Part 9 (1/2)
”Good!” cried Waker, with a short laugh. ”I seem to have fitted in just right to foil the villain in getting the papers. Say, better not let Jack know about this, or he'll be on the job, too, and what he needs just now is a rest--eh, Harry?”
”That's it,” agreed the other college youth, whom Belle had not noticed since coming down stairs in such haste.
”Wally robbed me of the honors,” complained Harry. ”I was just going to make after the fellow.”
”And was he really going to steal the papers?” asked Belle.
”I don't know as to that,” Walter answered.
”I don't know anything about any papers. But Harry and I were sitting here, after seeing that Jack was comfortable in his room, waiting for the doctor, when I heard someone come up the steps. At first I thought it was Dr. Blake himself but when the footsteps became softer, and more stealthy, as the novels have it, I took a quiet observation.
”Then I saw this Italian-looking chap reaching for the valise. I let out a yell, went after him and he dropped it. Ahem! Nothing like having a first-cla.s.s hero in the family!” and Walter swelled out his chest, and looked important.
”Better find out, first, whether you saved the papers, or just the empty valise,” suggested Harry, with a smile. ”Such things have been known to happen, you know.”
”That's right!” admitted Walter. ”Guess I had better look,” and he was proceeding to open a valise when Belle hastily took it from him.
”You mustn't!” she exclaimed. ”It isn't ours, and poor little Inez may not like it. Leave it up to her and she can tell if anything is missing.”
”Just tell that I saved it for her--I, Walter Pennington!” begged the owner of that name. ”Nothing like making a good impression, from the start, on the pretty stranger,” he added. ”Eh?”
”Just my luck!” murmured Harry, with a tragic air.
”Oh, you silly boys!” laughed Belle. She hastened up the stairs to the room where Inez as resting, the lace trailing from the half-opened valise.
”Oh, you have it back--my satchel!” gasped a Spanish girl. ”Oh, if ze papairs are only safe!”
They were, evidently, for she gave utterance a sigh of relief when she drew a bundle of crackling doc.u.ments from a side pocket of the valise, under a pile of filmy lace, at the sight of which Cora and the girls uttered exclamations of delight. Inez heard them.
”Take it--take it all!” she begged of them, thrusting into Mrs.
Kimball's hands a ma.s.s of the beautiful cob-webby stuff. ”It is all yours, and too little for what you have done for me!”
”Nonsense!” exclaimed Cora's mother. ”This lace is beautiful. I shall be glad to purchase some of it, and pay you well for it--I can't get that kind in the stores. You didn't show me this at first.”
”No, Senora, I was too tired. But it is all yours. I care not for it, now zat I have ze papairs safe. Zey are for my father!”
”Do you really think some man was trying to get them?” asked Cora.
”Oh, yes, Senorita,” was the serious answer.
”There was a man up on the stoop--he had the valise, Walter said,”
put in Belle. ”He dropped it and ran.”
”Who could he be?” asked Cora.
”An enemy!” fairly hissed the Spanish girl, with something of dramatic intensity. ”I tried to keep secret ze fact zat I was working for my father's release. I will not tire you wiz telling you all, but some enemies know I have papairs zat prove ze innocence of Senor Ralcanto. Zis man--Pedro Valdez he call himself--has been trying to get zem from me. He tried in New York, and he said he would give me no rest until he had zem. He must have been following me--no hard task since I have traveled a slow and weary way. Zen, when he saw my valise--he must have thought it his chance.”
”How dreadful!” murmured Bess. ”To think that such things could happen in Chelton!”
”And perhaps we are not at the end of them yet,” said Cora, softly.