Cherry Ames 24 Companion Nurse (16 page)

“Ah! Come right away. I shall be waiting for you.” The shopwoman hung up.

Inspector Forbes commented that there were two possibilities. Either Meg Greene was not with the gang, or if she was, they were expecting a message from someone else. “They’re trying to outthink us.” He turned to Cherry. He explained that there might be someone in or near the shop whom Cherry could identify—possibly one of the three criminals.

“Miss Ames,” the inspector asked, “could you ‘happen in’ there and pretend you are shopping while our Miss Kerr is there?”

“Yes, Mr. Forbes,” Cherry said. She thought of Martha Logan’s interest in detective stories. Through the tall window Cherry saw that the rain had changed into no more than a mist or fog. “May I bring Mrs. Logan shopping with me?” she asked.

“Yes, so much the better—if she can join you quickly,” the inspector said. “I want you to give Sergeant Kerr a few minutes alone fi rst with the shopkeeper. Let her leave ahead of you so you don’t appear to be together.”

“I understand,” Cherry said. “And after Mrs. Logan and I leave the shop, what shall we do?”

“Whatever you wish. If we need you further, we will get in touch with you at your hotel,” the inspector said.

“Thank you, Miss Ames.” He hesitated. “We are working on your report about Archibald Hazard, but we have nothing yet.”

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Cherry used a police telephone to call Martha. The inspector gave her a few instructions. He advised that they meet at a big woolens store a block away from the doll-clothes shop, then walk to the shop, so their

“happening in” would appear casual and natural.

Cherry walked alone to the big store. She waited there, just inside the door. Martha Logan arrived by taxi a few minutes later. She asked Cherry in a low voice, “Do I look as excited as I feel?”

“Yes, you do,” Cherry said with a grin. “Now, we simply are going shopping, with our eyes and ears wide open—” She dropped her voice to a whisper, to brief Mrs. Logan on the situation. “The inspector has men posted inconspicuously near the shop, but we’ve got to be careful, all the same.”

“And discreet,” Martha Logan said.

They left the big woolens store and strolled down the block. In the cool, moisture-laden air, everything looked gray and dim; the passers-by and the crowded buses fl itted past like ghosts.

As they crossed the street toward the doll-clothes shop, Cherry saw two men, not together, waiting at a corner. One man was reading a newspaper. The other man was thoughtfully smoking a pipe and gazing into a bookstore window. She recognized both men as detectives she had seen at police headquarters.

A little farther away a tall, thin, blind man, wearing a pulled-down hat and dark glasses, very slowly felt his way along with his cane, pausing, moving, pausing.

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“Oh, look at these enchanting doll clothes!” Martha exclaimed, planting herself in front of the shopwindow.

Cherry forced a smile as she came to look. Inside the rather bare shop she could see Mary Jean Kerr talking with a frowzy woman wearing a sewing apron. They seemed to be arguing. The woman angrily, repeatedly shook her head. Behind her, Cherry heard the faint tap-tap of the blind man’s cane.

“Let’s go in,” Cherry muttered to Martha.

The shopwoman paid no attention as the two new customers entered. “Indeed I am not acquainted with any Meg Greene!” she was insisting to the young policewoman. “I’ll thank you to stop talking in riddles, and tell me in a decent way who gave you my telephone number.”

“But I have told you, Mrs. Kirby,” said Mary Jean Kerr, with a show of anxiety. In her hat, coat, and gloves, carrying a parcel, she looked like any young housewife.

“Meg Greene gave me your number.”

“When?” the slovenly woman demanded. “And where was this Meg Greene?”

The policewoman answered, “She gave me your number day before yesterday”—that was the day of the Carewe art theft, Cherry remembered—“and she was telephoning me from the north of England. Ah, Mrs. Kirby! I don’t dare say more than that! Please believe me.”

The shopwoman fi dgeted with her apron. “There’s been a mix-up somehow, that’s all I can believe, miss.

I tell you, I’ve never heard of your friend, never.” 146
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The policewoman said pleadingly, “You may not know her, as you say, but she knows you—or knows
of
you. Will you just listen to the message?” The shopwoman peered at her. “A message for who?

Not for me, surely.” The policewoman kept quiet.

“Well? Well? Who’s the message for?” Cherry and Martha Logan pretended to be busy examining some doll sweaters on the counter. Out of the corner of her eye, Cherry noticed the blind man slowly passing before the shop.

“The message,” said the policewoman, “is to call the number I gave you, at any hour of the day or night.” The shopwoman gave a contemptuous snort. “You may forget about such a message, miss. If there is trouble a-brewing, I want no part in it! Now excuse me, I must attend to these two ladies.” The woman bustled over to them. At Martha’s request, she pulled out a box of doll dresses. She was still grumpy, not very obliging. Cherry noticed the selec-tion was meager. The woman must have a hard time earning a living here—unless she kept the shop merely as a front. Martha Logan admired the fi ne handwork and bought several items.

Meanwhile, the policewoman had left. Her visit had yielded no information at all, Cherry realized. As soon as the shopwoman had wrapped their purchases, Cherry and Martha left, too. It was raining lightly again.

Coming out of the shop, Cherry all but bumped into the blind man. He was standing uncertainly on the sidewalk, as if waiting for someone.

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“Oh, I’m sorry!” Cherry said. He grunted and grop-ingly moved a few steps away, so tall and thin he seemed to be on stilts. Didn’t he remind her of someone? She could not see his face very well under his pulled-down hat. She had an impression chiefl y of dark glasses and a mustache.

“Where will we fi nd a taxi?” Martha was saying.

Cherry did not answer. She had an uneasy feeling that the blind man was watching them. How fantastic!

A blind man couldn’t watch them. Yet the back of her neck prickled in terror—at sensing a hostile pair of eyes in back of her. Cherry stiffened.

“Let’s walk to the corner,” Martha suggested. She took Cherry’s arm, and felt her tenseness. “Why, what’s the matter?”

“I don’t know,” Cherry whispered. “Keep walking.” They walked away from where the blind man stood. Cherry forced herself to wait while a minute or two went by. Then she took one long look over her shoulder.

The blind man had taken off his dark glasses and was wiping the rain off them. But that’s what a sighted person would do! Cherry tried to see his eyes—in the misty light and under his hat, it was hard to be sure—

but she thought his eyes appeared normal. Yes, they
were
normal; as a nurse she recognized that much!

How rapidly he was blinking, though—

Suddenly Cherry recognized him. Rodney Ryder blinked like that—and was grotesquely tall and thin.

He hadn’t worn a mustache the last time she had seen 148
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him, but she remembered his face. The mustache could be a false one.

He saw her. Cherry turned her head away but not fast enough—he had noticed her watching him! Like a shot he strode off in the opposite direction, in long, determined strides, putting on the dark glasses as he went.

Cherry started toward the near corner, to tell the two detectives of her discovery. They were already coming rapidly up the long block, watching the blind man. The detective approaching nearest to Cherry acknowledged her only with a sharp glance.

“That blind man”—she called out—“he’s not blind!”

“Yes, we saw that, miss,” the detective called back.

“Look! He’s getting away—”

“He’s Rodney Ryder!” Cherry shouted. Turning again, she saw Ryder running, already halfway up the next block. Cherry broke into a run and went after Ryder.

So did the detectives, still nearly half a block behind her. Martha, waiting bewildered in the rain, was left behind. As Cherry ran past the shop, she had a blurred impression of the shopwoman alone at the window, her face drawn with fear.

Cherry looked up the street where Ryder—now a distant fi gure nearly two blocks away—was reaching a cross street crowded with traffi c. Cherry redoubled her speed. In back of her she heard one detective’s pounding footsteps. Apparently the other detective was going to arrest or question the shopwoman. Up ahead Ryder swung aboard the open platform of a bus

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passing on the cross street. The double-decker bus stopped for a traffi c light, and stood there.

Cherry ran that last block for all she was worth.

Thank goodness the traffi c light stayed red for a long time! She made it to the cross street, and without thinking, hopped on the same bus just as it started to move.

She stood on the open platform, panting, and looked back for the detective. Maybe she shouldn’t be on this bus with Ryder. She could still jump off—It might be wiser to follow Ryder in a taxi—more discreet—but she couldn’t see any empty taxis. The main thing was not to lose track of Ryder. The detective came running to the corner and Cherry waved to him. He saw her and nodded, and ran uselessly after the moving bus.

Then he gave up and looked around for a taxi.

“Whew! I’m glad the detective saw me,” Cherry thought. “I don’t much like following Ryder on my own. I wonder if Ryder noticed me get on this bus.” Such a crowd was packed into the big bus, sitting and standing, that there was a chance Ryder had not seen her get on, and did not see her now. Cherry could not locate him inside the lower deck of the bus. Cautiously she climbed halfway up to the top deck, and saw Ryder’s head and shoulders rising above those of the other passengers. Cherry came back down to the bus platform. The conductor asked for her fare.

“Yes—just a moment—” Cherry paid, then looked back for the detective. She spotted him in a taxi following the bus. Good!

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For the next ten or fi fteen minutes Cherry stood inside on the lower deck, half hidden in the crowd.

The bus drove into residential streets. Cherry kept watching the bus stairs for Ryder to come down and get off. Occasionally she glanced toward the traffi c, looking for the detective’s taxi—yes, it was still following the bus. She’d better watch those stairs! Once the bus got snarled in a traffi c jam. It started to move again, and after that the crowd began to thin. Tensely she watched the stairs. . . .

Then she saw Ryder. He bolted down the steps, his hat pulled low over his face, and jumped off the bus before it came to a full stop. Cherry squirmed past the other passengers as fast as she could, calling to the conductor, “Out, please! Out!” c h a p t e r x

End of a Bad Actor

by the time cherry got onto the street, ryder was well ahead of her. Had he seen her? He didn’t look back, if that was any encouragement. Was he leading her on a false trail? . . . “We’ll soon fi nd out,” Cherry thought.

Ryder turned down a shabby, cheerless street. Rows of brick houses, all alike, reared up from empty sidewalks. In some of the windows were signs reading: Bed and Breakfast. Cherry rapidly turned down the same street, glancing at a corner street sign:
Weir Street.

Ryder was hurrying, a dim, solitary fi gure in the rain.

Cherry followed half a block behind, and saw him enter a house. She counted the houses and fi gured that the street number of the one he had entered was 26.

When she reached the house, she saw that the window blinds were drawn. No one else was in sight. Cherry’s wristwatch read four o’clock, too early for people to 151

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be coming home from work, too wet for strollers. She stared at the door.

“Do I dare go in? I didn’t see Ryder use a key, so I guess the door’s unlocked. Unless he locked it after him from inside.”

Her fi rst impulse was to go in immediately. But she paused to think. She looked back for the detective. No sign of him or a taxi. It would be foolhardy, even dangerous, to go in alone. . . . Maybe Hazard was there too. She hoped so. . . . But then it would be even more dangerous.

“Yet I must not lose them,” she argued with herself.

“Maybe there’s a telephone in the entrance hall. If no one’s around I could slip in, call the police, and slip out again quickly. Then I’ll watch for the detective in the taxi. He should be here any second. . . . I’ve got to take the chance,” she decided.

Cherry knocked on the door, ready to run if she had to. No one answered. Her hands trembled as she tried the door. It opened, and she peered cautiously into the dark hallway. Leaving the door open, she stepped inside, blinking in the sudden dark.

The door swung closed. Cherry turned in confusion.

A hand, hard and heavy, clamped over her mouth. She was jerked backward and held in an iron grip. Ryder, unseen, said quietly into her ear, “If you make a sound, I’ll strangle you. I’ll not have the neighbors hear you.” Next a handkerchief or a scarf was pulled tight across her mouth, so that she could only whimper. Where were the people who lived in the house? Where was the detective?

END OF A BAD ACTOR

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Her eyes, growing accustomed to the dark, saw Ryder’s free hand reach out and bolt the door. He forced her to the staircase and started dragging her up. Cherry pulled back and kicked against the staircase railing to make noise.

“That’ll do you no good, my girl,” said Ryder. “There’s no one here except a friend of mine, on the top fl oor.

The respectable couple who rented us their spare room, as a favor to their friend Mrs. Kirby, haven’t any other tenants. Just us two ‘deserving schoolmasters.’ ” Ryder snickered. ‘‘And they themselves don’t come home from work until well after six. So up the stairs with you, now! You thought in Stratford I was a silly fool, didn’t you?”