Читать книгу Dorothy Dixon and the Double Cousin - Wayne Dorothy - Страница 2

“Just – one – moment, please!” Ashton Sanborn’s keen blue eyes twinkled as he surveyed his young guests. His heavy-set body moved with a muscular grace as he placed a chair for Dorothy and motioned the two boys to seats on a divan nearby. “Now then, Dorothy and Bill – I want you two chatterboxes to keep quiet while I ask Mr. Bright some questions and get this matter straight in my own head. Your turn to talk will come later.” His quizzical smile robbed the words of any harshness, and the culprits grinned and nodded their willingness to comply with his request.

“Mr. Bright,” he went on, “if you’ll just answer my questions for the present, I’ll get you to tell the story from the beginning in a few minutes.”

“It’s mighty decent of you to take all this interest, Mr. Sanborn.”

The Secret Service Man shook his prematurely grey head – “It’s my business to ferret things out. Now, as I understand it, you mistook Dorothy for her cousin, Miss Jordan, to whom you are engaged. The likeness must be amazing?”

“It is, sir.”

“Yes – well, we’ll get back to the likeness after a while. You say that Miss Jordan is a prisoner in her father’s apartment, and is in danger of her life?”

“Yes, sir.” Howard, tense and taut as a fiddle string, his hands gripping the edge of the cushioned couch, gazed steadily back at his questioner.

“Do you know for certain that she is in actual danger at the present moment, Bright?” Ashton Sanborn’s quiet tone and unhurried manner of speaking was gradually gaining the young man’s confidence. Bill and Dorothy noticed that Howard’s strained look was beginning to disappear, and he had started to relax.

“She has been in great danger,” he replied, “but now, they’ve decided to test her. There isn’t a chance, though, that she will pass the test, Mr. Sanborn. The poor girl is so worn out and nervous she’s bound to fail.”

“Do you know what time she is to be taken away from the apartment?”

“Yes, sir. Lawson told her to pack her clothes today, so as to be ready to leave at midnight.”

“Mmm!” Sanborn glanced at his watch. “It is now one-thirty. That gives us exactly eleven and a half hours in which to get her out of their hands. Now just one question more, Mr. Bright. What made you say that this is a matter in which the so-called Secret Service of the United States should be called in, rather than the police?”

“Well,” Howard’s brows knit in a puzzled frown, “you see, Janet is being taken to Dr. Tyson Winn’s house near Ridgefield, Connecticut, tonight. As I understand it, Dr. Winn has a big laboratory up there where he is experimenting on high explosives for the government. Lawson, the man who told Janet she was to go there, is Dr. Winn’s secretary. It all looks so queer to me – I thought – ”

“That is interesting!” Ashton Sanborn’s tone was serious and for a little while he seemed lost in thought. Then abruptly he looked up from an inspection of his finger tips, and rose from his chair. “I ordered lunch for three before you young people arrived,” he said with a return of his cheerful, hearty way of speaking. “Now I’ll phone down and have lunch for four served up here instead.” He looked at Dorothy. “By the way, the menu calls for oyster cocktails, sweetbreads on grilled mushrooms, O’Brien potatoes, alligator pear salad, and cafe parfait – any suggestions?”

“Oh, aren’t you a dear!” Dorothy, who had been using a miniature powder puff on her nose, snapped shut the cover of her compact. “You have ordered all the things I like best. No wonder you’re a great detective – you never forget a single thing, no matter what it is.”

Sanborn laughed. “Thanks for the compliment – but those dishes happen to be favorites of my own, too. Now get that brain of yours working, Dorothy. When I’ve finished with the head waiter, I want you to tell us all you know about your uncle and cousin. Before we can go further I must have every possible detail of the case at my fingers’ ends.”

He took up a phone from a small table near the window, and Dorothy turned toward Howard.

“You probably know more about the Jordans than I do,” she said. “I have a picture of Janet that she sent me a couple of years ago. We always exchange presents at Christmas – but we’ve never seen each other.”

“I really know very little about the Jordans, myself,” protested Howard. “You see, Janet and I saw each other for the first time just five weeks ago. It was on a Sunday afternoon, I’d been taking a walk in Central Park, when one of those equinoctial downpours came on very suddenly. Janet was right ahead of me, so naturally, I offered her my umbrella. She’s – well, rather shy and retiring, and at first she wasn’t so keen on accepting – ”

“So there is a difference between the cousins!” Bill winked at Howard. “If it had been Dorothy, she’d have taken your overcoat and rubbers as well. Nothing shy or retiring about Janet’s double!”

“Is that so, Mr. Smarty! It’s a good thing Howard met her that rainy Sunday. If it had been you, Bill, the poor girl would certainly have got a soaking!”

“You mean she wouldn’t have accepted my umbrella?”

“I mean you never would have offered it!”

“You win – one up, Dorothy,” said Ashton Sanborn when the laughter at this sally had subsided. “What happened after you and Janet got under your umbrella, Bright?”

“Oh, nothing much. We walked over to Central Park West but there were no taxis to be had for love or money. So then I suggested taking her home and we found we lived in the same apartment house. I asked if I might call, but she said that was impossible – that Mr. Jordan permitted no callers.”

“Well,” said Dorothy, “that didn’t seem to stop you. I mean you are a pretty fast worker, Howard, to get engaged with a tyrant father guarding the doorstep and all that.”

“Cut it out, Dot,” broke in Bill, who had been waiting patiently for a chance to get even. “You can’t be in the center of the stage all the time, and your remarks are out of order, anyway.”

“I’ll dot you one, if you take my name in vain, young man!”

“Silence, woman! Go ahead, Howard, and speak your piece, or she’ll jump in with both feet next time.”

Dorothy said nothing but the glance she shot Bill Bolton was a promise of dire things to come.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” grinned Howard, and Dorothy immediately put him down as a good sport. “Well, to go on with it – we used to meet in the lobby, go for walks and bus rides, sometimes to the movies or a matinee. Two weeks ago, Janet, who is just eighteen, by the way, said she would marry me. She seemed to have no friends in New York. I’ve seen her father, but never met him. Except for this horrible business, which came up a few days ago, all that I know about Janet is that her mother died when she was five, her father parked her at a boarding-school near Chicago, and she stayed there until last June when she graduated. Her summer holidays were spent at a girls’ camp in Wisconsin. She was never allowed to visit the homes of the other girls, so Christmas and Easter holidays she stayed in the school. During her entire schooling, she saw her father only five times. Last summer he took her abroad with him. They travelled in Germany and in Russia, I believe.”

“Gosh, what a life for a girl!” exploded Bill.

“I should say so!” Dorothy made no attempt to hide her disgust. “The more I hear about Uncle Michael, the less I care about him.”

“Tell us what you do know about him,” prompted Sanborn. “I want to get all the background possible before Bright explains the girl’s present predicament. I know a good deal about Dr. Winn and his secretary. If those men are threatening her, there must be something very serious brewing. Go ahead, Dorothy – luncheon will be up here any minute, now.”

“All right, but I warn you it isn’t much. My mother, who as you know died when I was a little girl, had one sister, my Aunt Edith, who was her twin. They looked so much alike that their own father and mother had trouble in telling them apart. Aunt Edith fell in love with a young Irishman named Michael Jordan, whom she met at a dance. He seemed prosperous, and my grandfather gave his consent to their engagement. Then he learned that Michael Jordan made his money by selling arms and ammunition to South and Central American revolutionists. Grandpa, from all accounts, hit the ceiling. He was a deacon of the church, very sedate and all that, and he said he wouldn’t allow his daughter to marry a gun-runner. And that was that. To make a long story short, Aunt Edith ran away with Michael Jordan. They were married in New York, sent Grandpa a copy of the marriage certificate, and then sailed for South America. For several years there was no word from them at all. My mother, whose name was Janet, by the way, loved Aunt Edith as only a twin can love the other. But she couldn’t write to her because the eloping couple had left no address. Six years later, mother had a letter from Uncle Michael. He was in Chicago then, and he wrote that Aunt Edith had died, and that he had placed little Janet at the Pence School in Evanston. Mother and Daddy went right out to Chicago, to see Uncle Michael. They tried to get him to let them take Janet home with them, and bring her up with me. I was only three at the time, so naturally I don’t remember anything about it. But what I’m telling you Daddy told to me years later. Well, their trip to Chicago was all for nothing – Uncle Michael refused to let them have Janet. It almost broke my mother’s heart. Well, and that is the reason Janet and I have always given each other presents at Christmas and on our birthdays, although we’ve never even met. Two years ago, she sent me her photograph, and both Daddy and I were astounded to see the resemblance to me. Twice, since then, I’ve been taken for Janet by girls who were at school with her at Evanston. Perhaps, if we were seen together, you’d be able to tell us apart – I don’t know.”

“I do, though,” declared Howard, “you may be slightly broader across the shoulders, Dorothy, but otherwise you might be Janet, sitting there. You’ve the same brown hair, grey eyes, your features are alike – ”

“How about our voices?”

“Exactly the same. You have a more forceful way of speaking, that’s all. I keep wanting to call you ‘Janet’ all the time.” Howard turned his head away, and Dorothy could see the emotion that again overtook him as he thought of his helpless little fiancee, a prisoner in the hands of unscrupulous men.

She glanced at Bill, and shook her head in sympathy. Just then there came a knock on the sitting room door.

“Ah! lunch at last!” Ashton Sanborn rose and put his hand on Howard’s shoulder. “Come, no more of this now. The subject of the double cousins is taboo until we’ve all done justice to this excellent meal!”