“Let’s go back,” Bess begged. “We aren’t learning a thing.”
Nancy agreed, although she hated to give up the search. When they reached the cabin, George said she was going swimming.
“I want to try gliding over the water,” she said.
“I dare you ” Nancy said as they went into their rooms.
The three girls changed hurriedly, ran down to the water, and swam around a little while. Then Nancy stopped to examine the shoreline. She detected footprints but they did not seem to go anywhere.
Just then George called out, “Nancy, look! I’m gliding on the water!”
Nancy turned. Sure enough, her friend was actually skimming on the top of the bay! Before Nancy had a chance to figure this out, George suddenly dived in and Bess’s head and shoulders appeared.
Nancy burst into laughter. “Good trick!” she called. “You had me fooled for a moment. Nice work, Bess. You did well holding your breath that long and toting George across the water on your shoulders.”
“I couldn’t have held out another second,” Bess told her. “Next time we try that stunt, I’ll do the gliding and George can be under water.”
Her cousin groaned. “I may be strong, but I’d have to be Supergirl to hold your weight!” she remarked.
Bess quickly dunked George before she could swim away. Nancy laughed, then sobered. She suddenly had an idea. Could this be the way the phantom woman accomplished her unusual walk?
She mentioned this to the girls and added, “But what is the purpose of it?”
Bess gave a great sigh. “We haven’t been here twenty-four hours. I just feel too vacationy to figure out such a problem. Besides, I’m starving. Let’s start lunch.”
The girls had just finished preparing a delicious fruit-and-cottage cheese salad when Aunt Eloise appeared. She was laden down with bags of food.
“Hypers!” George cried. “There’s enough here for an army!”
Bess’s eyes were glistening. “Um!” she said, taking out jars of jam and jelly. “Peach preserves and pineapple—”
George gave her cousin a stern look. “You sound like someone in an eating contest. Take it easy.”
Aunt Eloise put a stop to the needling by saying she had two surprises to tell the girls. “First of all, I’ve rented a sailboat for you to use while you’re here.”
“How wonderful!” Nancy exclaimed. “Oh, you’re such a darling!” She gave her aunt a great hug.
Miss Drew went on to say that the sailboat, the Crestwood, was at the main Cooperstown dock.
“Let’s go down this afternoon and get it,” George said enthusiastically. “It sounds great!”
“Aunt Eloise,” Nancy said, “while we’re eating, tell us about the second surprise.”
Miss Drew nodded. “This one is not in the line of fun. I’m afraid it could mean danger to you.”
“How?”
Her aunt said that just as she was leaving town, she had seen a girl hurrying along the shore road. “Later I realized she resembles you very much. I wonder if she could be the one who was part of that vacation swindle.”
Nancy frowned. Her aunt could be right. The police were looking for the girl. It could mean more problems for Nancy if she were mistaken again for this lawbreaker.
“I’ll certainly have to watch out,” she said aloud.
At two o’clock Aunt Eloise and the girls started for town in the convertible. Part way there, where the wooded mountain rose steeply from the road, the air suddenly reverberated with an anguished cry for help.
Nancy stopped the car and asked, “Where did that come from?”
The cry was repeated but the listeners could not be sure whether it was coming from the mountain or from the area between the road and the shoreline. Nancy pulled to the side of the road and parked. Everyone got out.
“Let’s divide for the search,” Nancy suggested. “Aunt Eloise, suppose you and Bess go down toward the shore. George and I will climb the mountain.”
The two search parties started off at once. Nancy and George had not gone verv far into the woods when they saw a girl racing pell-mell down the hill. She was about twenty years old and very pretty. But now she looked terrified and kept glancing back over her shoulder.
“What’s the matter?” Nancy called to her.
The girl was nearly breathless when she reached Nancy and George but she managed to gasp out, “The sorcerer! It’s true! He’s up there! Don’t go any farther!”
CHAPTER III
γo
“YOU’RE safe now!” Nancy assured the distraught girl. The young detective put an arm around the stranger’s waist and George held her hand.
“Yes, you’re perfectly safe now,” George reiterated. “We have a car down below. Would you like to sit in it and rest awhile?”
The girl heaved a great sigh. “That won’t be necessary. I must return to camp.” She pointed in the distance toward the water. “I’m a counselor down there. Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone wandering so far by myself.”
“We’ll drive you back,” Nancy offered. “A few minutes ago you were warning us not to go up the mountain. Why?”
“Because there’s a real sorcerer up there—a horrible-looking creature. I suppose he’s a man—but awfully scary in appearance. He wears a green costume that makes him blend into the foliage. There’s a funny green light glowing about him. That’s not so bad, but his face—it has a weird greenish hue.”
“What about his hair?” Nancy asked. She was intrigued by the description of this creature.
“I don’t remember seeing any. I guess his costume had a hood.” The girl sighed. “To tell the truth, I was so frightened I nearly froze in my tracks.
“He didn’t come any closer but pointed a finger down the mountainside and said, ‘Go! Do not return or I will change your bones into stone so you will never walk again!’”
The girl had been trembling with fear, but suddenly she shook off the mood.
“What a ninny I am!” she chided herself. “Of course there are no such things as sorcerers. Don’t ever tell my little girl campers that I thought one frightened me! By the way, my name is Karen Jones. What are yours?”
Nancy and George introduced themselves and said they were glad Karen was over her scare. Nevertheless, they were sure that she had seen some man with a greenish face and wearing a green suit. No doubt he had turned a flashlight on himself.
“Did you see anything else on the mountain?” Nancy asked Karen.
“Nothing special. You mean like a hut or a tent or a lean-to? No, I didn’t see anything like that. But tell me, why do you suppose that man is pulling such a stunt?”
George smiled. “I’d say to keep people away from himself and whatever he’s doing in the forest.” The three girls started walking toward the car.
Karen’s eyes grew large. “Do you think something illegal is going on up in the mountain?”
“Could be,” George replied.
Karen sighed again. “At college I’m a botany major. I was up in the forest hunting for luminescent mushrooms on tree stumps. You know, the kind that glow.”
“I’ve heard of them,” Nancy told her, “but I’ve never seen any.”
“This coming semester I’m specializing in fungi,” Karen explained, “and I’m supposed to hunt for something luminescent this summer. But I wouldn’t go up that mountain again for a million dollars!”
“I don’t blame you,” George said. “But if you do, better take a crowd with you and not your young campers either.”
By this time the three had reached the car. Bess and Aunt Eloise were just returning from the waterfront and reported that the cry for help had not come from there.
“It was on the mountain,” Nancy explained, then introduced Karen to the others.
George gave a quick résumé of the counselor’s story.
“Oh, how horrible!” Bess exclaimed.
They all got into the car and headed for Karen’s camp.
On the way she said, “One day I met a boy—he’s really a young man—in Cooperstown who told me there was a sorcerer on the mountain. He works at the main boat dock and people around there laugh at him and say he’s full of tall tales and that this was just another one of them. But now I believe him.”
Nancy asked who the boy was.
“His name is Johann Bradley, but everybody calls him Yo,” Karen explained. “I got the impression that he’s older than he looks and is kind of a town character.”
By this time they had reached Karen’s camp and she got out of the car. “I can’t thank you girls enough. If you ever learn the mystery of the green man, let me know.”
“I will,” Nancy replied as she locked the door and drove off.
During the rest of the ride to town, the conversation centered around the strange person in the woods. Who was he? Why was he there? Was he a danger to the community?
Bess spoke up. “I thought Mirror Bay Bide-A-Wee was going to be as calm as the water here and in less than two days we’ve bumped into two mysteries.”
Aunt Eloise laughed. “Which I’m sure pleases Nancy very much.”
Nancy grinned. “I’ll be happier after I solve them. I’m going to start by interviewing the boy Yo.”
She drove immediately to the Cooperstown main boat dock. Before taking the sailboat, she asked the man at the booth if Yo were around. He pointed to the end of a dock where a round-faced, pudgy young man sat twirling a toothpick in his fingers. As Nancy came closer, she could hear low singing. His voice was melodious and dreamy.
When Nancy approached, Yo looked up but did not arise.
“Are you Yo?” she asked.
“That’s me,” the young man replied. “Something I can do for you?”
Nancy sat down beside him.
“Yo,” she began, “a girl at a camp along the lake told me you’ve seen a man with a strange green face and wearing a green suit up on the mountain. He had a light around him.”
“That’s right. But he didn’t scare me,” Yo bragged, grinning.
“Do you know who the man is or anything about him?”
“Nothing except he’s a sorcerer,” Yo answered. “As you get near him he’ll tell you awful things. Like what he said to me. ‘Jump in the lake, boy, and don’t come up!’ ”
“Nice person,” Nancy commented. “Can you tell me anything else about him? Does he live on the mountain?”
“Search me. I know these mountains pretty well and I’ve never seen a shack around that area where he rushed at me. Maybe he comes from a distance.”
“But why would he always appear in that particular spot?” Nancy asked.
“I don’t know.” Abruptly Yo changed the subject. “You and your friends are newcomers here, aren’t you? I saw you at the bus stop yesterday. Did you get taken, too, by those phony people?”
“No,” Nancy told him. “That was a crime! By the way, the girl involved is supposed to resemble me. Have you seen her around?”
“Yup. Lots of times.”
Nancy was surprised to hear this. “Do you mean she lives here?”
Yo said he did not know, but he had often seen her walk up East Lake Road and take off through the forest.
Nancy wondered if there might be some connection between her and the green man. Was he the girl’s partner in the vacation racket? Perhaps a gang of them was hiding on the mountain! She said nothing of this to Yo and after a few minutes more conversation she finally stood up.
“What’s your name?” Yo asked. “And where are you staying?”
Nancy told him, thinking if she did not, he would find out anyway through the rental record of the sailboat. She also mentioned her aunt and the other girls who were with her.
“Yo, the police are looking for that girl who resembles me. If you see her around again, you had better tell them.”
“Okay, I will,” he promised. “Now you got me interested. I wonder who she is.”
Yo got up and accompanied Nancy back to the booth where Aunt Eloise was making arrangements about the sailboat.
Hearing this, Yo asked Nancy, “Do you know how to sail?”
“Oh yes,” she replied.
The pudgy young man smiled to himself. Nancy wondered what he was thinking about, but he gave no explanation.
Instead, he said, “I got a dandy little boat with an outboard motor. I’ll stop by your place sometime and show it to you.”
He was introduced to Miss Drew, Bess, and George. Then, smiling, Yo walked off.
“So he’s the tall-story boy,” George remarked.
Bess said, “Perhaps they’re not tall stories. Maybe they’re true. I don’t think Karen was making up what she told us.” Bess gave a great sigh and said in a dramatic voice, “That old mountain is spooky!”
The others laughed, then discussed who would take the sailboat up to Mirror Bay Bide-A-Wee. It was finally decided that Nancy and George would. Bess and Aunt Eloise would return by car.
As the two girls set off, Nancy kept thinking about the funny smile on Yo’s face. Did the lake and the bay have tricky winds? Would she and George be likely to run into some kind of trouble? Or did Yo know something more about the mountain he was not telling?
CHAPTER IV
The Green Apparition
As the sailboat moved up the lake, Nancy relaxed. It was a beautiful day and the water was calm. There was just enough breeze to carry the craft along at moderate speed. The girls had a close look at Kingfisher Tower and Council Rock, famous in the Indian history of Otsego.
“At the head of this nine-mile-long lake,” said Nancy, pointing ahead, “is Mount Wellington but it’s never called that. Instead, the mountain is known as Sleeping Lion because of its shape.”
“And it certainly looks like one,” George observed.
Nancy explained, “I’ve been reading up on the history of this place. Did you know that the village was founded by William Cooper, father of James Fenimore Cooper? He later became a judge. There’s an amusing story told in connection with his wife. He loved the wilderness and when a young man he decided to move his family from Burlington, New Jersey, up to Cooperstown.
“She refused and would not budge from her favorite chair. Not to be outwitted, Cooper had his wife and the chair lifted bodily into a covered wagon and brought to her new home.”
George laughed heartily. “I’ll bet she loved that! If my husband ever dared do that to me, I wouldn’t speak to him for a month!”
“I’ll remind your friend Burt,” Nancy teased.
George grimaced, then said, “Here’s a local story I heard. There was a man named Prevost who lived along the east shore of this lake. He wrote to a friend, saying all his children had ‘hooping cough’ at once. Ordinarily this might not seem like anything unusual, but as it happened, Mr. Prevost had twenty-one children!”
It was Nancy’s turn to laugh. By this time the girls were nearing the bay. Suddenly both of them noticed two boys in a canoe.
They were clawing furiously at the water to reach the paddles which evidently had been swept from their craft. Their efforts seemed futile, so Nancy suggested to George that they help the little fellows.
“I’ll come about,” she said, “and slacken the sheet rope.”
George worked the tiller. By expert tacking, the girls came alongside the drifting paddles and scooped them up. The boys were waiting with outstretched hands.
“That’s great!” one of the little fellows exclaimed. “Gee, thanks a lot.”
George grinned. “You boys are really good at dogpaddling,” she remarked.
“Yeah, but pretty soon your arms ache,” the other boy said.
Nancy asked them if they ever went up into the woods on the mountain.
“Sure,” said one lad, who told them his name was Chuck.
“Have you ever seen a strange man up there?” Nancy queried.
“No,” Chuck answered, “but we’ve heard funny sounds.”
Nancy asked what they were
like.
“Something like the whirring of machinery—you know, soft buzzing.”
“You have no idea what it was from?”
The boys looked at each other. “Maybe we shouldn’t tell you, but we got scared and ran away,” Chuck confessed.
Nancy smiled, saying she did not blame them. Then she asked, “Have you ever seen a woman gliding across the water near here?”
Both boys giggled and Chuck said, “You must be kidding!”
The children thanked the girls again for retrieving the paddles and started off. Nancy and George pulled into the dock of Mirror Bay Bide-A-Wee a few minutes later. Aunt Eloise and Bess were waiting for them.
“The Crestwood is great!” Nancy told her aunt. “What a wonderful surprise for us!” Then she spoke of Yo’s strange smile and tried to guess why.
Aunt Eloise said that Yo seemed a little hard to figure out. “If you’d given him the chance, he might have told you some tall story about the Crestwood.”
Bess announced that she was hot from her trip to the village and wanted to go for a swim. “How about the rest of you?” she asked.
Everyone was willing and within minutes they were ready. Nancy proposed that they do a little diving to see if they could find out what the woman gliding on the water might have been looking for.
“I’m sure she was searching for something because she kept her head down and turned it from side to side.”
The girls separated and went underwater time after time. The bay was so clear they could see as deep as the sun filtered. They tried scratching the silt and loose shale, but found nothing of interest.
In a little while, however, George came to the surface. “I’ve discovered something!” she exclaimed, and led the way down to a sunken rowboat.
It took the combined efforts of them all during the short periods when they could hold their breath to turn the rowboat over and finally bring it to the surface.
“It still floats!” George remarked. “Do you suppose this is what the woman was looking for?”
Nancy shrugged as they beached the rowboat. “In any case, let’s examine it.”