The Mystery of the 99 Steps (14 page)

When Nancy reached the bottom, she could hardly keep from shouting for joy! She had counted exactly 99 steps!

Ahead was a narrow corridor leading to a huge old-fashioned wooden door. In the upper part was a small square opening containing parallel iron bars.

“This must have been a dungeon!” the young sleuth thought. Cautiously she and George peered through the barred opening. Nancy gasped. A medieval lab! Maybe it once had been an alchemist’s prison!

The laboratory was fully equipped with an open furnace in which a fire roared, and there were numerous shelves of heavy glass beakers, pottery vessels, assay balances, crucibles, flasks, pestles, and mortars. At the rear were several long benches, one of which held bottles of assorted liquids.

What amazed the girls most, however, was a man in Arab garb standing sideways at one of the benches! Nancy and George glanced at each other. Was this Louis Aubert again in disguise? The light was too dim for them to be sure.

The girls watched the man intently. In his left hand he held a black chunk which the girls guessed might be charcoal. In his other hand he had a knife and was busy gouging a hole in the chunk.

Evidently deciding it was large enough, the Arab picked up a large nugget of gold from the bench and dropped it into the hole. Next, he opened a jar and with one forefinger took out gobs of a pasty black substance and filled the opening.

Immediately Nancy recalled the old alchemists’ experiments with metals and wondered if the nugget were real gold. Watching closely, she detected a look of satisfaction on what little she could see of the man’s face. Now he set the charcoal on the bench, walked to the rear end of the laboratory, and went out a door. Before it closed, Nancy and George caught a glimpse of a corridor beyond.

The girls were wondering what their next move should be, when they heard Bess give the secret birdcall. The sound came loud and clear and was instantly repeated. The double call meant:

“Hide where?” George asked in a whisper. Without hesitation, Nancy opened the laboratory door and motioned George to follow her. She tiptoed across the room to several large bins holding logs and charcoal. The girls ducked behind them.

They heard footsteps descending the stairway and a moment later Monsieur Leblanc strode in! Immediately he reached up above the barred door and pulled on a cord which rang a little bell. Within seconds the Arab walked in through the rear entrance. He bowed and said in a deep voice:

“Monsieur, you are welcome, but are you not a day early? Tomorrow is the magic number day. But it is well that you came.” Suddenly his manner changed. He added gruffly, “I cannot wait longer.”

Monsieur Leblanc’s face took on a frightened expression. “What do you mean?”

The robed chemist replied, “I have finished my last experiment! Now I can turn anything into gold!”

“Anything?” The financier grew pale.

“Yes. Surely you do not doubt my power. You have seen me change silver into gold before your very eyes.”

Monsieur Leblanc stepped forward and grabbed the Arab’s arm. “I beg you to wait before announcing your great discovery. I will be ruined. The gold standard of the world will tumble!”

“What does that matter?” the Arab’s eyes glittered. “Gold! Gold! All is to be gold!” he cried out, rubbing his hands gleefully. “The Red King shall reign! And when everything is gold, the metal will no longer be rare and precious! The value of money will collapse.” He laughed aloud.

Monsieur Leblanc seemed beside himself. “Give me a little time. I must sell everything and buy precious stones—they will never lose their intrinsic value.”

The chemist walked up and down for several moments. Then he turned and said, “Monsieur Leblanc, your faith in me will be profitable. Watch while I show you my latest experiment.”

He picked up a bottle filled with silvery liquid which Nancy guessed was mercury. He poured a quantity into a large crucible.

“Now I will heat this,” the Arab said, and walked over to the open furnace on which lay a grate. He set the crucible on it.

The chemist waited. When the liquid was the right temperature, he took the piece of charcoal from the bench and started it burning. Presently the man dropped the mass into the crucible.

Nancy and George never took their eyes from the experiment. Once George leaned too far out beyond the bin, and Nancy pulled her back.

Blue flame began to rise from the crucible. The Arab placed a pan on a bench near the furnace, then picked up the crucible with the tongs and dumped its contents into the container. The charcoal had disappeared, and out of the mercury rolled the lump of gold!

Monsieur Leblanc cried out, “Gold!”

George looked disgusted, and Nancy said to herself, “That faker! He has Monsieur Leblanc completely bamboozled. Why doesn’t he see through the trick?”

Both girls had a strong desire to jump up and expose the whole procedure. But Nancy was afraid the swindler would break away from them, and decided that it would be better for the police to arrest him.

Monsieur Leblanc seemed to be in a daze, but presently he pulled a large roll of franc notes from his pocket and handed them to the Arab. “Take these, but I beg of you, do not make your announcement yet. I will come at this same time tomorrow with more money.”

“I will give you twenty-four hours,” the Arab said loftily. “This time the price of my silence will be five thousand dollars.”

The demand did not seem to faze the financier. As a matter of fact, he looked relieved. He said good-by and left the same way he had come in. The Arab went out the rear door.

The two girls arose from their cramped position, hurried outside, and up the 99 steps. Bess was waiting anxiously at the top.

“We must run,” Nancy exclaimed, “and notify my father immediately that Monsieur Leblanc is being swindled!”

 

 

 

IT was bedtime when Nancy, Bess, and George burst in upon the Bardots. Twice en route Nancy had tried unsuccessfully to get her father on the telephone.

The couple could see from the girls’ excited faces that something unusual had happened. Nancy quickly poured out the whole story, feeling that the time was past when she had to keep her father’s case a secret.

Monsieur and Madame Bardot were shocked. “You think this Arab you saw in that laboratory is really Louis Aubert?” Madame Bardot asked.

Nancy nodded. “Something should be done as soon as possible. I don’t want to call the police until I talk to my father and ask his advice.”

She telephoned Mr. Drew, but found he was not in. The switchboard clerk at the hotel, however, did have a message for Nancy.

“Your father said to tell you if you should call that he tried to reach you at Monsieur Bardot’s but received no answer. Mr. Drew is an overnight guest of Monsieur Leblanc.”

“Thank you,” said Nancy.

After she put down the receiver, the young sleuth sat staring into space. She was perplexed by this turn of events. Nancy had so hoped to alert her father that Monsieur Leblanc was being hoodwinked by an alchemist’s trick! Had Mr. Drew also learned this? Or had he come upon another lead in the mystery of the frightened financier?

“I’d better try contacting Dad at once,” she told herself.

She called Leblanc’s number. A servant answered and said that both men had gone out and would not be back until very late.

“Will you please ask Mr. Drew to call his daughter at the Bardots’ number,” Nancy said.

“Yes, mademoiselle.”

When Nancy reported this latest bit of news to her friends, the others looked puzzled. She herself was fearful that her father might be in danger —perhaps from attack by Louis Aubert! Resolutely she shook off her worry. Surely Carson Drew would not easily be caught off guard!

The three girls, after a late, light supper, tumbled wearily into bed. In the morning Mr. Drew telephoned Nancy. She thought that his voice did not have its usual cheerful ring to it.

“I’m leaving here at once,” he told his daughter glumly. “I will come directly to see you.”

A sudden idea flashed into Nancy’s mind. “Why don’t you bring Monsieur Leblanc along? I have some exciting things to tell you which I am sure will interest him too.”

Nancy did not dare say any more for fear some servant might be an accomplice of Aubert’s and be listening in on the conversation.

“I’ll ask Leblanc. Hold the wire.” The lawyer was gone for a minute, then returned to say that his host would be happy to see Nancy again. “He’ll postpone going to his office until this afternoon.”

When the two men arrived, Nancy greeted Monsieur Leblanc graciously. Then, excusing herself, she took her father aside. “Dad, tell me your story first.”

The lawyer said he had tried diplomatically to impress Leblanc with rumors he had heard of the financier’s transactions. “I told him that reports of his selling so many securities was having a bad effect on the market and that his employees were panicking at the prospect of his factory closing down.”

Mr. Drew said Monsieur Leblanc had been polite and listened attentively, but had been totally uncommunicative.

“I can understand why!” Nancy then gave a vivid account of the girls’ experiences of the previous day.

When she finished, Mr. Drew said he could hardly believe what he had just heard. “This Arab alchemist must be captured and his racket exposed, of course. The question is what would be the best way to do it without tipping him off? I certainly don’t want Monsieur Leblanc to be harmed.”

Nancy suggested that they tell the financier the whole story from beginning to end. “Then I think he should keep his date with the Arab this afternoon and turn the money over to him as planned.

“In the meantime, Bess, George, you, and I could go with a couple of police officers and hide near the 99 steps. Then, at the proper moment, we can pounce on Louis Aubert, or whoever this faker is.”

Mr. Drew smiled affectionately at his daughter and put an arm around her. “I like your idea very much, Nancy. I promised you a lovely gift from Paris. Now I think I ought to give you half my fee!”

Nancy’s eyes twinkled. “Only half?” she teased.

She and Mr. Drew returned to the others and Nancy whispered to Madame Bardot, “Would it be possible for you to find errands for the servants outside the house so that nobody will overhear our plans?”

“Yes, indeed. I’ll send them to town.”

As soon as the servants had left, Mr. Drew said, “Monsieur Leblanc, my daughter has an amazing story to tell you. It vitally affects your financial holdings and perhaps even your life.”

The man’s eyebrows raised. “This sounds ominous. Miss Drew is such a charming young lady I cannot think of her as having anything so sinister to tell me.”

Bess burst out, “Nancy’s wonderful and she’s one of the best detectives in the world!”

Monsieur Leblanc clapped a hand to his head. “A detective!” he exclaimed. “Do you mean to say you have discovered why I am selling my securities?”

Nancy smiled sympathetically. “I believe I have.”

Then, as Monsieur Leblanc listened in amazement, she related the story of Claude and Louis Aubert. She told about the many ways they had tried to keep the Drews from helping Monsieur Leblanc, and finally how she and George had seen the financier come into the secret laboratory at the foot of the 99 steps.

“You saw me!” he cried out. “But where were you girls?”

When Nancy told him they had hidden behind the bins, he knew she was not inventing the story. Leblanc sat silent for fully a minute, his head buried in his hands.

Finally he spoke up. “To think I, of all persons, have been duped! Well, it is only fair I give you my story. In the first place, if this chemist is actually someone named Louis Aubert, I do not know it. To me, the man is Abdul Ramos. I never saw him in any other clothes than Arabian.”

Monsieur Leblanc said that Abdul had come to his office one day a couple of months before and showed him several very fine letters from Frenchmen, as well as from Arabs, attesting to his marvelous experiments.

Nancy at once thought of Claude Aubert. He could very well have forged the letters!

The financier continued, “Abdul wanted financial backing for a great laboratory he planned to build. Because of the letters, and some experiments he later showed me, I was convinced he knew how to turn certain things into gold. Yesterday when I saw the solid gold emerge from the heated charcoal—” Monsieur Leblanc’s voice trailed off and he shook his head gloomily. “How could I have been so foolish!”

After a pause the financier admitted what Nancy had already overheard—he had intended to sell all his holdings and put the money into precious stones. “Since gold is the standard for all currency in international trade, I really feared the economy of the world would be disastrously harmed when Abdul’s ability to transform substances into gold became known.”

Mr. Drew remarked, “That explains the large quantity of uncut diamonds you bought recently.”

The Frenchman looked surprised but did not comment.

Nancy spoke up. “Also, you figured that diamonds would replace gold as the world standard.”

“Precisely. I realize now that my self-interest is unforgivable. It was neither patriotic nor humanitarian. Instead I’ve been unforgivably greedy. Thank you for showing me up. This has been a great lesson to me and I shall certainly make amends for it.”

George asked, “Monsieur Leblanc, what about the number 9?”

He explained that Abdul Ramos knew a great deal about astrology and the magic of numbers. “He convinced me that on the 9th, 18th, and 27th days of each month new secrets were revealed to him and he threatened to announce his discoveries to the world.”

George next inquired if he had left money on the 99th step at Versailles where M9 had been chalked.