Carolyn Keene_Nancy Drew Mysteries 050 (2 page)

“I understand from their bank that they’re a reputable outfit. But look for surveyor’s stakes that might have been pounded into the fields or marks put on the fences or trees.”

“All right, Dad. See you later.”

Immediately Nancy relayed her father’s request. “How about it, girls?”

George answered, “At your service.”

Nancy brought her convertible from the garage and the other two girls climbed in. On the way to the Thurstons, Bess said, “Tell us more about this High Rise deal.”

Nancy said she had not seen the place, but the idea of destroying the bird farm and ousting the Thurstons was abhorrent to her.

“Dad says that the school children and grown-ups from the town of Harper and for miles around go there in busloads to see the animals, and the birds particularly. It would be a shame to deprive all those people of something so enjoyable and educational.”

George asked, “Who will decide all this?”

“Presumably the town council,” Nancy replied. “Dad told me that the five councilmen have been approached one by one by the staff of the High Rise Construction Company. They are trying to persuade them to vote against Mr. Thurston because of a great need for housing developments.”

George set her jaw. “And probably trying to bribe the councilmen,” she said.

Bess looked at her cousin disapprovingly. “Why do you always have to be so suspicious?” she asked. “Nancy, what do you think?”

The young detective smiled. “Remember what the law says: A man is presumed to be innocent until he is proved guilty.”

George made no comment.

Nancy had been watching road signs and presently turned into a side street of Harper and drove all the way to the end. A neat sign at the entrance to a farm said:

A tree-shaded driveway led to the house and other buildings. Nancy parked and the three girls stepped out.

“Isn’t this beautiful?” Bess burst out. Some distance back of the large, attractive old-fashioned farmhouse was a long row of huge wire cages. “Let’s look at the birds before we introduce ourselves,” she begged.

Nancy and George nodded and the girls headed for the end cage. Before they reached it, Nancy suddenly gasped in astonishment.

“What’s the matter?” Bess asked.

Nancy whispered, “There’s a man with wire clippers snipping the cage!”

“The birds will get out!” George exclaimed. “There’s a good-sized hole!”

“We must stop him!” Nancy urged, and started to run toward the man.

At that moment he looked up and saw her coming toward him, followed by Bess and George. Instantly he stopped work and sped away in the opposite direction across a field, carrying the clippers.

“We must catch him!” Nancy said tensely. “George, you come with me. Bess, will you try to block up that hole so no birds can get out?”

The race after the fleeing figure began.

 

 

 

THOUGH Nancy and George ran as fast as they could, the stranger who had snipped the wire cage outdistanced them. Apparently he was familiar with the territory. He had skirted the rough terrain, but the girls had to watch constantly for stones and pits. They finally stopped, out of breath, their faces flushed pink from the exertion.

“It’s a shame he got away,” George said in disgust.

Nancy was more optimistic. “At least we can give a good description of him. Let’s check. He had a long thin nose and dark squinty eyes.”

George nodded. “And a full reddish beard.”

“He was of medium height,” Nancy added.

George chuckled. “And he wore sports clothes that looked too large for him.”

The girls trudged back toward the cage where they had left Bess. In the meantime she had been breaking branches off a nearby tree and stuffing them into the hole. Some of the larger birds in the cage that looked like hawks began to squawk loudly. Realizing she was a stranger and about to cut off their chance. for freedom, they made an earsplitting racket.

“Oh be quiet!” Bess ordered. The birds, however, paid no attention to the command.

In a few moments the squawking brought a muscular-looking man on the run from a barn back of the cages. He was dressed in a coverall and Bess was sure he worked at the Thurston farm.

“What’s going on here?” he thundered at her. “And what are vou trying to do to that cage?”

Bess was frightened. She asked, “Are you Mr. Thurston?”

“No, I’m not,” the man replied. “My name’s Rausch. I work for Mr. Thurston. Well, young lady, are you going to answer my questions?”

Quickly Bess told him of seeing a man cutting the wire cage. “When he spotted me and my friends he ran away. They went after him. I stayed to plug this hole. That’s what I’m doing.”

“A likely story,” Rausch replied. “I think you’re connected with those people who are trying to drive Mr. Thurston away from here.”

“I am not! If I were, I certainly wouldn’t be standing here and trying to explain!” She was no longer afraid of the man—merely angry.

Bess’s face reddened as Nancy and George, who were hurrying back, saw her talking heatedly to the man. Every once in a while he would shake his finger at her.

“Something’s wrong!” Nancy exclaimed and started to run, with George keeping pace alongside her.

When they reached the cage, Bess said, “Girls, tell this man what we saw. He won’t believe me. And guess what? He thinks I’m connected with people who are trying to run Mr. Thurston off his propertyl”

George’s eyes blazed. “That’s ridiculous—utterly ridiculous,” she cried out. “Incidentally, who are you?”

Bess replied, “He says he works for Mr. Thurston.”

“Then I suggest,” said Nancy, “that everyone calm down.”

She told him about the man clipping the wire cage and the chase. She ended by saying, “We didn’t capture him, but we have a good description of him. Do you know anybody who’s of medium height, has a long thin nose, dark squinty eyes, a full reddish beard, and wears oversized sport clothes?”

The expression on Rausch’s face changed instantly. “I guess you girls are telling the truth and I’m sorry I spoke to you harshly, miss,” he said to Bess. “I don’t know anyone who fits that description.”

Rausch then said he would go for some material with which to mend the fence. “Will you girls please stay here a few moments longer until I get back? Don’t let any of these birds fly out!” he said, hurrying off.

When Rausch returned, Nancy asked if the girls could help him. “Well, yes, you can,” he answered. “These birds may think I’m here to feed them and fly through this hole before I can get it covered.” He said to Bess, “Your idea of putting branches in there was good.” He now removed them.

Bess smiled.

A new piece of steel cable was fitted into the section that had been cut out. Then, as the girls held it tightly against the opening, Rausch quickly threaded a wire in and out, weaving the two sections together firmly.

“We came to see the Thurstons,” Nancy told him.

When the job was finished, he took the girls to the rear door of the farmhouse and ushered them inside.

“Please wait here a minute,” he said. “Mrs. Thurston is a semi-invalid and sometimes she doesn’t feel well enough to have visitors.”

He disappeared toward the front of the house, but presently came back with a ruddy-faced, jolly-looking man. His graying black hair had receded from his forehead a couple of inches.

“Oscar,” said Rausch, “these are the girls who came to see you. And they’ll tell you what happened at one of the cages. I must go out now and tend to the animals.”

He hurried off as Nancy introduced herself, Bess, and George.

“How do you do?” Mr. Thurston said. He looked at Nancy, “You are Carson Drew’s daughter?”

Nancy nodded. “Dad has told me about taking your case. He asked me to come out and meet you and look around your place.”

“I’m pretty proud of my birds,” said their owner. “By the way, call me Oscar. Everybody does. I’m sorry Mrs. Thurston isn’t quite ready for visitors. Come outside. I’ll tell you something about my birds.”

On the way to the cages, Nancy briefed him about the wire snipper. Oscar remarked, “One more bit of harassment. I don’t know how much your father has told you about the trouble here, but I’m being bothered all the time in one way or another—threats, the warning of a curse to be put on me, and jinxes on my birds.”

Nancy told him that she knew about the housing development to be built by the High Rise Construction Company and that Oscar did not want to sell his property.

“That’s right,” he said. “And my wife adores this place. She isn’t very well and I’m afraid that if we had to move out and leave all this it would be very bad for her health.”

“Tell me some more about what has been happening to you,” Nancy requested.

“About a week ago,” Oscar replied, “a stink bomb was tossed through an open window. We had to get out of the house for one whole day.”

“How ghastly!” Bess put in.

“Yes, it was,” Oscar went on. “A few days ago I received an unsigned note in the mail. It said, ‘You’re holding up the chance for your neighbors to make a lot of money. Sell out or you will regret it!’”

“Where is the note?” Nancy asked.

“My wife found it and threw the note away.”

George frowned. “Do the police know about this?”

Oscar shook his head. “I had left everything to Mr. Drew.”

Bess smiled. “Nancy will never tell you, but she’s an amateur detective. Sometimes she works with her father and has solved lots of cases. She lets George and me help her and it’s pretty exciting. Recently we all worked on a really spooky one,
The Secret of Mirror Bay.”

Oscar’s eyes opened wide. “I’m glad you told me. Nancy, I believe you and your friends have a real mystery to solve right here. Well, let’s start with my telling you something about the birds.”

He led the girls to a cage that contained many varieties of woodpeckers.

“There’s a joke about these birds,” he told them. “It’s said they live an upright life. You notice how each one stands erect on the trunk of a tree. These birds can do this because they have short legs and toes that are strong and tipped with sharp, curved nails. Two of the toes face forward, the others to the side. In this way they can cling to the bark.

“Besides, they have pointed tails with a stiff strong shaft which they use for propping themselves against the trunk. If you look closely, you will see that a woodpecker’s bill is straight, hard, and comes to a point. It certainly makes an ideal digging tool to get the insects from the bark. By the way, the constant pounding would probably make the birds ill if they didn’t have very strong skulls to take up the shock.”

The three girls listened intently, taking in all these details.

Oscar said, “I suppose you can’t see their tongues, but they’re long and the birds can stick them out to an astonishing length beyond their bills. Since the tongue has backward-pointing barbs at the tip”—Oscar smiled—“it’s bad news for an insect that gets caught in it.”

The naturalist farmer moved on to a smaller cage.

Immediately Bess cried out, “It’s a wryneck!”

Oscar looked at her in amazement. “Few people know about this type of woodpecker. How did you learn about it?”

Bess looked at Nancy, not knowing if she should tell the story of the stuffed wryneck left on the Drews’ lawn.

Nancy did not answer the question directly. She asked, “Where did you get this bird?”

“It belongs to a girl who is attending Harper University in town here,” Oscar replied. “She’s a Eurasian and brought this pet from Europe. She is staying with us.”

Nancy was startled. Could there be any connection between the girl and the person who had left the wryneck at the Drew house?

 

 

 

WHILE Nancy was wondering about the Eurasian girl’s connection with the mystery, Oscar said, “Our visitor’s name is Kamenka. We call her Kammy for short. She is a fine girl, but a bit mysterious at times. You must meet her.” He looked at his watch. “She will be home soon. Can you wait and see her?”

“Yes,” Nancy replied, eager to meet the owner of the wryneck. “Bess and George, you’re not in a hurry, are you?”

“No,” the cousins replied.

Oscar pointed out that the wryneck differed from other woodpeckers in the way it sat on a tree. “You will notice that Petra—that’s the bird’s name—perches on a branch like other breeds of birds and never clings upright to the trunk of a tree. This type of woodpecker does not peck or bore for food but picks it up mostly from the surface of the ground. He eats flying insects and will often make a short dash into the air to catch one.”

By the time Oscar and the girls reached the house, Mrs. Thurston was ready to receive the callers. Though she was in a wheelchair, the invalid managed to propel herself around rather quickly. She was thin and frail looking.

After greeting the girls, she said, “My husband doesn’t like me to sit in the wheelchair, but he doesn’t realize how weak I am from worry.”

Mrs. Thurston went on to talk about the Thurstons’ problem.

“Isn’t it dreadful?” she said. “Oscar and I have been here for many years and built up this place. Why does anyone have a right to make us sell it?”

“There, there, Martha,” Oscar said soothingly. “Please don’t get yourself so excited. Nancy Drew and her father are going to straighten everything out for us.”

“Oh I hope so,” his wife replied.

Suddenly she changed the subject and asked the girls if they had seen the owls and the ravens.

“Not yet,” Nancy replied.

“Oscar,” Mrs. Thurston said, “would you go and make some tea for us and serve cookies with it?”