HAPPILY EVER AFTER!
"Passenger plane X 52 headed toward the border missing. Nan Sherwood--"
Walker Jamieson in a newspaper office in Mexico City got no further as
the news came over the wire. He grabbed a phone, asked for long
distance, and called the hacienda.
Yes, they had received the news. No, they didn't know anything beyond
what Walker did. Nan was traveling alone. Walker breathed a deep sigh of
relief at this. He had been afraid that Alice was with her.
It was all a complete mystery. Couldn't Walker do something? This plea
came from Alice herself and it wrung his heart.
"I'll try." These were the words with which he hung up and somehow they
comforted the young woman on the phone. She turned to her father and
said simply, "It was Walker. He'll help."
And Walker did. While government planes swooped back and forth again
and again across the country looking for a wrecked plane, Walker was
busy working out his own theories.
"I tell you," he was calling his New York editor, "there's a whale of a
good story here, one that's bigger than anyone has guessed. This is no
mere plane accident.
"How do I know? Oh, just smart that way. Can't tell you more now. Want
to go through with it? It will cost plenty of dough. Need a plane and a
couple of darn good pilots.
"Sky's the limit, you say? Okey-doke." With this he slammed the receiver
down and was off.
He went to the United States Embassy, called the hacienda again, hired a
plane and zoomed off in the direction X52 was headed for when it
disappeared.
For hours he and his pilot combed the district and found nothing that
satisfied Walker. Then, along about nightfall a lone shack in a deserted
district attracted his attention. The plane dropped down.
Nan heard it, from her shack prison she heard it and thought that it
was the X52 returning. While she waited, she didn't know what she wanted
the more--to have the plane come or have it stay away. If it stayed
away, she thought, that somehow, some way they could get out of the
cabin, but to what end she couldn't imagine. In the meantime, she was
concerned over the child and the fear that it would starve.
She waited tensely as the motor died, as she heard footsteps approaching
the cabin.
A voice called.
Where had she heard it before? Could it possibly be--Walker! Was she
dreaming? She heard it again. This time she answered and a great flood
of relief came over her. It was he! She ran to the door and shook it,
although she had done it a dozen times before during the day and nothing
had happened. Because Walker was here now, because there was someone out
there that she knew, she felt that almost anything might come true. She
pushed and shouted and beat upon the door.
Walker called to her again. This time she answered. His relief was as
great as hers. She was alive. His hunch was right! He too beat upon the
door with all his strength, pulled and pushed, but to no avail. Then he
and the pilots got a beam and rammed it into the unresisting blockade.
After what seemed hours, the door moved on its hinges, then gave way and
Walker found Nan, the pluckiest little girl in the world he said later,
unharmed by her experience.
"But Mr. Jamieson," Nan questioned him as the plane he had brought took
to the air with the pilots and the other prisoners, the woman and child,
"how did you guess what had happened?"
He didn't hear her at first. He was already busy planning the release on
the tale he had pieced together.
The lead--"Plucky Nan Sherwood Found Alive in Deserted Shack in
Wilderness. Gang of smugglers exposed in daring attempt to take plane
load of Chinese across the border."
Sounded good, he was thinking, but they really hadn't been exposed as
yet. He knew how they worked, but he didn't know who they were. He
turned now to Nan to see if he could find a clue.
"What did the men who imprisoned you look like?" he questioned her.
Nan described them briefly.
"Did you hear or see anyone besides the people you saw in the plane?" he
questioned.
Nan hadn't, but as he talked she had an inspiration. "Oh, I know, maybe
I can help you!" she exclaimed. Then she told him of the pictures she
had snapped before boarding the transport.
The rest of the plane ride was a dash toward a place where the pictures
could be developed. One by one they were brought forth from the
developing fluid, until it seemed as though the inspiration had not been
such a fortunate one after all. But Walker didn't give up. It was the
last one that brought the desired results.
"Why, I know that man." Walker Jamieson summoned forth from his long
experience as a newspaperman, the recollection of a story about an
aviator who had been discharged from the airplane mail service because
of irregularities. Here was a picture of the man.
Nan took it up and studied it. "Why, I know him too!" she exclaimed.
"Of course you do," Walker agreed. "He was one of the men who held up
the plane, wasn't he?"
"Yes, and not only that," Nan now divulged a surprising bit of
information, "he was present at the bull fight in Mexico City a few days
ago."
"What do you mean?" Walker looked at her intently.
"He was there with a former schoolmate, a Linda Riggs, and he was
introduced to Cousin Adair by her."
"His name?"
Nan searched back in her memory before she answered. "Arthur--"
"Howard?" Walker supplied the name.
"That's right." Nan was smiling now, thinking of Bess's glee when she
found out what a position Linda would be in when this story came out.
"So, you perhaps can even locate him," Walker looked at the amazing
youngster beside him.
"Linda is staying--oh, I don't know." Nan looked disappointed as she
remembered that they hadn't exchanged addresses with the girl. But it
didn't matter, before the night was over, Linda Riggs, thoroughly
frightened because she had unwittingly entertained and been entertained
by an international crook, revealed all she knew about his whereabouts.
And before the morning run of the great metropolitan daily that Walker
was associated with had gone to press, the story was completed.
Arthur Howard using visitors' passes stolen at the border and altered to
suit his needs passed back and forth freely between the United States
and Mexico. He was engaged in smuggling Chinese across and in this
particularly daring attempt to finish up a big job had, after he held up
the plane on which Nan had been a passenger, loaded it heavily with men
who had paid high prices to make the trip.
The Chinese cook at the hacienda had been involved because he had paid a
high price to try to get a relative of his across. The ring stolen from
Nan was his last desperate effort to finish his payments, payments which
had been draining all of his resources for months and had taken all of
his life's savings. This was the part of his story that he had told Nan
after she had won his confidence.
Needless to say, Arthur Howard and his gang were rounded up by a group
of United States G-men and he received a long prison sentence after a
startling trial.
But to Nan and her friends at the hacienda, the most important result of
the whole complicated affair was a certain wedding.
"Your cousin just couldn't be mean after Walker found you," Bess hugged
Nan in her excitement. "And there is to be that wedding that we talked
about, and you are going to be maid of honor and we're all going to be
bridesmaids. It will be in the garden and there will be lots of guests
from all over the country and maybe Walter will be back here. Oh, Nan,
I'm so excited!"
"And that isn't the half of it," Nan finished. "Cousin Adair has given
this place to Walker and Alice and he's settled a large sum of money on
them and he's inviting Momsey and Papa down for the wedding. Oh, Bess,
and Rhoda's going to come too, but not by plane," she added. "Everything
is just perfectly grand!"
So, let's leave Nan Sherwood and her friends to a happy, happy time, to
finish out a summer in Mexico that was more exciting than they ever
imagined a summer could possibly be.
Transcriber's Notes
Obvious printer's errors were silently corrected. Otherwise spelling,
hyphenation, interpunction and syntax of the original have been
preserved.
Line 1142: some-place should be non-hyphenated.