Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays Part 20

"Don't! don't!" begged Nan. "Oh! you _know_ I haven't it!"

At that moment Nan felt a severe grasp upon her arm. She could not have run had she so desired. Her heart grew cold; her face flushed to fiery red. All neighboring eyes were turned on her.

In department stores like this the management finds it very unwise to make any disturbance over a case of loss or robbery. The store detective held on to Nan's arm; but he waited for developments.

"What is this all about, Miss Merwin?" he demanded of the clerk.

"I am charged with stealing a twenty-dollar lavalliere!" exclaimed the customer.

"Oh, impossible, madam!" said the detective, evidently recognizing her.

"Then this girl, who was nearest, may have it," said madam, sharply.

Nan was very much frightened; yet her sense of honesty came to her rescue. She cried:

"Why should I be accused? I am innocent--I a.s.sure you, I would not do such a thing. Why! I have more than twenty dollars in my purse right now.

I will show you. Why should I steal what I can buy?"

To Nan Sherwood this question seemed unanswerable. But the store detective scarcely noticed. He looked at the lovely woman and asked:

"Madam is _sure_ this girl took the lavalliere?"

"Oh, mercy, no! I would not accuse anybody of such a thing," responded the woman, in her low voice.

"But we know who you are, madam, we do not know this girl," said the detective, doubtfully. "You are a customer whom the store is glad to serve. This girl is quite unknown to us. I have no doubt but she is guilty--as you say."

He shook the troubled Nan by the arm. The girl was trying to control herself--to keep from breaking down and crying. Somehow, she felt that _that_ would not help her in the least.

Without warning, a low voice spoke at Nan's side: "I know this girl. Of what is she accused?"

Only a few beside the detective and Nan heard the words.

"Of stealing something from the counter," said the man.

"I should not be surprised." The girl who had spoken, still whispered to the detective. "I know who she is. Her father is already in trouble on a similar charge. This girl tried to take a hand-bag of mine once. I never _did_ think she was any better than she should be."

It was Linda Riggs. She stood with flushed face, looking at Nan, and although but few customers heard what she said, the latter felt as though she should sink through the floor.

"Ah-ha!" exclaimed the pompous detective, holding Nan's arm with a tighter grip. "You'll come with me to the superintendent's office to be searched."

Nothing but the vindictive expression of Linda's face kept Nan Sherwood from bursting into tears. She was both hurt and frightened by this situation. And to have her father's name mentioned in such an affair--perhaps printed in the papers! This thought terrified her as much as the possibility that she, herself, might be put in jail.

Rather unsophisticated about police proceedings was Nan, and she saw jail yawning for her just beyond the superintendent's office, whether the lost lavalliere was found in her possession or not.

But instantly, before the detective could remove the trembling girl from the spot, or many curious people gather to stare and comment upon the incident, the wonderfully dressed woman said to the detective in her careless drawl:

"Wait! Quite dramatic, I must say. So this other girl steps in and accuses our young heroine--without being asked even? I would doubt such testimony seriously, were I _you_, sir."

"But, madam!" exclaimed the man.

"_What_ a situation--for the film!" pursued the woman, raising her lorgnette to look first at Nan and then at Linda Riggs. The latter was flushing and paling by turns--fearful at what she had done to her schoolmate, yet glad she had done it, too!

As the customer wheeled slowly in her stately way to view the railroad magnate's daughter, the clerk uttered a stifled cry, and on the heels of it the detective dropped Nan's arm to hop around the woman in great excitement.

"Wait, madam! wait, madam! wait!" he reiterated. "It is here--it is here!"

"What is the matter with you, pray?" asked the woman, curiously. "Have you taken leave of your senses? Why don't you stand still?"

"The lavalliere!" gasped the man and, reaching suddenly, he plucked the dangling chain from an entangling frog on her fur garment. "Here it is, madam!" he cried, with immense satisfaction.

"Now, fancy!" drawled the woman.

Linda slipped out of sight behind some other people. Nan felt faint--just as though she would drop. The clerk and the detective were lavish in their apologies to Nan. As for the woman whose garment had been the cause of all the trouble, she merely laughed.

"Fancy!" she said, in her low, pleasant drawl. "Just fancy! had I not chanced to be known to you, and a customer of the store, I might have been marched up to the superintendent's office myself. It really _is_ a wonderfully good situation for a film--a real moving picture scene made to order."

CHAPTER XVIII

THE RUNAWAYS AGAIN

Nan was ordinarily brave enough. But the disgrace of this scene--in which the fashionably attired woman merely saw the dramatic possibilities--well nigh broke the girl's spirit. If she moved from this place she feared the whispering people would follow her; if she remained, they would remain to gape and wonder.

The troubled girl glanced hurriedly around. Was there no escape? Suppose her chum and Mrs. Mason and Grace should appear, searching for her?

The floodgates of her tears were all but raised when the placid woman who had caused all the trouble turned suddenly to her.

"I _do_ owe an apology to you, my dear," she said. "I see you feel very badly about it. Don't. It really is not worth thinking of. You evidently have a spiteful enemy in that girl who has run away. But, of course, my dear, such unfounded accusations have no weight in the minds of sensible people." She seemed quite to have forgotten that hers was the first accusation.

She glanced about disdainfully upon the group of whispering women and girls. Some of them quite evidently recognized her. How could they help it, when her features were so frequently pictured on the screen? But Nan had not identified this woman with the great actress-director, whose films were being talked of from ocean to ocean.

"Come, my dear," she said. "We can find a quieter place to talk, I know.

And I _do_ wish to know you better."

Whether it were unwise or not, Nan Sherwood found it impossible to refuse the request of so beautiful a woman. Nan immediately fell under the charm of her beauty and her voice. She went with her dumbly and forgot the unpleasant people who stood about and stared. The lovely woman's light hand upon her arm, too, took away the memory of the detective's stern grasp.

The actress led her to the nearest elevator where a coin slipped into the palm of the elevator man caused him to shoot them up to another floor without delay. In this way all the curious ones lost trace of Nan and her new friend. In a few moments they were sitting in one of the tea-rooms where a white-ap.r.o.ned maid served them with tea and sweets at Madam's command.

"That is what you need, my dear," said Nan's host. "Our unfailing nerve-reviver and satisfier--tea. What would our s.e.x do without it? And how do we manage to keep our complexions as we do, and still imbibe hogsheads of tea?"

She laughed and pinched Nan's cheek. "You have a splendid complexion yourself, child. And there's quite some film-charm in your features, I can see. Of course, you have never posed?"

"For moving pictures?" gasped Nan, at last waking up to what the woman meant. "Oh, no, indeed!"

"You are not like most other young girls, then?" said the woman. "You haven't the craze to act in the silent drama?"