Password to Larkspur Lane (14 page)
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
“It isn’t the old lady!” came Miss Tyson’s voice. “It’s Nancy Drew!”
Adam Thorne growled.
“What?
I thought we’d knocked her out of action.”
“What?
I thought we’d knocked her out of action.”
Miss Tyson said in a worried voice, “That’s what Tarr and Jackson reported. Tarr himself pushed her—”
“Quiet!” snapped Thorne. “She’s tricked us. Take her to the house. We’ll lock her up.”
Quick as lightning, Nancy plunged out of the light and desperately raced down the hill. Taken by surprise, her captors hesitated, then pounded after her, the dog barking furiously.
Blinded by the sudden change from light to darkness, Nancy stumbled and fell. An instant later the Great Dane leaped on her.
“Grab that leash!” shouted Thorne. The dog was yanked back, then someone jerked Nancy to her feet.
“We’ll take her to the house!” panted Thorne.
With the ex-lawyer in the lead, flanked by the nurse and the attendant, and guarded in the rear by the gatekeeper and his dog, Nancy was marched to the mansion. Bell was waiting in the main hall.
“Who is this?” he demanded. “Where’s Mrs. Eldridge?”
“We haven’t found the old fox yet,” Thorne answered. “This is the Drew girl I warned you about.”
Bell’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by trespassing on private property?”
“I meant no harm,” Nancy replied truthfully.
Thorne snorted scornfully. “She’s been spying. It’s your fault, Bell. I told you not to bring Dr. Spire here. If the old woman’s shoulder was dislocated, you should have let it stay that way. Too bad you aren’t a real doctor,” he added unpleasantly. “You could have set it yourself.”
“Never mind that,” Miss Tyson put in sharply. “How did she get in here?”
“Luther, bring the gatekeeper quickly!” Bell ordered. “Just how did you get in, Miss Drew?”
“I came in at the entrance,” Nancy replied. “The larkspur is beautiful—”
“I’m not interested in flowers. I think—” Bell checked himself.
He turned to Adam Thorne and spoke in an undertone, but Nancy, straining her ears, heard him say “password to Larkspur Lane” before their voices became hushed.
After a few minutes the attendant appeared with the gateman. “Jones, have you ever seen this young woman?” Bell demanded, glaring at the man standing before him.
“I? No, sir,” the guard declared, not recognizing Nancy dressed in her own clothes.
“Did anybody come in by the gate tonight?” Bell asked sharply.
Nancy saw fear flicker in the man’s eyes as he met Bell’s hard stare. Through no fault of his own, the gateman had let intruders into the grounds!
Jones swallowed. “Uh-no, chief,” he said. “Nobody came in or out.”
A wave of relief swept over Nancy. No alarm would go out for Mrs. Eldridge. The gang would continue to think she was hiding on the grounds.
“All right,” Bell said. “Get back to the gate.” Then, turning to Thorne, he said, “Let’s continue this in my office.”
Miss Tyson grinned maliciously as she prodded Nancy along and into a large, luxurious room. A thick green carpet covered the floor and in the center stood a large mahogany desk. The walls, paneled in a rich-looking wood, were hung with costly oil paintings.
“Shut the door, Luther,” Bell ordered.
Bell seated himself behind the desk, motioning Nancy to stand opposite him. There was tense silence for a moment. Then Bell reached for a desk telephone.
“I am going to call the police, Miss Drew, and turn you over to them on a charge of trespassing, breaking, and entering with attempt to steal.”
“I wish you would,” Nancy replied, “if it is possible over that dummy telephone.”
“Didn’t I tell you she was sharp-eyed?” Thorne scolded. “You can’t fool her. Follow my advice and put her away. This is a waste of time.”
“What do you mean? Do you wish to have me summon the police?” Bell blustered. “Why do you call this a dummy telephone?”
“Because, in answer to your first question, I should be happy to be escorted from here under police protection,” Nancy retorted. “I know the telephone is a dummy because there are no—”
She checked herself abruptly. No use proving her powers of observation!
“See here, Nancy Drew,” Bell said, pointing a finger at her. “Stop all this talk and tell me how you entered these grounds—and why. I know all about you. Sylvan Lake is a long distance from here, and you did not walk.”
“There are various ways of traveling.”
“Bell, I’m telling you it’s just foolishness to try to match wits with this girl,” Thorne put in. “I know a way to make her talk—and what’s more, I’m sure her illustrious father will pay plenty to get his precious daughter back.”
“An excellent idea, Thorne,” Bell said with an evil smile. “What would you suggest we do first?”
“Put her in the cistern,” said Thorne. “I guess a couple of days without food or drink, down in the dark and cold, with the rats and spiders, will make Miss Drew answer any question we ask.”
Miss Tyson laughed harshly, looking straight at Nancy to see if she winced at the prospect. “That will take some of the snap out of her,” she said.
A shiver went down Nancy’s spine, but she did not change expression.
Bell’s cold eyes studied her carefully. “You’ve caused us a lot of trouble,” he said softly. “Because of you we had to give up our other headquarters. My partner Mr. Tooker will not overlook that very readily.” Bell toyed with a sharp-pointed letter opener on his desk.
Miss Tyson spoke up. “The pigeon keeper guessed she had found that bird, kept it, and then followed it to Tooker’s. Now I’m sure he was right. Only from the message that pigeon carried could she have learned the password. And I still say she couldn’t have entered without it.”
Luther cleared his throat. “But Jones said—”
“He was lying,” Miss Tyson broke in. “Where’s the car you came in?” she asked Nancy.
Nancy thought it best to keep stalling. The farther away Bess, George, and Mrs. Eldridge got, the safer they would be.
Nancy smiled. “Why don’t you search the grounds for the car?”
“That’s enough!” snapped Bell. “Take her away.”
Nancy knew she was in a hopeless predicament, and reasoned that more was to be gained by strategy than by a desperate attempt to break loose. As she was marched out of the room, she heard Bell say, “The disappearance of the Eldridge woman and the Drew girl showing up have me so upset I can’t think. I’m going upstairs and tell Adolf. Let him handle this. It’s dynamite.”
“Do as you please,” Thorne said coldly.
Nancy, her arms pinned behind her back, was shoved out onto the porch and toward the buildings beyond the house. Just outside the pigeon loft, Thorne stooped and jerked at an iron ring in the ground. It was attached to a round steel lid about three feet in diameter. Beneath it gaped a black hole.
“Well, down you go, Nancy Drew!” Thorne laughed.
Nancy looked around desperately. There was no escape. As the nurse pushed her, the trapped girl was forced to start down a swaying, flimsy wooden ladder into the dark, damp hole. Down, down, ten or twelve feet Nancy went, until she could feel the slimy bottom under her feet.
“This is worse than I bargained for,” she thought ruefully.
The ladder was jerked up and Thorne called, “Don’t worry. You may have it back.”
There was a series of splitting noises, and pieces of the ladder came raining down around Nancy’s head. As she threw up her arms to protect herself, she heard Thorne laugh sardonically.
Then the lid clanged shut!
CHAPTER XIX
Caught!
DESPAIR filled Nancy’s heart and she shivered. The dampness of the old cistern covered her like a clammy hand.
She took a deep breath. “Come on now,” Nancy scolded herself. “Brace up and try to find a way out!”
Stretching her arms wide, Nancy could feel nothing, so she knew her prison was wider than its three-foot lid. When her eyes became accustomed to the darkness, she noticed tiny gleams of light coming from above. Perhaps the lid did not fit tightly.
“Or maybe it’s a phosphorescent glow from some decaying thing,” Nancy thought with distaste. “Whatever it is, I must find out.”
Balancing herself with outstretched arms, she walked cautiously across the slippery floor. It was uneven and Nancy stepped ankle-deep in cold water. A moment later her fingers brushed the moist stone wall. She stared upward and saw light coming through chinks in the wall directly above her.
“I must try to reach those openings, but how?” Then Nancy remembered the pieces of ladder Thorne had mockingly thrown to her.
“Maybe I can use them after all,” she thought. Repressing a shudder, Nancy slid her fingers over the slimy floor for the fragments. “Now’s no time to be squeamish.”
Finding a piece of wood, Nancy fingered it anxiously for a nail. Feeling one, she pulled it loose from the rotten wood and noted that it was long and strong.
“Maybe this will work, and maybe it won’t,” she said half-aloud.
To her horror, she was answered by a throaty chuckle. Nancy gasped. As the sound was repeated she dropped the nail, unnerved. Then, fighting for control, the desperate girl located the noise—it was coming from above. Was someone watching through the chinks?
“Kel-ek-koo-oo-oo!”
As the new noise blended with the chuckles, Nancy suddenly grinned in relief.
As the new noise blended with the chuckles, Nancy suddenly grinned in relief.
“Pigeons! The light must be coming from the loft!”
Frantically she sought the lost nail. Locating it, Nancy began to dig vigorously at the loose mortar. Soon she had hollowed out space enough to give herself one toehold. A little farther above, Nancy dug again, and repeated the process until she could reach no higher on the wall.
Then she climbed up and chipped out another hold. The mortar was hard and her fingers, clutching the nail, grew cramped. The higher she went, the more difficult the task became.
Finally the imprisoned girl was forced to cling to the damp wall, her toes and the fingers of one hand digging into the niches she had scooped out. With her free hand she scraped a higher grip for herself.
At last Nancy’s fingers found the openings through which the light filtered. A big stone rocked under her hand!
Mingled excitement and alarm shot through her. Here was the way out! “But suppose I can’t move the stone or I fall!” she thought. About eight feet below was the stone floor of the cistern.
Nevertheless, Nancy forced herself to try pushing the stone aside. She failed, but suddenly it came loose and fell inward over her head. As the stone plummeted down, it grazed her shoulder, but Nancy managed to grab the top edge of the hole and hold tight.
With a sigh of relief she pulled herself through the enlarged opening and up to freedom! On the earthen floor of the pigeon loft, the young sleuth fell back exhausted and closed her eyes. A few moments later she opened them to the sound of fluttering wings and sleepy cooing. The loft was lighted by a large bright bulb under a small cage containing a pigeon.
“This is the sick bird,” Nancy conjectured, “and it is being kept warm.”
Capsules for messages lay on a shelf. “Good,” Nancy thought. She took a pencil and small pad from her blouse pocket and wrote three identical messages: “SP at once.” Nancy inserted them in the capsules, then caught a pigeon and attached the capsule to its anklet. Quickly she caught another bird, then a third.
“I’d better turn out the light for a few minutes so I won’t be seen releasing these pigeons,” she decided, and unscrewed the bulb.
Nancy now felt her way to the door, opened it, and released the birds. “Fly straight to Ned,” she muttered. “He’s waiting at the Tooker estate.”
Hoping no one had seen the light go off, Nancy turned the bulb on again and fled from the coop to the carriage-house garage.
Here she considered her next move. Nancy knew there must be lights on the landing field, because the gang used their plane at night. “But how do they turn them on? Perhaps at a switchbox in here?”
She opened the door wide enough to squeeze through and saw two large sedans. One was the old car used to kidnap Dr. Spire. Walking past it, Nancy glanced inside and stopped short. She had glimpsed a white blur! Was it a face she saw?
Nancy turned quietly and stepped nearer. As she stared, a figure in one corner of the back seat moved. Someone was seated there, bound and gagged. Quickly Nancy opened the car door. Removing the gag, she asked, “Morgan, how did you get here?”
“They brought me down,” he said hoarsely. “Thorne’s going to finish me off to keep me from talking. But they’ll do it where no one will find me.” He breathed heavily. “The gang’s ready to escape. Tooker has given the signal to clear out.”
“How soon?” asked Nancy as she quickly worked at his bonds.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “Soon.”
“What about the patients?”
“They’ll herd ’em into the cellar.” Anger gave the weakened man strength to continue. “The gang isn’t worried about them. They figure the shock’ll kill some of the old ladies and the rest’ll be too confused and terrified to be much help to the police.”
“Those men are brutes!” Nancy exclaimed. “They mustn’t get away!”
Quickly she climbed from the car and took the nail from her pocket. Nancy inserted it into a tire valve, holding it open until all the air had hissed out. She did the same to the rest of the tires on both cars, then hurried back to Morgan.
“Do you know how they turn on the landing-field lights?” she asked.
“Big oak,” he said weakly, “at the edge of the field. Switch box nailed to the tree.”
“I must turn them on,” she said. “I’ll be back!”
Nancy dashed from the carriage house and ran down the hill toward the level field at the bottom. The moon was coming up and the sloping lawn was bathed in pale light.”
“If only they don’t see me!”
From somewhere behind Nancy came the deepthroated bark of the Great Dane. Was he loose on the grounds? she wondered.
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