Part 21 (1/2)
”She has taken considerable pains to cover her traces,” said Josie to Mary Louise, when she returned from her futile trip.
”I hope you're not discouraged, dear,” returned Mary Louise anxiously.
”The local detectives have done nothing at all, so you are our only hope, Josie.”
The embryo detective smiled sweetly.
”I'm not here on a pleasure trip,” she said, ”although I enjoy travel and good hotel fodder as well as anyone. This is business, but so far I'm just feeling my way and getting a start. You can't open a mystery as you do a book, Mary Louise; it has to be pried open. The very fact that this Mrs. Orme has so carefully concealed her hiding-place is a.s.surance that she's the guilty party who abducted Alora. Being positive of that, it only remains to find her--not an impossibility, by any means--and then we shall have no difficulty in liberating her prisoner.”
”But to find her; can you do that, Josie?”
”Certainly, with a little help from the police, which they will gladly furnish. They know I'm Daddy's daughter, for I have already introduced myself to them, and while they may be slow to take the initiative they are always quite willing to aid in an affair of this sort. Now, it stands to reason, Mary Louise, that the nurse didn't use the streets to promenade with. Alora. That would have been dangerous to her plans.
There are so few people abroad in Chicago at six o'clock in the morning that those who met the two would have noted and remembered them. For the same reason Mrs. Orme did not take a street car, or the elevated.
Therefore, she took a cab, and the cabman who drove them will know Mrs.
Orme's address.”
”But who was the cabman?” asked Mary Louise.
”That,” said Josie, ”is to be my next discovery.”
CHAPTER XIX DECOYED
The excitement of being once more in a big city rendered Alora Jones wakeful on that eventful Tuesday morning following her arrival in Chicago. At daybreak she rose and peered trough the window into a gray and unimpressive side street; then, disinclined to return to bed, she slowly began dressing.
Presently a sharp knock sounded upon her door. Somewhat surprised, she opened it far enough to see a middle-aged woman attired in nurse's uniform standing in the dim hallway.
”Miss Jones? Miss Alora Jones?” questioned the woman in a soft voice.
”Yes; what is it?”
”I've a message for you. May I come in?”
Alora, fearful that Mary Louise or the Colonel might have been taken suddenly ill, threw wide the door and allowed the woman to enter. As the nurse closed the door behind her Alora switched on the electric light and then, facing her visitor, for the first time recognized her and gave a little cry of surprise.
”Janet!”
”Yes; I am Janet Orme, your mother's nurse.”
”But I thought you abandoned nursing after you made my father give you all that money,” an accent of scorn in her tone.
”I did, for a time,” was the quiet answer. ”'All that money' was not a great sum; it was not as much as your father owed me, so I soon took up my old profession again.”
The woman's voice and att.i.tude were meek and deprecating, yet Alora's face expressed distrust. She remembered Janet's jaunty insolence at her father's studio and how she had dressed, extravagantly and attended theatre parties and fas.h.i.+onable restaurants, scattering recklessly the money she had exacted from Jason Jones. Janet, with an upward sweep of her half veiled eyes, read the girl's face clearly, but she continued in the same subdued tones:
”However, it is not of myself I came here to speak, but on behalf of your mother's old friend, Doctor Anstruther.”
”Oh; did he send you here?”
”Yes. I am his nurse, just now. He has always used me on his important cases, and now I am attending the most important case of all--his own.”