The Scarlet Slipper Mystery Read Online Free PDF

ridiculous! Helene wouldn’t run off without telling somebody here at the school where she was going.” She stamped her foot angrily. “I demand to know where Helene and Henri Fontaine are!”
    “I cannot tell you, Mrs. Judson!” Nancy said firmly, her eyes flashing.
    The woman began a tirade, shouting that Nancy had no right to keep the information from her. Finally Nancy could take the abuse no longer. She rose from the desk and went around to escort Mrs. Judson outside.
    “There are children here,” she said, “and we can’t have a disturbance.”
    Mrs. Judson glowered as Nancy took her arm and led her out to the stairway. Suddenly Mrs. Judson shook herself free of Nancy’s grasp, turned halfway around, and jammed her elbow hard into the girl’s hip.
    Nancy lost her balance. She reached frantically for the banister, missed, and pitched headlong down the steps!

CHAPTER V
    Clue of the Stamp
    THE stairway was steep. Waving her arms wildly in an attempt to save herself, Nancy fell all the way to the bottom. She lay there, stunned.
    Mrs. Judson rushed down the steps, stepped over Nancy, and hurried out the doorway!
    Shocked and angry, Nancy was sure that Mrs. Judson was no friend of the Fontaines. The girl stood up, but when she put her weight on her right ankle, she winced with pain and fell back on the step, her face pale.
    At this moment George Fayne burst through the door. Seeing Nancy, she cried anxiously, “Hypers! What happened to you?”
    “I’ll be all right,” Nancy said, “but follow the woman who just went out the door. I must know who she is and where she lives!”
    George waited for no further explanation. Hurrying to the sidewalk, she spotted the suspect running up the block.
    Meanwhile, Nancy hopped up the stairway on her left foot, clutching the banister rail with both hands. As she reached the reception room, Bess, just dismissing a class, saw her.
    “Nancy, you’re hurt!” she cried.
    After the children had left, Nancy told her what had happened. Bess was furious.
    “That awful person!” she exclaimed. “Nancy, you’re hurt more than you admit. Come into the dressing room and let me look at your ankle.”
    She took off Nancy’s shoe, put cold compresses on the swollen ankle, then bound it. By the time George returned, the pain had eased.
    Nancy turned and asked, “Any luck?”
    “Yes and no,” George replied. “I followed the woman to the post office. She went to the General Delivery window and asked for mail for Judson.”
    George said that the clerk had handed Mrs. Judson a letter that had seemed to disturb her greatly.
    “She got red in the face and I thought she was going to cry. She stuffed the letter and part of the envelope into her handbag,” the girl went on. “But the other piece of the envelope with the stamp on it fell to the floor and I picked it up as she left.”
    “Good!” said Nancy.
    “But my luck ended there.” George sighed.

    “Nancy, you’re hurt!” Bess exclaimed.
    “Mrs. Judson rushed outside and got into a taxi. I couldn’t find another one, so I had no way of following her. And I didn’t even get the license number of the cab.”
    Nancy examined the thin piece of envelope George had saved. The letter had been post-marked in Paris, France, and sent by airmail. The notation Par Avion had been written by hand.
    George suggested that she drive Nancy home and then return to help Bess. “I’ll take over the reception desk,” she promised her friend. “You don’t need a ballet dancer there!”
    On the way home, the girls stopped at Dr. Milton’s office. He said that Nancy had suffered only a mild strain. He strapped the ankle and assured her that if she stayed off it as much as possible, it should be good as new in a day or two.
    When Nancy reached home, Hannah Gruen was distraught. “That dancing school isn’t worth it!” she declared loudly.
    At that, Henri and Helene rushed down the stairs. When they heard what had happened, Helene said,