The Silver Cobweb

  The titian-haired young sleuth walked thoughtfully back to her car in the parking lot.

  “Well, that didn’t take long,” said George.

  “Come on, Nancy!” Bess giggled. “We’re dying to know what that character wanted.”

  “Believe it or not, he offered me a reward to find the man who tried to tamper with Kim Vernon’s golf bag,” Nancy replied.

  As she backed out of their parking spot, Nancy glanced in her rearview mirror. A slight frown creased her forehead as she noticed Simon Shand talking t Kim Vernon near the pro shop.

  After dropping George and Bess off at their houses and promising to play golf with them soon, Nancy arrived home to find Hannah Gruen busy with chores. The kindly housekeeper had been with the Drew family ever since Mrs. Drew had passed away when her little daughter was only three. From that time on, Hannah had been like a second mother to Nancy.

  “Ned’s taking me out to dinner, but he won’t tell me where,” the pretty teenager shouted, leaping upstairs. “I have to get ready.”

  Hannah merely shook her head, letting a smile crease her face. She smiled again when the door chimes rang and Nancy flew out quickly to greet Ned and hop into his car.

  “Still won’t tell me where we’re going?” Nancy teased as they started off in his car.

  “Nope. But it’s a restaurant that just opened, and it’s not more than two miles from River Heights.” Ned laughed. “Those are your clues.”

  It turned out to be called the Russian Bear, and Nancy was delighted with his choice. After they had made their selections from the delicious menu, Nancy found herself telling Ned about the sneak thief at the country club, as well as her encounters with Kim Vernon and Simon Shand.

  When she finished speaking, Ned’s eyes twinkled. “Well I’ve got another surprise for you. Someone wants to meet you!”

  “Oh Ned! I can’t stand any more suspense today. Who is it?” Nancy asked.

  “Kim Vernon’s coach!”

  3. Code Blinks

  Ned’s announcement took Nancy by surprise. “Are you serious?” she asked.

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be”

  “It seems such a coincidence! I didn’t even know you knew Kim’s coach.”

  “I didn’t, up till this afternoon. His name’s Russ Chaffee, by the way. He was over at the Oakville Country Club, and the pro there introduced us.”

  Ned, an all-around athlete ad star quarter-back of the Emerson College football team, was to take part in a summer-vacation golf tournament organized by the River Heights and Oakville country clubs. He explained that, while paying, the Oakville course to familiarize himself with its terrain and hazards, he had run into Chaffee and the Oakville pro on the eighteenth green. The three had chatted on their way to the clubhouse.

  “As you might expect, Kim Vernon’s name might be just the person to solve the mystery.” Ned grinned and added, “Chaffee came up,” Ned went on. “Chaffee said he was as mystified by her pullout from the Charleston Cup as everyone else. So naturally I boasted that my girlfriend Nancy Drew leaped at the idea---especially since he knew Kim would be staying in River Heights.”

  Nancy smiled, pleased at Ned’s confidence in her sleuthing ability. “And just when and where a I to meet Mr. Chaffee?”

  “Here. Tonight.” Ned grinned apologetically at his date. “He had a dinner engagement in Oakville, but he wanted to see you as soon as possible. So I said tonight would be okay if he could make it here before eight-thirty. That’ll still give us time to catch the late movie. I hope you don’t mind too much, Nancy?”

  “Of course not, if I can help.”

  They were just finishing dessert when Nancy saw a husky-looking man with thinning silver-blond hair walk into the restaurant. “Here he is now,” Ned murmured.

  As the man approached their table, Ned rose to greet him---“Hi, Russ!” ---then turned to introduce the newcomer. “Nancy, this is Russ Chaffee, Kim Vernon’s coach.”

  She smiled. “How do you do, Mr. Chaffee.”

  “Miss Drew, it’s a pleasure.” He sat down and, after the waiter had brought coffee, said, “I imagine Ned has told you why I’ve come.”

  “You want me to try to find out why Kim Vernon withdrew from the Charleston Cup Tournament?”

  “Right. Will you?”

  Nancy remained silent a moment, her pretty face becoming serious. “I’m not sure. For one thing, when Kim was interviewed today, she refused to give the reporters any hint as to why she dropped out of the tournament.”

  Russ Chaffee nodded and smiled regretfully. “Exactly---which is why I’ve come to you, Nancy.”

  “The point is, what chance have I of finding out anything if she’s determined not to cooperate?”

  Chaffee’s smile gave way to a troubled expression. “Yes, I see what you mean. But surely, in all your mystery cases, you’ve had to cope with people who were trying to keep you from finding out the facts.”

  “That’s true,” Nancy conceded. “But most of those investigations haven’t been as personal as this, where the whole mystery concerns Kim’s private motives.”

  Chaffee nodded again. “It’s not an easy thing I’m asking, I realize that.”

  “There’s also an ethical consideration,” Nancy replied slowly. “I mean, if Kim doesn’t want anyone to know why she dropped out, have we any right to pry”

  Russ Chaffee frowned and toyed with his coffee spoon. “I guess my answer would be that Kim’s happiness is important to me, and I’ve a hunch she herself is pretty unhappy right now.”

  “You feel pretty sure of that?” Nancy probed.

  “Put yourself in her place,” said the star’s coach. “You’ve practiced and struggled for years to become a golf champion. Now you’ve finally made it to the top, and this tournament is your chance to prove it. You’re facing the best women golfers in the country and you’re beating them---leading the field by a comfortable margin. The crown is within your reach, so to speak. And then, just as victory is in sight, you’re forced to drop out!... Wouldn’t you be pretty unhappy in her place?”

  Nancy was struck by his choice of words. “Why do you say she was forced to drop out?”

  With a shrug and a frown, Chaffee replied, “I just can’t imagine any reason why Kim would quit of her own accord.” Recalling the scene, he added, “I can tell you, she certainly acted mighty upset about it at the time!”

  “Have you any theory of your own, Mr. Chaffee, that might explain what happened?”

  He shook his head glumly. “Not a clue. The whole thing just doesn’t make sense.”

  “How did you first become Kim Vernon’s coach?” Nancy inquired.

  Russ Chaffee explained that he and Kim’s father had been close friends, so when she first showed an interest in golf, he had given Kim lessons that had helped her become a top scorer on her college team.

  “After her parents died and she decided to turn pro,” Chaffee went on, “I put everything aside to help her. I felt Kim really had the makings of a champion!”

  Remembering the golf star’s remark over tea at the country club, Nancy said, “I understand Kim has a brother who lives near here, in Bradley.”

  “That’s right. Jack Vernon. Quite a promising young man. He’s recently gone into politics.”

  “Has she any other interests outside of golf?”

  “None,” her coach declared. “that’s another reason her withdrawal from the tournament is such a mystery. If Kim had any aims or interests that conflicted with her golfing career, I might understand her dropping out of the match. But golf’s her whole life!”

  “What about romance or marriage?” Nancy asked.

  “She had a steady boyfriend around the time she graduated from college,” Chaffee related. “A young jewelry designer named Brett Hulme.”

  The name immediately rang a bell in Nancy’s mind. “Oh yes. He’s quite well known.”

  “His workshop’s near River Heights,” put in Ned.

  “That
’s right,” Chaffee confirmed. “I expected them to become engaged. But then Kim became engrossed in her golfing career, which of course kept her on tour most of the time. So I guess they drifted apart and lost touch.”

  Despite her misgivings, Nancy promised to look into the mystery now swirling around Kim’s interrupted golfing career. But she was determined not to do so in any furtive or underhanded way.

  Later that evening, as she watched th movie with Ned, Nancy’s thoughts kept straying back to Kim Vernon.

  Kim had mentioned her brother’s nearness in Bradley was a reason for staying in River Heights. But now Nancy found herself wondering if Brett Hulme’s presence near town might have been an even stronger attraction.

  The next day, Nancy attended church service with her father. Afterward, over the appetizing roast that Hannah Gruen had cooked for their Sunday dinner, Carson Drew mentioned that he planned to drive to New York City that afternoon to see a client who was about to fly to Europe.

  “Oh Dad, that’s great!” cried Nancy. “I promised to visit someone in the hospital there this afternoon. May I go with you?”

  “Sure thing. In fact I insist on it!” Her father chuckled. “It’ll be a treat having your company, rather than driving all that way alone!”

  The gleaming high-rise hospital on Manhattan’s East Side was crowded with Sunday visitors. Tad Farr, who proved to be a burly, freckled subway policeman in his mid-twenties, met Nancy in the hospital lobby.

  “Miss Drew, I really appreciate your taking all this trouble to help my mother,” he said.

  The teenager grinned. “How could I refuse after you found such an unusual way to arouse my interest? By the way, make it Nancy, please.”

  “Thanks. You’ll call me Tad, I hope.”

  As they took the elevator up to the intensive care ward on the tenth floor, where Mrs. Farr was a patient, Nancy asked if her ability to communicate had shown any improvement.

  “Not yet, I’m afraid. She hasn’t made any progress at all, as far as I can tell. But I’m sure she’ll perk up a bit when she sees you.”

  Maggie Farr turned out to be a cheerful-looking woman with gray-streaked, carroty-red hair, whose lined faced reflected a lifetime of hard work. As Tad had predicted, her expression brightened when he introduced the famous young detective. But Nancy could not repress a pang of pity at her helpless condition.

  “Mrs. Farr,” she said, “can you blink your eyes?”

  The woman’s lids fluttered up and down.

  “Good! Now I’d like to ask you some questions. If the answer is yes, blink once. If it’s n, blink twice, okay?”

  Maggie’s lips seemed to shape a faint smile, and she blinked once.

  Nancy squeezed her hand by way of encouragement and then took the folded drawing out of her bag. She showed it to the elderly woman and said, “Tad thinks you were trying to tell him something important with this drawing. Were you?”

  Mrs. Farr blinked once. Emphatically, it seemed to Nancy.

  “Does it represent . . . a spider?”

  Again Maggie blinked once.

  Nancy looked at Tad. “But a spider means nothing to you?”

  He shook his head regretfully. “Nothing. I’ve no idea what she’s getting at.”

  Nancy turned back to Mrs. Farr. “Is this a . . . a live spider you’re talking about?”

  The response was two blinks.

  “Well then, a dead spider someplace in the room where you were sitting that day?”

  Again, two blinks.

  “A mounted specimen, perhaps, in a museum?”

  Two blinks.

  Nancy puckered her brow, trying hard to think of a question that might help the woman to communicate her meaning. “Maybe something that just . . . looks like a spider?”

  Mrs. Farr’s face brightened again and she blinked once.

  Nancy’s spirits rose, now that she had gotten another positive response from the patient. But they quickly sank again when she racked her brain for a follow-up question and drew a blank. Nancy flashed a helpless glance at Maggie’s son. “What on earth resembles a spider?” she murmured.

  Tad shrugged and scratched his head. “Beats me. A little baby crab maybe?” Or some kind of small electronic part, with wires sticking out from it---except I can’t imagine Mom wanting to talk about anything like that.”

  Nor could Nancy. “Never mind,” she said, trying not to let her discouragement show. “Perhaps it would be easier if we could find some way to help her spell out words.”

  “Like for instance?”

  “Well . . .” Nancy thought of Morse code, using long and short blinks for dots and dashes, but she had no chart of the alphabet at hand with which to instruct Maggie.

  In the end, Nancy suggested they simply spell out the alphabet aloud and have the elderly woman blink when they came to the right letter, the start all over again to get to the next letter.

  It was a slow process. They had worked out three letters---T – H – A – when a ward nurse who had been keeping an anxious eye on the proceedings came over and insisted on taking Mrs. Farr’s temperature. “I really think you’d better let her rest now,” she said after a frowning glance at the thermometer.

  Reluctantly Nancy left with Tad, after promising the patient to return another day. “I’m sorry I wasn’t more help,” she said when they reached the lobby.

  “You did fine!” Tad Farr assured her gratefully. “I could see that Mom really appreciated what you were trying to do.”

  The titian-blond sleuth paused thoughtfully before saying good-bye. “Have you any idea what might have happened just before your mother suffered the stroke? I mean, while you were gone and she was alone?”

  “Not really,” Tad replied. “There was no sign of intruders or visitors. She was watching TV.”

  “What channel? Do you remember?”

  Tad searched his memory for a moment. “As a matter of fact I do, because a soap opera she watches was just coming on.” He named the show and the television station, as well as the date on which his mother had suffered her stroke.

  Outside the hospital, Nancy hailed a cab and asked to be taken to the network skyscraper where the station had its broadcasting studio. Even though this was a Sunday, she reasoned that at least a skeleton staff would be on duty to handle the day’s programming.

  Luckily the lobby guard recognized the famous young sleuth by name, and soon Nancy was talking to a woman staffer on one of the upper floors of the building. She asked what program had come before the soap opera on the day in question.

  “Let me see. It should be right here in our broadcasting log.” The woman flipped through a loose-leaf binder. “Yes, here it is. The Diet Chef show.”

  Nancy sighed, swallowing her disappointment. “I don’t suppose you’d know if anything unusual happened on the show that day?”

  The woman shook her head. “I’m afraid not, dear . . . Oh, wait --- there was something! According to the log, the show was interrupted for a special news broadcast.”

  “About what?”

  “An interview with Kim Vernon. It was right after she announced her withdrawal from that golf tournament, even though she was way in the lead.”

  4. Phone Threat

  Nancy’s eyes widened. For a moment she could only stare in silence at the television staffer.

  “Are you all right, dear?” the woman asked anxiously.

  “Er, yes. Sorry, I was just thinking of something else. Thank you for the information.”

  Nancy left the broadcasting studio almost in a state of shock. Could it possibly be that the urgent message Maggie Farr was trying to communicate had something to do with Kim Vernon or her withdrawal from the Charleston Cup match? If not, it was certainly an amazing coincidence!

  But if not a coincidence, the alternative seemed just as weird. What possible connection could there be between a golf star and a spider?

  Nancy waited for her father to join her in a tearoom near Radio City Music Hall. T
hen, after a sandwich and iced tea, they drove back to River Heights.

  Hannah Gruen greeted them with the news of a phone call for Nancy. “The same man phoned last night too, dear, while you were out with Ned,” she added. “I forgot to tell you.”

  “It doesn’t matter, since I wasn’t in, anyway,” the teenager responded with a smile. “Did he leave his name or say what he wanted?”

  “Neither,” Hannah replied with a worried little frown. “I must say, he sounded rather unpleasant.”

  “In that case,” Nancy chuckled, “maybe it’s just as well I missed him!”

  She spent the evening curled upon the sofa with a good book, though much of the time her thoughts were far from the printed page.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Nancy said to herself for the umpteenth time the next morning, while dressing in a green knit shirt and a short green and white golf skirt. She was to pick up George and Bess and play a round of golf with them at the country club.

  The teenage sleuth was still puzzling over the information that the woman at the TV station had given her yesterday afternoon. The intriguing problem gave her an additional reason to hope she might encounter the golf star on the course this morning.

  Soon the three friends were well into their game, and Nancy was relaxed enough to be able to concentrate on keeping her two-stroke lead over George. As they were on their way toward the sixteenth green, Bess exclaimed, “Oh look! There’s Kim Vernon!”

  Nancy glanced across the intervening row of shrubbery to see Kim waving a greeting to them from the adjacent fairway. She was playing with Buzz Hammond, the club pro, who was just selecting an iron from his bag.

  N one way, it seemed a lucky encounter since it might provide an opportunity to follow up on her Saturday night conversation with Russ Chaffee. But o further thought, Nancy decided it might be best not to take any initiative in the matter, until she had decided how best to handle the situation.

  Kim and Buzz had disappeared by the time Nancy and her two friends walked off the golf course.

  “Oh, I’m sooo hungry!” said Bess. “let’s all have lunch here, shall we?”