The Mysterious Mannequin (3 page)

Ned said he had picked a lovely picnic spot along the Upper River. Nancy tried hard not to miss any of the beautiful scenery along the way or any of Ned’s conversation. This ranged from some of his amusing adventures trying to sell life insurance to the upcoming football schedule of Emerson College. But her mind constantly wandered back to the mystery of the mannequin.

Finally Ned realized this and said, “Nancy, if the Farouk case should take you to Turkey, how about letting me go along as your strong-arm man?”

Nancy laughed and did not answer him directly. She said, “Wouldn’t it be fascinating to visit Istanbul and see the mosques and the bazaars and the beautiful Bosporus?”

Ned did not reply because at that moment a boat with three twelve-year-old boys, one a reckless pilot, was bearing straight down on them.

“Crazy kids!” Ned muttered as he swerved sharply to avoid the other craft. He yelled at them. “Look where you’re going!”

The boys paid no attention. “How about a drag race?” the pilot called out.

“No thanks,” Ned yelled.

“Chicken!” the boy shouted and went on.

In a little while Ned pulled toward the shore and docked the boat at a small pier. He picked up the picnic box and helped Nancy out of the boat. They walked along the shore to a small grove of trees and sat down. Both were hungry and enjoyed the delicious lunch of roast beef sandwiches, peaches, and angel cake. As they finished eating, Ned said:

“Tell me, Nancy, what Farouk’s mannequin looked like.”

“Perhaps I can show you better by making a sketch of her,” Nancy suggested.

From her purse she took a sheet of paper and three colored pencils which she always carried with her. She worked industriously for a few minutes, then held up the sketch.

Ned grinned. “Groovy picture, but how do you expect me to know what the mannequin looked like with that veil wound around her head and across most of her face?”

“You’re right,” Nancy replied, laughing, “but all I can do is guess at the rest of her face.”

She turned the sheet over and made a completely new sketch. When Nancy finished, the face on the paper that stared up at her looked almost alive. She was a beautiful girl with an oval face framed by long black hair.

“Wow!” Ned exclaimed when she showed it to him. “A real doll! I mean mannequin!”

The couple wondered if by any chance the mannequin could have looked like the face in the sketch. If so, and she was around River Heights, there was a good chance of finding her.

“I’m sure nobody would have destroyed such an attractive mannequin,” Nancy remarked. “Well, I’ll have to work on that angle of the mystery another day.”

She and Ned climbed back into the speedboat and went on up the river until they came to the bookshop. It was a quaint structure with its own docking facilities, where customers tied up their craft and went inside to make their purchases.

As Nancy entered, she said, “What an amazing place! I’ve never seen so many books in such a small area.”

Ned smiled. “The owner brags that he has a copy of almost every current book and also some that are out of print or rare. I want to pick up two or three volumes in connection with my courses next fall. Suppose I meet you here at the front door in a little while?”

Nancy nodded and he went off. She began looking around at the rows and rows of books, finally coming to a section on foreign countries.

In a few seconds she located a whole shelf of books on Turkey. After choosing one on rugs, she picked up a volume on the history of the country and looked at the table of contents.

Famous Pasas
was the title of one chapter. Nancy turned to that part of the book and soon became absorbed in reading passages about Turkish history in which various
pasas,
men of high government rank, had been involved. Turning a page, she blinked in disbelief. One of the famous men had been named Tahmasp.

“I wonder if Farouk is a descendant of his?” she asked herself. “Maybe Dad could contact a living member of his family and find him that way.”

Nancy purchased the book and also another on Istanbul. She went to the front door, but Ned was not there yet. Seeing a pay telephone in the corner of the shop, Nancy called her father and told him what she had read. The lawyer said he would cable the police chief of Istanbul immediately to find out if Farouk Tahmasp or any member of his family lived there.

“I’ll tell the chief I have good news for Farouk. Then, if Farouk gets the message secondhand, he won’t feel that he has to hide any longer.”

By the time Nancy reached the front door again, Ned was there and she told him of her possible clue. He chuckled.

“I was sure that if I brought you here, you’d learn something useful.”

The trip back to River Heights was without incident. Ned remarked, “I’m glad those crazy kids got off the river. I’d hate to see this borrowed boat wrecked.”

The craft was secured and Nancy and Ned returned to the Drew house. They found Bess and George there with Hannah Gruen.

At once Bess rushed up to the couple. “Wait until you hear the cool surprise we have for you!”

“A COOL surprise?” Nancy questioned. “Is it in connection with the mystery?”

Bess, George, and Hannah Gruen nodded affirmatively. George said, “We’ve found another word in the border of the rug.”

Nancy smiled. “Don’t make me guess what it is. Tell me quick.”

“It’s in English,” Bess spoke up. “The word is ‘carry.’ See, here it is.”

Ned repeated the whole message so far: “ ‘Carson, find mannequin. I love her. Carry—’”

Hannah, Ned, and the girls looked at one another, puzzled. What was Mr. Drew supposed to carry and where? No one had a ready answer, and Bess and George expressed regret at never having seen the mannequin in the window of Tahmasp’s rug shop.

Bess glanced at her wrist watch. “I really must go home,” she said. “Nancy, if you learn what the rest of the sentence is, let me know.”

George said she must run along too, but Nancy and Ned continued to study the rug. Nancy, recalling that Hannah had a sore finger, decided she should help with the preparations for dinner. She excused herself to go to the kitchen.

Half an hour later Mr. Drew came in and soon afterward dinner was served. Conversation turned to the discovery of the word “carry,” but like the others, the lawyer had no idea what the rest of the sentence was.

“It’s interesting that Farouk used both French and English in his message,” he remarked. “You may find words in other languages, even Greek or Turkish.”

Ned laughed. “I’d be sure to miss them. To me the characters look like part of a design rather than a word.”

“I hope Farouk didn’t use any Greek or Turkish letters of the alphabet. We’d never recognize them.”

Directly after dinner Ned said he would have to leave. “I’ll be in touch,” he told Nancy. “And wish me luck selling a big fat insurance policy to my client.”

“I sure do,” Nancy said.

Nancy sat down in the living room to read the volume on Turkey which she had bought at the river bookshop. She became engrossed in the descriptions of various interesting places. The Topkapi Palace, she read, had been the home of several generations of sultans but was now a museum. On exhibit in one of the palace’s many buildings were the extravagantly ornamented garments, headpieces, and various objects that had belonged to the sultans and their families.

“Oh my goodness!” Nancy said to herself as she read that the palace had three hundred and twenty rooms and that three thousand people had once lived under its roof. Many of these of course were servants.

“Kemal Ataturk changed all this and made Turkey a republic,” Nancy read. “He is considered the George Washington of present-day Turkey.”

The book contained many color photographs. One showed a service of gold coffee cups, each one inlaid with two hundred and forty diamonds. There was an ebony bench inlaid with ivory. A huge turquoise had been embedded in the center.

“How exquisite!” Nancy said to herself as she gazed upon a cradle of gold inlaid with jewels. She laughed softly. “I wonder if the baby in it slept any better than those in plain old wooden cradles!”

She put down the book and stared into space, visualizing life at the Topkapi Palace long ago. Laughter, music, dancing girls in costume, the magnificently attired sultans.

Nancy suddenly sat up straight and came back to reality. She was reminded of the mannequin who might have looked like one of the sultans’ wives.

“I haven’t tried to track her down in the River Heights shops that sell women’s dresses,” Nancy thought, “and I haven’t checked the museum!”

The grandfather clock in the hall was just chiming eight.

“The stores and the museum will be open until nine,” Nancy told herself, getting up.

She hurried to the hall and consulted the classified telephone directory. One after another she called each department store and dress shop in town. None of them had purchased a mannequin from the rug dealer.

Nancy sighed and called the museum. An assistant to the curator answered.

“By any chance,” Nancy asked, “do you have a mannequin that came from Farouk Tahmasp’s rug shop a couple of years ago?”

“We have one, but I don’t know where she came from,” the man replied. “She’s a Turkish lady wearing a white veil.”

Nancy’s spirits soared. Had she found Farouk’s mannequin? “I’ll be right down to see it,” she told him.

Nancy quickly explained to her father and Hannah where she was going and rushed outside to get her car.

“Hold on!” her father called. “I’m coming along!”

It was already eight-thirty so Nancy drove at the speed limit. She parked quickly and the Drews rushed into the museum.

“Where’s the Turkish mannequin, please?” Nancy asked the guard in the entrance hall.

“Downstairs.”

Nancy and her father ran down the steps. Ahead of them was an exhibit of figures in costume from many countries of the world. They hunted for the Turkish figure and finally found her on the far side of the room. Her outfit was different from the one Nancy recalled in Farouk’s window. Could she be the mannequin they sought?

The custodian of the exhibit had followed the Drews. In a rather tired voice he said, “It’s nearly nine o’clock, folks. That’s closing time.”

“I know,” said Nancy. “Tell me, where did the museum get this mannequin?”

“Some wealthy woman gave it to us.”

“When was that?”

“Oh, about five years ago—maybe longer.”

The Drews looked at each other in disappointment. At last the lawyer said, “My daughter and I are looking for a certain Turkish mannequin. This isn’t the right one.”

Nancy and her father said good night to the custodian and went up the stairs. Neither spoke until they were in the car. Then Mr. Drew patted his daughter’s shoulder.

“It was a good try, Nancy. Better luck next time.”

Mrs. Gruen was sorry to learn of their dashed hopes. “Something good is bound to pop up,” she prophesied.

Nancy nodded and went back to the big upholstered wing chair in the living room to continue reading the book on Turkey. Togo snuggled beside her.

First Mr. Drew, then Hannah stopped to say good night to her, suggesting that she not stay up too late.

The young detective smiled. “One more hour,” she said. “This book is absolutely fascinating.” Nancy sighed. “It certainly makes me want to visit Turkey.”

“I was there once at the time of Ramadan,” her father said. “That is the most holy month of the year for the Moslems. During that period they eat nothing each day between dawn and sunset. At the end of the month, the young people follow a very lovely custom. It is called the Sugar Holiday. They buy bonbons and give them to the old people.”

Hannah had picked up the prayer rug from the floor and draped it carefully over a chair in the hall. Nearly an hour went by, when Nancy thought she heard someone fumbling at the kitchen door. Apparently it did not bother Togo because he neither barked nor got up.

But when Nancy rose and walked toward the kitchen, Togo followed her. She went through the darkened room and peered outside. There was no one around.

“Perhaps I’d better turn on the porch light,” she thought, and flicked the switch.

The outside lamp illuminated the entire Drew yard. No one was in sight.

“I must have heard a prowling animal,” Nancy thought.

She turned off the light and went back to the living room. She became interested in reading that the name of the Moslems’ sacred scripture is the Koran.

“Today’s students are finding it extremely difficult to read the book because it is not printed in the Latinized alphabet being used in the schools.”

The author went on to say that a translation was in progress. “Parents are glad it is being done because they are proud to have their children not only read but memorize the Koran from cover to cover.”

Nancy was about to put the book down when she idly turned to a section of color photographs showing robes and uniforms of olden times when sultans and their assistants lived so lavishly.

“Imagine!” she thought. “This uniform has two hundred and six diamonds sewed into it!”

Nancy finished looking at the fabulous costumes, then turned off the light and sat thinking about the mystery. Presently she was startled again by a sound from the rear of the house. Was someone tiptoeing on the first floor? She did not move and Togo did not wake up.

A few seconds later the young detective became aware of the shadow of a man moving forward from the rear of the hall. She stood up without making a sound. The intruder sneaked toward the front door, his back to her. He grabbed the Turkish prayer rug from the chair in one hand. With his other he turned the front doorknob.