“Don’t forget,” Bess followed suit, “it’s tea in London in coronation week.”
CHAPTER XX
BE CAREFUL, NAN!
“Are your passports all stamped for landing? Is your baggage tagged for Glasgow? Are you sure you have everything?” Dr. Beulah smiled down at the excited brood of young girls under her charge. “Have each of you a supply of English pounds and shillings? In short, are you ready to leave this boat and step your foot on foreign soil?”
They were all standing together on the boat’s deck watching the maneuverings as the ship came to rest in its dock just outside Glasgow. There had been no end to the excitement since the girls waved Maureen off at Belfast and the ship steamed across the North Channel to the Firth of Clyde, passing countless fishing boats along the way.
Bess had turned from waving Maureen off and started back to the cabin. Midway, she had a strange presentiment that something was vitally wrong. She walked gingerly down the hallway, looking to the right and left at the narrow corridors between groups of staterooms. When she came to that from which Grace had said the Scotch hunchback had come forth several mornings before, she walked very quietly and listened attentively. She neither heard nor saw anything. It was as if the cabin was empty.
That in itself was strange, for the doors of all the cabins along the way were open. In each, baggage awaited porters who were even now busy in front cabins labeling it and carting it to an upper deck. “Maybe the mystery has taken his baggage and walked out on us,” Bess thought as she continued down the corridor intent on making one more check of the stateroom to make certain that nothing was being forgotten.
The thought relieved her, and she was even humming a little tune when she turned into her own stateroom. She stopped short. There, kneeling in front of Nan’s baggage, was the red-headed hunchback!
He turned and looked at her. She would have screamed, but in a flash he was at her side and his hand was clamped over her mouth. He looked at her very intently with strange piercing eyes.