The Swami's Ring (4 page)

“The ring! He’s got the ring!” George cried. She leaped out of her car and darted after the man, shouting his name at the top of her lungs. But he was already pulling out of the lot.

“What happened?” Bess asked when her cousin returned.

“He’s gone.”

“And so is Cliff’s ring,” Bess said. “We have to get it back before we see Nancy again.”

George agreed and suggested that they go to Oberon College.

“Maybe we’ll catch him on the way to class,” Bess said hopefully.

The girls located his office in an old stone building near the student center. A note was tacked on the door: HOURS 1:30-3:00 P.M.

“He should be here in a few minutes,” George observed with a sigh of relief.

The wait, however, seemed interminable, as a stream of students carrying notebooks filed through the corridor and stopped outside an instructor’s door at the far end.

“Where is he?” Bess asked impatiently.

Then, as if in reply, the large, wooden, entrance door swung open and a young, brown-haired man, neatly dressed in a striped shirt and khaki pants, strode toward them.

“May I help you?” he asked, pulling out a key.

“We’re looking for Dr. DeNiro,” George said.

“You’ve found him.” The beardless man grinned. “Are you registering for one of my courses?”

His listeners stared at him completely dumbfounded.

“Is something wrong?” the instructor asked.

“No ... I mean, yes,” Bess said. “Do you have a brother who teaches here?”

“No,” he chuckled, “but I’m sure my department head would be pleased if I did. I’ve been away from campus for almost a month.”

The realization that Cliff’s ring was now in the possession of an unknown stranger made both girls shudder. They had been duped!

Instantly, George asked, “Are you missing any personal identification—driver’s license, credit cards, anything like that?”

“No, not that I know of. Why?”

George explained about their encounter with the man at the jewelery shop.

“He said he was you!” Bess exclaimed.

“Me?”

By now, the young man had opened his office and invited the cousins to sit down.

“He said he was doing some research on India and wanted to photograph the ring we gave him,” George explained.

“Well, it’s true I am working on a government project related to India, but it hasn’t been publicized.” He paused for a long moment. “I do wonder, though, why someone would pretend to be me.”

“All we know is that the ring may have belonged to a maharajah.”

The young man slid back in his chair, staring at the girls, yet past them.

“It’s possible,” he said, “that the fellow expects to gain access to information I’m after.”

“What kind of information?” Bess inquired.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”

She and George concluded that the professor must be involved in a highly confidential mission. The question was, Did the ring figure into it, and if so, how?

Before they could discuss it further, a student appeared at the door. She was holding several notebooks.

“I may need to talk with you both again,” Dr. DeNiro said, signaling the cousins to leave.

“And vice versa,” George said. She jotted down her phone number. “Will you be here tomorrow?”

“Yes, I have a course in the morning and another one in the afternoon.”

The cousins said good-bye and hurried to the car.

“This whole thing is getting pretty weird,” Bess commented.

“I’m beginning to think Cliff lost his memory on purpose,” George said.

“What? You think he’s faking?” Bess replied. “I don’t believe it.”

“I don’t either, really, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. After all, he could be in serious trouble and need a place to hide out.”

“I can think of nicer places than a hospital,” Bess remarked.

“True, but maybe he was trying to escape when he fell. The next thing he knew he was in the hospital. Since he didn’t want anyone to know who or where he was, he conveniently forgot his name.”

“I still don’t believe it.”

“Well, it’s just a thought,” George replied.

The girls said little else until they reached Rosemont, where they went to Cliffs room promptly. A curtain had been pulled around his bed and Lisa was talking with a doctor.

“Where’s Nancy?” Bess asked when Lisa had finished her conversation.

“She went to see Dr. Anderson,” Lisa said with evident concern in her voice.

The cousins glanced at the curtain.

“Is Cliff all right?”

“Yes, he is now,” the nurse replied. “But an hour ago he started screaming and choking.”

Had the bearded stranger returned to attack Cliff again? the girls wondered.

“What happened?” Bess asked anxiously.

“Did that bearded guy—” George started to say when Nancy dashed toward them.

“Cliff had a terrible nightmare,” she said, pulling the girls away from the young man’s door.

“Oh, thank goodness it wasn’t anything more serious than that,” Bess said.

“Even so, Cliff needs to be in a different environment,” Nancy remarked. “Dr. Anderson agrees.”

“Is Cliff well enough to be moved?” George asked Lisa.

“That’s up to the doctor.”

“Even if he can leave,” Bess said, “where would he go?”

“To my house,” Nancy said. “Hannah will see that he eats three full meals every day—”

“If that doesn’t bring back his memory, nothing will!” Bess laughed.

“And speaking of losing things,” Nancy said, suddenly remembering the girls’ mission downtown, “do you have Cliffs ring?”

The cousins gulped. That was the inevitable question they had been dreading.

“No, I’m afraid not,” George said. She explained all that had happened, ending with their visit to Oberon College.

Nancy listened in shock. “That was our only clue to Cliffs identity,” she said anxiously.

“I know it doesn’t help to say we’re sorry,” Bess replied.

“But we are. We really are,” George added.

Nancy slipped her arms around the girls’ shoulders. “Don’t worry about it. You’re not easily fooled, so the impersonator must be a pretty slick character,” she said, catching sight of Cliff s doctor down the hallway. “Excuse me a moment. I must talk to Dr. Anderson.”

She hurried toward him, and after several minutes of conversation, rejoined her friends.

“He wants to keep Cliff here until after lunch tomorrow,” she announced, “but after that, Cliff will belong to the Drew family!”

“I wonder how Ned will feel about that,” George mumbled.

“There isn’t a jealous bone in Ned’s body,” Nancy replied confidently. “I’ll tell him everything tonight.”

But when she reached home later that afternoon, she admitted she wasn’t only worried about the whereabouts of Cliff’s ring. She was also reconsidering the wisdom of her new plan. After all, Cliff was only a few years older than Ned, and Ned had often complained that she spent less time with him than solving mysteries. The fact that this one happens to involve a young, handsome man could be the last straw, Nancy thought.

Her father, however, disagreed with her conclusion. “After all, our house probably is the safest place for Cliff,” he said.

So when Ned arrived, Nancy announced her news cheerfully.

“Is something wrong?” she asked him, watching his buoyant smile shrink.

Ned shook his head. “We’re running late,” he said, “and I don’t want to break any speed limits on the way to the theater.”

“‘Bye, everybody,” Nancy said as they darted to Ned’s car. As she buckled her seat belt, she remarked, “Dad thinks Cliff will be much better off at our house than in the hospital.”

“Guess so,” Ned answered crisply.

He said little else, however, until they reached the theater, where several neighbors of the Drews greeted Nancy. Other townspeople, mostly members of the municipal board, stared coldly at her.

“Is it my imagination,” Ned said, “or did the mayor and his wife just snub you?”

“Yes, they did,” Nancy replied, feeling immediately uncomfortable. “But if you noticed, I smiled at them anyway. I’ll explain later.”

As the couple walked down to the front of the hall, they heard a rising murmur behind them. The mayor’s wife was adjusting her summer shawl and leaning forward to talk to a council-man’s wife. She, in turn, hissed back in a loud whisper. Nancy knew they were talking about her father.

“Can’t you tell me what’s going on now?” Ned said in a low voice.

“No—” was all the girl could say as musicians filed onstage.

When they were seated, a gray-haired man with a baton went quickly to the podium, causing a round of applause that grew louder as a young, red-haired woman took her place at the gleaming harp downstage.

Ned glanced at the program. The first piece featuring Angela Pruett, the harp soloist, was “Introduction and Allegro” by Maurice Ravel.

“This is going to be even more interesting than I thought,” Ned teased Nancy.

When the harpist began to play, however, the strings of the instrument squawked like a flock of birds, each one singing off-key!

“What’s going on?” Ned whispered to Nancy.

“I don’t know,” she said, “and apparently no one on stage does either.”

The orchestra stopped playing as the conductor and harpist exchanged puzzled frowns and a few words.

“We are terribly sorry, ladies and gentlemen,” the conductor announced to the audience, “but Miss Pruett’s harp seems to be badly out of tune. We will continue our program with the next selection and perform ‘Introduction and Allegro’ after intermission.”

Nancy leaned toward Ned. “Strange, very strange,” she said. “That instrument should have been tuned and checked before the concert began.”

“Maybe someone tampered with it,” Ned replied mysteriously.

That’s exactly what Nancy was thinking. But why would anyone want to ruin the performance ?

She was tempted to go backstage during intermission, but decided to wait until the end of the performance. To her delight, the rest of it went beautifully and uneventfully.

“I really enjoyed it,” Ned told Nancy as her eyes drifted to the musicians leaving the stage.

“That makes me very happy,” she replied, suddenly grabbing Ned’s hand.

“Gee, if I knew that’s all I had to say—”

“C‘mon, let’s go,” Nancy interrupted quickly. “I want to talk to Miss Pruett.”

Ned shook his head disconsolately. “And I thought this was going to be a detective-less evening,” he mumbled.

Nancy disregarded the comment as she asked an usher where the stage entrance was.

“Outside and to the left,” was the answer.

Without another word, the couple hurried toward the exit. Nancy did not even pay attention to the stares from the mayor and his wife as she passed in front of them. A minute or two more, and she and Ned were climbing a flight of steps to the musicians’ room.

“Miss Pruett!” Nancy called out to the young woman when she finally emerged.

The harpist glanced at Nancy with a fearful look in her eyes. “Yes?” she replied.

“I’m Nancy Drew, and this is my friend, Ned Nickerson—”

Noticing the programs in their hands, she asked, “Did you wish an autograph?”

“No—I mean, yes,” Ned replied, broadening his smile. He handed her a pen.

The young woman quickly scrawled her name. “You have lovely handwriting,” Nancy said.

Nonetheless, she observed a certain stiffness in the curve of the letters. Perhaps the performance had exhausted her, or, Nancy wondered, was she suffering from the strain of what had occurred earlier?

“Miss Pruett, I would like to ask you a few questions, if I may—about—” Nancy began.

“About the humiliating thing that happened to me?” the young woman replied, tears forming in her eyes. “There was no excuse—none!”

Nancy explained that she was an amateur detective who had a particular interest in the music festival because of her father’s association with it.

“It seems to us that someone must’ve deliberately turned all the pegs on your harp,” Ned declared.

Miss Pruett blinked her eyes as if trying to push the whole episode out of her mind.

“I appreciate your concern,” she said abruptly, “but I’d rather not talk about it now, if you don’t mind.”

“Will you be here tomorrow?” Nancy inquired.

“Yes, but I can’t stay after the performance,” the harpist said, adding nervously, “I have some errands to do. Now please excuse me. I must go.”

“But—” Nancy said, hoping to persuade her into granting an appointment.

The young woman walked away, however, and disappeared through a door at the end of the hall.

“She obviously doesn’t want our help,” Ned remarked.

“I have a hunch, though, that she really needs it,” Nancy replied.

“Speaking of help,” Ned said, “I could use some myself.”

“You could?” Nancy replied, suddenly shifting her eyes to his.

He sighed, allowing the bewildered expression on Nancy’s face to grow into curiosity.

“Don’t keep me in suspense, Ned,” the girl detective said as they headed for the car.

But the boy was savoring the attention. “I’d rather you tell me all your news.” Ned chuckled.

“That’s not a fair answer,” Nancy said, somewhat hurt. “After all, we’re supposed to be friends, and you’re practically saying you don’t want my help.”

“I didn’t say that at all,” Ned retorted, suddenly wishing he had never started the conversation.

Nancy, in turn, settled into silence until they reached the newly opened diner.

“You might as well have said it,” she murmured finally.