Read The Clue of the Broken Locket Online
Authors: Carolyn Keene
Tags: #Piracy (Copyright), #Women Detectives, #Detective and Mystery Stories, #Girls & Women, #Mystery & Detective, #Juvenile Fiction, #Adventure and Adventurers, #Lockets, #Mysteries & Detective Stories, #Fiction, #Family & Relationships, #Treasure Troves, #Adoption, #Women Sleuths, #Adventure Stories, #Drew; Nancy (Fictitious Character), #Twins, #Mystery and Detective Stories
The Clue of the Broken Locket (12 page)
“For Pete’s sake, where did you unearth that thing?” Dave asked with a grin. “Out of an underground passageway?”
Nancy laughed and told the story. Cecily added that they wanted to pry open one of the bird’s feet.
“We’re exhausted,” said Bess. “How about you muscle-men doing this little job?”
Removing the soldered wedge was rather a difficult task. Finally, however, the boys did accomplish it, and Ned reached into the small opening and pulled out a piece of paper folded over many times. When it was laid flat on a table it proved to be a fairly long letter.
Cecily began to read aloud: “ From Simon Delaroy, your brother.’ ”
Cecily looked up excitedly. “This is to my great-great-grandfather—William!”
She continued to read:
“ ‘I am afraid Maryland will be invaded in the war that I know is coming, so, for reasons of safety, I have decided to divide the family fortune into two separate halves. If someone outside our family should find one half, the rest of the family will at least have the other. My dear William, your share I am putting in the corner cupboard in the kitchen. Besides money and some securities I am also including the family silver. This is what I have done: Broken our mother’s locket in two and sent half to you. Perhaps the locket will prove to be a talisman, and, though the worst may happen in the next year or so, someday the two halves of the family may find each other again. We fear that mail from the North will be opened, so I have enclosed only a brief note about the fortune in the locket. By the way, I have hidden my portion of our family treasure in the beach house because that is a place very easily concealed.’ ”
As Cecily finished reading, everyone began to talk at once.
“It looks as if your mystery will be solved, Cecily!” said Bess. “And if this record racket is cleared up too, you and Niko can get married!”
Cecily beamed and said nothing would make her happier.
“But I’m completely puzzled about this beach house,” she said. “We haven’t seen any here. What do you make of it, Nancy?”
Nancy shook her head. “An ordinary beach house most certainly could not be concealed. This must have been a very special kind. Maybe we can find clues to it.”
The young detective said she also wondered why anyone would choose a cupboard for a hiding place. “That, too, must have been a very special one.”
“Why don’t we just march up to the lodge and look for it?” George proposed. “After all, Mr. and Mrs. Karl Driscoll have invited us there, and even if that Vince doesn’t want us around, apparently he isn’t the boss.”
Nancy was eager to follow this move. “It will give us a chance to look for the girl we think is Susan,” she said. “If she is working for the Driscolls, she ought to be around the house at some time. But if she is their prisoner, the sooner we do something about that the better.”
By now it was almost suppertime. The girls fixed a simple meal. The group ate quickly, then set off once more to Pudding Stone Lodge. When they reached it, the house was in complete darkness. No one answered their rings or knocking.
“Maybe they have left,” Bess suggested. “If the Driscolls are crooks, they probably suspect the police are on their trail.”
“I hate to think of those poor twins being dragged off.” Bess sighed. “Especially by such awful relatives.”
The young people waited awhile, but the place remained silent and dark. Finally Nancy said, “We’ll have to come back in the morning and see what we can find out.”
The others agreed. They had had a long, hard day! As soon as they had eaten a snack at the cottage, the boys said good night and left.
Before she fell asleep Nancy’s thoughts again turned to the twins. A hunch came to her. “It’s fantastic,” she admitted to herself. “I won’t even tell the others until I’m surel”
When the group assembled the next morning, Nancy announced a plan for trying to find out whether or not the red-haired girl was a prisoner at the lodge. Cecily was to play a prominent role by standing at a distance in sight of the house and pretending to be the other girl. Nancy would try to work things out so that she could call the attention of the Driscolls to Cecily. The girls synchronized their wristwatches, then all but Cecily went off. Part of the plan was for the three boys to remain hidden on the lodge grounds and trail anyone who came out of the house.
Nancy rang the front doorbell and Mrs. Driscoll came to answer it. She looked surprised but readily admitted the three girls.
“How are the children?” Nancy asked, smiling.
“Oh, they’re fine. They both love it here.” The woman did not offer to let the girls see the twins, however.
“We heard a woman’s scream come from here yesterday afternoon,” George spoke up. “Was anybody hurt?”
Mrs. Driscoll looked startled. “Oh, I guess you must have heard me. I thought I saw a mouse in the kitchen. They always frighten me.”
The girls were dubious but did not continue the discussion.
Nancy spoke up, “Our main reason for coming back is that we picked up a clue regarding the iron bird. Do you mind if we look in the cupboards?”
“I guess it will be all right,” Mrs. Driscoll said, but the girls thought she acted rather nervous.
She followed them into the kitchen and watched as Nancy opened the cupboard door. Only dishes, glassware, and some pots and pans were revealed. The young sleuth pulled over a step stool, climbed up, and examined the top shelf thoroughly. There was no sign that a secret door or sliding panel concealed a hidden treasure.
“Nothing here,” Nancy said, climbing down.
They all walked into the dining room where there was a fireplace. The room had no real cupboard, but alongside the brickwork was a niche in which stood a beautiful vase.
“Are there any other cupboards downstairs?” Nancy asked, casually looking at her watch.
“No,” the woman replied.
At that moment Karl Driscoll walked into the room. He stared at the girls, then nodded curtly, looking annoyed at their presence. Nancy wondered if they had disturbed some project of his. As if lost in thought, she walked toward the window. Suddenly Nancy asked, “Who is that red-haired girl down on the beach? Do you know her?”
The question had an electrifying effect on the Driscolls. They rushed to the window and looked out over the bluff. Cecily was in plain sight below. Now she turned as if heading for the misty end of the lake. With a muttered excuse, Karl Driscoll fairly ran into the kitchen. The girls dared not follow, but they heard a door close softly and footsteps pounding down the cellar stairs.
Nancy continued to look out the window and in about two minutes she spotted two men on the beach—Karl Driscoll and his brother Vince! How had they reached it without her seeing them leave the house? “I’m sure now they use an underground passage,” Nancy thought. The men started off on a run toward the misty end of the lake and disappeared around a bend. Cecily could no longer be seen.
With difficulty, Nancy kept calm. She was sure her ruse had worked! The other red-haired girl
was
being held in the house and the Driscolls thought she had escaped!
was
being held in the house and the Driscolls thought she had escaped!
“Now to hunt for the prisoner!” Nancy thought.
CHAPTER XVII
The Mysterious Beach House
As Nancy wondered how she could get upstairs to investigate the room with the bulls’-eye window, she saw Mrs. Driscoll looking hard at her, Bess, and George.
“I think you’ve done enough searching,” the woman said crisply. “You’d all better go now.”
Nancy knew she could not force the issue. Disappointed, she and her friends thanked Mrs. Driscoll and went outside.
“I hope those two men didn’t catch up with Cecily,” Bess said worriedly.
George chuckled. “She had a good head start. I’m sure she doubled back and is safely locked in the cottage.”
The girls lingered nearby, hidden among the trees. This was the spot where they were to meet the three boys, who came along a few minutes later.
“Any luck?” Nancy asked them.
Ned replied, “No one came out of the house.”
Nancy explained what had happened and the boys gave low whistles. “Wow!” said Burt. “The Driscoll brothers really took the bait!”
“Yes,” said Nancy. “But I wish we could have gone upstairs.”
Suddenly Bess warned, “Ssh! Here come Mrs. Driscoll and the twins.”
The six kept motionless in their hiding place. The woman did not seem to be searching for anyone, however. Yanking a child by each hand, she hurried down the bluff path and set off along the beach in the direction her husband and brother-in-law had taken.
“Now’s our chance!” Nancy said. “If the girl is a prisoner in that house, we must set her free!”
She and the others hurried to the door. It was locked, as was the one to the kitchen.
Nancy turned to Ned and pointed out the bull’s-eye window, which was open. “Do you think you can toss a stone through that window?”
Ned was sure he could. As the group moved through the woods toward the far side of the house, he began looking for a suitable stone.
Nancy rummaged through her handbag for a piece of paper on which to write a message. She did not find any, and the others confessed that they had neither paper nor pencil.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Nancy. “If the girl is locked in that room, she’ll know the stone wasn’t thrown by her enemies—there would be no reason for them to do so. I’m hoping she’ll realize someone is trying to help her.”
Ned stood far enough back, took careful aim, and threw the stone as if it were a high forward pass. It sailed neatly through the round opening! The group below waited tensely for a response. A few minutes went by in complete silence, and they began to despair. Maybe no one was in the room. Then suddenly the stone was tossed out the window!
Nancy was excited. “Someone is a prisoner in there!”
Burt spoke up. “I can’t understand why the Driscolls didn’t check the attic room before they rushed after Cecily.”
Nancy replied, “My guess is that Karl was so excited at seeing the red-haired girl nothing else entered his mind except that his prisoner had escaped. He rushed down to the cellar, found Vince, and dashed to the beach through a secret tunnel. But, in the meantime, Mrs. Driscoll probably was suspicious, and went to the attic to find out. When she discovered the other red-haired girl still there, she grabbed the twins, and went to warn the men—”
She stopped speaking abruptly at the sound of voices in the woods below. In a short while the hidden group could see the three Driscoll adults and the twins coming back to the house. As they came nearer, the little boy cried out, “I wanted to play in the water!”
“Shut up, you brat!” Karl Driscoll said, slapping the boy hard.
The little girl began crying as she tried to comfort her brother. Mrs. Driscoll hustled them into the house and the men followed.
Nancy again thought of her secret hunch. ‘It’s doubly important for us to get to Susan Wayne—or whoever the red-haired girl is—to learn if I’m right,” she said to herself.
“I’d like to sock that guy!” Ned burst out, and the others nodded vigorously.
Then Nancy suggested that Bess, George, Burt, and Dave station themselves to watch the house from every angle. “Ned and I will first check on Cecily. Next, we’ll drive to town and tell our story to Chief Stovall. I hope hell come and make an investigation.”
The couple hurried off to get Ned’s car. They found Cecily in the cottage, cautioned her to keep the door locked, and assured her they would tell her everything later. The trip to Misty Lake village did not take long. Chief Stovall was on duty. He listened patiently to Nancy’s account, but was obviously skeptical. “Your evidence is pretty flimsy, Miss Drew,” he said.
The young sleuth reddened but did not reply. Her blue eyes held a disapproving look, however, and finally the chief promised that he himself would come out with one of his men and look over the lodge premises.
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