The Crooked Banister (2 page)

“Do you think she knows where her brother is?” Nancy queried.

“I doubt it,” Mr. Drew replied. “Furthermore, Mrs. Carrier and another brother named Thomas put up the bail money!”

“How dreadful for them!” Mrs. Melody exclaimed.

Mr. Drew continued, “I think we’d better have some lunch. It’s nearly two-thirty and that’s when the dining room closes.”

There was little conversation during the meal. All were disappointed by the turn of events. They figured that before Rawley Banister vanished, he had set the tape recorder to announce he was not at home.

“Do you think we can ever get inside the house?” Nancy asked.

“I hope so,” her father answered. “We might pick up a clue there to his whereabouts.”

Mr. Drew telephoned Mrs. Carrier. After hearing the story, she suggested that the trio come to her home that evening. “I prefer not to discuss my brother and his affairs on the telephone,” she said.

“Of course,” Mr. Drew replied. “Is eight o’clock a good time?”

“That will be fine.”

Promptly at eight Mrs. Melody and the Drews reached the Carrier home. A short, rather stout, sweet-faced woman opened the front door. She invited them in, and then to the surprise of the Drews, cried out, “Joyce Johnson!”

At the same moment Mrs. Melody exclaimed, “Sally Banister! I never connected you with Rawley Banister!” The two women embraced.

“No wonder. We always called him Jack.”

Mrs. Melody turned to the Drews and introduced them to her boarding school classmate of years ago. “We’d completely lost track of each other.”

Mrs. Carrier graciously acknowledged the introduction, then said a bit sadly, “I’m sorry Joyce and I have met again under such adverse circumstances. But do come in and we’ll talk.”

The Drews had been afraid Mrs. Carrier would be very guarded in her remarks and they would find out little. But now, learning that her school-mate was a client of Mr. Drew, she talked freely.

“Rawley has always been a problem to our family,” she told them. “Time and time again we helped him out of scrapes. Finally the police caught up with him and he was arrested on a swindling charge. As you already know, my brother Thomas and I put up bail and now we’ll lose all that money. But this did not keep Rawley from disappearing. We have no idea where he is.”

Mrs. Carrier went on to say that she had a feeling her brother did not intend to come back.

“He mailed me a note and a key to his front door. None of the family has ever been inside the place. We were never invited.”

Nancy asked, “Were the contents of the note something you don’t wish to reveal?”

“Oh not at all,” Mrs. Carrier answered. “Rawley said, ‘I dare you to find the Crooked Banister. Sorry I disgraced the family. You are now in charge of everything.’ ”

“The Crooked Banister?” Nancy queried.

Mrs. Carrier gave a wan smile. “My brother used to refer to himself as the Crooked Banister. And each time he said it, he would laugh. The rest of us didn’t think it was funny.”

She told Mrs. Melody, “Thomas and I will certainly repay you for every penny you lost.”

Before Mrs. Melody could object, her friend changed the subject and said, “Would you people like to go out to Rawley’s house tomorrow morning?”

“Oh yes,” Nancy replied.

It was arranged that they would call for Mrs. Carrier about ten o’clock. Then, seeing that their hostess looked weary, the visitors left.

On the way back to the motel, they heard fire sirens. When they reached the Ruppert Motel all were astonished by what they saw.

“The motel’s on fire!” Mrs. Melody cried out. “The smoke seems to be coming from our rooms!”

As they turned into the grounds, the police stopped them. Mr. Drew explained that they were staying there and he believed the fire was in their rooms.

“Sorry, but you can’t go any farther!” a police officer said firmly.

The firemen had dragged long hoses up the balcony stairs and inside the bedrooms. It seemed strange to Nancy that all three rooms should be on fire at once and that none of the adjacent ones were. It was soon evident that the contents were either burned or water-soaked.

“I’m afraid everything is ruined!” Nancy said woefully.

“What’s worse,” her father added, “the copies of the deed and other papers to prove our claim against Rawley Banister were in my brief case!”

Mrs. Melody gasped. “And the originals were in my luggage!”

“MAYBE we can save the papers!” Nancy burst out.

She rushed up to one of the firemen and asked if he could possibly retrieve the luggage. He shook his head. “Not a chance of its being any good. But the fire is out. I’ll ask the chief if you can go to your rooms.”

He called up to the balcony and repeated Nancy’s request. The chief looked down.

“It’s safe enough now. But there’s a lot of water damage.”

Mrs. Melody and the Drews hastened up the stairway. First they came to Mr. Drew’s room.

He looked inside and exclaimed, “My brief case is gone!”

“How terrible!” Nancy said.

Mrs. Melody hurried along the balcony while Nancy stepped into her bedroom. Nothing seemed to be missing, but her suitcase was wide open. Every bit of clothing in it was soaked, as well as the dresses hanging in an alcove.

“What a mess this is!” she murmured.

The next moment she heard Mrs. Melody coming back. In an excited voice the woman said, “The papers concerning the property are missing! They must have been stolen!”

The fire chief looked at the three visitors quizzically, then called over a police inspector. “I suspected this incident was an incendiary act. Now these people say certain belongings of theirs have been stolen. There’s no doubt in my mind but that the thief set the three blazes.”

The Drews exchanged questioning glances. A suspicion was forming in their minds.

The inspector asked, “Have you folks any particular enemies?”

“Not that we know of,” Mr. Drew replied, “but the stolen papers related to a case on which I’m working.”

“My father is a lawyer,” Nancy added.

The inspector made no further inquiries, but he wrote down Mr. Drew’s name and address in case he wanted to get in touch with him. After the firemen had left and the motel manager had assigned Nancy, her father, and Mrs. Melody to rooms in another section, the three went to the lobby and sat down to discuss what had happened.

“I hate to say this,” Mrs. Melody spoke up, “but I suspect Rawley Banister was the one who stole the papers and set the fires.”

Nancy agreed, but her father pointed out, “There’s a possibility it could have been a confederate of his.”

Mrs. Melody, suddenly realizing her night clothes had been burned, said she wondered if any shops in the motel or in town might still be open. Nancy asked the desk clerk and learned that a small department store up the street did not close until twelve. Since the most popular section of the shop was the soda counter which was filled with young people, the Drews assumed that was the main reason for its being open late.

The trio were able to purchase necessities to tide them over the night. In the morning they could buy other articles.

When they returned to the motel, Mrs. Melody said she was going to bed at once. Nancy asked her father to accompany her to the burned-out rooms.

“Maybe we can pick up a clue,” Nancy added.

When they reached Mr. Drew’s former room, they found a police detective at work there. He said he had located a number of fingerprints but doubted that any of them belonged to the burglar.

The Drews did not find a clue, either, in any of the rooms and walked onto the balcony. As Nancy stood looking out over the parking area, her foot touched something on the floor. Glancing down, she saw an unburned taper match in a crack and picked it up.

Nancy showed the long match to her father. “I’ll bet the man who set the fires used one of these.”

“It’s a good guess.”

Nancy went on, “When we go to Rawley Banister’s house, I’ll hunt for taper matches. If I find any like this one, it should be pretty good proof that it was Rawley who was here.”

She could hardly wait for the next day to come. Now that the Drews were directly involved in the mystery, Nancy was eager to start work.

Although only eighteen, she had earned a reputation as an amateur detective by solving several cases, among them
The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase,
and most recently
The Mysterious Mannequin.

The following morning when the Drews and Mrs. Melody arrived at Mrs. Carrier’s home, they found her pale and nervous. Through a friend who was a newspaper reporter she had heard of the fires at the motel and the theft of important papers.

“I was sure they were yours and I’m terribly sorry. I know you must suspect, as I do, that the arsonist was my brother Rawley. Oh, it’s dreadful to have a member of one’s family do disgraceful things!”

She looked pleadingly at Nancy and her father. “The police have no trace of Rawley. Will you help me find him? I’m so worried that he’s using an assumed name again and cheating people out of money.” Tears trickled down the woman’s cheeks.

Mrs. Melody put an arm around her old school friend. “Please don’t feel so bad about this. I’m sure your brother will be found and will make amends. Let’s go out to his house and see if we can find something to help solve the mystery.”

They set out at once for Rawley Banister’s. When they reached the hilltop, the place seemed peaceful. In the bright sun the house did not appear so formidable.

Mrs. Carrier took the key from her handbag and inserted it in the front-door lock. She turned the knob and the heavy door swung inward. The hall was dark but daylight penetrated for a short distance.

“Oh! What’s that?” Mrs. Melody cried out, pulling back.

All of them heard a strange whirring sound. The next instant a weird metal figure whizzed across the hall, then went out of sight. But in a couple of moments it returned and shot past the callers.

“It’s a robot!” Nancy exclaimed. “He must be guarding the place.”

The visitors hesitated to walk in, but presently the robot disappeared through a swinging door at the rear of the hallway.

“I wonder if he’s coming back,” Mrs. Carrier said fearfully. “Rawley didn’t warn me that eerie things might happen here!”

Nancy was puzzled why the tape recorder at the door had not worked. “Maybe the knocker sets it off.” But when she rapped with it, there was no voice. “Strange,” she murmured.

Just then the robot came through the swinging door. This time the figure on wheels stopped beside a slanting column on top of which was a coach lamp. With one hand the robot turned on the lamp. The funny little mechanical man then went toward the front door and snapped on the switch for a ceiling fixture.

“Oh!” Mrs. Carrier burst out. “I can’t believe it!”

Mr. Drew smiled. “He seems harmless enough.”

Mrs. Melody pointed to a broad staircase. It was the most fantastic one any of them had ever seen. It twisted and turned every few feet. Even the spindles were not upright; some slanted forward, others backward.

On the left side the railing ended in a very attractive newel. The other banister stopped about three steps from the floor and ran into a wall. The staircase had not been centered. The whole thing gave the entrance hallway an unbalanced look.

“Why do you suppose your brother planned all this unusual architecture?” Mr. Drew asked Mrs. Carrier.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” she answered. “As a little boy Rawley used to build queer-looking things with his blocks, and later with metal construction toys. He made buildings, bridges, and strange cars and planes.”

Mr. Drew nodded. “That figures. This place was sort of your brother’s dream house.”

“I suppose so,” Mrs. Carrier agreed. “He wanted to see how much he could build things off balance and without them toppling over.”

Nancy continued to stare at the crooked staircase. Smiling, she said, “Sliding down that banister would be a terrific challenge.”

“I certainly wouldn’t want to attempt it,” said Mrs. Melody.

The walls of the entrance hall were papered in a gold-and-black floral pattern. There was only one picture. It hung just above the end of the unfinished banister, and was a framed Oriental hand-embroidered wall decoration. The visitors walked over to it and studied the weird design.

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven serpents,” Nancy counted, “all intertwined. They look greedy and horrible.”

“Yes,” her father said. “And each one is eating poisonous food. Some are flowers, others snakes. I recognize this plant as deadly nightshade.”

“And isn’t one of the serpents swallowing a poisonous snake?” Nancy asked. “I think it’s a cottonmouth.”

Before anyone could answer, the callers were startled by an explosion beyond the swinging door.

“Oh, what happened?” Mrs. Melody exclaimed.

The group stood frozen. If they rushed in to find out, would they perhaps be trapped and never get out of this weird house alive?

THE visitors finally decided to find out what had happened behind the swinging door but to do so cautiously. Mr. Drew insisted upon looking first. Carefully he opened the door and peered inside.

“I guess everything’s safe,” he said and motioned the others to follow him. Beyond was a large kitchen and in the center of the floor lay the robot, its head off!

“My goodness!” Mrs. Melody exclaimed. “Is he—is he—dead?”

Mr. Drew smiled. “At least he has been beheaded,” he answered. “But the rest of his body may be ‘hot.’ ”