Carolyn Keene_Nancy Drew Mysteries 050 (15 page)

“I certainly hope the thief returns and the police catch him,” the lawyer said. “And now I have some interesting news for you, Nancy. Ned phoned me to say that he, Burt, and Dave had already uncovered several questionable practices that are being carried on by the High Rise Construction Company. They have been talking to employees. The boys are going to stay a while longer and see what else they can learn.”

Before Nancy could comment, she heard a shrill police whistle. “Dad, I must go! Chief Pepper’s men are here! They must have captured the thief!”

She hurriedly said good-by and rejoined Bess and George. The three girls, followed by Oscar, dashed off to the area where Nancy had found the telltale envelope.

When they reached it, the suspect was surrounded by four officers. He was indeed Slick Fingers, who was proclaiming loudly that he knew nothing about the envelope—that he was merely hiking through the woods.

When the girls ran up to him, Nancy pulled out the evidence which she had kept in a pocket. One of the officers identified the jewelry as a recent theft from a local store.

“I didn’t steal it!” Slick Fingers shouted, but when he saw the money he became emotional and exclaimed, “That’s mine! Give it back!”

The police stared at him. “I guess that’s enough of a confession,” one of them said. “Come along!”

The parolee did not move. Instead he looked directly at Nancy. Then, acting like a wild man, he screamed and yelled at her.

“You’re responsible for all my bad luck. You ought to be locked up! You’re nothing but a troublemaker! I hate you!”

An officer grabbed the man firmly by an arm. “That’s all. Come with me.”

“May I ask him a question?” Nancy requested the policeman.

“Go ahead. He’s been advised of his constitutional rights.”

“How did you know about the symbol of the circle with the cross in it?” she asked the prisoner. “And what’s your connection with Merv Marvel?”

Slick Fingers showed agitation and looked at the ground, but he did not answer. Finally he was taken away by the officers.

It was dusk when Oscar and the girls returned to the house. Mrs. Thurston had lighted the lamps and was anxiously waiting for them. She was overjoyed to hear of the capture. Nancy went to the phone and called her father. He too expressed delight at the outcome.

Nancy said, “If we could only find Merv Marvel, we could probably close the case.”

Her father agreed. Nancy said she had a hunch the dancer might pay a visit to the farm. “Mr. Wright may even send him here to carry on Slick Fingers’ work.”

After she had finished talking with her father, Nancy mentioned this to Oscar. He begged the girls to stay there in case Merv Marvel should show up. As they went outside with him to feed the birds, Kammy returned and was told of Slick Fingers’ capture.

“I am glad,” she said. “Did he confess to stealing the wryneck from the museum?” Nancy told her that the man had not.

After the chores were finished, they all went back into the house. Bess and George thought perhaps the girls should leave, but again Oscar prevailed upon them to stay longer. Marking time made Nancy fidgety. Finally to calm her nervousness, she went outside to walk around.

As she neared the bird enclosures, she saw a tall, slim man sneaking along close to the rear of one cage.

Impulsively she dashed after him. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

He whirled, surprised.

“Who are you?” Nancy asked firmly.

He gave an odd smile. “My name is Merv Marvel,” he said softly.

The next moment he swooped her up in his arms and held a hand over her mouth so she could not scream. Taking great leaps, he carried the helpless girl away from the Thurston farm!

 

 

 

NANCY struggled with all the strength she could muster to free herself from Merv Marvel’s arms. But the tall, handsome dancer had muscles as strong as steel and held her tightly. His long, powerful leaps and running steps soon carried the two of them far away from the Thurston farmhouse.

Finally he set Nancy down in a field, but maintained a viselike grip on one arm. “You little vixen!” he exclaimed. “You may as well stop fighting because you’re not going to leave me. I’ll teach you to be my dancing partner.”

The strange remark frightened Nancy. She had hoped Merv Marvel would tire of the game he seemed to be playing and release her. Now she decided he was a bit unbalanced and could not be reasoned with.

Nancy stood still and murmured, “All right, I’ll behave. Now let’s go back.”

“Oh no,” Merv said. “We’re going to dance.”

An idea came to Nancy. Maybe he was staying with a group who used the circle-and-cross symbol, and she could go there with him and solve this mystery!

“Okay,” she said. “It will be fun to dance. Will you take me to your headquarters?”

Merv Marvel stared at her. “What headquarters?”

With one foot Nancy sketched out a circle and put a full-sized cross in the middle of it.

Merv was startled. “You—you know about our headquarters?” He did not wait for a reply but said, “Yes, we will go there.” He took her hand and together they began to waltz as he whistled softly.

“Now we’ll leap!” he said.

Still holding her hand tightly, he waited for an upbeat in the tune, then the pair made a flying swing through the air.

“You’re great!” Merv told her. “We’ll ask the Grand Master to arrange a program for us.”

Nancy’s heart skipped a beat. Had she deliberately put herself into a situation from which it might be impossible to retreat? She quickly changed the subject.

“Do you play spook for the people at headquarters ?” she asked.

“No, of course not,” he replied. Then, as the full meaning of her question struck him, he asked, “How did you know I sometimes play spook?”

Nancy described how he had frightened Mrs. Thurston and tried to frighten the Tabler grandchildren into believing a lot of foolish superstitions.

“You know too much,” the dancer said.

“Who hired you to play spook?” Nancy prodded him.

Merv was not taken off guard. “You already know who it was and I’m not going to work for him any more. Mr. Wright isn’t honest and he gets other people to do his dirty work for him.”

Nancy was thrilled at the progress of her inquiries. “Yes, he hired both you and Slick Fingers.”

Merv admitted this but denied having done anything except play spook. He accused Slick Fingers, however, of stealing a wryneck from the Harper University Museum and trying to scare Nancy with it.

“Later Slick took some valuable birds from there too. He also inoculated one of Mr. Thurston’s birds with a virus and, of course, the others caught it,” Merv said.

Nancy remarked, “And he used chloroform to knock out Mr. Thurston and Ned Nickerson.”

Once again Merv said yes, but he denied any knowledge of the theft of the live wryneck Petra.

“I know something else, though,” Merv said. “Mr. Wright asked Mr. Hinchcliff’s son to annoy your friends if he had a chance, and he pushed a supermarket cart into you, but it was the boy’s own idea to throw ink and glue at the other girls while they were at the newspaper office. Well, here we go. Leap!”

Nancy performed as requested. Now she could see dim lights in an old barn a short distance ahead. Merv took her directly there. Suddenly all the illumination went out and total silence followed.

Merv stopped moving but still held Nancy’s hand tightly. A few moments later they heard weird music on high-pitched, plaintive mid-Eastern instruments. It was accompanied by chanting. The lights were switched on again.

Nancy and Merv looked inside the barn. The walls were decorated with Oriental and African masks. The circle-and-cross symbol had been painted everywhere. Strange-looking people were doing an exotic, slow dance with convulsive twists and snakelike turns.

“It’s the devil dance!” Merv told Nancy. “We’ll go in.”

He shoved her toward a guard at the door. The man was tall, muscular-looking, and wore a European sixteenth-century suit of armor, but instead of a helmet, his head was covered with a turban from which protruded a long willowy gray feather.

He grabbed Nancy’s wrist and hissed into her ear, “We’re going to make a witch of you!”

The musicians stopped playing abruptly. Merv said to her, “The Grand Master is ready for new members!” He led Nancy forward.

 

Sometime after Nancy had been kidnapped, Ned, Burt, and Dave arrived at the Thurston farmhouse. The boys found everyone there frantic over Nancy’s disappearance. A quick search of the grounds had been made, then the police had been called.

Chief Pepper came in a short while with three officers. By now it was dark. The police focused a powerful searchlight on an area where a man’s foot had stomped down hard. The police found the matching print some distance away, then another.

Bess and George conferred. Had the leaping male ballet dancer been there?

On inspiration George hurried inside the house and telephoned the theater where the ballet performances were being held.

She asked, “Would it be possible for me to speak to Boris Borovsky?”

When he came to the phone, George explained what had occurred and the suspicion that Merv Marvel might have taken Nancy away.

“If so, can you give us any clue to where?”

Boris was able to offer one fact. Merv Marvel was very much interested in witchcraft.

“He might be a member of some demoniac group. I wish I could be of more help, and I hope you find Nancy Drew. She’s a wonderful girl and I wouldn’t want anything to happen to her.”

George thanked Boris for his suggestion and then returned to the others. She related what she had learned. The police did not know of any meeting place for a witchcraft group but would start a search.

All this while Ned had been conducting his own examination of the grounds. He pointed out that there were no tire tracks except those made by Oscar’s station wagon.

“The kidnapper must have come and left on foot. Maybe if we look some more, we can find out which direction he took.”

Again the officers played their searchlights over the area. Nancy’s and Merv’s footprints were picked up and led the searchers to the old barn. As they drew closer to it, all the lights went out.

The rescue party listened. Then from within came the hoot of an owl—the secret distress signal used by Nancy, Bess, and George!

“She’s in there!” Bess cried out.

At once the police turned all their searchlights on the barn. People in weird costumes began scurrying from every exit.

“Nancy! Nancy!” Ned cried out, dashing toward the barn, with the others at his heels.

A moment later Nancy appeared. Seeing her friends, she ran toward them.

“You’re safe!” Ned exclaimed as she fell into his outstretched arms.

Nancy looked for the police. Finding an officer, she said to him, “Come quick! You must arrest the Grand Master. He is a fake and cons money out of all these people. Merv Marvel is one of the victims. Besides, I think he needs psychiatric treatment. You’d better take him along.”

She and her friends now left and the police took charge in the barn. Nancy and the others slowly walked back across the fields to the Thurston farmhouse. As they entered it, the phone was ringing.

Mr. Drew was calling Nancy to say that sufficient evidence had been collected against Ramsey Wright and the other executives in his company to bring about their arrest for fraud and coercing people into selling to him cheap the property they owned.

“Incidentally, he financed the witchcraft setup as a little private moneymaking project.”

“This really is news!” said Nancy.

Oscar had come to say a word himself. “Mr. Drew, could you join us out here? I think the successful conclusion of this case calls for a celebration.”

Mr. Drew agreed. While they were waiting for him, Mrs. Thurston, apparently fully recovered and gay and happy, helped Bess and George prepare a snack.

Nancy had gone off to wash her face and hands, comb her hair, and sit down to rest for a few minutes. The various angles of the mystery ran through her mind like a kaleidoscope.

Then suddenly she sat up straight, thinking, “The part involving Kammy hasn’t been solved!”

She went at once to find the Eurasian girl. Kammy was in her room saying something softly to Petra in her native tongue.

“Kammy,” said Nancy, “you once promised to tell me a story about yourself and your life. Could you do so now? It may explain some of the points in the mystery which haven’t been cleared up.”

Kammy smiled and the two girls sat down on the bed side by side.

“The wryneck in our country,” Kammy began, “is almost a sacred bird. In ancient times it was used to try bewitching people who were interfering with royalty. My ancestors belonged to the royal family, and even though the country is no longer a kingdom, we descendants have always kept a wryneck with us.”

The Eurasian girl said that after arriving at the university she had become acquainted with an American boy. “He turned out not to be a friend, and I was too embarrassed to talk about it. He liked to play jokes. After I told him I did not care to see him any longer, he began to annoy me in all sorts of ways.

“One time when we were studying together I had idly drawn the magical symbol of the circle with the wide cross inside it. He thought this was very funny and later whenever he saw a chance teased me about it.”

Nancy asked, “Was he the one who put the jinx symbol inside Ned’s car and in your theme papers?”

Kammy nodded. “And he is the one who stole Petra and also took my ring, which he taped underneath the bird’s wing.”

“Did you ever speak to him about it?”