“I must trust you. I have no one else to trust, and I must escape from this horrible entanglement that I am in. But I cannot talk to you here. Come with me and we will drive in my carriage. There we can talk.”
Nick rose, and together they left the room.
As they passed out through the store, Nick saw Patsy and gave him the signal to follow them.
Then he went downstairs with Mrs. Ladew and entered her carriage with her.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE TRUTH AT LAST.
While Chick and Patsy and Ida had been engaged on their various branches of the work, Nick had been busy in following up some clews that had drifted into his hands.
So that, with what his assistants had discovered and reported to him, he had come to learn the full story of the relation of Ellison to Mrs. Ladew and of Mrs. Ladew with Jimmy Lannigan. And, when Ida reported the results of her interview with Miss Rainforth, Nick realized that the rest of the story could be pieced out by Mrs. Ladew, if he could induce her to talk.
Without delay, then, he had hurried at once to Philadelphia, and had followed Mrs. Ladew to the department store where she met Lannigan.
Believing from what he had learned of Mrs. Ladew that she would not talk to him willingly, he had determined that he would use the knowledge of her escapade in New York with Lannigan as the means of compelling her.
His success he now felt was as great as he could have hoped for.