“I’m going home. I’ll see you in Danford tomorrow.”
Erika looked worried. “It’s against the rules for anyone to leave the circus overnight,” she said.
“But I’m not a regular member of the troupe,” Nancy replied. “I’m sure it won’t make any difference if I return home for the night.”
Erika advised her to speak to Dan Webster. She went to his office and fortunately found him there.
He instantly agreed with Erika. “Kroon has an insidious way of checking up on folks around here,” the horse trainer told Nancy. “It would be much safer if you moved with the circus. We’re leaving tonight, you know.”
“Tonight?” Nancy said. “You mean we don’t sleep here?”
Dan Webster laughed. He said Nancy had a lot to learn about circus life. By the time she returned home with her clothes, the tents would be down and the performers and workmen in buses and trucks on their way to Danford.
“But I’ll need extra clothes,” Nancy said. “How am I going to get them?”
Dan advised her to telephone her home at once and have someone bring a suitcase to her within the next fifteen minutes.
Nancy hurried from the office and went directly to the main gate where she had asked Ned Nickerson to wait for her. He was there, watching with fascination as the big top suddenly swooped to the ground.
“I see this place is packing up,” he remarked, as Nancy joined him.
“And I am too,” Nancy told him, quickly explaining what she had been told to do. “Ned, I’ll telephone my house and have Hannah pack a suitcase. She should be home by now. Will you dash over there and bring it back to me? I’ll meet you here in fifteen minutes.”
“It sounds like a big order, packing any girl’s suitcase in that short a time.” He laughed. “But I’ll be here.”
Ned kept his promise and was back with the suitcase in record time. He reluctantly said good-by to Nancy, and added that he would be very willing to drive to Danford if she needed him for further sleuthing.
“You’re a dear,” she said, smiling. “If I need your services, I’ll let you know.”
Nancy waved good-by to him and hurried back to Erika. The rider was wearing a long, attractive dressing gown and slippers. She said she preferred traveling this way since she would have to sleep all night in the bus.
A few moments later a truck came by and picked up their suitcases. Then the Vascon troupe hurried to board the bus which had been assigned to them.
Nancy hardly slept a wink during the trip. The ride was bumpy and the bus stuffy. At Kroon’s insistence the circus group stayed together. This meant that they traveled slowly. Every once in a while one of the circus’s wild animals would cry out and disturb Nancy. But the regular troupers did not seem to mind any of these disturbances and slept soundly.
The following morning at Danford, Nancy, left to herself, decided to do some detective work. She went from performer to performer asking diplomatically for information about the Kroons, the circus itself, and particularly about Lolita’s parents. The young sleuth learned little that she did not already know until she came to the oldest of the clowns, a grizzled man named Leo Sanders.
He was sitting in front of his tent, looking through a scrapbook. Nancy seated herself on the ground beside him, smiled, and chattingly began to question him.
“Before I divulge anything I may know,” he said, “suppose you tell me why you want the information.”
Quickly Nancy revealed why she was trying to help Lolita and that she suspected there might be a secret in connection with the girl’s early life.
Sanders began to turn the pages of the scrapbook. Reaching a section not far from the beginning of the book, he laid it face up on Nancy’s lap.
“You may find part of the answers here,” he said.
CHAPTER XV
A Unique Admission
In the old clown’s scrapbook, now on Nancy’s lap, were several pictures of performers and acts of the European circus in which Lolita’s parents and Sanders had appeared. Poised in flight on a double trapeze were a dainty woman and a handsome man. Under the photograph was the caption: