“Well, just lately,” Mr. Nogales went on, “there have been even more than the usual number of persons smuggled across. Your government and mine has been working hard on the problem of putting an end to this. One means of stopping it has been to check most thoroughly the issuance of all duplicate visitor’s passes.”
Nan was beginning to see light in the whole situation now. Immigration laws and the smuggling of aliens across the border was something she had studied about in social science classes at Lakeview. This scene in the Laredo offices was a school lesson brought to life.
Nan vaguely remembered, as she stood there listening and watching, that Laura had once had a special report to give on this particular subject. She remembered because it was at the time the girls were planning a big spread down at the boathouse, and Laura had been so excited about the whole thing that she had gone to class utterly unprepared. In the few minutes before the assembly bell rang Nan helped her out, and so Laura had managed to struggle through the social science hour.
Nan turned. She wished that Laura and the rest were here now, but she knew that they were waiting in an outer office.
“Then you think,” Walker Jamieson’s words brought Nan back to the present plight of herself and her cousin Adair, “that there is a regular trade in visitors’ passes, that the pickpocket who got ours wanted nothing else?”
“You had no money stolen, did you?” Mr. Nogales queried.
“Uh-h-h-” Adair MacKenzie had been silent for a long while for him. Now he rummaged through his pockets even as Nan checked on the contents of her purse.
“Just as I thought,” Mr. Nogales nodded his head, as the two agreed that all their money was there. “Your visitors’ passes are the only thing missing. Just a moment, please, I’ll see what can be done.” With this, he disappeared into the office of his superior, and Adair MacKenzie followed him.
Nan, Alice, and Walker Jamieson looked hopelessly at one another as Adair disappeared from their view.