“That’s for you to figure out. Maybe you ought to stop by the apartment mentioned in this article.”
Aunt Eloise, who had slept later than usual, stood in the doorway. Her presence reminded Nancy of their conversation the night before, and she quickly telephoned her father. Mr. Drew agreed that she should go back to Millington, but warned her to be careful.
“I will be,” she promised, then invited Bess and George to meet her for lunch near the Millington office. “That way we can keep check on each other,” Nancy said, raising a smile from her aunt.
Half an hour later, she was at Millington’s reception desk. When she asked for Mr. Iannone, however, she was told he wasn’t in.
“But he hired me yesterday,” Nancy said to the receptionist.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a brown-haired woman pass hurriedly through a door. Nancy turned her head, catching the face before she disappeared. The young detective was positive that it was Rosalind, the stylist whom Mr. Reese had hastily fired the night of the fashion show!
The girl at the desk now pressed a buzzer, calling someone to come out for a moment.
Soon, an officious woman in a green wool suit appeared. “This is Nancy Drew,” the receptionist introduced the visitor.
Again Nancy asked for Mr. Iannone.
“He doesn’t work here any longer,” the woman informed her. “He quit yesterday.”
Nancy gulped. “Quit!”
“Yes. Are you a personal friend of his, may I ask?”
“No, but he offered me a job here.”
“Well, he had no authority to do so. I’m in charge now.”
The steely tone in the woman’s voice told the girl it would be tough to persuade her to go along with Mr. Iannone’s decision. So Nancy took a different tack. She related her unpleasant experience in the workroom and her suspicions that it was somehow connected to the recent thefts from the Reese collection.
“My, you do have an active imagination,” the woman said. “I’m quite positive that your trouble yesterday was an accident. I’m sorry about it, but I’m not going to hire you because of it!”
There was nothing left to say, so Nancy departed. Disappointed, she took the elevator to the lobby, not paying much attention to anyone until her eyes settled on the revolving doors ahead of her, and the man approaching them.
He looked familiar, but his head was bent low in a long, plaid scarf wrapped thickly around his neck. Nancy ducked into a magazine booth as he came forward, then watched as he loosened his scarf while he waited for an elevator.
Nancy had picked up a magazine, burying her face in it until she heard the door slide open. Then, as the stranger and several other people stepped inside, and turned to face the corridor, the girl lifted her eyes. The man was Jacqueline’s friend who claimed to be Chris Chavez!
She dived back out of sight as the door hung open an extra second for a last-minute passenger. Then it closed and Nancy watched the bank of numbered lights as the elevator moved up slowly. It made two stops, one of which was Millington’s floor!
If the man wasn’t the real fashion photographer, what was he doing there? Was he the thief who had stolen the designs?
13
Baffling Trail
While Nancy’s discovery had stunned her momentarily, Bess and George were preparing themselves for their own investigation.
“It’s a good thing that the two impostors believe they’ve duped us totally!” Bess told her cousin.
“And we have to make sure they don’t find out anything to the contrary,” George said.
When the girls arrived at the apartment listed for Russell Kaiser in the news article, the doorman said he had strict instructions not to admit anyone while the police were still there.
“Have they been here a long time already?” George inquired.
The doorman glanced at his watch. “About thirty minutes,” he said, “but they could be around the whole day, for all I know.”
“Let’s go,” George said, and pulled Bess out the door.
“Where are we going?” her cousin inquired.
“Some place where we can stake out the building,” George suggested.
The girls headed across the street toward a small coffee shop. Bess giggled. “If I have to stake out anything, there’s no place I’d rather do it from than a coffee shop!”
“I bet,” George answered. She carefully avoided patches of ice forming on the sidewalk and tried to scrape the icy granules that drizzled relentlessly out of the sky onto her coat sleeve. “This weather is terrible,” she complained. “How can we investigate efficiently if we have to slip and slide everywhere we go?”
“Don’t worry, we might have to sit here all day,” Bess said, as they entered the restaurant.
George shook her head. “I wonder if Mr. Kaiser is even home. I think I’ll call the apartment to see what I can find out.”
She left Bess in a booth by the window and returned a few minutes later in a flurry of excitement. “The maid answered,” George said. “Mr. Kaiser is leaving right now.”
The girls dropped coins on the counter and dashed outside. The sidewalk was treacherous, slowing them to a snail’s pace. Bess crept close to the shops, looking for iceless patches.
“Hurry!” George called back as she cut across the street.
Bess tried to, but felt the soles of her leather shoes skid forward. “You go ahead!” she cried.
The traffic light changed and she halted, watching George almost slide into the corner of Kaiser’s apartment house.
She managed not to fall, however, and walked to the entrance where a bald-headed man was stepping into a patrol car that was parked in front.
He’s the one who bought the medallion! she almost blurted.
Bess caught up to her as the car door closed, and George turned to her cousin excitedly. “That clinches it!” she exclaimed. “The second Russell Kaiser who asked Nancy to help is definitely the impostor! And even though his hair is different from that of the man we saw in the police picture, I’m sure he’s Pete Grover!”
“He was bidding on that medallion like crazy,” Bess said. “He must’ve really wanted it.”
“But if he’s a crook, why did he introduce himself to us?” George asked.
Bess had no answer, and no matter how much they talked about the odd twists in the growing mystery, nothing satisfied them.
Nancy, at the same time, had gone into the restaurant across the street from the Millington office. It was still too early to expect Bess and George, Nancy realized, but she waited, wondering if Jacqueline’s friend, whom she had spotted in the elevator, would come out again.
Traffic dragged on the ice-covered street, and a bus now blocked the girl’s view of the revolving doors.
What if I miss him? Nancy worried, as the bus inched away.
She pressed closer to the window to look down the sidewalk, but saw no one who resembled the phony Chris Chavez. Minutes went by slowly, it seemed, but suddenly the man appeared ! He paused outside the building and turned his head in both directions, apparently looking for someone.
I wonder if it’s Jacqueline, Nancy thought. Just then, another bus pulled up right in front of her.
Oh, please move! she begged silently. I can’t lose him now!
The vehicle moved along shortly and, to Nancy’s relief, the man in the plaid scarf was still there talking to another man. Nancy gasped as she recognized him.
“That’s Grover, the guy who told me he was Russell Kaiser,” she said under her breath. “Where are they going?”
Figuring that Bess and George might be delayed by the bad weather, she decided to leave a message for them with the restaurant hostess and follow the two men.
“Please ask my friends to wait for me,” Nancy told the young woman. Then she pulled up her coat collar and stepped cautiously onto the frozen sidewalk. She followed the men around the block, where they hurried into a fabric shop called Belini‘s, which boasted a variety of materials and sewing
goods.
Through the window, the girl detective saw the men descend a flight of steps in the rear. She entered the store, taking quick note of the colorful polyester and cotton fabrics that were shelved in bolts.
A sign in the back indicated that the sewing supplies and offices were downstairs. Nancy followed the arrow, glancing down at the customers as she went below. The men were not in sight. Apparently, they had stepped into the office.
Nancy headed for a table with large pattern books on it. She leafed through one, glancing up periodically to look for the two impostors.
“Excuse me, please,” a woman said suddenly. Nancy had not been aware of the customer standing next to her, eager to look at the pattern book she was holding. “Are you finished with that?”
“Oh, yes,” the girl replied as men’s voices suddenly drifted over the sound of file drawers opening and closing.
The office, Nancy soon discovered, was located around a bend in the wall. Next to it was a tall column of narrow metal cabinets that contained all kinds of buttons. Without seeming too obvious, the girl secreted herself behind them. Now she was within better hearing range of the conversation.
“Mr. Belini,” Nancy overheard Jacqueline’s friend say, “I have only a few questions.”
The young detective leaned forward eagerly, but someone approached the cabinets and opened a drawer, digging noisily through the buttons. Nancy quickly busied herself with swatches of material that hung behind her. Then, when the metal drawer slammed shut, she took her place again.
This time the other man was talking, and it seemed to Nancy that she heard the name Rosalind. But his voice fell away in a drone of unintelligible words.
It’s so frustrating, Nancy said to herself. She was tempted to leave her hiding place and move closer to the doorway, but what if she were caught? I can’t take the chance, she decided.
She rested her hands on the stack of metal and dipped her head to one side. The pressure of her grip pitched the fragile cabinet forward and several drawers slid open, emitting hundreds of buttons!
They poured out in a steady stream despite the girl’s attempt to right the cabinet quickly. Then her fingers slipped, and the whole structure crashed to the floor!
14
A Developing Pattern
As hundreds of buttons swirled out, Nancy hurried to the other side of the wall. She felt a lump harden in her throat as the three men ran out of the office.
“Again someone knocked over this cabinet,” Belini complained. “Why don’t people watch where they’re walking?”
Two assistants seemed to appear from nowhere. “That whole setup is just terrible,” one said. “We’ll have to get a different type of cabinet. This one is so wobbly it falls at least once a week!”
While Belini mumbled something, they scooped up the buttons, separating them into their respective drawers. The three men, meanwhile, went back into Belini’s office. When the clerks finished with the cabinet, they hurried upstairs, allowing Nancy to position herself behind it once more. This time she carefully avoided touching it.
“How well do you know Mrs. Jenner?” she heard the phony Chris Chavez ask.
Belini said something in reply, which Nancy could not understand. Then his voice rose as he added, “Mrs. Jenner has a reputation for being abrasive. But she was a good worker, Mr. Henri, the best stylist around!”
Henri! Nancy couldn’t believe her ears. Could it be that the phony Chris Chavez was really the reporter, Ted Henri?
A jumble of thoughts raced through the girl’s mind. Why all the pretense? she wondered. And what was Ted Henri’s affiliation with the phony Russell Kaiser, alias Pete Grover?
Was Henri investigating the same design thefts that Nancy was? Did they relate at all to the fake auction scheme he, as Chris Chavez, had revealed to Nancy?
Or maybe he trumped up the auction story for my benefit, hoping to sidetrack me onto another mystery! Nancy concluded.
As she continued listening, more questions came from the two men. They wanted to know what Belini’s association with Millington was!
The young detective missed hearing Belini’s answer as several customers entered the room from the stairway. They were chattering about a choice of colors, but then paused long enough for the girl to hear a few more remarks pass between the men.
“Do you supply fabric to Millington?” Henri questioned.
Belini grumbled something unintelligible.
Then Nancy heard Henri ask if Belini had sold material to Mrs. Jenner.
“Sure. So what? She likes to sew.”
Clearly, the man was on the defensive, but before any more was said, the reporter and Grover strode out of the room. Nancy remained out of sight until they went up the stairway and she heard Mr. Belini’s voice again.
“Henri will be at the Crystal Party tomorrow night,” the man said. Then there was a click as he put down the telephone.
Obviously, he had called someone. Nancy stood stock-still, hoping to hear more, but the man made no other calls. She decided it would be better for her to try and follow the two men, rather than eavesdrop on Belini, so she hurried up the stairs and out the door.
Her eyes roamed the street, but the pair was nowhere in sight! They couldn’t have gone too far on the ice, Nancy reasoned. They must have taken a taxi.
Disappointed, she headed back to the restaurant, digging in her rubberized heels to avoid slipping. On the way, she picked up a newspaper. When she arrived, Bess and George were not there.
After the two girls had seen Russell Kaiser leave in the police car, they assumed that he was on his way to the local precinct.
“Let’s go there,” George suggested. “Maybe we’ll get a chance to talk to him.”
The girls asked the doorman for the address. He gave it to them but said, “I wouldn’t recommend bothering poor Mr. Kaiser now. He’s very upset, as you can well imagine.”
“Don’t worry,” George said. “We only want to talk to him because we might be able to help him.”
The doorman raised his eyebrows and was about to ask them how, but the girls just smiled sweetly and left.
When they arrived at the police station, they did not see the bald-headed man. Upon asking at the desk, they learned he was talking to the captain, but would be done in a few minutes. Bess and George sat down to wait.
“I bet Nancy has eaten our lunch as well as hers by now,” Bess murmured to her cousin.
“I just hope she’s still there,” George said. “Of course, Millington may only give her a half hour off, in which case she’s probably left.”
The cousins’ conversation ended abruptly as Mr. Kaiser appeared. The girls stood up quickly.
“Mr. Kaiser,” George said when he strode toward them.
He paused.
“Remember us? We met you at the Speers’ auction the other evening,” Bess continued.
“Oh, yes,” he said now. “You were with the young lady who bid on the medallion.”
“Yes. We saw the news item about the burglary and wondered if the medallion had been stolen, too.”
“You followed me here to ask me that?” he replied, incredulous.
“We’re detectives,” Bess said.
“Amateur detectives,” George added. “May we speak to you a moment? We have some information that might be of interest to you.”
Kaiser shrugged. “Why not?”
Without revealing too much about the mysteries they were working on with their friend, Nancy Drew, George explained their special concern for the distinctive medallion.
“It’s very possible,” she declared, “that the man who was bidding on it is the burglar you’re looking for. He told us he was you.”
“Not only that,” Bess spoke up, “but he seemed to want that medallion an awful lot.”
“Enough to steal it, I suppose,” Mr. Kaiser said with a glint of mischief.
“Exactly,” Bess said.
“Well, girls, I appreciate the clues, but I’m
afraid you’re on the wrong track. You see, the robber wasn’t the least bit interested in the medallion. I had put it in the safe with some other things that he took. He left the medallion, though, probably thinking it was a valueless trinket.”
The girls were disappointed. “Then obviously the burglar wasn’t the man who competed with you at the auction,” George said. “But why did he introduce himself to us as Russell Kaiser?”
Mr. Kaiser shrugged. “I have no idea, and to be quite honest, I don’t really care. Now, I have other matters to take care of. If you will excuse me, please.”
He hurried off, and the young detectives left the precinct and headed for the restaurant. To their relief, they found Nancy still there, dallying over a salad.
“We thought for sure you’d be gone by now,” Bess said as she and George sat down. “What happened to your job at Millington?”
“I have no job,” Nancy replied, spearing a piece of lettuce with her fork, “but I do have lots of other news.”
She told about her encounters, the conversations she had overheard, and her current suspicions.
“I’m convinced Ted Henri deliberately tried to send me off on another mystery—” Nancy said.
“The auction scheme,” George put in.
“Right—because he didn’t want me near the case involving Mr. Reese.”
“And Jacqueline’s been helping her brother,” Bess remarked.
“Then her story about the kidnapping was phony,” George added.
“I’m not positive about that,” Nancy said. “Maybe she really did believe her brother was missing. Otherwise, why didn’t she appear for the fashion show? What makes less sense is that she turned up at the hotel later.”
“Also, we never did see her and Ted together at any time that evening,” George added.
“Exactly. So it’s possible that someone wanted her to believe Ted had been kidnapped,” Nancy concluded. “Someone who was determined to keep her away long enough to steal those expensive gowns!”
After the young detective’s idea took root in everyone’s mind, the other girls related their experiences of the morning.