The Strange Message in the Parchment (5 page)

The girls respected the woman’s wishes and said no more. As soon as they had finished their ice cream, they left the store.

After they were in the car and on the way home, Nancy asked Junie if Mrs. Potter was always so abrupt.

“Oh, no,” Junie replied. “She’s a very nice person and usually full of fun. I can’t understand why she acted the way she did.”

Nancy was silent for a few minutes, then said, “It’s my guess she has been intimidated, perhaps by the same men and in the same way that Eezy was!”

 

 

 

LATER, when Nancy thought Mr. Rocco would be free, she called his home. Another man answered and said he would get the owner. Several minutes passed but no one returned to the phone.

“Maybe he had to go a long way to find Mr. Rocco,” Nancy reasoned.

A few minutes later, she thought, “It wouldn’t surprise me if Mr. Rocco didn’t want to talk to me after I climbed his fence!” She could not understand, however, why her call had not been disconnected. Over and over she said into the phone, “Hello? Hello? Hello!”

Finally she heard Mr. Rocco, who was not very cordial. He said, “If you want to see me, I’m glad you called up for an appointment. I don’t like people who climb over my fence uninvited!”

Nancy apologized for having done this but added in a pleading voice, “Junie Flockhart and I were eager to see you. When we thought the bell didn’t work, we took a chance. Please forgive us.”

“What do you want?” Rocco asked abruptly without acknowledging the apology.

“I have come across some very interesting information that I would like to discuss with you—but not over the phone.”

After a moment of silence on the other end of the line, Mr. Rocco said, “You know I am a very busy man.”

“Oh, yes,” Nancy replied, “but we won’t take up very much of your time. Please. We’d like to talk to you as soon as possible.”

“How about next week some time?” the man asked.

Nancy’s heart sank. Next week! She could not wait that long. “We were hoping that perhaps we could see you tomorrow,” she said.

There was another long pause, then Mr. Rocco said, “What’s the hurry?”

“I’ll be able to tell you that when we get together,” Nancy answered. “Couldn’t you spare a few minutes tomorrow morning, say at nine o’clock?”

“Nine o’clock! I make my workers get up at six!” the man said.

“Any time you say will be all right with us,” Nancy told him.

Mr. Rocco reluctantly agreed to eight o’clock and added, “Don’t be late. I can’t stand tardiness.”

Nancy thanked him and cradled the phone. She went to tell Junie of their early appointment.

“Oh, Mr. Rocco is impossible, just as my father said!” Junie exclaimed. “But we’ll be there. In fact, I suggest we arrive at his home by quarter to eight so he won’t get mad. By the way, congratulations for persuading him.”

Nancy smiled. “It was a bit of a problem, but it worked.”

The two agreed to go to bed early in order to awaken in time for their conference.

The following morning they arrived promptly at quarter to eight. In response to the bell the gate swung free. A man opened the door to the house and said he would see if Mr. Rocco had finished his breakfast. Nancy and Junie looked at each other but said nothing. What about Mr. Rocco’s bragging that he made his workers get up at six o’clock?

Nancy thought, “He’s a bit of a slave driver.”

In a few minutes the farm owner appeared. He neither smiled nor shook hands. Instead he growled at them, “I told you not to be late but I didn’t want you to come so far ahead of our appointment, either!”

Junie said that the girls would wait until he was ready. Both she and Nancy felt that this unpleasant man tried to intimidate anyone with whom he came in contact. When Rocco realized that his method did not work on the girls, he scowled and paused for several seconds before replying to his callers.

“You don’t have to wait. But be quick about what you want. I haven’t much time, you know.”

Without hesitation Nancy said, “We are very interested in the parchment you sold to Mr. Flockhart. Did you bring it from Italy?”

“Yes,” Rocco replied. “I bought it at an auction there.”

“Can you tell us anything about it?” Nancy went on.

“I don’t know anything about it. At first I liked the figures painted on the parchment, but a while ago I got tired of looking at them, so I decided to sell the picture. It’s very fine work and brought a nice price. I guess Mr. Flockhart recognized a good thing when he saw it.”

“The parchment’s lovely,” Nancy agreed. Then she asked Mr. Rocco if he had ever taken the parchment out of its frame to look for anything of interest that might have been written on the back.

The man stared at his visitors intently. “No,” he said. “It never occurred to me. Did you find something?”

The two girls glanced at each other. They thought it best not to tell him what they had discovered.

“Oh, we studied it, but there wasn’t much on the back,” Nancy said lightly.

Rocco did not inquire just what they had discovered, and the girls were glad. Suddenly the man bombarded them with questions.

“Why this great interest in the parchment? Do you feel there is something wrong with it? Is your father sorry he bought the painting? Does he expect me to buy it back?”

Mr. Rocco paused, but only long enough to catch his breath. “You young whippersnappers come barging into my home and hammer me with questions. What’s going on? I think I have a right to know.”

By this time the man was very excited, and for a short time Nancy felt guilty about upsetting him. Then she thought of several things that had happened and her attitude changed. She said she was sorry if she and Junie had harassed the farm owner. They meant no harm. Their main interest was to learn the background of the parchment. This seemed to satisfy Mr. Rocco for the time being.

Junie changed the subject and asked Rocco, “Were you ever married?”

“No!” Rocco said quickly, and did not volunteer any more information. Instead, he stood up as if he were afraid Nancy or Junie might ask more questions he did not want to answer. He indicated that the visit was over.

The girls walked to the front door, with Rocco following them stiffly. On the way home in the car, Junie said, “I wonder why Mr. Rocco was so unwilling to give us anything but the barest information about either the parchment or himself.”

Nancy said she thought he was a man with many secrets, which he had no intention of divulging.

Junie remarked, “I just think he’s an old grouch. How are we going to find out anything about the picture he brought from Italy if he won’t talk?”

Nancy thought for a few seconds, then replied. “Let’s try to get the information in spite of him! We’ll leave the car on the road and hike across the fields until we meet one of his workmen. Maybe he’ll talk, and we can learn more about Rocco.”

“His first name is Salvatore, by the way,” Junie said.

It was several minutes before they saw a man hand hoeing in one of the vegetable fields. The girls went up to him and smiled.

“Good morning,” Nancy said.

The man remained silent, though he smiled at her. She wondered if he were deaf, so this time she shouted her “good morning.” Still there was no response and the farmer went on working.

Junie walked close to the man and shouted at him, “Do you live here and work for Mr. Rocco?”

The man shrugged. “No speak English,” he finally said.

Nancy and Junie looked at each other and walked on. Across the field they saw another worker and headed in his direction. They put the same question to him and received the same answer, “No speak English!”

Junie sighed. “No one around here seems to speak our language. We’re getting nowhere fast.”

As the girls walked on Nancy suddenly spotted something and pointed. “I see a boy over there. Maybe we’ll have better luck with him.”

They walked toward the lad, who appeared to be about ten years old. He was handsome with large brown eyes and black curly hair.

The boy was seated on the ground in the shade of a large branch, and was holding a sketching pad and colored pencils. He was drawing a picture of the landscape spread before him. Against a tree nearby stood a hoe.

“That’s very good, sonny,” Junie told him, looking closely at the sketch. “What is your name?”

The little boy smiled but said nothing.

“Do you speak English?” Nancy asked.

The boy shook his head. “No English. Italian.”

Suddenly the young artist jumped up. He hid his sketching pad and pencils under a sweater and grabbed the hoe. He moved off a little distance and began to work furiously. Nancy and Junie looked at him in surprise. Since they made no attempt to move, he pointed in the distance. They followed the direction of his finger. Mr. Rocco was coming toward them at a fast pace!

“We’d better scoot,” Junie warned. “I doubt that Mr. Rocco would like our being here.”

Nancy nodded and the girls hurried off in the opposite direction. On the way home, Nancy said, “I believe if young Tony could speak English he might give us some clues.”

“How do you know the boy’s name is Tony?” Junie asked.

Nancy grinned. “I saw it on his sweater!”

“Good observation!” Junie praised. “I didn’t even notice his sweater.”

As soon as the girls reached the farmhouse, Nancy called her father’s office. He was there and asked how she was progressing with the mystery.

“Not very well,” she replied. “I need your help.”

“Sure thing. What can I do for you?”

“Will you please find out from the Immigration Department all you can about Salvatore Rocco, who came to the United States from Italy about ten years ago?” She told her father all she had learned so far.

“I see you’ve been busy,” he said. “I’ll check with Immigration and let you know the answer.”

After the call, the girls went to look at the mysterious parchment again. They puzzled over it for some time before Junie asked Nancy if she had come up with any new theories.

Nancy’s eyes sparkled. “I have a wild guess!” she said.

 

 

 

“I THINK we can assume,” Nancy said to Junie, “that Mr. Salvatore Rocco knows more about the parchment than he is telling. The initial A on it could stand for Anthony, and a common nickname for Anthony is Tony.”

Junie knit her brows. “Are you trying to say that Tony, the little boy we met on Mr. Rocco’s farm, might be the baby in this parchment picture?”

Nancy nodded. “I told you it was a wild guess.”

“It sure is,” Junie agreed, “but I respect your hunches.”

Mr. Flockhart walked into the room and was told Nancy’s latest theory. He chuckled, but said he was impressed with the idea. “Nancy, please continue with your suppositions. It sounds like an intriguing story, and the first hypothesis that has been made so far in the mystery of the parchment.”

Junie remarked that the man pictured on the parchment, who had his back to the viewer, could be the boy’s father. “But why wouldn’t he be facing the viewer? Was the artist ashamed of him?”

“That’s a possible answer,” her father agreed. “On the other hand, maybe the artist just didn’t like the person and turned him around so nobody could recognize him.” He said to Nancy, “Have you any more guesses?”

“Not yet,” she replied, “but I may have after I learn more about little Tony and Mr. Salvatore Rocco.”

Mr. Flockhart reminded the girls that it was generally believed in the community that Mr. Rocco was the child’s uncle and that the boy’s parents had died.

“That gives me an idea,” Nancy said. “The last picture on the parchment portrays the collision of a sailing ship and a steamer. Maybe,” she added, “Tony’s parents were killed in the accident.”

“Very reasonable assumption,” Mr. Flockhart said. “I wonder if Mr. Rocco legally adopted his nephew.”

“I guess,” said Junie, “that we’d have to go to Italy to find out.” She teased, “Nancy Drew, detective, Milano is getting closer and closer.”

Nancy grinned. “Maybe, but I have a hunch I’ll solve the mystery right here at Triple Creek Farm.”

Junie and her father looked at their guest, then Junie said, “Nancy Drew, you’re holding back one of your hunches, or theories, or wild guesses. Come on, what is it?”

Nancy nodded. “You’re right. In the first place, I’m not convinced that Mr. Rocco’s story to Mr. Flockhart and to us about buying the painting at an auction is true. I’ve been thinking of poor Tony. He has so much talent as an artist, and so does the person who made these paintings, whose initials are DB. That person could be a close relative of Tony’s. By the way, what’s his last name?”

“I don’t know,” Junie’s father replied. “I have always supposed it was Rocco.”

Mr. Flockhart said he thought the girls should try to find out what DB stood for. “It might be the initials of the artist, or an art school, or a museum, or even a dealer’s initials.”

“One thing is sure,” Nancy said, “Milano is Milano, Italy, so that’s as good a place to start as any, but I guess we can’t go there.”

Junie’s father said, “Leaving the mystery for a moment, Nancy, I have a little favor to ask of you. In your spare moments, try your hand at creating an attractive symbol for Triple Creek Farm. I don’t like the one I’ve been using.”

“I’ll be glad to try,” Nancy replied.

As soon as he left the room, she went to the hall table, where the telephone was, and picked up several sheets of paper and a pencil. Junie watched intently as Nancy made sketch after sketch. The girls laughed at some of them.

“This one looks like a three-legged monkey,” Junie remarked. “No offense meant.”