“By gad, yes! I think I’ll recognize that cabman again. If I come across him, I’ll tip him for you. He deserves it.... The swine! To start pumping the townsfolk before he was ten seconds in the place, and about his own daughter, too! Dash his eyes—wait till someone refers him to me for news of you! I’ll head him into the open country quick enough—trust me!”
Dacre’s comments might sound rather incoherent; but it was painfully evident that Nancy’s father had created a bad first impression, and he was one of those unhappy mortals who could not afford to do that, because he never survived it.
CHAPTER IX
THE CHASE
In the morning Power’s first care was to ascertain the position of the room allotted to Willard. As he imagined, it proved to be in the back part of the hotel, every apartment in the front section being occupied by season residents. Shortly before six o’clock, therefore, he drove away in an open carriage, confident that nothing short of an almost incredible chance would bring the older man to vestibule or porch at that early hour. Halting the vehicle at a corner near Nancy’s abode, he walked to the house, and surprised the earliest servants astir by bidding one of them wake Mrs. Marten at once, as he had news of her father.
“Nothing serious,” he added, with a reassuring smile at a housemaid whose alarmed face showed an immediate sense of disaster. “Mrs. Marten is leaving Newport today, I think, and my message may decide her to start sooner—that is all.”
But Nancy had seen him from her bedroom window, and now fluttered downstairs in a dressing gown.
“What is it, Derry?” she asked, and mistress and maid evidently shared the feminine belief that such an untimely call presaged something sensational and therefore sinister.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said cheerfully, knowing how essential it was that she should not be startled into an exclamation which might betray her secret to the listening servants. “I heard from Dacre last night that you meant to meet Mr. Willard in New York, and I have reason to believe that you ought to depart by the first train. To do that, you must get away from the house in forty minutes. Can you manage it?”