gested as they paused beside her car. “I’ll be
glad to have you as my guest for the night, and in
the morning you’ll feel better and can decide
what to do then.”
Joanne shook her head proudly. “Thank you,
but I wouldn’t think of letting you go to any more
trouble. I have a little money. I can find a board-
inghouse and I’ll keep on looking for work here.”
Nancy saw that Joanne was disappointed and
discouraged and hated to leave her on her own,
but finally conceded. “I guess you’re right,” she
admitted. “But at least let me help you hunt for a
place to stay.” Joanne accepted the offer grate-
fully.
Even with the car, it was difficult to locate a
pleasant room. Joanne could not afford a high-
priced place, and the cheaper ones were unsatis-
factory. Finally, however, they found a suitable
room on a quiet street and Nancy helped Joanne
get settled.
“I may be driving over this way tomorrow,” she
said. “If I do, I’ll stop in to see what luck you’ve
had.”
“I wish you would,” Joanne invited shyly. “I’ll
need someone to bolster my morale.”
“All right, I will,” Nancy promised.
After a few words of encouragement she said
good-by, then drove slowly toward River Heights,
her mind again focused on the various events of
the day.
“I don’t know what will happen to Joanne if
she doesn’t find work,” Nancy told herself. “It
would be a shame if her grandmother loses Red
Gate Farm. I wish I could do something, but I
don’t know of any available jobs.”
It was nearly dinnertime when Nancy reached
River Heights. As she passed the Fayne home,
she saw George and her cousin Bess on the front
lawn and stopped to tell them about Joanne’s un-
successful interview.
“Isn’t that too bad?” Bess murmured in disap-
pointment. “She seems such a sweet girl. I’d like
to know her better.”
“I promised I’d drive over to see her tomor-
row,” Nancy told the girls. “Why don’t you come
along?”
“Let’s!” George cried enthusiastically. “I love
going places with you. We always seem to find
some sort of adventure!”
Nancy’s blue eyes became serious. “I’d say
this has been a pretty full day! I can’t seem to tor-
get that mysterious saleswoman in the Oriental
perfume shop or the strange man on the train. I
wasn’t going to say anything to you about this, but
something odd happened this afternoon in that
office.”
Nancy then related the mysterious actions and
behavior of the man named “Al.”
“You mean you think his telephone conversa-
tion was a little on the shady side?” Bess asked,
wide-eyed.
“It seemed that way to me,” Nancy answered.
“I doubt very much that it’s a manufacturing
business and those numbers I copied from his
pad were anything but stock-market quotations!”
“Well, here we go again! Never a dull moment
with Nancy around!” George laughed gaily.
“Don’t be too impatient, George,” Nancy ad-
vised with a grin. “We don’t have proof that any
of today’s incidents is really cause for suspicion.”
At this moment a foreign-make car went by.
Nancy glanced casually at the driver, then gave a
start. He was the man who had spoken to her on
the train!
He slowed down and stared at the three girls
and at the Fayne home. Nancy felt at once that he
was memorizing the address. He gave a self-satis-
fied smile and drove on. Nancy noted his license
number.
“I almost feel as if I’ll hear from him again,”
she told herself, then revealed to the girls, who
had not noticed the car’s driver, that he was the
man who had confronted her on the train.
“He’s still interested in you,” Bess teased.
But George found nothing to laugh about. “I
don’t like this. Nancy,” she said seriously. “I re-
member he had a hard, calculating face.”
Nancy, too, remained serious. A disturbing
thought had suddenly occurred to her.
“Why,” she told herself, “that man must have
been trailing me. But I wonder for what reason?”
She determined, for the moment at least, not
to mention her suspicions aloud and dropped
the subject of the mysterious man. Presently she