The man’s eyes blazed but he said nothing.
“Nancy, go on,” Pop urged.
The girl’s next remarks amazed the stranger. “You imprisoned Roger Paine but we found him. He’s a short distance from here, and I’m sure he’ll identify you.”
The abductor’s shoulders suddenly sagged, but still he said nothing. Nancy went on, “You are a member of a revolutionary gang. Under this big cloud you buried a lot of rifles and bombs.”
Her remarks really shook the stranger. Panic overcame him and he gazed around for a way to escape. He knew it was hopeless.
Finally he said, “How did you find out all this?”
Nancy explained about the medal he had dropped and how she and her friends had deciphered it. Now a look of real terror came over the man’s face.
“You’re too smart!” he shouted. “You can arrest me if you want to, but I won’t tell you my name nor the names of anybody else I work with. I sent one of those medals to each of my friends, who knew the trick of reading the letters.”
Ned offered to climb into the plane and see what he could find out. He was not gone long. In the pilot’s compartment he discovered a booklet containing all the information Pop Hamilton would need to round up the revolutionaries. It also revealed that this man’s name was Rudolph Panzer. Below it were the names and addresses of all members of the gang. Also included was a list of the contents of various boxes of firearms and bombs buried under the great cloud.
“There’s enough stuff here to blow up the whole country!” Pop exclaimed.
Nancy stared at their captive for a moment, then said, “You may as well tell us everything. For instance, how did you make the mystery cloud magnetic?”
The stranger grinned. He almost seemed pleased by the young detective’s question.
“That was easy,” he said, boasting. “A scientist friend of mine developed a super-fine magnetic dust. I merely seeded the cloud with it from my plane.”
“Very clever,” Nancy remarked.
“Clever enough to nearly put an end to you and that friend of yours!” Panzer declared angrily.
Ned fought hard to control his temper. “Never mind about that!” he put in. “Nancy checked with the state university climatology team that came out here twice and investigated the cloud.”
“They concluded that it was formed from ordinary water vapor,” Nancy interrupted. “How did you manage to throw the scientists off the track?”
“My plane is equipped with a special generator that produces a magnetic field of reversed polarity,” Panzer said. “If anybody got too nosey about the mystery cloud, I would fly through it and turn on the generator. Presto! In a couple of minutes the magnetic dust was dissipated. I had you all fooled!”
“Not quite everybody,” Pop added, winking at Nancy.
The girl detective asked Panzer about Ben Rall’s part in the scheme.
“Nothing but a messenger, and he was a failure at that except bringing Major to us. Later he stumbled into our camp and we used him. The ransom demand was an idea of one of my men, and he sent it off without my knowledge.”
Rudolph revealed that when Nancy and Bruce had discovered Roger’s plane, he had come with food to the imprisoned man, but moved him to another place after that. The skyjacker brought rifles and bombs to the site at daybreak, when no one was around. He was surprised to learn he had accidentally switched on the ELT system in Roger’s plane when he landed.
Panzer glared at the girl detective. “If it wasn’t for you,” he snarled, “I would’ve gotten away with my scheme. You never found out about my dropping a pal of mine in a parachute. He always wears cowboy boots. Today, though, I came alone.”
“You’ve said enough,” Pop declared. “Put your hands behind your back.” He slipped a pair of handcuffs over their prisoner’s wrists. To the others he said, “Panzer and I will ride in one of the planes that had no passengers.
“Nancy and Ned, you go back to the ranch together. You will be commended for your work, but I want to be the first one to congratulate you on solving the mystery of the sky phantom.”
Ned chuckled. “You mean Nancy solved it,” he said generously. “I was just copilot and co-detective.”
“Thank you, Pop,” said Nancy. “I admit there were scary moments.”
Her days of frightening moments and adventures were not over. Very soon she would be launched on The Strange Message in the Parchment.
Right now she said to Pop, “I’ll be glad when you catch the men who tied Ned and me up in those sacks, rolled the tree down the hillside to injure my friends and me, and killed Speed Boy.”
“They’re all members of the same gang, according to Ben Rall. We’ll soon round them up. By the way, one of Panzer’s pals had Ben Rall steal Major and sell it to him. The horse carried the heavy boxes from the plane to the holes Panzer dug. Later Ben used to spy on him. Then one day Panzer saw him and gave him the ransom note to deliver.”
“I suspected that that was what happened,” said Nancy. “The sooner you have the whole gang in custody the better. Pop, please congratulate Bess and George for me. Without them I never could have put all the pieces of the puzzle together.”
Carolyn Keene, The Sky Phantom
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