“I agree,” Nancy replied. “Of course she might have been taken out of the house and been kept somewhere else until after I’d gone.”
During the delicious steak supper, which Cecily and Nancy served, the girls continued to talk about the locket, the missing red-haired girl, and Pudding Stone Lodge.
When they finished eating, George declared she felt fine and again longed for action. Bess looked at her cousin sternly. “No physical exercise tonight. But I’ll make a bargain with you. I’ll drive you to the movies over at Ridgeton.”
“Neat idea,” said George. “I accept.”
Bess turned to Nancy meaningfully. “I hope you girls don’t mind not being invited. Somebody probably should be here to guard this cottage.”
The significance of Bess’s remark was not lost on Nancy. They must keep Cecily at the cottage so that she would surely be there when Niko camel
“How about a little walk?” Nancy asked Cecily.
“Oh, I don’t believe so,” the other girl answered. “I’d like to write some letters. My friends will wonder what has happened to me.”
Nancy asked if Cecily minded if she went out by herself for a short time.
Cecily said, “Oh, go right ahead. I think I’ll lock myself in, though, in case there are any prowlers around. When you return, knock three times.”
Bess and George went off in the car, while Nancy strode along the lake front. Before she knew it, she had reached the path leading to Pudding Stone Lodge. On a sudden hunch Nancy decided to climb quietly up along the slope and pick up any dues she could. As she walked toward the house and looked upward, the young sleuth stopped short.
There was a steady glow of light from the bull’s-eye window!
CHAPTER XII
Precarious Hiding Place
THE light from the bull’s-eye window began to flash on and off. Surely this must be a signal, Nancy thought.
She ducked behind a large bush and looked around uneasily. It occurred to her that a sudden light beamed on the grounds could reveal her hiding place. Nancy began to count the flashes to see if they spelled an SOS message. But they did not.
“I may be letting my imagination run away with me,” she told herself. “It could be that the owner himself came back to find something in that room, and is poking a flashlight into various places. That would make it seem as if a light were going on and off.”
Nancy’s keen instinct told her, however, that this was not the right explanation. There were too many other suspicious and mysterious goings-on in connection with the Driscoll property! As she stood gazing, suddenly a light went on in the kitchen. Was someone getting a snack? Nancy decided to take a chance and move closer. She was too far below the kitchen windows to see anyone inside. But she did hear a door slam. Had someone gone to the cellar? Nancy listened for the person’s return. After a time, when she heard nothing, she began to wonder if the Driscolls carried on some kind of work down there.
It occurred to Nancy that the signaling from the window might have been for someone waiting on the lake or in the woods—or, as she had guessed earlier, from a prisoner in the room. At that moment she heard a muffled humming sound.
“It’s the same machine noise that I heard before!” Nancy thought.
She decided to try tracing it. Straining her ears, the young sleuth followed the sound down through the woods of the embankment. It was now bright moonlight and she had no trouble descending. As Nancy neared the beach, she was startled by a rustle of the brush behind her. She darted in back of a large tree, hoping no one was following. The rustling had stopped. There was complete silence now, except for the humming sound. Nancy took a chance and moved toward the beach. Suddenly she stopped, her heart beating faster. She noticed the silhouettes of two men standing not far from the water. Where had they come from?
Now the humming noise was louder. The girl detective was sure she was near its source. Nancy was greatly puzzled. What was the source of the sound?
Suddenly the men turned and walked directly toward Nancy. One of them was Vince Driscoll, the other a stranger, short, wiry, and partially bald.
Hastily Nancy retreated along the woods path. She looked back. The men had begun to climb the bluff. With a sigh of relief, Nancy paused. But the next moment the men stopped too. “She’s here somewhere,” said the stranger. “Karl saw her!”
Nancy tried to figure out who “she” might be. “Do they mean me, or the mysterious red-haired girl?”
Then she heard Vince say, “Come on. Let’s look over here.” Again they started in Nancy’s direction.
Sure she was in danger, the young sleuth tiptoed away. But she stepped squarely on a dead branch, snapping it with a loud crack.
“What was that?” she heard Vince growl. “Somebody’s ahead of us.”
The men broke into a run, and Nancy had no choice but to run herself. Could she make her way to the cottage safely? A chilling thought struck her. The men might have a confederate searching the woods! She could be trapped!
Wondering what her best means of escape might be, Nancy decided on Henry Winch’s dock. This was now not far away.
“I can lower myself under it and hang on,” thought Nancy. “If necessary, I can even drop into the water.”
As quietly as she could, Nancy continued running. But Vince and his companion evidently could hear her for they hurried in the same direction.
Nancy managed to reach Henry Winch’s store. She dashed around the side which was in the shadow and let herself down underneath the dock. She clung to a supporting beam.
A minute later her pursuers stomped onto the dock. “I caught a glimpse of her,” the stranger said. “She’s got to be around here somewhere.”
As Nancy’s heart pounded, the two searchers circled the little building. She heard Vince say he would try the door and windows.
“They’re locked!” he growled in disgust.
“Maybe she had a key. Why don’t you bust in and find out?” the other man asked.
In a moment Nancy heard the tinkle of glass and the raising of a window sash. There was silence for several seconds, then Vince’s voice. “She’s not in here. You weren’t seeing things, were you, Webby?”
“I sure wasn’t,” his companion answered angrily. “Hey! Maybe she’s underneath this dock. Let’s look.”
Nancy had just decided that there was nothing left for her to do but drop underwater and hold her breath as long as she could, when a sharp whistle pierced the air from the direction of Pudding Stone Lodge.
“That’s Karl!” Vince exclaimed. “Wonder what’s up.”
“We’d better go,” Webby said.
To Nancy’s intense relief, the two men rushed off. She lost no time in hoisting herself up from under the dock and watched the men run along the beach. To her astonishment, when they reached the bluff just below Pudding Stone Lodge, the two disappeared!
“Is there an exit to the beach from the cellar of the house?” Nancy thought excitedly. “Old houses often had secret passages to be used as hiding places in time of trouble.”
Nancy also decided that it was possible the machine that made the humming noise was in this very same passageway! But what was the machine for? Her mind went back to the counterfeit idea.
“Oh, dear, if I could only find out!”
At that very moment she heard a ship’s bell ring. The girl detective stood stock-still, listening. The ringing continued for about a minute. Then suddenly in the fog at the end of the lake, the phantom launch appeared!
“This time I’m going to find out what’s going on!” Nancy determined.
Leaving the dock, she sped to the Baker cottage. She pounded on the door, calling, “Quick, Cecily! Let me in!”
Cecily dashed to the door and opened it. “What’s the matter?” she asked.
“The phantom launch! Look!”
Cecily stepped to the porch and stared at the weird sight. Nancy, meanwhile, grabbed a paddle. “I’m going to try and find out what it is!
” she cried, and rushed down to the canoe.
Nancy turned it over, pushed the craft into the water, and jumped in. She began to stroke furiously toward the phantom boat.
The shortest route was by the center of the lake where the water was deepest. The canoe glided forward at racing speed. Nancy had been so intent upon the sight ahead that she failed to notice the craft was leaking. Now she felt her ankles getting wet and looked down in dismay. Water was pouring into the canoe.
“What horrible luck!” Nancy murmured in disgust. “Just when I had the mystery in my grasp.”
All the young sleuth could do was gaze ahead and try to get as clear a picture of the phantom launch as she could.
Suddenly a black cloud blotted out the moon. When it reappeared, the launch had vanished, and within seconds, the canoe sank!
CHAPTER XIII
A Spy?
STILL clutching her paddle, Nancy started to swim for land.
“I’m sure I couldn’t rescue the canoe. It will have to be fished out of the bottom of the lake.”
As Nancy neared shore, she began to wonder whether someone was waiting in ambush. There was no doubt in her mind that the canoe had been sabotaged! It had been all right when Henry Winch left it.
“Could it be the work of the Driscoll brothers?” she asked herself, and clutched the paddle tighter. “If anybody tries to waylay me I’ll use this as a weapon!”
Before leaving the water, Nancy looked up and down the narrow beach, at the foot of Pudding Stone Lodge. There was no one in sight and finally she stood up and waded ashore. A chill breeze struck her and she began to shiver.
“Great!” Nancy said to herself. “Whoever my enemies are they’re tricky. It never occurred to me that anyone would tamper with the canoe.”
Partly to keep from being seen and partly to keep out of the wind, Nancy went up to the path that led through the woods and headed for the cottage.
“If I weren’t so uncomfortable and didn’t have so much on my mind,” Nancy thought, “I could really enjoy this gorgeous moonlight and scenery.”
Suddenly, as she rounded a bend in the path, she saw a girl ahead.
“Cecily!” she cried out.
Instead of answering, the young woman fled up the hill among the trees. Nancy knew now that she was not Cecily but the other red-haired girl.
“Please wait! I want to talk to you!” she called. “I’m not going to harm you.”
The fleeing girl paid no attention. Soon not even her footsteps could be heard. Where had she gone? To Pudding Stone Lodge?
Nancy became lost in speculation as she went on toward the cottage. Maybe she was wrong about the strange girl. If the young woman was afraid to speak to Nancy, she might well be a spy for the Driscolls—not a prisoner! Possibly she had been posted near the girls’ cottage that evening, to follow anyone who came out.
Nancy pursued her line of reasoning. “As soon as I set off in the canoe she could have run along the path, to see what happened to me. When the canoe filled with water and I began swimming, she knew I wasn’t going to drown. She waited to see what I’d do when I got to shore. The instant I called out Cecily’s name, that girl rushed back and reported everything to the Driscolls.”
Another idea occurred to Nancy—that someone wanted to keep people from getting too close to the phantom ship, so he had sabotaged her canoe.
By the time Nancy reached the cottage, she was cold and exhausted. She saw smoke coming from the fireplace chimney and took heart at the thought of its cheering warmth.
As Nancy opened the door and walked in, she saw Bess, George, Cecily, and Niko grouped around a roaring fire.
“Nancy! Whatever happened to you?” Bess cried out, upon seeing the bedraggled, shivering girl.
Her friend normally would have given a humorous answer, but instead she said seriously, “Hello, Niko! I’m glad to see you again. As for me, somebody put a hole in the canoe and I took an unexpected bath.”
“Who would have done that?” George asked. “Oh, don’t tell us now, Nancy. You get yourself into a hot bath pronto!”
Nancy was glad to obey. Later, while she was dressing, Bess and George came into her room. They had decided to retire, and leave Cecily and Niko alone to talk over their problems.
“Nancy,” said George, “we were just about to send a search party out for you. Now, give us the details.”
When Nancy finished her story, the cousins shook their heads ruefully. Bess said, “This mystery gets more dangerous all the time for you, Nancy. And here you are worrying about losing the canoe! It’s just lucky you weren’t drowned! I honestly don’t think your father or Mrs. Gruen would want you to take such chances.”
The young sleuth smiled. “But I never know when I’m going to have to take chances!” she countered. “I just know that any time I undertake a case, I’m apt to run into some kind of a trap.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Bess conceded. “But I’m going to do my best to keep you out of any traps from here in!”
“Thanks, Bess,” Nancy said with an affectionate look at her friend. “And now, about that other red-haired girl. I have two completely opposite ideas about her. One is that she is in cahoots with the Driscolls in some underhanded scheme; the other is that she’s their prisoner or is somehow in their power. For example, it might be she managed to escape tonight. But she thinks that I am working with the Driscolls and only wanted to delay her so she could be recaptured.”
Bess sighed. “You’re going too fast for me, Miss Detective.”
George spoke up. “For that matter, I wonder how other facets of the mysteries may involve this strange girl—such as the phantom launch, the peculiar humming noise, and even the treatment those poor twins are apparently getting!”
Bess shook her head. “I can’t tax my brain any more tonight. Say, I’m starved! How about the three of us transferring to the kitchen for a midnight snack?”
Nancy chuckled. “To tell the truth, I think a little food would completely revive me. I’ve worked up an appetite by my long swim and hike.”
Bess, the culinary expert, was out of the door by this time and heading for the little kitchen. The others followed.
“Well, what shall it be?” Bess held up a spoon and struck a chef-like pose.
“Hot tomato soup,” said Nancy, “with cream in it.”
“Sounds good,” said George. “I’ll make some toast to go with it.”
“Anybody want a hamburger?” Bess giggled. “I’m going to make one for myself.”
Suddenly Nancy felt ravenous and said she would have one too. “Make it three.” George grinned. In a few moments Bess had the burgers sizzling in a pan.
Bess had just flipped them over when there came a tremendous crash from the living room!
CHAPTER XIV
The Cricket Clue
ALL three girls dashed into the living room. They looked horrified at the scene before them. The front door stood open, a huge rock lay on the floor and beside it both Cecily and Niko lay unconscious! Bess gave a little scream as she and George ran forward to kneel beside the striken couple.
Nancy was torn momentarily between helping them and trying to find the rock thrower. She rushed from the cottage and gazed around. Two men were racing along the lake front toward the lodge, and in a minute vanished from sight among the trees.
“I’ll bet they’re the Driscoll brothers!” Nancy murmured to herself. “I wish I’d had a better look. Well, I can’t do anything about it now.” She hurried back inside the cottage. For the first time she realized exactly what had happened. The two assailants had carried the heavy rock up to the porch, quietly opened the door, and thrown their weapon with full force at the couple. Cecily and Niko had been seated on the small couch before the fireplace, their backs to the door. Fortunately, the rock had struck the couch, but the force of the blow had pitched the pair forward, and they had struck their heads on the edge of the hearth.
“They might have fallen right into
the fire!” Nancy thought, shuddering.
Bess and George were already giving Cecily and Niko first aid and in a little while they revived. Both had bruises on their heads, but otherwise were not injured. They were thunderstruck to learn what had happened.
“I think you need a police guard at this place,” Niko said shakily.
Cecily looked wan and upset. Luckily there was a diversion at that moment. Bess cried out, “Oh, our hamburgers!” She dashed into the kitchen and presently announced that she had three very well-done, somewhat burned, hamburgers for sale.
Nancy, Bess, and George temporarily had lost their appetites. But there was enough of the hot soup for everyone and Bess served cups of it in the living room. As the group sat around sipping the soup, they discussed the mystery. None could think of any reason for the attack.
Presently Niko admitted to being very tired, and said he would drive back to Mrs. Hosking’s for a good night’s sleep.
“I’ll see you all in the morning. How about Cecily driving to Baltimore with me tomorrow, and you other girls coming in Nancy’s car? We can stop at my record company first.”
The plan was agreed upon. As Niko was about to leave, Cecily said, “I’ll have to do something with Satin while we’re away. Will you ask Mrs. Hosking if she will keep him?”
Niko scooped up the beautiful black cat. “I’ll take him right now. Good night, everybody.”
Nancy was the first one awake the next morning. She hurried into the kitchen, and by the time the others opened their eyes, the delicious aroma of broiling bacon reached them. The girls took a quick dip in the lake, then ate before dressing. By nine o‘clock they had locked the cottage and were on their way. While the others waited at Mrs. Hosking’s, Nancy drove to police headquarters and talked with Chief Stovall. She told of the many happenings in or near the cottage since the prowler had broken in.