Chapter 23 The Clue of the Broken Locket by Carolyn Keene
A Startling Surprise
“Mrs. Blair’s locket is not in my possession and never has been!” she said coldly. “Please step down from the running-board of my car!”
“Now don’t get huffy!” the man pleaded. “I know you hate to confess——”
“There is nothing to confess,” Nancy interrupted angrily. “Will you move away from my car?”
“Oh, all right.” McNeery fell back reluctantly. “But I’m going over to your father’s office and have a talk with him.”
The producer found himself speaking into thin air, for Nancy had driven away.
“I certainly am furious!” she said to herself. “How brazen of that man to insinuate that I stole the locket!”
Nancy had intended to pick up her chums, George and Bess, before starting for Crown Point. In her present mood she did not care to see or talk to anyone. However, after driving around the block several times she regained control of her troubled feelings, and betrayed nothing of what was in her mind when she greeted her friends.
They, too, had read the morning papers and were highly indignant at the defaming stories.
“Please, let’s not talk about it any more,” Nancy pleaded. “I want to forget it if I can.”
The girls fell to discussing more cheerful subjects. At first Nancy listened, but soon lost the trend of the conversation. Her attention was attracted to a yellow car which was following close behind her own. When she speeded up it did likewise.
“That’s funny,” she thought. “I wonder if someone is following me?”
She lost sight of the machine when she turned the next bend. Then, in looking forward to the exciting day they were to spend at Crown Point, she dismissed the matter from her mind.
Fifteen minutes later Nancy felt the steering wheel begin to wobble, and immediately suspected that a tire had gone down. She halted the car and stepped out to look at it.
“It’s flat, all right,” she informed her friends ruefully.
Before the other two girls could get out to see for themselves, the yellow car that Nancy had noticed earlier pulled up alongside. Abe Jacobs was at the wheel; Francis Clancy beside him. The two men leered triumphantly at the girls.
“Trying to get away, eh?” Jacobs demanded of Nancy.
“Certainly not,” the Drew girl returned coldly. “I am on my way to Crown Point.”
“A likely story,” Jacobs sneered. “You are fleeing over the county line with stolen goods!”
“That’s right,” Francis chimed in gloatingly. “I’ll bet she’s got the diamonds in her car now!”
“I most certainly have not,” Nancy refuted, stepping back into the automobile and taking her place at the driver’s seat. “I tell you I have never seen Mrs. Blair’s locket!”
“Colleen said you took it,” Francis insisted, “and I’d believe her word before I would yours.”
“You might investigate her record!” Nancy said hotly. “You may find a few things that will surprise you.”
“Just the same, we’ll have a look inside your car,” Abe Jacobs drawled, placing his hand on the door handle.
Anger welled up within Nancy at this proposed outrage. She knew that the two men had no right to search her machine and was determined to get away from them even should it mean a ruined tire.
As Jacobs swung open the door, she stepped firmly on the gas pedal. The car spurted forward, and the lawyer was flung backward to the ground.
With a cry of fury Francis Clancy hurled himself upon the running-board of the moving car. Before Nancy was aware of what was happening, he had snapped off the ignition.
“Oh, no you don’t!” he sneered.
Abe Jacobs picked himself up from the ground, fuming because he had fallen into a puddle of water.
“You have the diamond locket, Nancy Drew!” he said accusingly. “I’ll find it, too!”
He jerked open the car door, and before the girls could make a move to prevent him, he had ripped down the pocket. A hard object instantly thudded to the running-board. It was the diamond locket!
“Ah!” Jacobs cried triumphantly, snatching it up. “We have the thief, Clancy!”
Nancy and her chums were too stunned for the moment to say anything. Who had placed the locket in the car pocket? With sinking hearts they realized that their every act heightened the appearance of their guilt. If they only had not tried to get away!
“I don’t know how in the world that locket came to be in my car,” Nancy stammered. “I never saw it before in all my life!”
“You can tell that to the judge,” Jacobs sneered.
He handed Clancy the diamond trinket.
“This is the one Mrs. Blair lost, isn’t it?”
“Sure, this is the one, all right. Colleen told me——”
He broke off quickly, and did not finish his sentence. Nancy shot a suspicions glance at him. She had not forgotten the conversation she had overheard between Clancy and Colleen the previous day. They had spoken of getting her caught in a police net. How innocently she had walked into their trap!!
“Someone must have put the locket in my car to throw suspicion on me,” she defended herself.
“And we have a good idea who it was, too!” George spoke up, glaring at Clancy.
“Miss Drew, you’ll have to come back with me to River Heights,” Jacobs said sternly. “We have the goods on you this time, and even that smart father of yours won’t be able to pull you out of it.”
Nancy had no intention of returning to River Heights if she could possibly prevent it, yet she thought it best to appear to give in. She accordingly assumed a dejected pose and said:
“I can’t go with you until I get my tire changed.”
Back on the road Nancy had caught a glimpse of a car which she knew belonged to a garageman, for it bore the advertisement of his shop in Crown Point. Before Jacobs could protest, she had signaled for the man to stop.
“Can you change my tire for me?” she inquired as he drew up alongside.
“Sure, Miss! That’s my business. It won’t take me more than ten minutes!”
Jacobs and Clancy were impatient at the delay, but offered no objection to the mechanic fixing the car, since it was impossible for them to take all three of the girls back to River Heights in their coupé. Nancy and her chums alighted, presumably to watch the work.
Jacobs and Clancy lingered about for a time. Then, catching sight of a spring nearby, they wandered over for a drink of water. Nancy had been acting so depressed in spirit that they felt they now had her completely cowed.
This was the opportunity the girl had been seeking. She quickly leaned over and whispered something to the garageman. He looked startled, then nodded.
Bess, by prearrangement, now stole quietly over to Jacobs’s parked automobile. Nancy had told her where to find the water cock. She quickly turned it, allowing the contents to drain out upon the ground.
“That should delay things some!” she chuckled.
Nancy ran over to the garageman’s automobile and started the motor in an instant. She thrust in the clutch and shot away, while the outraged cries of Clancy and Jacobs rent the air.
The two men ran after the car for a short distance, but realized that they could not hope to overtake it. Nancy had completely outwitted them!
“You let that girl take your car!” Jacobs accused the garageman furiously, as he ran toward his own automobile. “Now what’s happened?”
He stared at the stream of water flooding the ground. Before he could reach down to turn the cock, the last drop had drained from the automobile.
“Done again!”
“We can get some water from the spring!” Clancy proposed.
“In what, you fool?”
“You might try carrying it in your hats,” the garageman chuckled.
“Don’t stand here staring at me!” Jacobs ordered Clancy furiously. “Do something! Find a bucket or even a tin can. We can’t run this car without water! We’d burn it up.”
While the two men raged, Bess and George quietly returned to Nancy’s car as they had been told to do. By this time the mechanic had changed the wheel. Clancy and Jacobs were too excited to notice what the girls were doing.
Suddenly the garageman sprang into Nancy’s car. Before the two men could recover from their surprise, they stood watching him drive away with Bess and George.
“I may get into trouble for doing this!” the mechanic chuckled. “But I always like to help a lady in distress! Besides, I didn’t care for the looks of those two birds!”
“Where are you taking us?” George inquired curiously.
“The young lady said she’d meet us at my garage in Crown Point. Maybe you’ve heard of the Skillman Repair Shop. I fix anything that runs on wheels.”
Before they reached that place, Bess and George felt very well acquainted with Henry Skillman. They drove up to the garage, and were relieved to see the car which Nancy had taken parked by the gas pump. But the girl herself was nowhere to be seen.
“I guess she must be waiting inside,” Bess commented.
The girls found Nancy at the telephone. She had just concluded a long conversation with her father and another with Mrs. Blair. The latter left her somewhat shaken, for the actress showed slight disposition to believe the girl’s story about the diamond locket.
“We must get away from here as quickly as we can,” Nancy told her companions hurriedly, “or Jacobs and Clancy will be after us in a very short time.”
“Yes,” George agreed with a laugh, “they’ll be hot on the trail as soon as they get their car started. Oh, it was too funny for words to see them so flabbergasted!”
“Before we leave, I want to thank Mr. Skillman for having helped us,” Nancy declared.
The garageman was in his shop testing the punctured tire which had been removed from Nancy’s car.
“I was glad to help you out,” the man declared.
“Helping ladies is his specialty!” a workman cut in jokingly. “Ask him to tell you how he saved a woman’s life about a year ago!”
“I didn’t save her life,” Skillman growled. “I just picked her up when she was unconscious on the river bank.”
“We’d like to hear the story,” Nancy declared promptly.
Knowing that they ought to hurry away, Bess and George were surprised that Nancy suddenly had decided to tarry.
“I tell you it wasn’t anything,” the garageman maintained modestly. “But if you can stand to hear about it, I’ll spin the yarn for you girls.”
As Nancy and her chums listened, even the former little dreamed of the far-reaching results Mr. Skillman’s story was destined to bring about.