Finally, after Nancy had knocked a fourth time, the door opened a tiny crack.
“Who is it?” Jacques asked. His voice was fearful.
“It’s Nancy Drew,” Nancy told him. “I need to talk to you.”
The door slammed shut. “Go away,” Jacques called, his voice muffled through the door. “I’m sick. I don’t want to see anybody.”
“But it’s important,” Nancy insisted. She hesitated. “If I can’t talk to you, I suppose I’ll have to go see Ms. Amberton—or maybe even Mr. Cherbourg.”
“Nancy!” George hissed. “That’s blackmail!”
“You bet,” Nancy agreed grimly. “Fight fire with fire, I always say.”
The door opened again, a little wider this time. “You wouldn’t do that, would you?” Jacques whispered.
“I will if I don’t get some answers,” Nancy replied in a firm voice. He backed up and let them in.
All the curtains and shades had been drawn. Jacques was obviously hiding out. What was he afraid of?
The chauffeur closed the door behind them. “What do you want to know?” he asked nervously.
“We want to know why you borrowed the yellow Mercedes from the Mercedes dealer,” Nancy said.
Jacques’s face paled. “But I didn’t—”
“There’s no use denying it,” Nancy told him. “We’ve already talked to the dealer. He’ll swear that you borrowed it.” She looked around. “Where’s the wig you wore when you nearly ran us down?”
Jacques sagged weakly into a chair. “I threw it away,” he said in a broken voice. “Into the trash can.”
“Speaking of trash cans,” George said, “who took the money out of the trash can at Nelson’s Column yesterday afternoon?”
“Money?” Jacques shook his head frantically, his eyes wide with fear. “I didn’t take any money.”
“Well, then,” Nancy responded, “tell us what you do know.”
“Somebody called me on the telephone yesterday at around noon,” the chauffeur said. “I couldn’t recognize the voice. I couldn’t even tell whether it was a man or a woman. I was instructed to—” He swallowed hard. “I was instructed to—to borrow the yellow Mercedes belonging to Mademoiselle Sinclair.”
“You mean, steal it, don’t you?”
Jacques shifted uneasily. “I didn’t want to do it, mademoiselle,” he said. “But the person said that if I followed his instructions, I would be free. There would be no more blackmail payments—ever!”
“So when you couldn’t steal Lake Sinclair’s car, you went to the Mercedes dealer,” Nancy supplied. “And then you came after us.”
“I was told you’d be in the plaza at five. I was told not to let you walk away.” He thought for a moment, and then repeated miserably, “I didn’t want to do it. Even though I wanted to be free of the blackmail, I couldn’t bring myself to kill you.”
“You mean you missed us on purpose?” Ned asked.
“At the last moment I swerved.”
“It’s a good thing you did, too,” Nancy said. “If you’d hit us, it would have been a cinch for the police to track you down in that car. The blackmailer knew what he was doing. You were a sitting duck.”
Jacques nodded. “I am sorry,” he whispered again.
In the taxi on their way back to the apartment, Nancy stared out the window, thinking. “You know,” she said after they had climbed out and Ned paid the driver, “maybe we were tricked.”
“How?” Ned asked, pocketing the change.
“Maybe last night’s drop was a phony—set up to lure us to the plaza. Maybe we were the sitting ducks, and the blackmail money was just a decoy.”
“You might have something there,” George said. They got into the elevator and pushed the button for the sixth floor.
“If that’s true,” Ned remarked, “then Dandridge would have to be in on it.”
“Maybe Dandridge is in on it,” Nancy said. “Maybe he set the whole thing up. When we confronted him in his office, he could have shown us that money just to throw us off—to convince us that he was a victim, too.”
“Sure!” George exclaimed. “Then he could have called Jacques Olivier and arranged to have him run us down!”
“That makes sense,” Ned said slowly. “In fact, Dandridge is the only one who knew that we were going to be there at five o’clock.” He pulled out his key to the apartment and opened the door.