The Eskimo's Secret (10 page)

“So what does it mean?”

“Even four can be hard to handle. Suggest you wait before seeking a newer vehicle.” Nancy quoted the words, then gasped. “The parade. He must be referring to the parade.” “What about it?” Alana looked confused.

“I was in a runaway stagecoach. I mean, I was riding in a stagecoach and the team was frightened into running away.”

Alana just looked at her expectantly.

Nancy stared at the words, sure that she was correct in her interpretation, but unable to see what possible connection there could be between a runaway stagecoach and her father’s deadly predicament. “It doesn’t make much sense, does it?” she admitted.

“It must mean something,” Alana said. “Maybe Ben can help us.”

“Ben?” Nancy was surprised at the suggestion.

“Well, if the rest of your deciphering is correct, your father and the Tundra are being held

prisoner on an island somewhere near here,” Alana said.

Nancy nodded. “Probably an island with a lighthouse on it.”

“Ben is a fisherman and he’s been all through this area most of his life. He just might know which island it is.”

“That would be wonderful,” Nancy exclaimed. “Let’s get dressed, then I’ll order breakfast for all of us from room service.” She grinned. “I, for one, am starving. Thinking always makes me very hungry.”

Alana giggled. “I haven’t been doing that much thinking, but I could eat the menu.” “Don’t,” Nancy teased. “Without it, we won’t know what to order.”

Their good spirits carried them along until there was a loud pounding on the wall. “Let’s have it quiet in there,” Ben’s voice carried through to them. “People will think you’re having a party.”

“We are,” Alana called, “and you’re invited.” “Be right over.”

Ben joined them quickly, a shy grin on his round face. “It sounds like you’re feeling better about things this morning,” he told Nancy. “Have you solved the code?”

“Not completely,” Nancy admitted, “but I have a lot of clues for you to look at after breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” Ben looked disapproving. “We can’t go out together.”

“No need,” Alana told him. “I ordered almost everything on the room-service menu. The kitchen probably thinks there are eight people coming to join us.”

“Considering that I’m supposed to be alone in this room, you could be hard on my reputation,” Nancy observed with a giggle.

Alana joined in laughing but stopped as someone knocked on the door.

Nancy pointed to the bath and waited until both her guests had hidden themselves behind the closed door. She opened the door to the hall carefully, leaving the safety chain on until she was sure there was no one besides the room- service waiter. The clues her father had given her would do no good if the men who were holding him discovered that Alana was with her now.

By the time they’d demolished the ample portions of food, Nancy’s happiness had turned to impatience. She got the list and handed it to Ben, explaining each clue to him. He read them over several times, then shook his head. “I don’t know of any island they could be using that has a lighthouse on it,” he said.

“What about an island that has something to do with a parade, rodeo, team, horses, the West, a stagecoach,” Nancy said.

“Stagecoach,” Ben murmured, then his dark eyes began to glow. “Coachman Island. It’s not very big, but there is an old mansion on it. Some crazy millionaire settled there for a while, built this big house with a tower that looks like a lighthouse.” He gasped. “Nancy, that must be what your father saw.”

“You’ve solved it,” Alana cheered. “Oh, Nancy, you really did it.”

“With Ben’s help,” Nancy acknowledged, but she felt none of her friend’s elation.

“Is there something wrong, Nancy?” Ben asked.

Nancy shrugged. “Not with what we’ve discovered,” she said. “It’s the rest of the clues. If Dad included them, they must have some meaning and we can’t go after him and the Tundra until I figure out what he was trying to tell me. That’s still a mystery.”

“What do you want us to do to help, Nancy?” Ben asked, forcing her mind away from the puzzle.

Nancy looked at the two, trying to think logically. “You can’t stay here,” she said, suddenly realizing the danger. “The kidnappers have been in my room twice already. There’s no reason to think they won’t come again.”

“But where can we go?” Alana asked, plaintively.

Nancy looked to Ben.

“She’s right, Alana,” he said. “They’ll come after you if they find out where you are. Our only hope of getting Mr. Drew and the Tundra back is to keep one step ahead of them.”

Nancy nodded regretfully. “Is there anywhere you can hide for the day?” she asked. “We could meet back here tonight and you could use the room again and we could make our plans.”

Ben grinned. “How about a nice ride on a fishing boat, Alana?” he asked. “That is, if we can rent a car.”

“Good thinking,” Nancy said. “They know my car now, so it would be good to have another one.”

Ben nodded. “I’ll take care of it,” he said, then sobered. “I want to go by Firebird Lodge, too, and make sure that everything is all right out there.”

“Just be careful,” Nancy said.

“How do we keep in touch?” Alana asked. “I mean, if you think this telephone might be bugged, we can’t call you.”

“There’s a telephone booth in the lobby,” Nancy said. “I’ll be in it at noon and again at five P.M. I wrote down the number when I used it last night, so if you want to reach me, call at those times.” She gave them the number.

“Will you be all right, Nancy?” Alana asked.

“I will be if I can figure out the rest of Dad’s clues,” Nancy told her.

Ben and Alana left soon after, promising to use the fire stairs and to be very careful that they weren’t followed when they left the hotel. Once they were gone, Nancy wheeled the room-service table out into the corridor for pickup, then returned to the list of clues.

She stared at them, but nothing came to mind. Frustrated, she replayed the tape, seeking some sort of clue in her father’s tone or inflection. There was none. Depressed and miserable, she lay down on the twin bed and closed her eyes.

Wearily, she realized she should go down and call Helen. If they were watching her, she didn’t want them to suspect that the lists of numbers were a sham.

Then, for the first time, another question popped into her mind. Why had her father included Helen Haggler’s name in the list? She was his only real client at the moment, not a name out of the past.

And why had her father been kidnapped before she had come to Alana’s aid? How could the men have known she would be in Victoria seeking Alana; and if they couldn’t be sure, why had they kidnapped her father?

“They are connected!” she exclaimed, then raced to the table to read the clues she hadn’t understood before.

Just be sure that you don't tell one about the others. Let each one think I’m working exclusively for him or her. That was it. Her father had been kidnapped because he was going to Helen Haggler in connection with her investigation of Investors, Inc. Their using his abduction as a threat to force her to find Alana had come later after they’d found out from Nancy’s call to Tod that she was looking for Alana.

“You didn’t get your tongue twisted, did you, Dad?” Nancy murmured. “My ACB’s are the C- B, Inc. investigations and I’d be willing to bet that C-B stands for Cole-Borge.”

Feeling lighter by the moment, Nancy picked up all her notes and put them in her pocket, then took her purse and went down to use the phone booth in the lobby. She placed a call to Helen Haggler.

“Do you have any news, Nancy?” Helen asked as soon as Nancy identified herself. “Has Carson been freed yet?”

Nancy bit at her lip, remembering the warning about not telling one about the other. “No, he hasn’t, Miss Haggler,” she began, suddenly unsure about what she should do. “That’s why I called you.”

“Do you need help raising the ransom?” Miss Haggler asked. “I can send someone up with cash, if that’s the problem.”

“They don’t want money,” Nancy said. “They want someone else in exchange.”

“Me?” Miss Haggler didn’t sound particularly surprised.

“No, it’s the girl I came up here to help,” Nancy replied. “I’m calling to ask for more time. I have new information, including a good idea where Dad is being held; but I can’t free him before tonight. If you call in the police, we may not have a chance.”

“Are you still trying to tell me this abduction has nothing to do with the attempt to take over my company?” Miss Haggler snapped.

“No. When I told you that last night, I didn’t know there was a connection, but now I’m sure there is. That’s why I’m so positive that Dad is in terrible danger. They can’t let him go, Miss Haggler. He knows far too much.”

“Then why not call in the police or the Canadian authorities? If you don’t think you can ransom him, why wait?”

“If I’m right, we just might be able to trick the men who are holding him.”

“You think you can handle it better than the police?” She sounded skeptical.

“Much better,” Nancy said. “The men holding Dad want my friend so badly, they’ll do almost anything to get her.”

“How long do you want me to wait?”

“Until you hear from me?” Nancy suggested. “Forty-eight hours. If I don’t hear from you

before this time day after tomorrow, I’ll call the police. Who do I send them after?”

“I’d rather not make any accusations,” Nancy began.

“That’s the price of time,” Miss Haggler said. “If you disappear, too, I want to make sure we know where to start looking.”

Nancy swallowed hard. “Do the names Jasper Cole and Felix Borge mean anything to you?” she asked.

“Those two-bit hustlers are behind this? They wouldn’t know what to do with Haggler Inter-national Imports if they had it.”

“If you had a large collection of native art that wasn’t yours but wasn’t exactly stolen, could you sell it through your shops?” Nancy asked.

“Not honestly, but it would be possible, I suppose,” Helen Haggler admitted. “Why? Do they have something like that?”

“They’re working on getting it,” Nancy said. “You aren’t making a lot of sense,” Miss Haggler complained. “But I suppose I’ll have to trust you, won’t I?”

“I hope Dad will be able to explain the whole thing to you by this time tomorrow,” Nancy said fervently.

“And if he isn’t able to, where do I send the authorities?” she asked.

“I can’t tell you,” Nancy said, “but I’ll put my notes in an envelope and mail them to you today. That way if things go wrong, you’ll know as much as I do.”

“Notes?”

Nancy explained about the tape and its coded message. “If you don’t hear from me in forty- eight hours, maybe the police can use it,” she said.

“You just be very careful,” Miss Haggler warned. “The men trying to take over my company are completely ruthless. I doubt they’ll stop at anything to get what they want.”

“They’ve already proved that,” Nancy said, chilled by her words. “But I won’t stop at anything either—not until I get my father back!”

Nancy made several more calls from the pay phone. Contacting Mr. Steele for a report on the progress of the robbery investigation was the first. It made her feel guilty to listen to the worry in his voice when he asked her about Alana, but she couldn’t risk telling him anything.

Next, she called the hotel in Seattle to check for messages, then she tried the Firebird Lodge and was pleased when there was an answer. “Is Ben Qinggoq there?” she asked politely.

“I’m sorry, miss, he isn’t,” the woman answered. “But I do expect I’ll be seeing him in the next day or so. Would you like to leave a message?”

“No, thank you, I’m sure he’ll be getting in touch with me,” Nancy said.

When she left the phone booth, she looked around, trying hard to remember whether any of the people in the lobby had been there last night, but she couldn’t. She got a stamped envelope from the desk clerk and addressed it to Helen, but she didn’t put the notes in it. Hoping to find a copy machine, she decided to walk to the nearby shopping area.

“We’ll just see if anyone is following me,” she murmured, stepping briskly into the damp air.

The streets weren’t crowded at that hour, but she couldn’t spot anyone. She stopped in a small doughnut shop to wait for the stores to open, then wandered through several before buying some items for what lay ahead. Dark jeans for herself and Alana, plus lightweight, dark-colored sweaters to match.

“Just the right dress for the invasion,” she told herself, renewing her determination.

After making her purchases, Nancy moved on to a stationery store carrying maps and bought one that included Coachman Island. She also made photocopies of her notes and mailed the envelope. When that was done, she consulted her watch, and seeing that it was almost twelve o’clock, returned to the hotel.

The people in the chairs and on the sofas of the lobby seemed to have changed, but again, she couldn’t be sure. Nancy sat near the phone

booth for almost half an hour, but it didn’t ring.

Frustrated, but not really surprised, Nancy went into the hotel dining room for a quick lunch, then decided to go to her room. There was always the chance, she reminded herself, that the kidnappers would call for a progress report, and she didn’t want them to think that she was merely stalling for time.

When Nancy got on the elevator, she found it half filled by a laundry cart apparently abandoned by one of the maids. She peered inside, noting that it contained mostly uniforms for the hotel employees.

Without really planning anything, she bent over the side of the cart and poked around until she located three uniforms that looked as though they would fit her, Alana, and Ben. She slipped them into the bag with her other purchases and left the elevator on her floor.