Password to Larkspur Lane
Read Password to Larkspur Lane Online
Authors: Carolyn Keene
Tags: #Women Detectives, #Detective and Mystery Stories, #Girls & Women, #Mystery & Detective, #Juvenile Fiction, #Adventure and Adventurers, #Mysteries & Detective Stories, #Fiction, #Kidnapping, #Mystery Fiction, #Women Sleuths, #Adventure Stories, #Older People, #Swindlers and Swindling, #Drew; Nancy (Fictitious Character), #General, #Mystery and Detective Stories
Table of Contents
PASSWORD TO LARKSPUR LANE
Blue bells will be singing horses!
This strange message, attached to the leg of a wounded homing pigeon, involves Nancy Drew in a dangerous mission. Somewhere an elderly woman is being held prisoner in a mansion. Nancy is determined to find and free Mrs. Eldridge.
This strange message, attached to the leg of a wounded homing pigeon, involves Nancy Drew in a dangerous mission. Somewhere an elderly woman is being held prisoner in a mansion. Nancy is determined to find and free Mrs. Eldridge.
While working on the case, the young detective’s close friend, Helen Archer, begs her to solve a weird mystery. Helen’s grandparents, the Cornings, are frightened by a sinister wheel of blue fire that appears after dark in the woods outside their home at lonely Sylvan Lake. When Nancy discovers the significance of the eerie signal, she also learns that her two mysteries are connected.
How the clever young detective fathoms the meaning of the strange message, how she locates the stronghold of a ruthless ring of swindlers, and how she rescues the gang’s victims makes absorbing and exciting reading.
“There’s that spooky blue flame again!”
Mr. Corning gasped
Mr. Corning gasped
Copyright ® 1994, 1966, 1933 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by Grosset & Dunlap, Inc., a member of The Putnam & Grosset Group, New York. Published simultaneously in Canada. S.A.
NANCY DREW MYSTERY STORIES® is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Grosset & Dunlap, Inc.
eISBN : 978-1-101-07711-5
2007 Printing
CHAPTER I
Singing Horses
“IF this were two thousand years ago—!”
Nancy Drew paused on the flagstone path of her garden in front of a border of beautiful larkspur. For a moment the attractive titian-haired girl of eighteen watched the tall blue plumes waving in the breeze. Then she turned to the middle-aged woman behind her.
“I must select the very best for the flower show, Hannah,” she said.
The Drews’ housekeeper and Nancy paused to look up at a passing airplane. They were startled to hear its engines cut out. As Nancy and Hannah watched in alarm, a wounded bird plummeted down and landed among the flowers.
“A homing pigeon!” Nancy exclaimed, seeing the tiny metal tube attached to its leg. “Maybe the bird’s carrying a message!”
Hannah Gruen’s eyes were on the plane. “Oh, Nancy!” she gasped. “It’s going to crash!”
Nancy gazed upward and saw that the twin-engine craft was flying very low. The plane was tan color and had a curious design outlined in black on the fuselage.
“It looks like a winged horse,” Nancy thought, but she could not be sure, since the sun was shining in her eyes.
Suddenly the coughing engines roared to life and the plane nosed upward, then zoomed away.
“Whew!” Hannah exclaimed. “I thought that thing was going to fall right onto our house!”
“I wonder if the plane hit this pigeon,” Nancy said, and once more turned her attention to the bird, which was panting feebly.
“You poor dear!” she said, picking it up. Gently Nancy felt for broken bones, but found none. “The pigeon may only be stunned,” she said.
“What a miracle that it’s alive!” Hannah said.
Nancy nodded. “I’d better see if the pigeon’s carrying a message. It might be something important that we ought to report to the bird’s owner.”
While the housekeeper held the pigeon, Nancy removed the top of the capsule on its leg and slid out a thin piece of paper. She unrolled the message and read aloud:
“ ‘Trouble here. After five o’clock blue bells will be singing horses. Come tonight.’ ”
Nancy and Hannah looked at each other in puzzlement. “It’s a strange message,” the housekeeper said. “What in the world does that mean?”
“I wish I knew,” Nancy replied, “but it sounds urgent—and mysterious.” She slipped the message into her pocket. “I’ll wire the International Federation of American Homing Pigeon Fanciers and give them the number stamped on the bird’s leg ring. All homing pigeons are registered by number so the owners can be traced.”
She examined the ring containing the digits 2-21-12-12, then hurried off to phone the telegraph office. By the time she returned, Hannah had placed the bird in a cardboard box lined with cotton.
Nancy brought an eyedropper and with it gave the pigeon water. Then she put some wild-bird seed in the box. “Do get well,” she said softly.
“How are pigeons trained to carry messages?” Hannah asked as Nancy placed the box on a garage shelf.
“They have a home loft. No matter where the birds are released, they always fly back there.”
“Did you ever hear how fast they can fly?”
“I read about some pigeons who raced from Mexico City to New York, averaging a mile a minute.” Nancy glanced at her watch. “I’d better hurry or I won’t get to the flower show on time.”
She continued snipping prize larkspurs and putting them in a basket.
“Before all the excitement began,” said Hannah, “you were saying, ‘If this were two thousand years ago—,’ but you didn’t finish. What did you mean?”
Nancy smiled. “I was thinking that if I had lived two thousand years ago I might have been a Grecian maiden. And in that case, I might be praying right now in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. I always imagine flowers around there. Maybe delphinium—that’s another name for larkspur.”
“What would you be asking for?” said Hannah.
“That my father’s olive groves would bear extra well, that his vines would be loaded with grapes and his nets heavy with fish every morning.”
Hannah laughed heartily at the thought of her employer, Carson Drew, the well-known lawyer, picking olives or hauling in a fish-filled net.
While talking, Nancy and Hannah had been cutting stalks with the finest flowers and before long had a basketful. Nancy took it into the kitchen and carefully fashioned an exquisite arrangement in an old English vase. She carried it to her convertible parked in the circular driveway.
She thought, “My car was a good-looking one until that horrid man ran into it last week.” Ruefully she surveyed the dent.
“It’s a strange message, Nancy,” the housekeeper said
“Good luck with your entry,” Mrs. Gruen said. “Hope it wins a prize!”
“Hannah, you’re a darling!” Nancy exclaimed and kissed her. The two had deep affection for each other. The girl’s mother had died when Nancy was very young and the housekeeper had helped Mr. Drew bring up his only child.
As Nancy drove across the town of River Heights, she mulled over the strange message on the homing pigeon. Was it a code? Suddenly it occurred to Nancy that the pigeon might have been released from the plane which accidentally struck it. She wondered what the reply would be from the Homing Pigeon Fanciers association.
“Maybe,”’ she thought excitedly, “I’ve stumbled upon a new mystery!”
By this time she had reached the Blenheim estate on the outskirts of River Heights. The broad tree-shadowed lawn was filled with women setting up displays for the annual charity flower show. Nancy had been assigned a spot in the greenhouse behind the mansion.
As she set her larkspur arrangement in place, the chairman came up to her. “My, Nancy, your delphinium are gorgeous,” Mrs. Winsor said.
“Thank you,” Nancy replied.
“I just adore larkspur,” the woman said. “Such a lovely old-fashioned flower. My grandmother had them in her garden. She always had hollyhocks and bluebells, too.”
Bluebells! Nancy’s mind leaped to the mysterious message. Could the
blue bells
in it mean flowers?
blue bells
in it mean flowers?
Aloud she said, “Mrs. Winsor, I hope the judges like my flowers as much as you do!”
Nancy hurried back to the convertible. She was eager to get home and see if a reply to her telegram had come.
To make better time, Nancy turned off the main highway onto a little-traveled shortcut. As she drove down the narrow road, Nancy saw an old black sedan parked along one side.
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