ALL ABOUT NANCY
The red-haired youth drew himself up to the window-sill (he had climbed
a rickety arbor below) and motioned to the girls to unlock the sashes.
They did so and Scorch forced up the lower one.
"Hist!" he whispered, in a tone so hoarse that it almost choked him.
"Where is he?"
"We don't know," said Jennie, hastily. "He's locked us into this room."
"Of course he would," said Scorch, airily. "Don't they always do that?
It's the gray man; isn't it?"
"Yes, yes!" said Nancy. "Senator Montgomery."
"That's the man. I got onto his name lately. And I seen him again, too.
Now he'll keep you from Mr. Gordon."
"Is he hurt very badly?" asked Nancy, anxiously.
"You bet he is!"
"Oh, Scorch!"
"But you're goin' to have a chance to talk with him first. He'll see
you, too. He told me so only last evening. I was with him all night.
Then I ran home for breakfast and found your telegram. Then I beat it
for the station. But you'd got away before I got there."
"Senator Montgomery came down on the train with us," explained Nancy.
"And he said he was coming right to Garvan's Hotel to see Mr.
Gordon----This is not the hotel; is it, Scorch?"
"I should say not!" returned the boy. "He fooled you. I asked among the
cabmen at the station, and they all saw you and the gray man. So I
knowed there was trouble afoot.
"He took you around the corner, and there a milkman saw you all getting
into the taxi. So I grabs another taxi--I had money belongin' to Old--to
Mr. Gordon--in my pocket.
"That taxi-driver was a keen one, he was. He trailed your machine like
he was trackin' a band of Injuns. Cops saw you pass, and switchmen at
the trolley crossin's.
"So we got here just as the taxi was whiskin' his nibs away----"
"Then he's not in the house?"
"I knew he wasn't when I asked," said Scorch, calmly. "He's beat it for
Garvan's. That's where we'll go, too."
"Oh, Scorch!" cried Jennie. "You're wonderful. How you going to get us
out?"
"Not by the window, I hope," murmured Nancy.
"Of course not," the young man replied. "See here."
He produced from either trousers leg the two parts of a jointed steel
bar. It went together with a sharp click and proved to be a burglar's
"jimmy" of the most approved pattern.
"Scorch O'Brien! Where did you get that thing?" demanded Nancy. "You
could be arrested with it in your possession."
"Forget it," advised Scorch, easily. "My next-door neighbor is a cop. He
let me have it, and I'll show you how to use it."
The youth went to the single door of the room, inserted the point of the
bar between door and frame near the lock, and the next moment the dry
wood gave way, splintering all around the lock. The door came open at a
touch.
"Sup--suppose they stop us?" breathed Jennie, trembling.
"Let 'em try!" exclaimed the valiant Scorch, and led the way into the
dark hall.
They marched downstairs, the girls clinging together and trembling,
without a soul appearing to dispute their advance. The outside door was
chained; but Scorch had no difficulty in opening it. And so they passed
on out into the grimy street just after sunrise.
The house was merely an old, ill-kept lodging house, the person who ran
it being under some sort of obligation to Senator Montgomery. The girls
never learned what street it was on.
"My taxi's waiting," said Scorch, proudly, hurrying them around the
corner. "Come on, before it eats its head off and breaks me."
"Oh, I've got money, Scorch!" cried Nancy.
"All right. You may need it later."
The taxi-cab driver paid no attention to the girls as they got in.
Scorch took his seat beside him, and they were off. In a very few
minutes they stopped at Garvan's Hotel, in a much better-looking
neighborhood, and Scorch paid for the cab.
"Come on, now, and let me do the talking," said the red-headed youth.
"That gray man is ahead of us; but he isn't the whole thing around
_this_ hotel. They know me better than they do him."
Nobody sought to stop them, however. They went up in the elevator and
got out at the third floor. Scorch led the way along the corridor, and
suddenly turned the knob of a door without knocking. The door was
unlocked.
"Here! What do you want in here, young man?" snapped a voice that Nancy
and Jennie recognized.
It was Senator Montgomery. Scorch pushed ahead.
"I must see Mr. Gordon," he said. "I've been with him ever since he was
brought in from the wreck. I'm takin' my orders from him."
"He is in no fit shape to give orders. You can't see him----"
He broke off with a startled cry when he saw the girls.
"Where--where did they come from?" he gasped.
"Right from where you locked them in, Mister," replied the boy, boldly.
"But you didn't count on me; did you? I was on the job. Mr. Gordon has
asked to see Nancy Nelson, and he's going to see her."
"You young scoundrel!" exclaimed the man in gray. "I'll have you
arrested for breaking and entering."
"All right, sir," returned the youth, quite calmly, but walking swiftly
to the window of the room. "See yonder, Mister? See that cop on the
corner? Well, that's Mike Dugan. He's my next-door neighbor. And if you
were the President of the United States, instead of a senator, Mike
Dugan would be a bigger man than you.
"Understand? Nancy Nelson sees Mr. Gordon just as soon as the nurse
says it's all right. You try to interfere and I'll call my friend up
here!"
The inner door opened and a white-capped nurse appeared.
"Not so much talking, please!" she said, severely. "You are disturbing
Mr. Gordon. Has the girl appeared yet?"
Nancy Nelson ran forward. Senator Montgomery tried to stop her; but
Scorch was right in his path.
"Stand back!" exclaimed the red-haired youth, emulating his favorite
heroes of fiction. "She's a-going to see him!"
"Of course she is," said the nurse, taking Nancy's hand. "I believe it
will do him more good than anything else. He is worried about something,
and if he relieves his mind, the doctor says, he has a very good chance
of recovering."
"He's mad. He's not fit to talk with anyone," declared Senator
Montgomery, as the door closed behind Nancy and the nurse stood on
guard.
The man was dripping with perspiration and showed every evidence of
panic.
"Say, boss," advised Scorch, "if Mr. Gordon is likely to tell anything
that is goin' to incriminate you, as the newspapers puts it, take my
tip: Get away while you can."
And whether because of Scorch's word, or for other reasons, Mr.
Montgomery tiptoed from the room, and was not seen again about the
hotel. Nancy and Jennie remained, however, for several days, being
assigned to a room next to Mr. Gordon's suite.
Just what passed between the injured man and Nancy Nelson nobody but the
two will ever know. Nancy did not tell everything even to her chum. But
Mr. Bruce likewise had a long interview with the lawyer that very day
and at once went to work under the injured man's direction to obtain
certain property which might be tampered with by those who had kept
Nancy out of her rightful fortune for so long.
Henry Gordon was equally guilty with his old partner, Montgomery. But
the latter had benefited more largely from the crime, and Gordon had
been a party to it under duress.
Years before, when he lived in California, Henry Gordon had been tempted
to commit a crime. Had it become known he never could have practised law
again--in any state. Montgomery knew of the lawyer's slip and held it
over him.
The Senator's wife had a sister who was married to a very wealthy
man--Arnold Nelson. It was supposed that Mr. Nelson's family--himself,
his wife, and little daughter--had died suddenly of a fever during an
epidemic in a coast town.
With the child dead, the entire property belonging to the Nelsons came
to Senator Montgomery's wife, and he had the handling of it. But Gordon,
who had known and loved, as a young man, Nancy's mother, after the
parents' death found the deserted little girl, placed her with Miss
Prentice at Higbee School, and forced Montgomery to pay, year by year,
for the child's board and education.
Where Nancy was, Montgomery did not know until he came across her at
Pinewood Hall. Gordon had no idea that the Senator intended sending his
own daughter to Pinewood, too.
So that, in brief, was the story the broken and injured lawyer told his
charge. Later he explained more fully to Mr. Bruce, Jennie's father, and
with the aid of good counsel, Mr. Bruce made the Montgomerys disgorge
the great fortune that they had withheld from Nancy's use all these
years.
In the end Mr. Gordon did not die. He remained an invalid for some time,
but slowly recovered. Nancy, by that time, had become such a necessity
to him that he went to Clintondale for the weeks of convalescence when
the doctors refused to let him get back into legal harness again.
He was really a changed man. He could not act as Nancy's guardian; Mr.
Bruce, Jennie's father, did that. But there was scarcely a pleasant
afternoon during the remainder of Nancy's junior year, while Mr. Gordon
was at Clintondale, that a very red-haired youth, in a smart auto
outfit, did not drive up to the school entrance in a little runabout,
and whisk Nancy down to the village hotel to see Mr. Gordon for an hour
or so.
And Nancy learned to like Mr. Gordon better than she had ever expected
to when she first bearded the lion in his den.