Nan Sherwood's Summer Holidays Part 27

Prescott would be angry to know that those things happened on the boat and that we didn't tell her. You know she would, and it would spoil all the rest of our trip."

"Maybe Bess is right," Grace agreed timidly. "Maybe we had just better wait for a while and see what happens."

"We'll wait for two hours," Amelia looked at her watch, "and if Nan hasn't come back by then, I think we should tell everything we know. It really might help Mr. Blake. He seems terribly worried."

"Yes, there's something more to this than we know about, I'm sure. I heard Dr. Prescott and him talking about sending for some people in the village to help join in the search."

"Have they done it?" Bess asked quickly.

"I don't believe so," Laura answered. "She asked him to wait, to give Nan time to come back if she had wandered off by herself. She doesn't want any of this to get into the newspapers, if she can help it."

"Oh, if it does, it will frighten all our people back home and we'll have to go back right away, I know," Bess was worried at this thought.

"Why didn't Nan stay here with us?"

"Maybe we ought to tell all that we know now," Rhoda returned to the question that had been set aside a few moments before. "It certainly can't do any harm. Dr. Prescott probably will scold us, but that's nothing beside the risk of harming Nan by not telling."

"Rhoda's right," Laura got up once more, "and I don't care what the rest of you think, I'm going downstairs now and tell. I just can't stand sitting here any longer and not doing anything."

"All right, then," Bess gave in, for she too was becoming tired of just waiting. "Let's all go down together. Are the rest of you agreed?"

Grace still seemed reluctant to go, for she was one to obey orders and felt that if the people downstairs wanted them, they would call. She said something of this to her friends.

"Oh, Grace, don't be so afraid," Laura was impatient with her now, "You can just bet that, if they thought we had anything at all worth telling, they would have asked us long ago. Now, come on, don't be a baby."

"Maybe it isn't worth telling." Grace was growing stubborn now.

"Well, all I can say is," Laura replied to this, "that if the fact that a mysterious person went through Nan's luggage once and then followed her from the time we got off the boat until we got here isn't worth telling, then nothing is. Now, come on."

There was no more argument. Together the girls went downstairs to where James Blake and Dr. Prescott were holding consultation with two villagers who had been called in when Dr. Prescott had finally given her consent to ask for outside help.

"You understand," James Blake was saying, as they entered, "the la.s.sie has gone off by herself and been lost. There is to be no word of anything else told to anyone, but we want a thorough search made of every likely hiding place in the neighborhood. No one would hurt her, but as you both know, there might be good reason to keep her in hiding until after the good king is crowned. Now, mind you, hold your tongues, and report back to me as quickly--" He left the sentence unfinished as he saw the girls.

"What is it la.s.sies?" He smiled rea.s.suringly down at them.

Laura plunged into her story without any preliminaries.

"And he was--a hunchback--red headed--with strange eyes?" The old man seemed to grow much older even as he repeated the words. "Then it is as I feared. The man we want is Robert Hugh Blake, my own poor, misguided brother!"

He rubbed his hand across his face, as he spoke. For a moment, he looked as though the whole thing was more than he could possibly stand.

Those in the room watched him silently, feeling at once how deeply he was hurt. To Bess alone, the name, Robert Hugh Blake, had a familiar ring. As she heard it, her thoughts flashed back to the last day on the boat when she had surprised the hunchback at Nan's luggage. She remembered Nan's revelation then, remembered her own puzzling over a clue that just escaped her memory.

Now, she puckered her brows over it again and tried to go back further over the things that had happened. There! No, it didn't quite come. She tried harder, sure now that the fact that was escaping her had an important bearing upon the present mystery. She went back in time over the scenes on the boat, their farewells to their parents, the trip to New York, the last days at school, the worry when for so long they didn't receive any letters--

There, she had it now! It was a letter, the mysterious letter Nan had read in their room at Lakeview! It was the letter Nan had refused to explain, although it had left her nervous and excited! Bess remembered the scene all quite clearly now. She knew now, as she knew then, that Nan's explanation that it made her homesick wasn't the truth. She knew that that letter had been the beginning of all their troubles!

Without thinking further, she blurted out what she knew about it. James Blake, Dr. Prescott, everyone in the room listened intently to everything that Bess had to say. For once, she made a clean breast of everything and told all that she knew of what had been happening.

"And where, la.s.sie, is that letter?" James Blake made a distinct effort to forget his own sorrow at the turn of events. Action was needed now.

"I don't know, unless it is in her bags," Bess started upstairs at once.

"I'll go look." At last she felt important, as though she was doing her part to help locate Nan.

But much as she wanted to, she couldn't find the note in question. She looked over everything most thoroughly, admiring, even in her excitement, the extreme neatness of Nan's bags. But she found nothing unusual at all. She went slowly back downstairs and reported.

"Did you ever see the letter at all?" Dr. Prescott questioned her, "the envelope, the stamps, or the postmark?"

Bess shook her head, wis.h.i.+ng now that when she had first noticed Nan sitting troubled over it, she had insisted on knowing what it was all about. "If I hadn't been so interested in that old memory book," she thought regretfully, "I might have known more now."

But regrets were of no use, now. All in the room felt regrets in one form or another, but that did not bring Nan back.

Old James Blake had sat silently by, during Dr. Prescott's questioning, knowing that she thought as he did, that the letter Nan had received in Lakeview was some sort of warning as to what would happen to her, if she left the United States. He knew, too, that in asking about the postmark, she was trying to find out whether or not it had been mailed in Scotland.

"There is only one thing to do," he spoke rather sadly, "and much as I hate to have it happen, I must tell you to do it. You must ring that bell over there, call for a servant, and either go yourself or have him go and report this whole thing to the authorities. It's a case, I think, for Scotland Yard."

"You are sure that that is the only course?" Dr. Prescott was most sympathetic.

"Yes, I am sure," the old man said, "My brother, the one whom you all call the hunchback, was injured during the late war so that he was deformed for life and his mind was affected. He has, since his discharge from the hospital, been a recluse, refusing to see anyone except myself and a very few friends. He has spent most of his time searching old family records with the aim in view of writing a family history.

"He has always loved this estate and felt, for no very good reason, that he and I were the logical heirs. When it pa.s.sed to someone across the water, the blow almost killed him. However, he recovered, and we kept him under close guard when Nancy's parents were here some time ago.

"Apparently, after their departure, since they left the care of the place in our hands, he was resigned to what had happened. However, when the old king died and he saw that our old Scotch privilege of taking part in the coronation was given to an American, the old wound was reopened. For days he was like a mad man around here. Then he quieted down, and I thought that he was accepting fate again. When he disappeared some weeks ago, I made a quiet search. Unable to find out anything, I let the matter rest, hoping against hope that he had gone into retirement as he often has in recent years.

"What must have happened you know as well as I. That he is somewhere in this vicinity, I am certain, as certain as I am that he was the driver of the coach last night on the wild drive up the hill. Why it was that he stopped, that he didn't carry out what I think was his original intention, to drive you all over the embankment, I can only guess.

"It wasn't for fear of losing his own life, I know. I believe that it was concern for me. We have always been very fond of one another."

He said this last simply, and made a motion, as no one else moved, to go himself and pull the bell chord.

CHAPTER XXVIII

NAN COMES INTO HER OWN

"Wait!" Dr. Prescott gave the command as the old Scotsman raised his arm to pull the chord. "Someone's coming!"

With one impulse, everyone in the room turned toward the door. They were all tense as it was opened from without and a group of villagers entered with Robert Hugh Blake in their midst!

"I tell you," he was protesting, "I don't know where the la.s.sie is." His eyes were wild and staring as he spoke. "I tell you I don't--" He broke off his sentence when his eyes lighted on his brother. His whole att.i.tude changed. "James, I don't know where she is," he almost whimpered.

James Blake stepped over to his brother's side. He motioned to the others in the room to keep quiet.

"There, there, Bobby," he spoke as he would to a child, "Of course you don't know where she is now. But where was she when you last saw her?"

"Down in the old gatehouse at the foot of the hill." Robert Blake answered. He was accustomed to obeying his brother. "But I didn't hurt her, not at all." His voice was earnest as he spoke and so sincere, that even Dr. Prescott, worried as she was, believed him.