Chapter 18 The Password to Larkspur Lane by Carolyn Keene
The Matching Necklace
“Real adventure?” Helen echoed. “Say, that’s second nature with me.”
She threw back the covers of the bed and began dressing rapidly.
“Hurry up, Nancy,” she cried gayly. “Lead me to this adventure. What are we to do? Advance in full force on the enemy?”
“Exactly,” Nancy replied, pulling on her stockings. “Rough and ready hiking clothes, Captain Corning. We are going to use strategy, but not charm, so put that frilly frock away.”
Keenly excited, the girls scampered down to the garage and climbed into Nancy’s car. They drove to the village gasoline station to have the tank filled and the oil and water checked, then pointed the nose of the machine north by west.
“On your guard, Larkspurs,” Nancy cried.
Knowing her destination in advance, Nancy was able to make good time to the spot where the sign “L. S. Lane” marked the establishment of the battle lines.
“From now on,” she told her companion, “caution must be our password. We must see as much as possible without being seen.”
Not venturing to enter the lane for fear of being detected and watched, Nancy drove past the half-concealed road and into a woods, Helen assisting by letting down the bars of an old-fashioned fence around the grounds. Nancy concealed the automobile as best she could by driving it close to the thickest part of the forest where a tangle of creeper and bittersweet covered it.
“No one will notice it here,” she said. “Now let’s strike across this place to the woods ahead and see how close we can come to the house without using the lane.”
Cautiously the girls worked their way over bramble and bush until the roof of the gatehouse came into view. They were on the opposite side of the road from their vantage point of the day before, and had a better view of the lodge which guarded the entrance to the grounds. A high wire mesh gate blocked the way. Tilted back in a chair against the gatepost was a man who Nancy assumed was the keeper. At his feet was a brindled Great Dane dog, its tongue lolling and its eyes alert.
“Let us hope he doesn’t scent us,” Nancy whispered. “I guess there is no getting by in that direction.”
She led the way to the right, still well within the trees, always keeping the tall fence in view. After about a quarter of a mile of rough going the inclosure turned at right angles and continued in a straight line. No path or road followed the fence line here. Tall trees were on all sides.
“Ugh, it’s rough traveling,” Helen shuddered. “I’m afraid of snakes.”
“You wait here for me,” Nancy said. “I shall be back, regardless of whether or not I find a way over inside the grounds, and report to you.”
“I certainly will not stay here without someone else,” Helen retorted. “In the first place, I shouldn’t think of letting you go on alone, and in the second place I should be scared to death by myself.”
Swallowing her fears, Helen followed Nancy through tangled undergrowth as she went along the property line over the hill. At one point they came to a place where a particularly heavy clump of trees concealed the house and grounds. Nancy called a halt for rest and consultation, so the two girls sat down.
“This would not be a good spot to climb the fence,” Helen observed, leaning back on her elbows. “You’d rip your skirt on that barb wire.”
Nancy looked at Helen in surprise.
“Don’t you see?” she asked, pointing to the top of the inclosure.
“I see a fence and two strands of barb wire on the outside, near the top,” Helen replied. “Is there anything else?”
“Notice how the wire is fastened.”
“Surely, on little china knobs. What has that to do with it?” Helen inquired.
“Those china knobs are insulators. That means that the top wire is charged with electricity,” Nancy informed her. “If you touch one wire, it will probably set off an alarm, and if you press two at once—and you could not avoid doing that in climbing over—you would probably be killed by an electric shock.”
Helen gave a low whistle.
“It’s a regular fort, isn’t it?” she commented. “Yet how peaceful it all looks.”
Through the meshes of the wire the girls could see the flower-covered hillside, occasional clumps of trees, and a view of the rear of the gatehouse. It was truly a lovely spot, and had it not been for the sinister strands of charged wire, would have been a welcoming garden.
“Rested?” Nancy asked. “Let’s go.”
Since they were now approaching the house, the girls moved even more warily. Grass seed and pollen powdered their hair and faces. Bees and wasps grumbled with mock menace at the intruders. Helen stepped gingerly, afraid of putting her foot down on a snake.
“It would be just like those people to let a couple of thousand rattlesnakes and copperheads loose around here,” she shuddered. “Ugh, I think I stepped on something alive,” she cried suddenly, trying to choke back her exclamation of horror.
She side-stepped, then fell to the ground, her hands pressed to her mouth to throttle a scream of pain and terror.
“Helen, what happened?” Nancy whispered excitedly, turning back to her chum.
It flashed through her mind that steel traps might have been scattered through the grass. However, her worst fears had not been realized, though the situation was bad enough.
“I stepped into a hole, and I think—I think my ankle is sprained,” Helen said, her face white.
Nancy’s heart sank. If either of them should become helplessly injured, detection would certainly follow.
She knelt beside her companion, and with expert fingers felt the injured ankle, wishing that Dr. Spires might be with them now. A decided lump appeared on Helen’s instep, and the girl winced when Nancy touched it.
“Lie back and I’ll take off your shoe and stocking,” Nancy directed under her breath, striving to be as businesslike as the bone specialist. She quickly bared Helen’s foot, and probed around the injury again.
“Nothing broken,” she announced. “In my opinion it isn’t even a sprain. Probably you danced so much last night that you stretched a ligament which has jumped out of place. I think I can fix it. It is going to hurt, Helen, but after the first jolt I am sure the pain will go.”
Nancy took Helen’s heel firmly in one hand and her toes in the other. Then she bent the girl’s foot as if striving to make toes and heel touch. A moan escaped Helen’s lips, and a pang of pity went through Nancy at the thought of the pain to which she was subjecting her friend. Resolutely, however, she continued with her operation.
The foot bent until the straining tendons showed under the delicate skin. Nancy suddenly wrenched the fore part abruptly to left and right. With a tiny audible snap the misplaced tendon jumped into place, and the girl released her hold on Helen’s foot.
“That—that feels better,” Helen said, sitting up and rubbing her injured member. “I didn’t know you had added doctoring to your other accomplishments, though. Is there anything you don’t know something about, Nancy?”
“Why, this is just simple first aid I learned at camp when I was a child,” Nancy replied. “I had the same thing happen to me once, so I got a first-hand demonstration of the remedy. Try standing on the foot.”
Helen did so, and reported that, except for “a queer sort of rubbing feeling,” she experienced no bad sensation.
“I thought for a moment you had been bitten by a rattlesnake, Helen.”
“Dear me, that would have been awful.”
“Pretty bad,” agreed her chum, “especially way out here in this lonely place.”
“I guess we can’t be too careful.”
The girls resumed their cautious advance over the brow of the hill, Helen’s ankle now feeling very much better. They had a full view of that part of the grounds that had before been hidden from them.
Sloping from the front and rear of the house was a wide lawn with gravel walks and flower beds, making another charming picture of rural beauty. The house was set in the center and had a broad veranda shaded by tall trees. At the foot of the lawn, and at the rear, was a wide, grassy space which Nancy surmised was used as a landing field for the airplane. At this time the aircraft was not in sight.
Trees of every description surrounded the place. The lonesomeness of it all was appalling. The charged wire fence made it more private than ever.
“They don’t want strangers to come here, that’s plain,” grumbled Helen, surveying the scene.
Just below the brow of the hill, and connected with the house by a long arbor, was a group of outbuildings, a carriage shed evidently converted into a garage, a good-sized barn, and a chicken yard.
“Listen,” Nancy said, raising a finger.
The cooing of pigeons came distinctly to the ears of the girls.
“Pigeons!” exclaimed Helen.
Nancy resumed the advance until they were behind the garage, which was windowless on their side. Here they rested in the shade until aroused by the sound of a voice and a fluttering of wings.
“Come here, you,” the listeners heard through the wooden walls. “I guess you are able to work again.”
There was a frightened “coo-coo-oo.” Then the voice spoke again.
“Now then, let’s see if you can get to the Chief’s place this time without taking a couple of days to do it, and arriving there lame at that,” the unseen man said. “Remember, you are going to Tookers’ and not to Drews’, you half-witted barnyard goose, you.”
A door closed. Nancy strained her eyes upward, watching patiently. What she expected soon came to view—a pigeon that soared in wide circles and then headed in a bee line south by east!
“There goes my feathered friend the pigeon,” she whispered to Helen.
“Did you hear what that man said?” Helen asked with a catch in her voice. “He mentioned your name!”
“Yes, thanks to Effie’s gullibility they learned I had their pigeon captive,” Nancy said. “If Tommy had not let the bird loose, I should have put the message back under its wing. These birds fly between here and the Tooker place with secret messages, I believe.”
The girls’ progress was continued. Once past the outbuildings, they saw what had been concealed from view by the barn and garage—a grassy court around a lichen-covered sundial in which stood a number of wheel chairs, each occupied by a white-haired old lady. A glance at the veranda, now visible in its entirety, showed steamer chairs and a couple of cots in the shade. Some of them were occupied.
A woman in a nurse’s uniform had her back to the girls. She seemed to be administering to one of the elderly women.
“It looks like a sanatorium, sure enough,” Helen observed cautiously. “It can’t be a deception, Nancy. Perhaps your suspicions are all wrong.”
Nancy put her fingers to her lips. The nurse turned and walked toward the fence, revealing to the hidden observers a full view of her face.
“Helen, look!” whispered Nancy. “That nurse is the same woman that stole my purse!”
“The one who took the bracelet?”
“Yes, the very same pickpocket.”
“But she is apparently a nurse up here,” advised Helen, noting the woman’s stiffly starched uniform.
“She is in league with the lawyer and Tooker, I feel sure.”
“Nancy, you are the cleverest girl there ever was,” said Helen admiringly.
“I believe Mrs. Eldridge is one of those old ladies over there,” went on Nancy.
The girls ceased whispering, and tensely watched the nurse pass from one patient to another. Finally she walked from the porch to a corner of the grounds near the fence. She stooped to regard a woman reclining in a chair close to the wire barrier. For a moment she watched the dozing patient closely, then sat down on a steamer rug spread on the lawn. Presently she opened a book and began to read.
“What shall we do next, Nancy?” asked Helen nervously.
“I wish I could see better.”
“Oh! It is so risky to move.”
“I know, but——”
“Suppose we were trapped. I’d die,” whispered Helen tremulously.
“I must see that old lady.”
“Oh, Nancy, please don’t—do anything you——”
“Sh,” murmured the determined girl. “I must move forward.”
Boldly Nancy crept close to that section of the fence where the sleeping woman sat, and almost gasped aloud as she saw that the elderly lady wore a heavy necklace which exactly matched the strange bracelet.
Could this be Mrs. Eldridge?