Chapter 25 The Password to Larkspur Lane by Carolyn Keene
Rescue on Wings
Nancy dodged behind the first tree trunk, then peered in the direction of the plane. The glow of the flashlight bobbed closer, down the hill and across the level spot. Dimly she made out three men, their identity hidden by distance and darkness. Yet she felt certain, by the sound of their voices, that one was Dr. Bull, another, Adam Thorne.
There was a mumbled conversation, and Nancy saw the tarpaulin unlashed from the twin engines. The three men climbed aboard, and for a moment all was silence.
The motors coughed, and the propellers began to revolve with a clacking sound. The pilot permitted them to turn at low speed until the engines warmed up. For fully five minutes this process continued.
“I hope they discover what I have done to their plane before they leave the ground. I shouldn’t want them to be killed.”
Nancy began to worry. Had she really gone too far in detaining these crooks?
She was tense with excitement as she waited for the fateful moment of the take-off. Then her heart leaped. The pipe she had twisted out of shape had been one of the exhausts, and the sparks and hot gases shooting from the left motor had set the fabric of the fuselage on fire!
“Fire!” gasped the stricken girl. “Oh, I never expected the plane to burn up. If they ever catch me now!”
The occupants of the craft saw the flames and jumped out of the ship. They seemed stunned at the suddenness of the catastrophe.
“This is terrible!” one cried aloud.
“Awful! What happened?” asked a second one whom Nancy recognized as Dr. Bull. “Did someone light a match?”
“Oh, I hope the men won’t find me yet,” Nancy whispered to herself. “They are in a rage now.”
As the brilliant glare of the conflagration lit up the surrounding territory, she could see the three men stagger away from the blazing plane, evidently much confused.
A moment later the gasoline tanks exploded with a reverberating roar, sending a column of flame fifty feet into the air. The sudden report knocked two of the men off their feet. The last outbreak apparently rendered one of them unconscious, for Nancy saw his companions kneel beside him.
Down the hill there raced a column of persons, both men and women, who were the guards, nurses, and attendants from the sanatorium. Each individual was made distinctly visible to the girl behind the trees by the blaze.
“What happened?” cried Miss Tyson, who was in the lead.
“Ain’t it awful!” groaned Luther, standing beside her and wringing his hands.
“Why don’t you do something?” snapped the nurse. “I’ll bet it was set on fire by that Drew girl.”
“Do you really?”
“Yes, I do. Go search the grounds!”
Nancy saw the injured man lifted by the shoulders and knees, while the thunderstruck attendants gesticulated their amazement at the accident.
Nancy began to worry anew as she heard the command:
“Search the grounds!”
Suddenly she looked up into the sky. Some of the nurses scattered, racing up the hill, while others stood open-mouthed, staring overhead. Nancy heard another roaring sound above the noise of the consuming flames. Glancing upward, she saw another airplane swoop down upon the level field.
Was it—could it be—the rescue party? Had sufficient time elapsed? Had the pigeon delivered its message?
Nancy’s doubts were soon removed. The machine roared and bumped across the grass and swerved to a halt. Man after man leaped from the cabin, and as Nancy raced toward the new arrivals, she heard the crack of a pistol. The sound which added speed to her feet had just the opposite effect on everyone else present, for the people from the sanatorium stood stock-still, while a score of hands shot up in gesture of surrender.
Panting and almost falling, Nancy reached the group.
“Ned!” she cried. “And Father! Oh, how glad I am!”
She stumbled, and fell into Carson Drew’s outstretched arms.
“Nancy, dear Nancy,” he said. “Are you hurt? You are covered with dirt.”
“Never mind that, Father.” She hugged him, assuring him that she was unharmed, although practically exhausted. Supported on his arm, she stepped into the circle of light from the airplane’s powerful landing beams. The prisoners were being marshaled into line by six policemen, two men in flying clothes, and Ned. The latter dropped his pistol and hastened to Nancy’s side.
“You see, I didn’t fail you,” he exclaimed. “I knew my protests would not stop you, so I went to the Tooker place with the police.”
“Oh, thanks, Ned,” cried Nancy. “I needed help so badly.”
“We nabbed the man at the pigeon coop on Mr. Jordan’s charges, and also a Japanese butler and a slick-haired fellow,” Ned explained quickly. “The police say he is an international society crook with a long record and a dozen warrants out against him.”
“Holy mackerel!” burst from one of the group of prisoners.
It was Adam Thorne who was pointing at Nancy. Dr. Bull, sitting on the ground nursing a burned leg, looked up.
“The Drew girl,” he roared. “I told you to put her in the cistern!”
“I did!” Thorne yelled, his voice rising almost to a shout. “She must be a witch. How did you get out?”
“Climbed out,” Nancy said directly. “I got into the pigeon coop. That enabled me to free several pigeons with messages which my friends intercepted at the Tooker place—and here they are.”
“I bet you gummed up our airplane too,” Bull raged savagely.
“I did my best,” Nancy said. “I am sorry if it caused you serious injury.”
“Sorry—bah!” hissed Dr. Bull. “To think of being foiled by a mere slip of a girl!”
“I told you so,” cackled Thorne. “I told you she was dangerous, but you were too conceited to believe a girl could fool you.”
“Oh, take me away and lock me up,” Bull groaned. “Lock me up in a lunatic asylum. Put me in a strait-jacket—anything! Do something, do something—I’m beat out!”
“You will have to wait until arrangements are made,” a police officer said dryly.
“Arrangements?” The doctor looked puzzled.
“Yeh, we’re interested in the kind of an illegal outfit you have been maintaining here.”
The doctor’s jaw sagged and he turned a sickly hue.
“Guess we’ll have plenty against you after we look around,” continued the officer.
Nancy noted the men’s uniforms and recognized them as state troopers. Somehow she felt glad that the pompous Inspector Mulligan had not shared in the capture.
Leaving the police to guard the captives, Ned and Nancy, Mr. Drew and the two pilots—friends of Ned whom he had pressed into service at Nancy’s telephoned direction—climbed into the airplane and in fifteen minutes came to a big field near the shores of Sylvan Lake. There Nancy thanked the aviators, promising to give them a complete account of the adventure at a later date. Then she and her father piled into Ned’s car and were whisked away to the Corning cottage.
Helen leaped down the porch steps as the car came to a halt, and threw her arms around Nancy. “I’ve been scared stiff,” she confessed. “Oh, we got here all right, and I was just getting ready to come back for you. Mrs. Eldridge is inside with her nephew and niece.”
You can imagine the triumphal entry that was accorded Nancy as she entered the brilliantly illuminated living room, covered though she was with mud and dirt. Begging to be allowed to clean up before telling her story, Nancy hastened to bathe and change her clothing. When she reappeared, the cheers were raised anew, and Mrs. Corning brought the girl, who suddenly realized she was famished, a tray of tempting food.
As Nancy ate she related her adventures, everybody hanging breathlessly on each word. When she had concluded, she was showered with praise.
“Helen deserves as much credit as I do, and so does Ned,” Nancy insisted. “Without the aid of both of them I should have been helpless.”
Nancy insisted on hearing Ned’s experience at the capture of the Tooker estate, as well as Helen’s story. Mr. Drew had arrived by airplane from St. Louis in his anxiety to be sure that Nancy was safe, and it was then that Ned had encountered him just as he and his aviator friends were about to take off.
Old Mrs. Eldridge, seemingly ten years younger since gaining her freedom, told what she had learned about Dr. Bull’s sanatorium. The doctor, who had been blackballed from his profession years ago even as Adam Thorne had been barred from practicing law, had joined with the ex-lawyer and one Adolf von Hopwitz, an international sharper, to cheat wealthy old women. Von Hopwitz was using the name Tooker.
Von Hopwitz, having ingratiated himself into various social circles, would introduce Dr. Bull to old ladies who complained of ill health, and between them the unscrupulous pair would persuade the women to go to the sanatorium.
There, by the use of drugs and hypnotism, Dr. Bull would prevail upon the patients to sign away large parts of their wealth to him. Here Thorne’s knowledge of legal matters would be utilized. Despite his bad reputation and removal from practice, the man knew all the tricks of the law, and the contracts he drew for the women to sign could not be changed in any detail, should the patients’ relatives try to break them.
Mrs. Eldridge, keener-witted and with more strength than most of the patients, had defied the crooks, thus helping to contribute to their downfall.
“After all, Fate gets the most credit,” Nancy observed. “Or call it Nemesis. If Dr. Bull’s own airplane had not injured one of his pigeons over my larkspur bed, we should not have learned the password.”
“And that reminds me,” Mrs. Corning exclaimed, jumping to her feet and leaving the room. She returned with a big box which she presented to the girl.
“What can this be?” Nancy wondered, undoing the wrappings. From the receptacle she drew forth a silver loving cup—first prize for her beautiful larkspur blooms.
“I shall see to it that that is not the only prize you will have won today,” Mrs. Eldridge said significantly.
“I am happy to have been of service,” smiled Nancy. “I expect no reward.”
“Nancy’s best reward would be to hand her another mystery to solve,” said Ned.
Nancy blushed becomingly, and murmured: “Have you any that need solving, Ned?”
“No, but by morning I’ll dig one up, and I’ll telephone you at five o’clock.”
It was not to be Ned after all who was to bring The Clue of the Broken Locket to the girl. Indeed, it was not to be that simple. But just now she was in a joking mood.
“I’ll be ready,” said Nancy calmly, but with a twinkle in her eye. “Make it very, very complicated and original.”
THE END