Читать книгу Nancy's Mysterious Letter - Walter Karig - Страница 6

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“You mean—Edgar?”

Ira Dixon looked at Nancy in bewilderment.

“Yes, the one who is after a part of your inheritance,” Nancy nodded.

“Why, I—I don’t know where he lives, to tell the truth,” Dixon said. “Why?”

“Doesn’t it occur to you that he might have taken your mail pouch for revenge?”

“That is a possibility,” he said. “After all, there isn’t a soul in the world with any grudge against me except Edgar.”

Nancy said nothing, as Dixon paused. Then he went on:

“But no, Miss Nancy, I can’t believe he would do such a thing just for spite. He knew how proud I was of my record. No, he wouldn’t be so mean. He may be greedy, but not cruel.”

“If you don’t know where he lives it doesn’t matter, then,” Nancy replied, with a shrug of her shoulders. “However, I shall try my best to aid you and also get my father to help straighten matters out for you.”

“Thank you a thousand times, Miss Nancy,” cried Dixon, grasping one of the girl’s hands in both his own. “You give me courage, you do indeed. I——”

The mailman’s voice broke, and he turned his head. Nancy patted him on the shoulder and went out into the street.

“Oh, bother! It’s dark,” she exclaimed. “I thought I’d have a chance to read my letter from England in the car.”

The swift autumnal twilight had set in, and Nancy switched on her parking lights to comply with the “sunset law.” Although traffic was still thick in the heart of the city, Nancy threaded through it without difficulty and in a few minutes drew up in front of her home.

“Yoo hoo!” George hailed her from the porch. “We’re still here!”

“Your father came in just as we were leaving so we told him all about the robbery,” Bess explained when Nancy reached the porch. “We were just starting for the bus now.”

“Then I’ll drive you home,” Nancy said promptly. “It will take less than half the time, and you can carry some of those apples with you. Mrs. Burd gave me a bushel when all I asked for was two quarts.”

Nancy went into the kitchen and returned at once with four large paper bags heaped with apples, and a big squash.

Bess and George relieved her of the apples, while Nancy explained that neither she nor her father cared for squash and one of the other girls might as well make use of it.

“Not I, thanks just the same,” George laughed. “Squash—ugh! I’d rather eat—cornstalks.”

Bess Marvin, whose plump curves indicated a much heartier appetite than that of her cousin, put in a bid for the vegetable.

“I like it—squash pie, squash pudding, baked squash and buttered squash! Mmm! You don’t know what’s good.”

“Let’s go, then,” Nancy cried. “And I’ll tell you what happened at the post office as we’re driving. Dad’s locked himself up in his study, Hannah tells me, and said he wanted dinner late, so I have an hour yet.”

In about twenty minutes Nancy drew up in front of George’s home, a more modest dwelling than the Drew house. George jumped out, received her apples, and after exchanging farewells and plans for the next meeting of the three, left her friends.

Bess lived only two blocks farther on, and in no time at all Nancy was bidding goodnight to her second passenger.

“I’ll drop around tomorrow if I have the chance,” Bess said. “Whew, but it’s getting cold and windy. Real football weather!”

“I haven’t planned a thing for tomorrow,” Nancy said. “Say, I’d better give you a hand with this stuff. There is a hole in the bag of apples and they might spill out. Here, you take the squash.”

The apple bag ripped as Nancy picked it up. Hugging it to her chest, she scurried for the Marvin door, but a pace from the front steps the bag tore wide open from the weight of the apples, and the crimson fruit went rolling in all directions.

Bess dropped her squash, and the two girls, with much laughter and scrambling under bushes, retrieved the apples. It was quite dark by now, and the brisk wind sent the last withered leaves whirling from the trees.

“Br-r-r! That feels like winter,” Nancy cried, gathering up the corners of her coat and making for the house with her recovered apples.

Mrs. Marvin opened the door and then immediately ran for a dishpan to hold the fruit.

“Look out, Nancy,” she said. “You are going to lose a letter from your pocket.”

“Oh, my letter from England!” Nancy exclaimed, taking out the crisp envelope and contemplating it again. She was half tempted to ask permission to read it then and there.

“It’s a curious thing,” she laughed, “but this is the first letter from England I ever got in my life. I can’t guess whom it is from. It’s addressed to ‘Nancy S. Drew,’ and I have no middle name.”

“Why don’t you open it now, then?” Mrs. Marvin suggested. “There is some printing on the back.”

“Oh, it’s more fun speculating as to what is inside,” Nancy smiled, turning the letter over. “Sure enough, there is a name on the back. I hadn’t looked. It says ‘Chelsford, Lincoln, Chelsford and Bates-Jones, Solicitors.’ Oh, that spoils my fun. I suppose it is someone soliciting for charity.”

Nancy stuffed the unopened letter back into her pocket.

“I know,” Bess laughed. “Nancy’s detective instinct is aroused, and she is trying to deduce what is in the letter without opening it. Why don’t you hold it to your forehead and shut your eyes, Nancy, like the mind reader we saw at Coster’s Theater that time?”

Her chum laughed, too.

“Nancy has another real mystery,” Bess said to her mother.

“Indeed?” Mrs. Marvin exclaimed.

“I brought this one on myself,” Nancy said ruefully, buttoning up her coat. “Bess will tell you all about it. I must hurry home to dinner.”

Nancy bade her friends goodnight and stepped out into the darkness. The high wind was rattling the tree branches and whirling the fallen leaves about.

“What’s that white thing being blown about in the air?” cried Bess from the doorway. “It isn’t your letter, is it?”

Nancy, one foot on the running-board of her car, looked back to see a white object tumbling by, a dozen feet from the ground. Then she put a hand into her pocket. The letter was still there.

“It’s nothing but a little piece of newspaper,” she called to Bess.

As her chum closed the front door, Nancy gathered her coat tightly about her, stepped into the car, and turned on the motor.

She did not notice that the mysterious letter from England had been pushed from her pocket and had fluttered to the running-board, where a gust of wind had flattened it momentarily against the side of the moving car.