By ROLAND ASHFORD PHILLIPS.
(This interesting story was commenced in No. 134 of Nick Carter Stories. Back numbers can always be obtained from your news dealer or the publishers.)
CHAPTER XII.
THE UNEXPECTED.
Elliot Nash was puzzled, the morning following, when Hooker came to the shack and said that Sigsbee wished him to call at his office. Nothing was said concerning the previous night’s adventure, and while Nash was eager for an understanding, he determined to wait until after the interview with the Los Angeles politician.
He reached San Fernando at noon, and the local train set him down at the Fifth Street Station, Los Angeles, shortly after one o’clock. After the few months’ absence, the city appealed strongly to the engineer, and he spent all of an hour walking slowly in Broadway, Main, and Spring Streets, looking into the store windows, enjoying the scene of the hurrying throngs of shoppers, and amused or amazed now and then at the volley of questions fired at him by the curious, excited tourists.
The big restaurants were filled, and always in front of them stood a group of thrifty strangers, studying the bill of fare posted in the windows, and trying to decide what to order, and just what it would cost, before venturing inside.
Nash was more than interested in the types around him, who made the Los Angeles streets as lively and colorful as those of some foreign city. Here came a bevy of chattering, laughing girls, probably residents, all in white, with glowing complexions; jostling elbows with them, a Japanese family would wend their way, dressed in fashionable clothes, and carrying themselves with an air of importance—the City of Angels has many Japanese millionaires. Here and there a Spanish landowner, one of the real settlers of southern California, who still frown upon the “gringos,” as they style the Americans, swarthy of face, erect of figure, strutted past like a soldier on parade. Quaint Mexican women, bareheaded, barefooted, garbed in loose gowns of brilliant coloring, stepped in and out, following their lords and masters—thin-faced, evil-eyed, cigarette-smoking “greasers” in grimy linen suits and wearing huge, silver-trimmed, and costly sombreros—in most cases, more hat than man.
Shy, unsociable Chinese; stolid-faced men, dainty women, and big-eyed, beautiful children, all in gorgeous, flowing garments, pattered noiselessly through the crowd, apparently unconscious of the staring and remarks made by the gaping farmer from Iowa, who, with his wife and family, had spent his savings for a few glorious months in this California paradise.
Nash strolled aimlessly down Spring Street, and went into the Big Alexandria Hotel, and on through the crowded lobby to the grill. Here he ordered lunch, and enjoyed every morsel. It was nearly half an hour past the appointed time when he presented himself to the stenographer who guarded the inner offices of Mr. J. Sigsbee, in the big Equitable Bank Building. Sigsbee, while serving the city on the aqueduct construction, was interested in a large law firm.
When Nash found himself in the presence of Sigsbee, and discovered him to be none other than the man he had been refused an introduction to the previous night at Camp Forty-seven, he knew that, instead of clearing the problem was becoming more intricate.