“Where would you like to go, miss?” the cab driver asked. He sounded a bit exasperated.

“Make that Fifth and Cranston,” Nancy said. She listened carefully as the dispatcher acknowledged the driver and signed off.

She wasn’t absolutely certain it was the same voice she had heard on the radio in the other car, but she couldn’t afford to take the chance. Her kidnapper might have told the man the place she had escaped from. All the dispatcher needed to hear was a cabbie report from that same vicinity that he was taking a fare to the Grand Theater, and he’d know Nancy Drew was his passenger.

The trip was a long one and the traffic heavy. Nancy kept glancing behind her until she was certain they hadn’t been followed. By the time she got out at Fifth and Cranston, her pulse was normal again.

And she made sure she checked the name on the side of the cab before it drove away. Gold Star Cab Company. A name to remember. And a face to remember, too, she thought, suddenly feeling guilty. She was already dating the best-looking guy in River Heights-Ned Nickerson. Although Jim Dayton, the name Nancy noticed on the cab driver’s license, did come pretty close.

Nancy turned her thoughts back to the mystery. Why would a cab company be part of a plot to kidnap Ann? And why had the voice on that radio recognized her father’s name when he heard it?

She had learned something. She just wasn’t sure what.

She’d learned something else, too-a very expensive lesson. She could be used as a weapon against her father.

Chapter Five

The taxi ride had given Nancy a lot of time to think. She didn’t dare go back to the theater. Her kidnapper was no idiot. He would have guessed that she had driven to the Grand and would go back for her car. He’d probably be waiting for her. She’d have to leave the car there for a while.

Then Nancy remembered she wanted to try to see her uncle Jonathan Renk. She could phone the police from his house.