(#25) The Ghost of Blackwood Hall (5 page)

“She’s hiding something!” Nancy whispered

The cousins darted off, leaving Nancy alone beside the black walnut tree. Carefully Nancy put the envelope back in the hollow, and sat down a little distance away to watch.

As Nancy sat with her back to a tree trunk, she thought she heard the soft pad of steps. She straightened up, listening intently, but heard nothing.

“Probably some animal,” Nancy decided.

Nevertheless, she glanced about carefully. Her skin prickled, as if in warning that some stranger might be nearby.

“Nerves!” she told herself.

At that moment Bess and George, unsuccessful in their pursuit of the blond girl, were returning. Coming within view of the big walnut tree, George was astonished to see a strange sight. Though no wind was blowing, a leafless branch of a tree behind the walnut seemed to bend slowly downward.

“Bess, look—” she began, then ended lamely, “Never mind! It’s gone now.”

“What’s gone?” Bess demanded.

“A branch. I guess my eyes tricked me,” George admitted.

Hearing the voices of her friends, Nancy quickly arose and came to meet them. Seeing that they were alone, she said in disappointment:

“You weren’t able to overtake her?”

“We had miserable luck,” Bess admitted. “We didn’t even get close enough to see her face.”

“We trailed her to the main highway, where she must have hopped a bus,” George added.

“I think we should take the money with us,” Nancy said. “I’ll ask Dad what to do about it.”

On tiptoe, Nancy reached into the hollow of the tree. A puzzled expression came over her face.

“The envelope’s gone!” she exclaimed.

“It can’t be!” insisted Bess.

Nancy groped again and shook her head. “The envelope is gone! But no one was here!”

“I’ve got an idea,” said George. “Maybe someone climbed another tree, crossed over into the big walnut, and then snatched the letter from above!”

“The trees are so close together I suppose it could be done,” Nancy admitted doubtfully.

“Wait a minute,” George cried out excitedly. Then she told about the slowly bending, leafless branch.

Nancy peered intently up into the old walnut and the maple next to it. “No one there,” she observed. “George, you’re sure it was a branch and not a fish pole with a hook on the end that was used?” she asked.

“It could have been a pole.”

“I understand several things now!” Nancy exclaimed, thinking aloud. “That metal object I saw near here the other day must have been part of a collapsible pole! I’ll bet it belonged to the same person who was here today!”

“And the same one who robbed Mrs. Putney!” added Bess.

“George, did the stick bend down out of the tree, or did it come from the direction of the bushes?” Nancy asked.

“I couldn’t see well enough to be sure,” George replied. “But from where I stood, it appeared to bend down out of a tree behind the walnut.”

The three went back to the convertible, agreeing that it might be a good idea to keep a lookout for visitors to the walnut tree. Obviously it was being used as a collection station by someone extracting money from gullible people.

Later, as she drove homeward, Nancy began to wonder whether this might not tie in with Lola White’s peculiar actions.

As she turned into her own driveway she noticed a dark-green sports car parked in front. The driver came to meet her.

“Hi, Nancy!” Ned grinned. “Guess I got here a little early.”

“I’m late. Been working on a case. Please forgive me.”

A week earlier she had accepted Ned Nickerson’s invitation to a sundown picnic planned by Emerson College students spending their summer in River Heights.

“I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes,” she promised.

While Ned waited on the porch, she rushed into the house, showered, and dressed. On her way downstairs, she paused in the kitchen to say good-by to Mrs. Gruen.

“It seems to me you’re never home any more,” the housekeeper replied. But she added with a smile, “Have a good time and put mystery out of that pretty head for tonight!”

“How could I?” Nancy laughed gaily.

Nancy had not asked Ned where the picnic was to be held. Therefore, she was surprised when she discovered that the spot selected was on the upper Muskoka River, less than a mile from the mysterious walnut tree.

“Want to do me a favor?” she asked Ned.

“Sure thing.”

Nancy told him about the money in the walnut tree, its puzzling disappearance, and her suspicion that something sinister was going on.

“And you want to stop and have a look for more envelopes,” said Ned. “Okay.”

They found nothing in the tree, but the crossed twigs had been removed. Someone had been there! Ned promised to stop at the spot now and then to see if he could learn anything.

They drove on to the picnic spot, where their friends had already gathered. The aroma of broiling hamburgers made them ravenous.

Both Nancy and Ned were favorites among their friends, and soon everyone was laughing and joking. After all the food had been consumed, some of the young people began to sing. Others went off in canoes.

“Let’s go out on the river, Nancy,” Ned suggested.

Nancy sat in the bow of the canoe, her paddle lying idle across the gunwales, while Ned paddled smoothly upstream. Moonlight streamed over the treetops and shimmered across the surface of the water. Presently Ned guided the canoe into a cove and let it glide silently toward shore.

“What a night!” he said. “I wish—”

Suddenly Nancy, who was facing the shore, sat bolt upright and uttered a low cry.

“Look over there, Ned!” she exclaimed in a hushed voice. “Am I seeing things?”

The youth, who had been watching the moonlight on the water, turned his head and was startled to see a ghostly white figure wading out into the river from the beach.

“Whew!” Ned caught his breath, nearly dropping his paddle.

As the canoe swung with the current, Nancy got a clear view of the figure in white.

The person wading deeper and deeper into the water was Lola White!

CHAPTER VI

A New Lead

“QUICK, Ned!” Nancy cried, seizing her paddle. “She’ll be in over her head in a minute. We must save her!”

Her companion needed no urging. He sent the canoe forward with powerful strokes.

“Lola, stay where you are! Don’t move!” Nancy called to her.

The girl did not appear to hear. On she waded, holding her hands in front of her.

As Nancy had feared, the shallow water ended abruptly. The next instant Lola had stepped in over her head. The ducking seemed to bring her out of her trance, and now she began to struggle frantically. If she knew how to swim, she gave no evidence of it.

Fortunately, the canoe was soon alongside her. Quickly Ned eased himself into the water, while Nancy steadied the craft. He seized the struggling and terrified girl, then began to swim toward shore. In a moment they were in shallow water.

Nancy was waiting with the canoe, and the sputtering Lola was lifted into the bottom of the craft. The girl was only half conscious. Nancy bent low over her and caught the words, “the beckoning hand.”

“Gosh!” Ned observed uneasily. “She’s in a bad way!”

“We must get her home right away,” Nancy decided. “And you, too, with those wet clothes.”

Paddling as fast as they could, she and Ned started toward the picnic grounds where he had left his car. Midway there, Lola seemed to recover her senses. She sat up and gazed at Nancy as if recognizing her for the first time.

“Lola, why were you wading out into the water?” Nancy asked.

“I can’t tell you,” Lola answered weakly.

“You said something about a beckoning hand.”

“I did?” Lola’s eyes opened wide and an expression of horror came over her face.

“You thought someone was calling to you?”

Lola spoke with an effort. “I’m grateful to you for pulling me out of the river. But I can’t answer your questions!”

Nancy said no more. Taking off her sweater, she put it around the shivering girl.

Later, when they reached the picnic grounds, she hurried Lola in secret to Ned’s car, as the college group made joking remarks to Ned about his bedraggled appearance.

At the White home Nancy and Ned lingered only long enough to be certain that Lola had suffered no ill effects from her immersion.

“Please don’t tell anyone what happened,” Mrs. White pleaded. “Lola went out this evening without telling me where she was going. I can’t imagine why she would go to the river.”

“Perhaps to meet someone,” Nancy suggested.

“So far as I know, she had no date. Oh, I do so need your help to clear up this mystery, Nancy!”

“I’ll do everything I can,” Nancy promised.

Upon returning home, the young detective sat for a long while in the Drew library, reflecting upon the events of the evening.

Nancy mused also about the many unrelated incidents that had taken place the past week. Into several of these the mysterious Howard Brex seemed to fit very naturally. Yet of his whereabouts since his release from prison, nothing was known.

Penning a brief note to Mr. Johnson, Brex’s former boss in New Orleans, she described the crossed-twig sign, and asked if by chance it had any connection with the suspect and his jewelry designs.

For several days after the letter had been sent, Nancy and her friends kept a fairly close watch on the black walnut tree at the edge of the clearing. But so far as they could determine, no one visited the tree, either to leave money or to take it away.

“We’re wasting time watching this place,” Ned commented after the third day. “Whoever it is you’re looking for knows you’ve discovered the walnut-tree cache, and has probably moved to a safer locality.”

Nancy was inclined to agree with him. She felt very discouraged, for it seemed that she was making no progress whatever in solving the stolen jewelry mystery. Because she could report no success to Mrs. Putney, she avoided calling upon her.

But a letter from Mr. Johnson, the jewelry manufacturer, brought startling results. He wrote:

The crossed-twig design you described was never used in any work Brex did for us. We have also looked through other jewelers’ catalogs, but do not find anything like this design pictured.

However, some time ago, a simple-minded janitor in this office building received from Chicago a letter bearing an insigne of crossed twigs. The man was urged to invest money in stock of the Three Branch Ranch on the promise of doubling his funds. The scheme sounded dishonest, and I persuaded him to ignore it.
I
would have reported the stock sellers to the authorities, but unfortunately the janitor destroyed the letter before I had a chance to examine it.

Nancy took Mr. Johnson’s letter to her father, who read it carefully, then offered a suggestion.

“Why not notify the postal authorities? It’s against the law, as you know, to use the mail to promote dishonest schemes.”

“Will you do it for me, Dad? Your letterhead is so impressive!”

“All right, I’ll dictate a letter to my secretary this afternoon,” the lawyer promised.

Nancy decided to write a letter of her own to the Government Information Service to inquire if they had any record of a Three Branch Ranch. Three days later she received a reply. She was told that no such ranch was listed.

“This practically makes it certain the stock scheme is a swindle!” she declared. “The headquarters of the outfit may be in Chicago, but I’ll bet salesmen are working in other places.” Yet it was difficult for her to connect Brex, a clever designer of jewelry, with a crooked stock promotion.

Even though she had no conclusive information to convey, Nancy decided to call upon Mrs. Putney to ask a few questions. Just as she was about to leave the house, however, a taxi stopped in front, and the widow herself alighted.

Mrs. Putney looked even more worried than on the previous occasion.

“Poor thing,” Nancy said to herself. “I’d like to be able to help her!”

Nancy met Mrs. Putney at the front door, and cordially escorted her into the living room.

“I’ve come to see you, because you never come to my house,” the visitor scolded Nancy mildly.

“I haven’t been to see you lately, because I had nothing to report, Mrs. Putney. I intended to call today.”

“Then I’ll forgive you, my dear. If you were coming, you must have a clue.”

“Several of them, I hope. Before I tell you what I suspect, I must ask you a rather personal question, Mrs. Putney. Do you own any stock in the Three Branch Ranch?”

Nancy’s question seemed to take the widow completely by surprise.

“What—what do you know about the Three Branch Ranch?” she asked in a voice which quavered with emotion. Her faded eyes reflected stark fear.

CHAPTER VII

Matching Wits

ALARMED, Nancy called to Hannah Gruen, who came in hurriedly from the garden. Then she took Mrs. Putney’s arm and led her to a chair.