The Sinister Omen

  Contents

  1. The Great, Black Buzzard

  2. Sabotage!

  3. Air-Sea Rescue

  4. Nightmare Come True?

  5. The Vulture Strikes Again!

  6. The Sinister Omen

  7. Where Is Carson Drew?

  8. Rats

  9. Nancy's Ruse

  10. Mrs. Palmer Lashes Out!

  11. Puzzling Burglaries

  12. An Inside Job?

  13. Trapped!

  14. Hidden Talkers

  15. Dave Versus Angus

  16. Betrayed!

  17. Hydrofoiled!

  18. A Mystery Solved

  19. Stroessner's Plan

  20. The Sinking Earth

  1. The Great, Black Buzzard

  Crash!

  The home of Bess Marvin, still covered by the predawn darkness, was suddenly disturbed by the sound of something falling to the floor.

  "Wha—? Gerv? Uh—" came the sleepy and confused voice of Bess as she struggled to get out from under her blankets to snap on the light.

  "Nancy!" she cried out a moment later.

  "What's the matter?" a second sleepy voice asked from the top of the double bunk bed. It was Bess's cousin, George Fayne, whose face now appeared over the side, eyes blinking and dark hair tousled.

  "It's Nancy," said Bess. "Look at her. She's fallen out of bed!"

  She pointed to her disheveled friend in pale blue pajamas who was curled up on the floor across the room. Nancy was moving her legs in a running motion as she groaned and made little cries of distress.

  "She's having a nightmare!" George declared. "Wake her up, Bess."

  "Me?'' Bess cried, brushing her blond hair back from her face, her blue eyes growing wide with alarm. "Oh, no. I read somewhere that if you wake up somebody having a nightmare their heart might stop. Or they go into shock or something."

  "Oh, Bess!" George looked at her relative with some exasperation. "Nancy's very healthy and she doesn't have heart problems. So you can wake her up."

  Bess hesitated. "I'd feel better if you did it."

  George climbed down and knelt beside Nancy. She took her friend's face gently in her hands. "Come on, Nancy," she said. "It was just a dream. Wake up!"

  Gingerly, Bess came over and knelt next to the two. She rubbed Nancy's hands until at last the girl opened her large, blue eyes. At first, they were still filled with fright, but Nancy quickly relaxed once she saw that she was safely in Bess's bedroom with her friends.

  "Oh, where did it go?" she moaned.

  "Where did what go?" Bess asked. "It was a nightmare, Nancy, a bad dream. But you're okay now.''

  "Oh-h-h.'' Nancy shuddered. "It was awful. Awful. I never get nightmares. Why should I get one now?"

  "Too much pepperoni pizza last night.'' George laughed.

  "And too much pistachio ice cream with hot fudge and whipped cream," Bess added.

  "If that's so," Nancy said, "how come you two didn't have nightmares?''

  "We're used to junk food," George replied with a chuckle.

  "Tell us about your dream," Bess urged. "Fm dying to know what happened!"

  "Hm," Nancy said, feeling strong enough to get up and sit down on the edge of her bed. "Let me try and remember. It had something to do with our going to Fort Lauderdale to meet Dad and chase the stamp smugglers and all that."

  "What stamp smugglers?" Bess demanded, looking apprehensive. "Don't tell me you're going to become involved in another mystery while we're in the middle of our spring vacation?"

  "Well—" Nancy grinned. "It's really Dad who's involved in the mystery this time."

  "You mean your father's in Florida trying to catch a bunch of stamp smugglers?" Bess asked.

  "Right. He's working with his long-time friend and client, Señor Ricardo Segovia, on a case."

  "The same Señor Segovia who invited us to stay in his house?" George inquired.

  "Yes."

  "That figures," Bess complained. "She tells us all about her father's wealthy friend who wants us to stay in his twenty-two room mansion for our spring vacation, but she never mentions that our host and Mr. Drew are working on a mystery!"

  "And we don't believe for one minute that you won't help, Nancy!" George added. "And that means we'll be caught up in it, too."

  "And here I thought we'd just have a good time!" Bess grumbled.

  "We will," Nancy said placatingly. "You see, Señor Segovia often does undercover and consulting work for the U.S. government. At present, he's tracking down a network of international crooks who specialize in stealing and smuggling rare stamps. Now, he didn't ask me to help him, but if there's something I can do—"

  "Of course," George said.

  "Doesn't the case intrigue you?''

  Bess looked skeptical. "ril tell you when it's all over. But you seem so intrigued that you're having nightmares."

  "Oh, yes," Nancy said. "The nightmare."

  "I know." George grinned. "You dreamed you were being chased by an Emerson College Señor in a gorilla suit."

  "Be serious," Bess begged. "I want to hear."

  "Well," Nancy began, "I imagined that I was in Fort Lauderdale and I was being chased, you're right about that. It was night, and I was followed by cars, boats, and helicopters. They even had guard dogs after me."

  "They?" Bess asked.

  "Well, in nightmares you never seem to recognize who it is that you're afraid of. The only thing I can remember is a great, black, shadowy outline of something. A bird. A bird of prey. No, that's not right. A bird that eats carrion, dead bodies. A vulture or a buzzard or something like that."

  "Ecch." Bess shuddered.

  "Oh, I don't know," George quipped. "It could have been worse. It could have been an Emerson College Señor in a gorilla suit."

  All three girls broke up laughing. Then Bess said, I'm sorry, Nancy. It must have been horrible, but it's over now and you woke up and we didn't give you a heart attack so let's all go back to bed and get some sleep. We have a long trip ahead of us in the morning."

  "Right," Nancy agreed. "Everybody back to bed and my apologies for my vulture or whatever it was."

  The girls were just getting settled under the covers again, when they heard an auto horn honking under their bedroom window.

  "Oh, it couldn't be," George cried out. "It's the middle of the night!"

  "No, it isn't," Nancy said. "It's five o'clock!" The horn honked again. Bess chuckled. "It's them, all right. It's the boys."

  Nancy and George had stayed at Bess's house overnight in order to get an early start to Florida the next morning. The "boys" they referred to were three Emerson College Señors, Ned Nick-erson, Dave Evans, and Burt Eddleton. They were driving to Fort Lauderdale in Ned's father's Land Rover, assuming the girls were making the trip in Nancy's blue sports sedan.

  The girls popped their heads out the window and saw the three young men smiling and waving at them.

  Ned, who had long had a fondness for Nancy, stood up tall in the front passenger seat. His dark eyes were teasing as he called, "Don't tell me you're still in bed. We're going to be south of Washington, D.C., before you even get started."

  Burt, who was driving, called to George. "You want me to save you a shady space under a beach umbrella? It's going to be awfully crowded in Fort Lauderdale by the time you get there."

  The girls hooted back at their friends, a bit weakly because they were still half asleep.

  "Never mind, Bess," called Dave Evans, a rangy, blond boy with green eyes who lounged in the back seat, making a bed of the duffle bags stuffed with the boys' possessions. "You'll probably show up by the middle of next week. I mean, half a week's vacation is better than none."

  At that point, the front door of the house o
pened and Mrs. Marvin cried out, "Boys, boys, you should know better than to make such a commotion at this hour of the morning. You'll wake up all the neighbors!"

  Ned and his friends promptly quieted down, looking a little abashed. "We're sorry, Mrs. Marvin," Ned apologized.

  Mrs. Marvin, who could never be stern for too long, smiled. ''All right. Now get going. And here, I made you some sandwiches and cookies. You'll just have to pick up milk or soft drinks along the way."

  Thanking her, the boys took the food, called out quiet good-byes to the girls, and pulled away with a minimum of engine roar.

  "Oh, dear," George said, hugging a pillow and flopping on Bess's bunk. ''Oh, dear, the poor dears. They don't know."

  Nancy laughed. "No, they don't know we're going by plane and we're going to beat them by two full days."

  "Yet," Bess said, a worried look creasing her pretty face, "I feel kind of mean, doing that to the boys."

  "Mean?" George challenged. "Didn't you just hear them gloating about getting there first? Don't you think it would be good for their souls and make them more modest and humble if we three girls arrived ahead of them?"

  Bess giggled. "I suppose so."

  The three girls dressed and went down to breakfast. They had packed the night before and were ready to leave as soon as they had finished eating. After fond good-byes and hugs and kisses from Mrs. Marvin, they piled into Nancy's car and were on th.eir way to the airport. But they had not even driven a dozen blocks when Nancy said very quietly, "Don't look back. Don't do anything. But there's a car following us!"

  2. Sabotage!

  ''I hate this" Bess said. ''Whenever a car follows us I know what it means. It means Nancy is going on another case, even if we don't know what it is yet.''

  ''Don't be a pessimist," George told her. "Maybe it's somebody going to the airport, too."

  "Not likely," Nancy declared, her blue eyes flashing to the rearview mirror and back to the road. "I've tested him out by slowing down and giving him a chance to pass us. He didn't take it. He's just hanging in there behind us."

  "Can you see who it is?" George asked.

  "No. It's a small, green sports car with one of those tinted glass windshields; the kind where you can't see in very well but you can see out."

  "What are you going to do?" Bess asked.

  "I don't know" Nancy replied. "I don't know whether just to ignore him or try to lose him."

  "Let's lose him," George suggested. "But how?"

  "Oh, we can do a few tricks that won't-break the law," the titian-haired sleuth responded. With that, she pulled up and stopped. The move took the green car by surprise. Before the driver could react, he found that with another car directly behind him, he had no choice but to pass the girls. As soon as he did, Nancy made a smooth U-turn, went back over the brow of a hill until she was sure the green car was out of sight, then turned right onto an alternate road to the airport.

  "That did it," George said. "It's so easy when you know how."

  But five miles farther on, Nancy looked into her mirror and groaned. "It's so easy, is it? He's back again."

  This time the two girls whirled around and saw the green sports car a hundred yards behind.

  "Well," Nancy said, "let's not worry about it. He's not bothering us and we're going to a crowded airport where he's not likely to try anything."

  The girls drove on for another ten minutes.

  Then Bess, who couldn't resist looking back furtively, cleared her throat. ''Ah, Nancy?"

  ''Yes?''

  "If I tell you something, will you promise not to take your hands off the wheel and scream?"

  "Nancy Drew has never taken her hands off the wheel and screamed in her entire life," George stated.

  "Okay. Now there are two cars following us. The green one and right behind it a yellow station wagon."

  "I know," Nancy said. "I just didn't say anything because I didn't want to upset you. We might have a whole parade before we get to the airport."

  She tried to think of a reason why people would be trailing her. Could it have anything to do with the legal actions her father was undertaking on behalf of Señor Segovia in Florida?

  Before she could reach any conclusion on the matter, they had arrived at River Heights Airport. Nancy drove straight to the charter plane area and parked. The girls got out and looked around for their "shadows." They didn't see the green car, but the yellow station wagon pulled in next to them. To their surprise, the driver, who got out and approached the trio, was a woman.

  "This is it" Bess whispered. "Here comes trouble, Detective Drew. I can feel it."

  The woman had pleasant features and earnest brown eyes. Her dark blond hair was tied back tightly and she wore glasses with large, clear plastic rims.

  "Nancy Drew?" she asked, stopping a few feet from the girls. Then, not waiting for Nancy to reply, she said, "Oh, excuse me. Let me introduce myself first. I'm Susan McAfee? From Fort Lauderdale?" She had the habit of many Southerners of ending a statement with a rising intonation to make it sound like a question.

  "Oh, hi," Nancy said. "Yes, Tm Nancy Drew. And these are my friends, Bess Marvin and George Fayne."

  "Miss Drew, I don't want to delay you. I know you're trying to get to Fort Lauderdale and . . ."

  Nancy started. "How did you know?"

  "Well," Miss McAfee replied, "I know your father, Carson Drew. He's an old friend of my employer, Mrs. Eleanor Palmer. May I speak to you privately and explain?"

  Nancy put her arms around Bess and George. "You can say anything you want in the presence of Bess and George. They're my dearest friends and confidantes."

  "Oh, all right" Miss McAfee smiled. "But could we at least go inside and have sodas while I tell you my problem? I'm awfully thirsty."

  Nancy agreed and the four young women went inside and settled down in a comfortable booth in the restaurant. Then Susan McAfee took a deep breath and began.

  ''I am the personal secretary and companion to Mrs. Eleanor Palmer. Mrs. Palmer is very wealthy. And very courageous. And extremely opinionated. She is also bright and funny and sharp as a tack. And she is ninety-three years old, mind you."

  "Wow," said Nancy, "she must be quite a lady."

  "She is. I hope you get to meet her because you'll find it quite an experience. Anyway, Mrs. Palmer, as I said, is an old friend of your family. She knew your father's grandparents quite well."

  "They weren't alive any more when I was born," Nancy said.

  Miss McAfee nodded and went on. "Mrs. Palmer has an annoying and unusual problem. It's a little scary, really. She and I and her servants live in a huge, old house. Everything is done in the Victorian style of the 1890s. Great, massive furniture, heavy mauve drapes. It's a little like living in a museum."

  ''But not scary, is it?'' Bess put in.

  "No. But what has happened is. Mrs. Palmer is plagued by burglars. Only they don't steel anything!"

  "I beg your pardon," Nancy said, looking quizzically at the young woman.

  "That's right," Miss McAfee replied. ''They don't take anything. They break into the house and ransack it, but in the end nothing's missing."

  "Could they just be vandals?" George asked. "Perhaps neighborhood children who think it's fun to destroy things?"

  "No," Miss McAfee said. "These people are professionals. There is no doubt of that. Our security precautions would keep out any amateur thieves or vandals."

  "How many times has it happened?" Nancy asked.

  "Four times. Isn't that unbelievable? I must tell you that Mrs. Palmer has given the Fort Lauderdale Police a very hard time. She has also complained to the Broward County Sheriff's Office and the Florida State Highway Patrol."

  "Is there special protection now?" Nancy asked with concern. "At her home, I mean?''

  "Yes. The police have a man on guard. But if there's another burglary, I think Mrs. Palmer will try to have the entire city and county government replaced."

  The girls laughed. "A feisty old
lady," Nancy said.

  Susan McAfee nodded. "Sometimes she does try your patience, but she has so much character and spunk that you have to admire her."

  Nancy agreed. "Well, Miss McAfee, what do you intend to do about this problem?"

  "I think you know. Mrs. Palmer sent me to ask you if you will take the case while you're in Fort Lauderdale."

  Bess cast her eyes heavenward and touched Nancy's foot under the table. Nancy ignored her, though she smiled a little.

  "Why did you fly all the way up here when you knew I was coming to Florida?" she asked Susan.

  "Mrs. Palmer wants her answers right away."

  Nancy laughed. ''I know, but she could have telephoned."

  "That's something else. She doesn't trust telephones. She doesn't really trust anything invented in the last one hundred years. "

  Nancy drummed her fingers on the table.

  "Miss McAfee, I'd like to help but we were going to be on vacation and . . "

  "Mrs. Palmer said she would more than match any price you might want to set"

  Nancy shook her head. "We never take money. That's not the issue."

  There was silence. Then Bess spoke. "Well, Mrs. Palmer is so old. And she is a friend of your family so it probably wouldn't be polite to say no, would it? I mean, I don't want to make your decisions for you, Nancy, but . . ."

  Nancy and George were both amused. "Well," George said. "Look who's becoming an agent for Nancy Drew, detective. I thought you wanted to vacation with us!"

  Bess grinned ruefully. "We'll work it in. We have to help Mrs. Palmer!"

  3. Air-Sea Rescue

  Nancy extended her hand to Susan McAfee. "My most tenderhearted friend Bess has been my conscience," she said. "Tell Mrs. Palmer we'll take the case."

  Susan heaved a sigh and shook Nancy's hand. "You don't know what a relief this is. I've been rehearsing in my mind what a tongue-lashing I'd get if I went home and told her you didn't want to do it."

  Nancy smiled and took down the address and phone number. She noted that even though Mrs. Palmer distrusted telephones, she had given in to Susan and had one installed. Then the girls parted from the young woman and made their way to the area where a beautiful, white, high-winged seaplane rolled gently in the Muskoka River alongside a small dock. It was the craft that Carson Drew had chartered as a present for his daughter and her friends. There was plenty of room for all three girls and their luggage.