Hesba Stretton - The Ultimate Christmas Library - 100+ Authors, 200 Novels, Novellas, Stories, Poems and Carols

“Is that the height of your ambition?” laughed Mr. Sherwood. “If so, you are easily satisfied.”

Nan told her father all about the search for the runaway girls, and about little Inez and Jennie Albert. She wanted to see how the latter was. The comforts she and her friends had left the sick girl the day before, and the ministrations of the physician, should have greatly improved Jennie’s condition.

Nan left her father at the entrance to the alley leading back to Jennie’s lodging; but in a few minutes she came flying back to Mr. Sherwood in such excitement that at first she could scarcely speak connectedly.

“Why, Nan! What is the matter?” her father demanded.

“Oh! come up and see Jennie! Do come up and see Jennie!” urged Nan.

“What is the matter with her? Is she worse?”

“Oh, no! Oh, no!” cried the excited girl. “But she has got such a wonderful thing to tell you, Papa Sherwood!”

“To tell me?” asked her father wonderingly.

“Yes! Come!” Nan seized his hand and pulled him into the alley. On the way she explained a little of the mystery.

“Dear me! it’s the most wonderful thing, Papa Sherwood. You know, I told you Jennie was working for a moving picture company that was making a film at Tillbury. She had a boy’s part; she looks just like a boy with a cap on, for her hair is short.

“Well! Now listen! They took those pictures the day before, and the very day that you came back from Chicago to Tillbury and that awful Mr. Bulson lost his money and watch.”

“What’s that?” demanded Mr. Sherwood, suddenly evincing all the interest Nan expected him to in the tale.

As they mounted the stairs Nan retailed how the company had gone to the railroad yards early in the morning, obtaining permission from the yardmaster to film a scene outside the sleeping car standing there on a siding, including the entrance of Jennie as the burglars’ helper through the narrow ventilator.

“Of course, the sleeping car doors can only be opened from the inside when it is occupied, save with a key,” Nan hastened to say; “so you see she was supposed to enter through the ventilator and afterward open the door to the men.”

“I see,” Mr. Sherwood observed, yet still rather puzzled by his daughter’s vehemence.

Jennie Albert, however, when he was introduced to her by Nan, gave a much clearer account of the matter. To take up the story where Nan had broken off, Jennie, when she wriggled through the window into the car, had seen a big negro man stooping over a man in a lower berth and removing something from under his pillow.

The man in the berth was lying on his back and snoring vociferously. There seemed to be no other passenger remaining in the car.

Jennie did not see what the colored man took from the sleeping passenger, but she was sure he was robbing him. The negro, however, saw Jennie, and threatened to harm her if she ever spoke of the matter.

The director of the picture and other men were outside. The girl was alarmed and more than half sick then. She had the remainder of the director’s instructions to carry out.

Therefore, she hurried to open the sleeping car door as her instructions called for, and the negro thief escaped without Jennie’s saying a word to anybody about him.

Mr. Sherwood, as deeply interested, but calmer than Nan, asked questions to make sure of the identity of the sleeping passenger. It was Mr. Ravell Bulson, without a doubt.

“And about the negro?” he asked the girl. “Describe him.”

But all Jennie could say was that he was a big, burly fellow with a long, long nose.

“An awfully long nose for a colored person,” said Jennie. “He frightened me so, I don’t remember much else about him— and I’m no scare-cat, either. You ask any of the directors I have worked for during the past two years. If I only had a pretty face like your Nan, here, Mr. Sherwood, they’d be giving me the lead in feature films— believe me!”

The mystery of how the negro got into the locked car was explained when Mr. Sherwood chanced to remember that the porter of the coach in which he had ridden from Chicago that night answered the description Jennie Albert gave of the person who had robbed Mr. Bulson.

“I remember that nose!” declared Mr. Sherwood, with satisfaction. “Now we’ll clear this mystery up. You have given me a key, Miss Jennie, to what was a very hard lock to open.”

This proved to be true. Mr. Sherwood went to his conference with the automobile people with a lighter heart. On their advice, he told the story to the police and the description of the negro porter was recognized as that of a man who already had a police record— one “Nosey” Thompson.

This negro had obtained a position with the sleeping car company under a false name and with fraudulent recommendations.

These facts Nan, at least, did not learn till later; she ran off to the skating rink, secure in the thought that her father’s trouble with Mr. Ravell Bulson was over. She hoped she might never see that grouchy fat man again. But Fate had in store for her another meeting with the disagreeable Mr. Bulson, and this fell out in a most surprising way.

When Nan was almost in sight of the building where she expected to join her friends on skates, there sounded the sudden clangor of fire-truck whistles, and all other traffic halted to allow the department machines to pass. A taxi-cab crowded close in to the curb where Nan had halted, just as the huge ladder-truck, driven by its powerful motor, swung around the corner.

Pedestrians, of course, had scattered to the sidewalks; but the wheels of the ladder-truck skidded on the icy street and the taxi was caught a glancing blow by the rear wheel of the heavier vehicle.

Many of the onlookers screamed warnings in chorus; but all to no avail. Indeed, there was nothing the driver of the cab could have done to avert the catastrophe. His engine was stopped and there was no possibility of escape with the car.

Crash! the truck-wheel clashed against the frail cab, and the latter vehicle was crushed as though made of paper. The driver went out on his head. Screams of fear issued from the interior of the cab as it went over in a heap of wreckage and the ladder-truck thundered on.

Nan saw a fat face with bulging eyes set in it appear at the window of the cab. She was obliged to spring away to escape being caught in the wreck. But she ran back instantly, for there were more than the owner of the fat face in the overturned taxi.

With the sputtering of the fat man there sounded, too, a shrill, childish scream of fear, and a wild yelp of pain— the latter unmistakably from a canine throat. Amid the wreckage Nan beheld a pair of blue-stockinged legs encased in iron supports; but the dog wriggled free.

“Hey! Hey!” roared the fat man. “Help us out of this. Never mind that driver. He ought to have seen that thing coming and got out of the way. Hey! Help us out, I say.”

Nobody seemed to be paying much attention to the fat and angry citizen; nor would Nan have heeded him had it not been for the appeal of those two blue-stockinged legs in the iron braces.

The fat man was all tangled up in the robes and in the broken fittings of the cab. He could do nothing for himself, let alone assist in the rescue of the owner of the crippled little limbs. The dog, darting about, barked wildly.

As Nan stooped to lift the broken cab door off the apparently injured boy, the dog— he was only a puppy— ran yapping at her in a fever of apprehension. But his barking suddenly changed to yelps of joy as he leaped on Nan and licked her hands.

“Why, Buster!” gasped the girl, recognizing the little spaniel that she and Bess Harley had befriended in the snow-bound train.

She knew instantly, then, whose was the fat and apoplectic face; but she did not understand about the legs in the cruel looking iron braces until she had drawn a small and sharp-featured lad of seven or eight years of age from under the debris of the taxi-cab.