THE MAN IN GRAY AGAIN
"Do you understand it, Nancy?" asked the principal, quietly.
"Oh, yes, Madame!"
"I suppose it is natural for them to send for you if your guardian is
hurt?"
"Scorch would be sure to send for me," whispered the girl, nodding.
"Scorch?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"A very peculiar name, Nancy."
"He--he is a peculiar boy. But I know him. I have been to his home. He
is my friend."
"And Garvan's Hotel?"
"Is where Mr. Gordon lives. He is a bachelor."
"Ah! Then I presume it is all right. But to go to Cincinnati at
night--there is a train in an hour----"
"Dear Madame Schakael!" cried Jennie. "Let me go with her. I'll take
care of her."
"She's better able to take care of you, I think, Miss Flyaway,"
observed the Madame, with a smile.
"We'll take care of each other, then," said Jennie, promptly. "I'll wire
my father, or my brother John. They'll come in to the city to meet us
to-morrow morning."
"That may be a good way to handle the matter," said the principal,
accepting Jennie's suggestion with relief. "Miss Nelson should go at
once, I believe. I'll 'phone Samuel at the stables and have him here at
the door with the light cart before you girls can possibly get ready.
Each of you pack a bag--and pack sensibly. Be off with you!" commanded
the little woman, handling the matter with her customary energy, once
her decision was made.
Nancy and Jennie ran up to their room once more. The whole house was
still now, especially on the junior floor.
Only they thought they saw Cora Rathmore's door ajar.
"That's the nasty cat who told!" hissed Jennie, as she and her chum
began to dress.
"Never mind. We won't do it again, Jennie. We were wrong."
"I suppose we were. But, Nance!"
"What is it, dear?"
"I hate like time to have to be an example for the greenies and
sophs.," wailed Jennie, cramming things into her traveling bag quite
recklessly.
The girls were ready for their strange journey in twenty minutes. There
was no dawdling over dressing on this occasion. When they returned to
the Madame's office Samuel was just bringing the dog-cart to the door.
"Are you warmly dressed, girls?"
"Yes, indeed, Madame."
"Have you sufficient money?"
"I have nearly ten dollars," said Nancy.
"And I have half as much," added Jennie.
"Here is twenty more," said the Madame, putting it into Nancy's hand.
"Your guardian, Mr. Gordon, has always left a sum for emergencies in my
hand. It seems he has been very liberal. I hope, Nancy, that you will
find him not so seriously injured as the circumstances seem to suggest."
She kissed them both warmly and went to the hall door with them.
"Get their tickets and see them aboard the train. Speak to the conductor
about them, Samuel," she said to the under gardener.
"Indeed I will, Madame," replied the good fellow.
As they rattled down to the lodge gates, the door of the little cottage
opened and Jessie Pease hurried out in her night wrapper.
"Wait! Wait, Samuel!" she called, and held up a little basket. "You'll
be hungry on the train, girls. Some chicken sandwiches, and olives, and
odds and ends that I managed to pick up after the Madame telephoned to
me about your trouble.
"I hope it isn't so bad as it looks, Nancy. And take care of her,
Janie--that's a good lassie!"
"Oh! aren't folks just _good_!" exclaimed Nancy to her chum, as Samuel
drove on. "It just seems as though they _do_ like me a little."
"Huh! everybody's crazy about you, Nance! You ought to know that,"
returned Jennie. "I don't see what a girl who's made so many friends
needs of a family--or of money, either. Don't worry."
But Nancy wiped a few tears away. Never before had she appreciated the
fact that here at Pinewood Hall she had made many dear and loving
friends. "Miss Nobody from Nowhere" was just as important as anybody
else in the whole school.
Samuel drove almost recklessly through the streets of Clintondale in
order to make the night train that stopped but a moment at the station.
They were in good season, however, and the man put them, with their bags
and the basket, aboard.
It would not have paid to engage sleeping berths at that hour. The two
girls had comfortable seats, and of course, were too excited to wish to
sleep. Jennie proceeded to open the lunch basket at once, however.
"No knowing when we'll get a chance to eat again," declared Nancy's
lively chum, who was enjoying to the full the opening of this strange
campaign.
What should they first do when they reached the city? Would the hotel be
open so early in the morning? Would Scorch be at the station to meet
them?
And this question brought Nancy to another thought. Scorch had not been
communicated with.
So she wrote a reply to his message, saying that she and Jennie, were
coming to Cincinnati and were then on the train, and had the brakeman
file it for sending at the first station beyond Clintondale at which the
train stopped.
She addressed it to Scorch O'Brien's home, believing that it might reach
him more quickly in that way. She did not suppose that the red-haired
youth would be allowed to remain at Garvan's Hotel over night.
As it chanced, it was a very good thing Nancy Nelson sent this message,
and addressed it as she did. But, of course, neither she nor Jennie
Bruce suspected how important the matter was at the time.
And, within a few minutes, something else gripped the attention of the
girls. They were discussing Jessie's chicken sandwiches, "and other odds
and ends," when a man walked down the aisle of the rocking coach toward
them.
"Oh, look, Nance!" whispered Jennie.
Nancy looked up. The towering figure of a man dressed in a gray suit,
with hat and gloves to match, stopped suddenly beside them. It was
Senator Montgomery, Grace Montgomery's father.
"Hul-_lo_!" he muttered, evidently vastly surprised to see the girls in
the train bound for Cincinnati.
"How do you do?" said Nancy, softly.
"Yes! you're the girl. I thought I was not mistaken," spoke the Senator,
and although he frowned he seemed to wish to speak pleasantly. "You go
to the same school as my daughter?"
"Yes, sir."
"Pinewood Hall?"
"Yes, sir," repeated Nancy.
"What is your name?"
"Nancy Nelson."
"I thought I could not be mistaken." The frown was gone from his face
now and his sly eyes twinkled in what was meant to be a jovial way.
"You girls are not running away, I suppose?"
"Oh, no, sir," said Nancy, timidly.
"What is the matter, then?" he asked, quickly. He held a folded paper in
his hand which he had evidently been reading.
"My----A gentleman who looks after me has been hurt and I am going to
him," responded Nancy, hesitatingly. "They have telegraphed for me."
It seemed as though the Senator's face paled. "You don't mean to say he
sent word to _you_?" he demanded.
"Oh, no! not Mr. Gordon."
The Senator's face became suddenly animated again. He smote one hand
heavily upon the chair back.
"Not my old friend, Henry Gordon--a lawyer?"
"Yes, sir."
"I saw he was hurt. Why! I myself am going to Cincinnati for the special
purpose of seeing if he really is seriously ill!"
"Indeed, sir?"
"Quite so," declared the Senator. "And he sent for _you_? I didn't know
he had a relative living, my dear."
"No," explained Nancy. "It was Scorch who sent for me."
"Scorch?"
"Mr. Gordon's office boy."
"Humph!"
"And I am not related to Mr. Gordon," explained Nancy, wishing to be
perfectly open and aboveboard. "But Mr. Gordon has always looked after
me and--and I didn't know but I might be of some use to him if he is
alone and injured."
"Ahem!" returned the Senator, grimly. "I do not know that I quite
approve. I cannot understand what your principal was thinking of when
she let you two girls come off alone on such an errand. But----Ahem! I
will see you when we arrive at Cincinnati."
Jennie had not said a word during this conversation. She waited until
Senator Montgomery had gone along the aisle and was out of earshot. Then
she seized Nancy's arm suddenly.
"I've got it!" she whispered.
"Ouch! Got what?" demanded Nancy, striving to free her arm.
"I see it all!"
"Then let me see a little of it, Jennie. And, goodness me, dear! don't
pinch so. What _do_ you mean?"
"Do you know who that man is?" demanded Jennie, in an awed whisper.
"Of course. He's Grace Montgomery's father."
"Yes!" cried Jennie, impatiently. "But who else?"
"Why--why----"
"I don't understand why we did not see it before!" exclaimed Jennie,
mysteriously. "At any rate _you_ ought to have remembered it when Scorch
was talking that day."
"I really wish you would say what you mean, Jen," said her chum.
"That man--that Senator Montgomery--who knows your Mr. Gordon so well
and says he is hurrying to him now----"
"Well?" asked the wide-eyed Nancy.
"That fellow is the man in gray of whom Scorch told us so long ago.
Don't you remember? The man who came to Mr. Gordon and seemed to object
because he had sent you to school at Pinewood Hall?"
Nancy was stricken dumb for the moment. Scorch's description of the
mysterious man who had left Mr. Gordon in tears came back to her mind
now, clearly.
"The man in gray," repeated Jennie, nodding her curly head vigorously.