Chapter 21 The Password to Larkspur Lane by Carolyn Keene
The Secret Entrance
“Singing Horses,” repeated the guard. “Right ye are.”
Striding up to the gates, he opened them wide. Helen guided the car between the posts and then the portals clanged shut.
The password had permitted them to enter!
Both girls heaved deep sighs of relief as they sped up the flower-bordered lane. Halfway up the gravel drive, Nancy spoke.
“Stop!” she whispered. “No one can see us from the house yet, and the lodge is concealed by those shrubs.”
Helen brought the car to a halt, awaiting her chum’s next orders.
“What shall I do now?” she asked timidly.
Nancy scanned the scene about her.
“I’m glad Father gave me a dark-colored car, not a bright yellow one,” she mused. “It will be much easier to conceal.”
“Oh, Nancy, you do think of the greatest details,” exclaimed her chum, “especially when you are running down clues.”
“I have to, Helen.”
“Wouldn’t it be dreadful if those scoundrels should seize this handsome car, and turn it to their own use?”
The two girls remained silent, each one considering several possibilities. There was danger on all sides, and they were not unaware of it.
“We’ll have to take a chance on that,” Nancy muttered finally. “Back the car off the drive to that clump of trees, Helen. Good! It’s a double row. Get in as far as you can. Keep on backing—farther. Splendid! Now, you wait here. Don’t let anything happen to yourself or the car.”
“Oh, Nancy, I am so frightened,” Helen quavered. “What are you going to do?”
“Just carry out all my plans,” Nancy announced. “First, I am going to find Mrs. Eldridge’s room on the third floor, and somehow or other bring her here.”
Helen kissed her chum. “Good luck!” she whispered.
Nancy squeezed her friend’s hands and, with far less confidence than she displayed, picked her way through the flower beds to the house.
“I wish that dog would stop growling,” she said to herself, as the menacing sounds came to her ears.
The lights were turned on inside the sanatorium. For this Nancy was thankful. She knew it was impossible to look out of an illuminated window into the twilight and discern what was going on out of doors. Yet she had to be cautious, lest any person on the grounds detect her.
“I must be on my guard, and very closely,” she whispered to herself.
However, the brave girl reached the walls of the old mansion without being seen. Carefully she made her way to a door. Before opening it she listened for sounds from inside, and there came to her the hum of voices, which was broken by a ringing laugh.
“This is not the place,” Nancy concluded. “No ‘patient’ here is happy enough to laugh like that.”
She went farther, staying in the shadows until another door was reached. This one was open, an unlatched screen filling the space. Nancy peered cautiously inside. She glimpsed a wide hallway with stairs ascending to her left, and guessed that this was a back door to the main corridor, as advantageous a place to enter as any.
“Now for a trip inside,” she murmured. “I hope my new shoes don’t squeak.”
Quietly she drew aside the screen and crept inside. The hall was only dimly lighted. Half a dozen wheel chairs, two or three of them occupied, stood about. There was no other sign of life.
Nancy moved on tiptoe toward the broad stairway, and had just reached the steps when she heard the tread of feet on the oaken floor. Like a flash the quick-witted girl darted to an unoccupied wheel chair, and muffled herself in the light woolen blanket left in it by its last occupant.
“I’ll try to look wan and feeble,” she said under her breath, letting her jaw sag and partially closing her eyes.
Not a moment too soon! The young woman in the gingham uniform, who had appeared in the garden some time earlier to summon Miss Tyson to the office, entered the hall. Nancy watched her apprehensively, fearing that the hat and veil would excite some comment. The nurse’s helper, however, marched by humming to herself, giving none of the occupants of the chairs a second glance.
“Thank goodness!” exulted Nancy. “I’m free again!”
She leaped up and flashed toward the stairs. A withered head was poked up from the nearest chair, and a cracked voice cried:
“Hi there, my dear. The doctor seems to have more than cured you. Why, you are young again!”
Nancy did not pause, but with hammering heart raced up the steps to the second floor. A quick glance around, and she started the climb to the top story.
“It can’t be much farther,” she reasoned.
Once the uppermost floor was reached she halted to get her bearings.
“ ‘The south corner room,’ Mrs. Eldridge said. That would be to my right.”
With that Nancy tiptoed quickly down the hall and stopped before the last door. She bent down and tried to look through the keyhole, but could see nothing. Then she turned the knob.
The door was locked!
Nancy racked her brains to think of a way to open it.
“If I only had a tool of some kind,” she thought.
As she pondered the situation, she heard footsteps on the stairs. There was no time to lose; not a moment to spare. Perhaps some of the other rooms were unlocked.
With Nancy, to think was to act. She darted across the hall and tried the handle of the opposite door. It turned in her hand, and the girl stumbled into total darkness. It was not a room, but a small broom closet which she had entered.
“My, but this is a tight squeeze,” she thought. “Oh, dear, I can hardly breathe in here.”
Nancy did not dare move, for the brief glimpse she had had of the interior in the moment the door was opened revealed the floor to be littered with scrub pails, while the walls were stacked with mops and brooms which a touch would send clattering to the floor.
With her ear to the door, Nancy waited. The footsteps approached, coming her way. The courageous girl’s heart seemed to stop beating as the sound paused opposite her hiding place.
There was the rattle of a key in a lock, and the clink of china on a tray. Nancy guessed that Mrs. Eldridge’s supper was being brought to her.
With infinite caution she opened the door to look out. She saw a white skirt vanish into Mrs. Eldridge’s room, and heard a voice which she knew to be that of Miss Tyson, the hard-hearted pickpocket.
“Wake up, wake up, Mrs. Eldridge,” the nurse said. “Here is your supper, and if you don’t do as the doctor says, it will be the last good meal you will taste for a long time.”
The occupant of the room groaned faintly, and the attendant spoke on.
“I have some nice tomato bouillon, a broiled lamb chop with fresh peas and mashed potatoes, and ice cream for dessert. Doesn’t that make your mouth water? Smell it, and find out how good it is. Taste it, and remember that tomorrow there will be only stale bread and warm water for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if you don’t obey our dear good Dr. Bull, who is so kind to you.”
“If she is going to make a speech and wheedle Mrs. Eldridge, I’ll have some time to act,” Nancy decided before Miss Tyson was halfway through her harangue. Slipping cautiously out of the closet Nancy tiptoed to the opposite door, which was partly ajar.
“I have an idea, if only it will work before someone discovers my invention for keeping that lock open,” Nancy murmured.
Tearing a strip from her veil, the quick-witted girl plugged the slot in the door frame into which the bolt of the spring lock fitted, and then darted back to her hiding place.
“Oh, dear, if I ever knock over a broom, I’ll never rescue the poor woman. The noise would bring the whole cruel crowd down on me.”
Miss Tyson remained to threaten Mrs. Eldridge a few minutes more, then left the room, slamming the door behind her. Nancy listened with high hopes for the nurse to go downstairs, then flew to the door across the hall. Her trick had worked! The latch had failed to close! Nancy pushed the door open and stepped into the room.
“Mrs. Eldridge,” said Nancy softly.
The old lady was propped up on her bed, with two pillows behind her back, contemplating a tray of savory food. Nancy saw the elderly woman thrust the soup aside as she entered the chamber.
“Mrs. Eldridge,” she whispered again, coming closer to the elderly woman.
The patient looked up and saw a figure swathed in black, with veiled face, standing at the foot of her bed. Unnerved from the trying experiences she had been through, she did not know what to make of this sudden appearance, and with a sharp cry fell back upon her pillows.
Nancy flew to her side.
“It is I, Nancy Drew, the girl who spoke to you through the fence,” she whispered, quickly removing the bonnet and veil. “I have come to save you. Mrs. Eldridge, everything is going to be all right.”
“I—I—I am so nervous,” the old woman gasped. “They have tried their best to frighten me so often. How in the world did you get in here?”
“Don’t worry about that. The thing to do now is to get you out of here,” Nancy whispered. “I hope no one heard you scream. Oh, someone did! Where can I hide?”
Through the walls Nancy could hear footsteps rushing up the stairs, and the sound of voices from below.
“I heard Mrs. Eldridge scream,” came from Miss Tyson.
“What of it?” said a second speaker.
“I suppose I’ll have to chase up to her room again,” went on the nurse.
“I wouldn’t bother,” came another voice.
“But I can’t let anything happen to her,” reiterated Miss Tyson.
“She hasn’t signed yet?”
“No.”
Nancy looked around the room. There was not even a clothes closet in the chamber. There seemed to be no suitable place for the girl to withdraw so as to escape detection.
“Oh, dear,” groaned Mrs. Eldridge, sensing her rescuer’s predicament. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
“Don’t worry,” comforted Nancy.
Steps clattered along the hallway toward the room, and without a second thought Nancy dived under the bed. It was very dusty there, and the bed spring sagged so in the middle that she was literally squeezed in between it and the floor.
However, it was the only concealment the room afforded, and she had not reached it a moment too soon. Nancy lay practically motionless, almost afraid to breathe.
She could see a pair of white canvas-shod feet march into the room and pause at the foot of the bed, a few inches from her nose.
“You screamed!” Miss Tyson demanded. “Why, Mrs. Eldridge?”