The Mandie Collection (26 page)

“Sorry—everything was—so fast,” Mandie said between gasps.

When they got to the place where the man had disappeared, they stopped to consider what they should do next. They stood looking down the dark alley where the man had vanished.

“I believe this alley has nothing in it but the back doors of all the shops along the street around the corner,” Jonathan said.

“And he could have gone into any of the shops,” Mandie added.

“I just thought of something. When you told me about seeing him in our house this morning, you said he was speaking a foreign language. If I only knew what language it was, we could look in the neighborhood where that nationality of people live,” Jonathan said.

“You mean there's a whole neighborhood full of foreign-speaking people?” Mandie asked in surprise.

“Oh, there are lots of languages spoken here in New York, and the people of each different language live in clusters,” he explained.
“So if I knew his language, I could locate the settlement of his kind of people.”

“I'm sorry, Jonathan, but I don't believe I have ever heard such a language before. Of course, we don't have any foreign-speaking people down in North Carolina where I come from, and I haven't heard any other languages except when we went to Europe this past summer,” Mandie told him. Snowball squirmed in her arms.

“I'd like to know how they got into the house and managed to tie Jens up,” Jonathan said as he continued scanning up and down the streets at the intersection.

“And I wonder what they stole. Your butler was saying, ‘Thieves,' and was trying to tell us what they had taken,” Mandie reminded him, still peering down the dark alleyway. “I didn't see Mrs. Cook in the kitchen, either. She had promised to watch out for Snowball.”

“Well, are we going down through there or not?” Jonathan asked with a big grin. “We could at least check around the doorways.”

“Of course,” Mandie agreed. “Let's go.”

The two young people cautiously entered the alley and began slowly inspecting the back doors of the shops. Almost all of the businesses had trash cans beside the entrances. Here and there they found a window, but the glass was always barred and too dirty to see through.

“It's awfully dark in here for it to be daylight outside,” Mandie remarked.

“That's because it's cloudy and also because the buildings are so close together. Everything in New York is crammed in,” Jonathan said while he examined a dark recess at the corner of a building.

Snowball suddenly growled and almost jumped out of Mandie's arms. She quickly squeezed him tight. “Snowball, be still,” she told him. But the white cat struggled to get free.

“Watch out!” Jonathan suddenly called to her.

Mandie looked toward the corner where he was standing and saw something rushing toward her. Snowball growled angrily and fought with her to get down.

“What is it?” She gasped as she tried to catch her breath.

The flying object dashed past her, and as it disappeared down the alley she realized it was another cat. Then out of nowhere a dog materialized and chased after the animal.

“Whew!” Mandie said, letting out a deep breath.

Jonathan walked back to where she was standing. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Those animals were in the trash cans.”

“Yes, I'm all right, but let's hurry and finish looking through this dark place,” Mandie said, rubbing Snowball's head to calm him down. She put her handkerchief to her nose when she smelled the rotting garbage that the animals had stirred up.

Mandie stayed close to Jonathan the rest of the way, and they finally came out onto the street at the end. They had not met up with anyone in the alley.

“Now I suppose we should look in the front doors of all the shops,” Jonathan suggested.

“Maybe if we described the man, someone might have seen him,” Mandie said as they walked up to the door of the first shop on the block.

“We can try that if you can remember what the man looked like,” Jonathan replied. “I was so busy untying Jens I didn't get a good look at him. I would recognize the girl, but I don't know about the man.”

“He was tall, dark-looking,” Mandie began as they stopped for a moment. “He had on everyday clothes, like a man would work in, dark grayish, and the main thing I noticed was that he was wearing a green beret.”

“A green beret?” Jonathan asked thoughtfully. “Could the man have been French?”

“I may be wrong, but it didn't sound like French he was speaking,” Mandie replied. “Not the kind of French we heard when we were in France.”

“Was it a slower language? You know the French talk rather fast sometimes,” Jonathan told her.

“No, it was fast, all jumbled together in fact,” Mandie replied. “And he must have been able to understand English because Jens was speaking English. I understood that much when Jens gave him that envelope and then told him not to let anyone know where he got it, and that haste would ruin everything, and all that.”

Jonathan thought for a moment and said, “Then Jens must have been able to understand the man's language, too, and I'm just not sure how many languages Jens knows. I do know he has a good education. My father hired him away from the household of an earl in England
where he was working. Jens wanted to come to the United States and had not been able to because of money.”

“Those people in England seemed to know so many languages when we visited there, like German, French, and some I never figured out,” Mandie replied. Snowball had finally calmed down and clung to the shoulder of her coat.

“On your trip there is one language I don't think you ran into, and that is Spanish,” Jonathan said, suddenly brightening up. “They also talk with their hands. Did this man use his hands when he talked?”

Mandie frowned and thought about that. “Why, yes, I believe he did,” she said. “He talked real fast, and I remember his hands sort of accenting the words he was saying.”

“Aha! Let's try a Spanish neighborhood,” Jonathan decided. “I know where there are several hundred tenements that Spanish people live in.”

“Several hundred?” Mandie asked. “Jonathan, how will we ever find anybody in a place that big?”

“We'll just walk around and look and ask questions,” Jonathan said. “Come on. It's within walking distance if you feel up to it. How's your cold?” He smiled at her.

“My cold is a nuisance more than anything,” Mandie said. “But aren't we even going to look in all these shops around here? The man did go this way.”

“You're right,” Jonathan agreed. “Let's start here at the corner and work our way down the block. This is a mixed area—a Jewish delicatessen, a German butcher, a Dutch candy store, a Negro shoe shine parlor, a Chinese laundry, and lots more. I've been down this street before.”

The two young people began entering the shops, looking around, and going on to the next one. Jonathan asked several store owners if they had seen such a man as he described but without any luck.

Then as they entered the last shop, which was a soda shop on a corner, Mandie looked ahead through the store and spotted the stranger. He looked directly at her, then turned and ran out the back door.

“Jonathan, there he is!” Mandie yelled as she tightened her hold on the white cat and chased after the man.

Mandie reached the back door first and shoved it open. Jonathan
caught up with her and together they came out into the same back alley they had gone down earlier.

“He's disappeared,” Mandie said in a disappointed voice, scanning the dark alleyway. She stomped her foot and added, “Oh, shucks! He was right there in that store, and now he got away.”

“Come on. We'll find him again,” Jonathan told her. “He couldn't have gotten very far away.”

They began searching the passageway and watching to see if any of the doors were open. Finally coming to the corner and out into the street, the two stopped to look around.

“He sure disappeared fast,” Mandie remarked.

“But I imagine he is still in the neighborhood,” Jonathan added. “Let's look in the shops again. More than likely he stepped inside a store.”

“He really must be guilty of something to run from us that way,” Mandie said.

“Sure he is,” Jonathan told her. “Remember Jens was calling the man and the girl thieves, and he said they had stolen something. So I am pretty sure he has committed a crime of some kind.”

Mandie reached to touch Jonathan's arm. “Jonathan, we should be awfully careful. He could be dangerous if he's committed a crime,” she reminded him.

Jonathan patted her hand and said, “Just don't get out of my sight.”

“But, Jonathan, if we do finally get him to stop running away, or I should say, catch up with him, what are we going to do? We can't arrest him,” Mandie said.

“No, but we can make such a fuss that everyone within listening distance will stop to see what's going on,” Jonathan said. “Besides, there are quite a few policemen walking the beat around here. We might be lucky enough to see one.”

At that moment something touched Mandie's nose, and she looked up to see light snowflakes beginning to fall. “Jonathan, it's snowing!” she exclaimed as she cuddled Snowball closer.

Jonathan looked upward, also, and said, “Just a few flakes here and there. It may not even really snow. But, anyway, we're wasting time. Let's go through all these stores again.”

“If I see him again, I'll try to dodge out of his sight and signal to
you so we can trip him or something before he knows we're around,” Mandie said as they stepped up to the door of the corner shop.

They walked in and out of several stores, looking over the people inside, but had no luck until they came to the Chinese laundry.

As they stepped inside, Mandie laid her hand on Jonathan's arm to stop him. “That man behind the counter,” she whispered. “I think that's the man. He's taken off his green beret.”

Jonathan glanced at her and then walked toward the man with Mandie close behind him. When they reached the counter, the man saw them and suddenly shoved down a lever that blew up a cloud of steam, blinding their view.

Mandie wiped her face and cried, “I can't see a thing, Jonathan!”

Jonathan, by her side, blew out his breath and said, “I can see enough to know he grabbed his green beret from the shelf under the counter, put it on his head, and disappeared in the fog.”

Mandie looked toward the front door. The air was clear in that direction, and she had not seen the man go that way. “He went out the back door,” she said. “Come on.”

The two rushed past the Chinaman working on a laundry press and out the back door. This time they were in luck. The man was still in sight as he ran down the dark alley.

“Let's go,” Mandie said, reaching for Jonathan's hand and holding on to Snowball with her other arm.

The two raced down the alley in pursuit. When they came to the end, they saw the man run across the street and disappear behind some bushes in a small park. They kept right on running after him.

Jonathan suddenly yelled something in a foreign language, and Mandie looked at him as he waved ahead.

“What are you saying?” she managed to ask as she began gasping for breath. She felt like the cold was really stuffing up her lungs.

“I asked him to wait so we could talk to him, in Spanish, that is,” Jonathan explained as they slowed down to examine the area around the bushes where the man had gone.

“He sure can disappear fast,” Mandie said. “That's all I can think about. How fast he can run.”

“He knows by now that we are really in earnest about catching up with him, so he has to run all the faster,” Jonathan said, looking behind a bench.

Mandie happened to glance ahead and saw the green beret moving past a sign at the far end of the little park. “Look!” she exclaimed and pointed in that direction. “There he is!”

Mandie and Jonathan kept chasing the man, but he kept outrunning them. He led them through various kinds of neighborhoods and business districts but didn't seem able to completely disappear.

Mandie's side was hurting, and Snowball was heavy to carry while running. Her throat got sorer and sorer, but she didn't complain. She did her dead-level best to keep up with Jonathan, who didn't seem to tire at all.

Then suddenly Mandie thought the world was tumbling. There was a terrific roar all around her, and she looked up to see train cars running on a platform far above the street. She had never even heard of such a thing, much less seen it. She stopped in amazement, and Jonathan happened to look back and saw that she had stopped.

“Come on!” he called out above the noise, stepping back to take her hand. “That's just the elevated railroad up there. Come on.”

Mandie allowed him to pull her forward as she continued to stare at the miracle above, trains running up in the air!

“I see him over there behind that building with the horse tied up in front,” Jonathan told Mandie, still pulling her along with him.

Mandie quickly looked where he was pointing. The man, still wearing the green beret, was sitting on the doorstep of the tenement house where the horse stood. Evidently he had not seen them.

“Maybe we can catch up with him now,” she said eagerly as the two of them ran across the cobblestone street, dodging between drays pulled by horses and children playing in the street.

Just as the two got to the other side of the street, the man finally saw them. He jumped up and ran up the stairs to the overhead railroad.

“Come on,” Jonathan urged Mandie as he started after the man.

Mandie got to the stairs and then suddenly pulled her hand out of Jonathan's. “We can't go up there. That train may come back and run over us,” she cried.

“Oh, come on, Mandie,” Jonathan coaxed her. “There's more than one track up there. We can get out of the way if it comes back. Come on. I'll show you.”