asked her chum suddenly the light of adventure in her eyes. When Helen found Nancy smiling that way, she always knew that excitement of some sort was brewing.
“A long ride? There is no second guess,” Helen responded. “Make it just as long as you wish. I feel like Cinderella in her gilded coach after riding around in my little four-cylinder runabout. All we need now are some footmen in gold and white uniforms, with satin capes to throw upon the ground as we enter and leave. Oh, Nancy, sometimes I feel that I’m filled to the brim with adventure, and could just drive to the ends of the earth, stopping only five minutes at each town.”
After this romantic speech Helen sank even deeper into the cushions, a far-away look in her eyes.
Nancy smiled. “We are going exploring,” she said, adding mysteriously, “We are on the hunt for a place where the owners use singing horses—as a password, I mean!”