Patsy heard him descending the cellar stairs a moment later.
“By thunder, this is the gang that cracked that Westchester savings bank,” he said to himself. “Gee whiz! there’s half a million at stake. If the chief was right, Jim Nordeck must be the man who buried the plunder, and the girl in question must be Nancy Nordeck.”
Patsy did not realize just then, however, how perfectly right Nick Carter had sized up the entire case. This appeared a moment later, when Nancy Nordeck and the missing rector were led into the room, both with their arms securely bound behind them.
The Reverend Austin Maybrick was quite pale, but he[Pg 38] carried himself with dignity, and his fine face wore a look of scorn that told how little he feared the threatening situation. He appeared surprised when he saw Kate Crandall and Patsy, but he did not speak.
Gridley hardly noticed him. He turned at once to the girl who had entered, and then leaned wearily against the nearest wall.
She was a slender, poorly clad girl, who looked ten years older than she really was. Her dark-brown hair was in disorder, her eyes deeply ringed, but her features were regular and she would have been quite attractive, but for a wan and pinched look that told of dejection, suffering, and more of care and misery than often falls upon one of her years.
She also was surprised at seeing Patsy and Kate Crandall, but it appeared only in the sharper glint of her large, expressive eyes, which flashed from one to another, though chiefly at Gridley, with a look of mingled determination and defiance that evinced a fearless spirit in her frail form.
Gridley turned to her with lowering gaze, saying harshly:
“You’re surprised at seeing others here, ain’t you?”
Nancy Nordeck gave him look for look, with her thin gray lips curling contemptuously. She drew herself up a little, replying with a sinister slang that evinced her lack of refinement.