eyes.
When he realized that Nancy knew she was
being followed, he wheeled around and turned
down a side street.
“He was tailing me!” Nancy thought.
She had never seen the man before and won-
dered why he was trailing her. She was eager to
tell her father, but found that he had invited a
client to dinner. By ten o’clock, after the caller
had gone, she had stopped thinking about the
incident.
Before retiring, father and daughter sat down
in Mr. Drew’s bedroom to discuss the mystery.
“Isn’t Emily Foster our best lead yet?” Nancy
asked.
Mr. Drew did not answer; in tact, for several
seconds he had not been paying strict attention
to Nancy’s conversation. Now, so suddenly that
the young detective was startled, he tiptoed to the
door and yanked it open.
A man in a brown suit crouched just outside.
Thrown off balance, he fell forward into the
room.
CHAPTER XI
A Warning
“So you were eavesdropping!” Mr. Drew said
sternly as he pulled the man to his feet.
“No, that’s not true!” the fellow stammered.
After recovering his balance, he tried to retreat.
Mr. Drew blocked the doorway. “Sit down!”
he ordered the man into the room. “We want to
talk to you.”
Nancy recognized the man as the one who had
followed her.
“What were you doing outside my door?” Mr.
Drew asked him sharply.
“Nothing,” he replied in a sullen voice. “I
thought this room belonged to a friend.”
“That’s hard to believe, but easy enough to
check. What’s his name?”
“None of your business.”
“I can turn you over to the police.”
Nancy spoke up. “I can report to them that you
trailed me today!”
The stranger squirmed uneasily in the chair.
“You can’t prove anything!”
“This man followed you today?” Mr. Drew
asked his daughter in surprise.
“Yes. I forgot to tell you about it.”
“That settles it,” the lawyer said. “We’ll turn
him over to the police for questioning.”
“No, no! Don’t do that! I’ll tell anything you
want to know-except my name,” the stranger
said.
“Very well.” The lawyer nodded. “Why were
you following my daughter?”
“Because I was paid to do it.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know the guy’s name.”
“What were your instructions?”
“To make a complete report on where Miss
Drew went, whom she talked to, and what she
did.”
Mr. Drew turned so that the man could not see
him full face. With a wink and a quick movement
of his hand he signaled Nancy to step into the ad-
joining room. For a moment the young detective
was puzzled. Then it dawned upon her that her
rather wanted her to slip quietly downstairs and
arrange to have the stranger followed.
“So you won’t tell us your name?” Mr. Drew
repeated, facing the stranger once more and walk-
ing up so close to him the man could not see
Nancy.
“No. I won’t,” the man replied.
Nancy stole noiselessly into the adjoining room.
She hastened downstairs and used a public tele-
phone to call police headquarters. After identify-
ing her father and herself, she said, “Please send
a plainclothesman at once. I’ll meet him in the
lobby and explain everything when he arrives.
How will I know him?”
“He’ll pretend to have a bad cold,” the officer
said.
Nancy was worried that the detective might not
reach the hotel in time. But in less than five min-
utes a man entered coughing uncontrollably. She
told him why he had been called and asked him
to trail the eavesdropper.
“Here he comes now!” she whispered as the
brown-suited stranger emerged from an elevator.
“He must not see me!”
She hid behind a pillar and noticed with satis-
faction that the eavesdropper did not realize he
was being followed from the hotel. Then she went
upstairs.
Mr. Drew praised his daughter tor having in-
terpreted his signals correctly. “By the way,” he
asked, “have you called Hannah since we left
home? There may be some messages for us.”
At once Nancy dialed the Drew number. Han-
nah Gruen answered.
“I’m glad you phoned,” she said. “I tried to
reach you in Hampton, but you had already left.”
“Is anything wrong?”