The Nancy Drew Sleuth Book (7 page)

“That cabdriver wasn’t exaggerating,” Nancy said. “It’s a slim chance, but let’s hunt for a dark car with scraped tires on the right side.” She hailed a limousine taxi, and all of the girls piled in.

“Where to?” the driver inquired.

For a moment, Nancy was embarrassed. Finally she said, “Just drive around until we spot a dark sedan with bad scrape marks on the right wheels.”

“I know exactly where it is,” the cabbie replied, much to the girls’ surprise. “I passed it at the edge of town, where both tires blew out. I stopped to see if I could help, and the man said, ‘No. I only have one spare. But there’s a garage nearby. Ask them to send a tow truck here!’”

“What did the people in the car look like?” Martie asked.

“The man had a thin face and funny-looking ears. The woman with him had light red hair and was kind of heavy.”

“That’s the couple we’re trying to find!” Martie blurted out. “They’re thieves!”

“What!” the driver exclaimed.

Nancy urged him to go to the garage as fast as possible. He set off with a roar and soon pulled up in front of the repair shop. The girls jumped out, and Nancy quickly paid their fare.

“Be careful!” the driver warned as the girls hurried toward the building.

A car was just being lowered from the right lift. The two suspected thieves were standing alongside it.

The instant Nancy saw them, she dashed into the office and said to the owner, “Don’t let these people get away! They’re wanted for assault and robbery at Wright’s Jewelry Store. May I use your phone?”

“Go ahead,” the man replied. “I’ll keep the couple here.”

Nancy dialed police headquarters and spoke to Chief McGinnis. When he heard her amazing report, he said, “We’ll be there at once.”

Within five minutes, three officers arrived, and the suspects were held while their car was searched. The jewelry found in it was identified by Mr. Wright, who had been hastily summoned. He also identified the mask worn by his attacker.

Martie took the telltale light red hairs from her purse. They matched the woman’s hair perfectly. The couple was arrested and taken away in the police car.

NANCY brought her three-legged childhood blackboard from the attic and set it up in the living room. She took a piece of chalk from a box, consulted a slip of paper in her left hand, then wrote:

A few minutes later, the members of her Detective Club began to arrive. In turn, each one asked, “What’s that?”

“A code for you to figure out,” Nancy replied. “Buried in a sentence is a name you know well. What does the sentence say, and what is the name hidden inside?”

The girls stared at the blackboard for several minutes. Each one finally said, “I give up.”

Nancy smiled. “A good detective absolutely never gives up.”

She asked the girls to take their notebooks and work on the puzzle. “Most codes are based on the transposition of letters or numbers,” she said. “This one is based on letters.”

She left the room for ten minutes. When the young detective returned, she asked, “Any luck?”

“A little,” Peg spoke up. “The first line says, ‘We can certainly,’ but what’s the
N
for?”

Nancy laughed. “How about hooking it to the beginning of the next line?”

Peg did. “The next word could be
note.”

“Good. Keep going.”

Presently, Sue called out, “Note a cote. A cote’s where you keep pigeons, isn’t it?”

Nancy nodded. “So far you have, ‘We can certainly note a cote.‘ What’s next?”

“Ah, I know,” Karen exclaimed. “Pigeons coo. The sentence is, ‘We can certainly note a cote by the cooing. ’”

The others clapped, then Peg asked, “How do we find the hidden name?”

Nancy suggested that the girls try using numerical relationships in the sentence this time, like perhaps the first letter in each word. “But that isn’t the answer in this case, so try something else.”

At once the Detective Club members began to count on their fingers. After a while, Peg held up five fingers, and Nancy nodded.

“Girls,” said Peg, “try every fifth letter.”

They did, and called out in unison, “It’s
Nancy!
The hidden name is Nancy!”

There was much laughter, and the girls remarked, “Well, what do you know?” “Pretty clever and tricky,” and “How come we couldn’t figure it out ourselves?”

When the noise subsided, Nancy said, “You just aren’t used to codes, but don’t worry—there’s plenty more where that came from. This was just a teaser. Karen and I have a mystery for all of us to solve. She will tell you about it.”

Karen stood up and showed the others a paper that looked as if words on it might be a sentence, but the message made no sense.

“This is a copy of a piece of paper my father found at the bank in the safe-deposit box of a Mr. Carvello who died. Dad is an executor and is trying to settle the estate. In the will, Mr. Carvello left everything to a children’s home, but nothing of value has been found in his house except a few pieces of furniture. Since Mr. Carvello was reputed to be wealthy, this seems strange. But Dad did tell me the man was an eccentric.”

Nancy asked, “Does your dad think this paper may contain a clue to something of value that’s hidden?”

“He does,” Karen replied. “He planned to take the message to a specialist in breaking codes, but he said if the members of our Detective Club wanted to work on it, he’d wait a couple of days.”

“We’ll certainly try,” Nancy replied, and the other girls said, “You bet.”

Nancy took the paper and copied the strange words on the blackboard.

Peg called out, “It looks like some foreign language!”

“It sure does,” Martie agreed. “Nancy, how do we tackle this?”

“First, look for double letters. Then, figure out what double letters occur most frequently in words.”

After several moments Honey said, “Not
AA,
except in ‘baa, baa,’ but that’s not likely to be in a code. Say, how about
EE?”

Nancy nodded, and Peg said, “Double
I
isn’t usual, but double
O
is. And there’s
BB
and
CC
and
DD
and
FF
and
GG
and
LL
and
MM
and
NN
and double
P
and—”

“You’d better try the vowels first,” Nancy advised.

Karen was saying, “Feed, feel ...”

Sue struggled with
BOO
. “Maybe book.
COO—
perhaps cool. Maybe fool, food ...”

Nancy reminded the club members that she doubted the first
F
meant
F
, rather some other transposed letter.

Sue continued as she had started. “
GOO, LOO
. Maybe the word is
look!”

“That’s a clever guess,” Nancy said. She wrote down the letters of the alphabet, one under the other. Then she put
S
next to
O, F
next to
L
, and wrote
U
alongside
K.

Peg had another clue. “The last word has an
SS
for
OO
and an
F
for an
L
. Could the word be
floor?”

“Let’s try it,” said Nancy. “If it’s correct, it would give us
C
for
F
and
F
for
L
, and
S
for
O,
and
I
for
R.”

The girls were excited. Now it was easy to fill in
FALSE FLOOR.
Sure they were on the right track, each member worked diligently. Letter after letter was chalked on the board.

Suddenly, Peg cried out, “I think I can see the pattern!”

Nancy smiled. “I see it, too.”

“I suppose I’m slow,” Cathy said, “but I don’t get it. Will you tell me?”

“It’s the last letter of the alphabet, then the first,” Peg explained. “Then comes the second to last and the second, the third to last and the third, and so on.”

Peg slapped her forehead with her palm. “Of course! How could I have missed it?”

“It’s quite confusing,” Nancy admitted. “Just to get it all clear in our minds, let’s write each code letter followed by the corresponding letter in the alphabet.”

The girls did, and came up with the following columns:

When this was done, Nancy said, “Now let’s see if we can decipher the mysterious message. Just write the corresponding letters underneath the code letters.”

The girls did, and cried out in amazement.

Karen jumped up. “I must tell my dad about this right away!”

Nancy said, “Ask him if we may go out to Mr. Carvello’s mansion and try to find the false floor and the treasure!”

Karen called her father and talked for a long time. Then she hung up, smiling. “Dad was absolutely thrilled. Doesn’t see how we broke the code so fast. He’s leaving the front-door key at his office. He’s sorry he can’t wait for us, but he has to go to a business meeting. Says we’ll need extra nourishment for our afternoon’s work, so he’s treating us all to lunch at the golf club. We’ll take my station wagon.”

Two hours later the girls reached Mr. Carvello’s residence, and Karen let them in.

“What a gloomy place!” Cathy Chase exclaimed, discovering that the electricity had been turned off. “Imagine living here all alone!”

Nancy pointed out that the curtains were drawn.

“Let’s open them,” Cathy urged. “This place gives me the creeps the way it is.”

The girls lifted shades and pulled back drapes. Instantly, the first floor became very attractive as sunlight fell on the rugs, furniture, and pictures.

The searchers began to turn back the carpeting and move the furnishings, hunting for a false floor. They went from room to room examining every inch, but found nothing.