“Go ahead,” Nancy replied.
Nancy went upstairs to say good morning to Miss Carter and brief her on the latest event. The actress was astonished at the news.
“Well, if Bunce was the tapper,” she said, “then we won’t hear him again. Maybe it’s just as well that he’s gone. He hated my cats, anyway.”
A few minutes later George joined them and the two girls went to dust their rooms. Nancy stopped to talk to her friend while George made her bed.
“Listen!” she said suddenly.
This time the strange sound was not tapping. It was more like a weird plaintive wail.
Both girls stood still. Nancy pointed upward and whispered, “Something or somebody is in the attic!”
The girls tiptoed to the door of the third-floor stairway. It was open a few inches. They paused a moment, then started up the steps. Wondering what they would find, the girls stood at the top of the stairs and stared ahead.
The queer sounds were coming from inside the wooden mummy case, which was wobbling back and forth!
CHAPTER XVI
Telltale Handprints
WITH cautious steps Nancy and George approached the wobbling mummy case. It was locked on the outside.
The wailing within had now intensified. Had a person been imprisoned? Yet the sounds did not seem human.
Taking a long breath, Nancy opened the latch on the mummy case. A wild-eyed Persian cat leaped out!
“Oh!” the girls exclaimed.
Then Nancy and George began to laugh. George said, “Boy, I’m something! I can’t tell the difference between a cat and a ghost!”
Apparently the cat had been imprisoned for some time and refused to quiet down. Even though Nancy held out a friendly hand, the Persian would not come near her.
“How in the world did it get up here?” George asked. “Somebody must have deliberately locked it in the mummy case. But who?”
“It’s a good thing that case isn’t airtight,” Nancy said.
“Do you suppose,” George asked, “the tapper put the cat in there for spite?”
Nancy shook her head. “I’m sure he has nothing against Miss Carter or the cat. Possibly he has stolen some, but I think his main objective in coming here is to find valuable objects hidden in this house.”
George wondered if Mr. and Mrs. Woonton, having such an unpredictable son, had secreted some of their valuables. “Gus may have figured his parents forgot to take them along when they moved, and he is now trying to locate the pieces and perhaps sell them. Or does he know his parents are dead and he has come to get the articles?”
“It’s a good hunch,” Nancy replied. “Here’s another idea. Remember the threat in Gus’s diary of getting square with his guardians? Maybe he managed to get out of the secret room at times and hid the articles to make the guardians seem like thieves. And now he’s back to collect them.”
All this time she had been coaxing the cat to come toward her. Finally it walked to where she was standing. Nancy picked up the Persian and the two girls went back to the second floor. When Miss Carter heard the story, she gasped.
“Every day this mystery becomes more of a puzzle,” she said. “You girls are doing a good job, but I wish that the unwanted stranger would stop coming into the house.” She took the cat on her lap. “You poor tabby,” she said. “You might have been smothered. Oh, there are such wicked people in this world!”
Just then Mrs. Bealing appeared in the doorway. She had heard only part of the conversation and wanted to know what had happened. When Nancy explained, a look of dismay spread over the nurse’s face.
“I’m afraid that I locked the cat inside the mummy case,” she said. “I went upstairs to get some rags. The case was open so I locked it.” She gave a great sigh. “Oh, I never would have forgiven myself if this beautiful animal had died because of me.”
Miss Carter spoke up quickly. “How were you to know? What I want to find out is who brought the cat into the house.”
No one had an answer. While they were still discussing the incident, Bess came into the driveway. She deposited her packages on the kitchen counter and went upstairs.
When she reached the second floor, Mrs. Bealing burst out with the story of the cat in the mummy case. “I’d certainly like to know who brought that Persian into the house!”
Bess was aghast and hung her head. “I did,” she said. “The poor thing didn’t seem very well, so I took it to my room. You were asleep, so I decided to tell you later. I guess the cat went up to the third floor by itself.”
Miss Carter was relieved. “Such a simple explanation for what started out to be a big mystery,” she remarked.
Bess said, “I stopped at the pet shop downtown and asked the man what to do for a sick cat. He gave me this special food.” She held up the package.
By now the cat had gone into a deep sleep on Miss Carter’s lap. For a moment everyone wondered if perhaps the Persian had been drugged like the others. But when the actress roused the cat, it stretched, yawned, then jumped from her lap.
“It seems to be all right,” she remarked. “But go ahead and give my pet some of the special food you bought, Bess.”
As Miss Carter watched the Persian daintily eating the tidbits, she said that the mummy case had been used in the play The Dancer and the Fool.
“I wonder if Toby Simpson might like to use it in his revival of the play. I think I’ll phone him later today.”
Just then the phone rang. Mr. Drew was calling Nancy. “I have some further information for you,” he said. “It’s rather startling.”
“What is it?” Nancy asked quickly.
The lawyer said that something he had learned only complicated the case. “The license for the Bunces’s car was issued in Pleasantville to a Gus Woonton.”
“What!” Nancy exclaimed. “Dad, do you think that the Bunces and Gus Woonton are together?”
“Either that, or Bunce is using Woonton’s name.”
“I’d say,” Nancy put in, “that whichever is true, it proves that the Fred Bunce we know is the administrator of the Woonton estate.”
The lawyer said he had checked the Pleasantville address given to him by the license bureau but that neither Gus Woonton nor anyone named Bunce was known there.
“So it’s apparent Bunce or Gus Woonton gave a phony address.”
Mr. Drew also said that he planned to ask the St. Louis and Chicago authorities for further information on William Woonton’s will.
“I’ll start right away,” he promised. “Take care. Good-by.”
Nancy sat lost in thought for some time. There were many clues and many leads in this puzzling mystery, but at the moment they seemed to have led only to dead ends. She finally roused herself and went to report the latest findings to her friends.
Bess sensed at once that the girl detective was discouraged. “Nancy,” she said, “a change from thinking about all this would do you good.” She turned to Miss Carter. “Would you mind if we girls go to the attic and look over the rest of the props?”
The actress smiled. “I think that would be a splendid idea. But I want to go with you. I’d like to explain what some of the things are and in what plays they were used.”
Nancy and George carried the frail woman to the third floor. There was an old, worn couch and she asked to be placed on it.
“This stood in the living room of a scene in the stage production of Three Votes for Mary. In that play I was trying to get a friend of mine elected. And oh the exaggerations I told about her!” The actress laughed gaily at the recollection.
She pointed to a large trunk. “That’s full of costumes,” she said.
“Oh, may I try on some of them?” Bess asked.
Miss Carter smiled and said, “No offense, dear, but all of them were worn by me. You will admit that our—our figures aren’t exactly the same.”
Bess admitted this but opened the trunk and took out the gowns one by one. There was such a variety that she remarked, “Mis
s Carter, you were a queen, a dairy maid, a soldier—”
“Yes, I even played the part of a boy soldier. I wasn’t supposed to be in the play. The agency called me in a hurry because the actor became ill.”
“How did you manage to talk like a young man?” George asked.
“I didn’t. I merely moved my lips and a young man offstage said the lines.”
Although Bess could not wear any of the gowns, she held them up in front of her and looked in a full-length mirror at herself.
“I’m Queen Elizabeth,” she said. After putting the gorgeous white satin dress back in the trunk, she picked up a robe such as judges wear. “Who am I now?”
“Portia in The Merchant of Venice by Shake speare,” Miss Carter replied.
Nancy had been listening, but all the time her eyes kept roaming around hunting for dues. Without disturbing the others, she began to move boxes and trunks quietly. There was no sign of a trap door in the floor.
As Nancy moved a chest aside which stood in front of a window, her attention was drawn to the sill. Although the window was closed, there were clear signs of hand- and footprints, indicating that someone had entered the attic this way. She opened the window which had no lock on it, and found more prints on the outside sill.
“Girls, come here!” she called out. “I think I’ve found something important!”
Bess and George rushed over and stared at the marks. Then Bess exclaimed, “If anybody climbed up here from the ground, he must be a monkey!”
“Who can open windows,” George added. “Of course we have no idea how long these prints have been here. Someone could have climbed up a ladder before we came on the case.”
“That’s true,” Nancy conceded, “but I have a hunch these marks were made recently.” Her eyes lighted up. “I’m going to rig something to try catching anybody who comes in this way again.”
Nancy explained her scheme. She would attach an unseen cord to the window and run it down to her bedroom.
“If anybody opens this window,” she said, “it will ring a bell near me. Then I can race up here and grab him.”
“Not without me,” George spoke up firmly.
“All right,” Nancy agreed.
Later, as the girls prepared for bed, they wondered if there would be a visitor that night. They fell asleep. Around one o‘clock in the morning Nancy’s bell began to ring!
CHAPTER XVII
Rooftop Escape
IN a jiffy Nancy was out of bed and putting on robe and slippers. She dashed into the room where Bess and George were sleeping and woke them.
“What’s up?” George asked.
“The bell rang!” Nancy whispered. “Come on! Hurry!”
She was more than halfway up the attic steps before the girls overtook her. Nancy beamed her flashlight into every dark corner of the attic, since the overhead light was a dim one. No one was hiding there.
“Maybe when the tapper heard the bell,” Bess suggested, “it scared him and he went back out the window. Let’s see if he’s hanging on.”
They rushed over and looked out. There was no sign of an intruder.
“Of course he had plenty of time to get down,” George remarked.
Nancy reminded the others it was a pretty precarious climb hanging onto a vertical wall. “It couldn’t be done quickly.”
“Right,” said Bess. “And I don’t see how he could do it, anyway.”
Puzzled, the girls gazed across the roof. They could see only part of it, since the house had two gables. The moon was shining and everything stood out clearly.
Suddenly George grabbed Nancy’s arm. “Look! Over by the chimney! There he goes!”
For a few seconds a pudgy figure was silhouetted on a far peak. Then it disappeared.
“We can catch him yet!” Nancy exclaimed. “He can’t get down as fast as we can.”
She led the way downstairs, two steps at a time. The girls dashed to the first floor and outside.
Taking opposite directions they raced around the house, all the time looking upward for the climbing figure. In the bright moonlight they could not have missed anyone descending from the roof, yet no person was visible.
“He’s gone again!” Bess wailed. “I don’t fancy running into somebody dangerous, but just the same I’d like to know who the climber is and how he gets up and down.”
At that moment they heard a motor start and hurried to the street. A car, which was not the Bunces‘s, pulled away from in front of their house with a roar.
The driver, who had no passenger, held a hand over the side of his face so he could not be identified. He suddenly turned out his lights, making it impossible for the girls to read his license number.
“Now who was he?” George asked. “Perhaps Fred Bunce came back for more of his things.”
“I doubt it,” Bess replied. “He must know by now that the police are looking for him. He wouldn’t dare come here.”
“It might have been the pudgy man we saw on the roof,” Nancy remarked.
“What do we do now?” Bess asked.
Nancy said she was going to alert the police. Two officers arrived in a little while and Nancy briefed them on the details of the man who had been on the roof and escaped. The police made a thorough search of the entire house, even the secret room, which Nancy showed them.
“Man alive! What a prison!” one of the officers exclaimed. “Staying in here for any length of time is enough to drive a person crazy even if he didn’t start that way.”
Nancy made no comment. At times she felt sorry for Gus Woonton and figured that if he had had psychiatric help as a child he might not have turned out the way he had.
“It may not be too late,” she thought but kept the supposition to herself.
Finally the two officers, convinced that the intruder had gone, said they must leave but would check the house again in about an hour.
“If you hear anybody in the meantime, let us know,” one said.
The commotion had awakened Miss Carter and Mrs. Bealing, who wanted to know what had happened. They were given a full report.
At the end Nancy said, “Unfortunately we’ve learned almost nothing. But the tapper—or whoever got into the attic—knows by now we’ve rigged up a way to snare him. So I figure there’s a good chance he won’t be back.”
Actually Nancy said this to allay the women’s fears but deep in her heart she did not believe it. Anyone as determined as the tapper would return.
Finally everyone went to bed for the second time that night. There was absolute silence in the house. Nancy did not drop off to sleep at once. Suddenly she jumped from the bed and started for the hall doorway.
She had heard tapping-heel sounds on the second floor!
By the time Nancy reached the hall, the tapping had stopped. She waited. There was not a sound.
An eerie feeling came over Nancy, as if she were being watched by unseen eyes. The young sleuth stood still for a long time, but there was not another sound either from the second floor or anywhere else in the house.
“I couldn’t have dreamed hearing the tapping,” she thought, going back to her room and dropping into bed.
Nancy did not get much rest that night. The mystery had begun to disturb her. She felt she was getting nowhere in solving it. Finally, utterly weary, Nancy fell asleep.
She had promised to take Mrs. Bealing to River Heights early in the morning so the woman could spend Sunday at home. Nancy was up, bathed, and dressed before anyone else was ready.
Bess and George had promised to care for Miss Carter while her nurse was gone. They planned to hurry with the housework because in the afternoon their Emerson college friends, Burt Eddle ton and Dave Evans, would arrive and stay to supper. Ned had told Nancy he would come to her house by bus and the two would drive to Berryville n her car.
“I’ll ride back to Emerson with the boys,” he had said.
Before Nancy and Mrs. Bealing left, Miss Carter again thanked them for all they had done. br />
“I’ll try not to be any trouble to Bess and George,” she said. “If they get too lonesome, I’ll try to cheer them up by quoting a few humorous lines from plays I’ve been in.”
“That’ll be great,” Bess replied with a giggle.
She felt unusually happy this morning. It was a clear day and birds were singing cheerily. She had succeeded in playing Cupid for Toby Simpson and Miss Carter. And in a few hours her favorite date would arrive.
“You look,” George said to her cousin, “like a satisfied cat who has just finished off a poor mouse.”
“Yes? Well, how about you doing a little grinning?” Bess retorted. “Burt’ll like that.”
Nancy and Mrs. Bealing said good-by and left the house. As they rode along, Mrs. Bealing said, “This is a beautiful morning, isn’t it? We’re having special services at our church. I’m so glad Miss Carter gave me the day off.”
Suddenly she asked Nancy, “Do you always go to church?”
“As often as I can,” she replied. “This morning Dad and Hannah and I will go to service together.”
“That’s nice.”
When Nancy reached home, Mrs. Gruen insisted that she have a second breakfast—at least some of her homemade coffee cake.
Nancy laughed. “I can’t very well refuse that, although I did eat a big breakfast.”
After church Nancy helped with dinner preparations and by one o‘clock she and her father and Mrs. Gruen were sitting down to a delicious meal of roast lamb, mashed potatoes, fresh peas, and strawberry shortcake.
“Marvelous dinner,” Mr. Drew said.
Directly afterward Nancy put the plates, glasses, and silver into the dishwasher. Meanwhile the housekeeper had begun preparations for a cold supper which Nancy would take with her. By this time Mrs. Gruen knew the favorite foods of the three boys who were coming to Miss Carter’s.
“This evening there’ll be chicken sandwiches, sliced tomatoes, and apple pie with ice cream,” she announced.
“Perfect,” said Nancy.
An hour later the telephone rang. Mr. Drew answered. He talked a long while and then came out to the kitchen.