Chapter 22 The Password to Larkspur Lane by Carolyn Keene
Trapped!
“Oh, did I scream?” Mrs. Eldridge asked in a weak voice. “I am sorry.”
“Whether you are sorry or not makes no difference,” Miss Tyson snapped. “There are other patients in the house whom you upset by carrying on that way. Why did you scream?”
“I am really very sorry,” Mrs. Eldridge said, trying to find some plausible excuse for her outcry. “It won’t happen again.”
“Answer my question!” cried the nurse, stamping her foot and raising a cloud of dust which made Nancy fear she would sneeze. She pressed her black veil against her face.
“The—the soup is very hot,” Mrs. Eldridge said. “Tomato bouillon can be very, very hot, Miss Tyson.”
“A likely story,” the nurse sniffed. “The soup is not as hot as all that after having been carried up from the kitchen. No, that is not the truth, Mrs. Eldridge, and I intend to find out your real reason.”
“Oh, Miss Tyson,” begged the patient, “don’t scold me.”
“I had to make a special trip up here on your account.”
“That’s too bad. I’m sorry.”
“Well, why did you scream? What have you been doing?” rasped the nurse.
“Nothing,” replied the poor old lady.
“I think I’ll take a look around here,” said Miss Tyson menacingly.
Nancy stiffened at the nurse’s announcement. Did Miss Tyson suspect something? If the attendant were to search the room, she would certainly trap the girl in the narrow space under the bed.
“I think you screamed just to make trouble,” snapped the nurse, glancing carelessly toward the window, “because you know another patient is due here, and you want to give the place a bad reputation. Well, spare yourself the trouble. The new patient’s nurse just telephoned that she will not arrive today.”
Nancy, beneath the bed, heard the remark. This was a new turn of events, since she herself was masquerading as the newcomer. It rather upset her plans.
“Suppose someone here should question the gatekeeper,” she thought. “I am getting in deeper and deeper trouble. If only that nurse would leave me free to get Mrs. Eldridge out of here!”
“Any more hysterics from you, and you will be put where your screams will bother no one,” continued the nurse gruffly. “Remember that!”
“Yes, Miss Tyson,” Mrs. Eldridge said meekly. “I hope I shall not trouble you any more.”
“Hurry up and eat, for it will be dark soon, and you are too nervous to have lights. You will have to sleep,” and the woman stamped out of the room.
Nancy waited until the sound of the attendant’s footsteps had died away before she crept out of her hiding-place. Hastily she brushed the gray dust from her black clothing.
“We’ll have to work fast and quietly,” she whispered. “Evidently the people here are always alert. Listen carefully, Mrs. Eldridge. I have a car concealed on the grounds. Never mind asking me how I got in. You will learn everything later. Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
“That is the best thing I have heard yet,” smiled Nancy.
“Although they keep us confined to wheel chairs to weaken us,” the old lady said, “I am still pretty spry. I walk up and down this room for a little exercise. Once I tried to climb out of the window, but the vines pulled loose and I fell and dislocated my shoulder.”
“Is that how it all happened?” Nancy marveled, amazed at the woman’s gameness despite her great age.
“A strange man was called to attend me,” explained Mrs. Eldridge.
Nancy nodded understandingly. “The doctor who was brought here to treat you started the chain of events which brought me here.
“This is my plan: I will guide you to the car, but we shall have to take the utmost care lest we be detected. You are to put on this bonnet and veil, this coat and these shoes, and let me have something to wear over my clothes. Once in the car, my chum Helen will get you out of the grounds to safety. Will you go through with it?”
Mrs. Eldridge pondered the bold scheme.
“How do I know this is not a trap to kidnap me again?” she said. “Perhaps you are just one of Dr. Bull’s accomplices, trying to do away with me so that you can get my fortune. Perhaps you are from a group who are trying to get me as a hostage for ransom.”
Nancy’s eyes flashed.
“You will have to take the chance,” she said curtly. “I have come here at the peril of my own life and that of my chum. If you do not care to take the risk, I will go.”
“Said with spunk,” chuckled the old woman “I never really doubted you, Nancy—that is your name, is it not? I have no coat, no hat, no shoes to exchange for yours. Most of my belongings were taken away from me.”
“Never mind,” said Nancy, quickly helping Mrs. Eldridge into the black coat. “Now adjust this bonnet yourself.”
As she did so, the excited old lady looked at the supper tray.
“That food is cooked with drugs to weaken my will and to make me doze all the time,” she said, preparing to leave. “I eat as little of it as possible.”
They stole to the door, Nancy assisting Mrs. Eldridge.
“Getting downstairs undetected will be the big job,” the girl whispered.
“Don’t take the main stairs,” Mrs. Eldridge whispered. “There is a service flight at the far end of the hall.”
“Are you sure we are right?” murmured Nancy.
“Yes, for I explored this place in the dark until they took to locking me in at night. That is another thing I cannot understand—how you could open my door.”
“I’ll tell you later,” smiled Nancy.
The service stairway was enclosed. It was a narrow, steep flight of steps which Mrs. Eldridge had to descend sideways, one at a time. Lights were reflected under the door on the second floor past which the two fleeing figures, so widely separated by years, yet so closely united in their determination, hurried breathlessly.
Near the ground floor the stairs divided. Mrs. Eldridge indicated that the left division should be taken.
“The other leads into the kitchen. This one takes you to the cellar landing and the entrance into the garden,” she whispered.
Presently Nancy opened the door which led into the open air. She was surprised to see how dark it had grown. Was Helen still waiting?
As fast as Mrs. Eldridge could hobble in the bedroom slippers she wore—Nancy’s shoes were too small for her; that had been determined at once—the two hastened to the rendezvous in the trees. Nancy’s heart leaped with joy when she saw the car bulking large and black, a shadow among the shadows.
“Now let me help you in,” she cried almost gleefully, assisting Mrs. Eldridge into the automobile. Helen choked back tears of joy and relief.
“Hush. Don’t say a word. There are ears everywhere.”
The final test was at hand.
“If you should have trouble getting out, you must be courageous, Helen. Just indicate to the gatekeeper your need for haste.”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” cried Helen aghast.
“No, I have other plans,” Nancy said firmly.
“Oh, Nancy, please!”
“I hope,” said Nancy, “that before you get to Sylvan Lake, Dr. Bull and Adam Thorne will be in custody and all their victims freed. To do that necessitates my staying here. But do not worry. I have succeeded thus far, and I shall be able to keep out of the clutches of the scoundrels. I’ll find plenty of hiding places. Please go, Helen.”
“I—I—” began Helen, but Nancy leaned in and choked her off with a kiss. “Please hurry,” she urged. “Everything depends on speed.”
“I’ll come back for you—I won’t leave you here alone.”
“Good-by, Mrs. Eldridge. You will soon see little Marie.”
The car moved noiselessly out of the shadows to the driveway. Nancy followed to see if there was to be any trouble at the gates. From a safe vantage point she observed the watchman peering into the car.
“Oh, dear, I hope there is no obstacle.”
The guard talked energetically for a moment; then, with a shrug of his shoulders, he opened the gates. The car shot through, and Nancy sank to the ground in sheer relief.
“I’ve won,” she said to herself. “Now, if all goes well, I can have these unscrupulous people locked up for treating helpless patients so cruelly. Their relatives will have them released. I must not fail now,” and Nancy moved cautiously toward the house again.
The further plans which she had in mind were somewhat upset when she found the building a blaze of lights, with figures darting back and forth across the illumined windows. A bright light above the stable door shed a radiant glow over the grounds.
“Something is going to happen,” Nancy said to herself. “Or else something has happened.”
She concealed herself in the shrubbery along the foundation of the house. A window above her was suddenly flung open, and Dr. Bull’s voice could be heard, raised in anger.
“Emily, your carelessness is uncalled for and inexcusable!” he thundered. “I am not afraid of the old crone’s escaping, but she will give us a pretty hour’s work searching the grounds.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Suppose she falls and breaks her neck—we’d all be in a fine mess.”
“Listen, Simon, I can’t be everywhere at one and the same time,” Miss Tyson’s voice replied. “Anyhow, you have taken in enough money on these old women. Why don’t you quit this business? Then we could leave for South America as you promised.”
“Not with several thousand dollars still to be had,” the doctor snarled.
“Well, of course——”
“See that every shrub and bush in this place is combed for Mrs. Eldridge, and when you find her, bring her to me.”
“All right.”
“We will wring this money out of her tonight!”
“Believe me, I’ll do all I can to help.”
Nancy peered upward. She could see Dr. Bull’s pointed beard thrust from the window as he surveyed the outside. She trembled with fear lest he look down and detect her. However, after a few moments he withdrew his head.
“So they are searching the grounds?” Nancy mused. “In that case, Mrs. Eldridge’s room would be the safest place for me. Very likely they will not look for her there.”
The Great Dane growled menacingly at the gateway.
“I’ll hide beneath the bed again,” she decided quickly.
Softly she edged along the building to the exit by which she and the elderly woman had left the sanatorium. Up the steep, dark stairs she crept, and past the threatening door on the second floor.
When she was halfway up to the third story the door below her was thrown open, and a voice asked:
“Has anyone looked in here?”
Light streamed into the stairway, and without ado Nancy scampered up the remaining steps to the top. Below her she could hear somebody say:
“You go down and I’ll go up.”
Softly the girl turned the knob and stepped into the upper hall.
“Oh—oh—help—goodness—help!”
A startled scream followed, and a crash of dropped crockery froze Nancy in her tracks. The attendant, she of the blue gingham frock, was in the hallway, staring at Nancy open-mouthed, a broken basin at her feet.
“Let me pass!” cried the escaping girl, pushing the student nurse aside.
Nancy dashed forward and ran down the main stairs, while behind her she heard the attendant calling to someone coming up the back steps that she had “seen her sister’s ghost.”
A chorus of excited voices came from the second floor.
“What’s the matter?”
“What fell?”
“Is anyone killed?”
Light was streaming into the hall from a dozen open doors. Evidently all the attendants were busy trying to quiet the patients.
Nancy reached the ground floor without being seen. She flew past the deserted wheel chairs to the porch, ran along its entire length, and jumped into the shrubbery, panting.
She paused a moment to recover her breath. Then, making sure that the coast was clear, she darted across the open lawn to a clump of bushes.
To her dismay she discovered that her surmisal had been incorrect. Scarcely had she settled herself before she heard a dog sniffing. Then the animal broke into a frantic bark. Presently someone with a heavy tread raced up, and a searchlight revealed Nancy’s hiding place.
“Here she is!” a deep voice shouted exultantly. “Down, Tiger, down! I got her, Chief!”