The Nancy Drew Sleuth Book (8 page)

Finally Peg stood up to stretch her back. “We’ve sure made a mess of this place, and yet haven’t discovered the treasure.” She sighed.

The others restored the furniture to the proper places and went to the second floor. Here it was difficult to work, as beds and bureaus were heavy to move. It took the girls over an hour to finish their search of the upstairs.

“And no false floor,” Sue complained.

Nancy smiled. “A good detective never allows herself to be discouraged. Come on, let’s try the third floor.”

The Detective Club members climbed the steep steps. At the top they saw two bedrooms and an attic.

“My hunch is,” said Nancy, “that these rooms won’t give us a clue, but the attic may. Suppose two of you examine the bedrooms. The rest of us will check the attic.”

It was soon evident that neither of the rooms contained a false floor, so all of the girls concentrated on the big, open attic. There were many trunks and boxes, and the place was cluttered. In order to examine the wooden floor beneath, the young detectives had to shift the objects around until their arms ached.

“Nancy, do you think Mr. Carvello might have meant the floor of a trunk?” Peg asked, rubbing her left shoulder.

“He could have. Let’s find out.”

Each trunk was turned upside down and tapped thoroughly. They proved to be solid.

“Guess again, Peg,” Cathy teased.

“I’m all out of guesses. We’ve certainly covered this house from top to bottom!”

“With one exception,” Nancy reminded her. “The cellar.”

“Oh, no!” Sue groaned. “I’m exhausted!”

But she trooped down to the basement with the others, not wanting to admit defeat.

“That false floor had better be here,” Karen declared, “or I’ll never bother to decipher another code!”

A series of rooms made up the basement. First the club members entered a canned fruit closet, its shelves bare. The floor was solid cement. While the girls were busy examining a rec room, they suddenly noticed that Nancy was missing.

“Where’d she go?” Karen asked, and called her friend’s name.

There was no answer! Worried, she and the others ran along the corridor calling the young detective and opening doors. Finally they came to a large door and had a hard time opening it. When it budged, they were relieved and surprised. Nancy stood inside!

“You gave us a real scare!” Karen said.

“I’m sorry,” Nancy apologized. “But I found this refrigeration room—”

“This is the biggest freezer I’ve ever seen!” Sue giggled.

“It certainly is huge,” Nancy agreed. “I had a sudden hunch that maybe the code meant the floor of a refrigerator or freezer, so I hunted for one. I walked in here and examined the box thoroughly, but found nothing. By the way, it’s a good thing the power was turned off, or I’d be frozen by now.”

“Icicle Nancy,” Sue kidded.

“Girls,” Nancy said suddenly, “I have another hunch. Look at what we’re standing on!”

For the first time the others realized that the floor was a heavy, wooden slatted mat on top of cement.

Karen exclaimed, “The false floor! Oh, let’s pick the mat up and see what’s underneath! ”

It took the combined strength of all to turn the mat up on end. They stared at what was underneath—a two-foot-square section set into the cement with a pull ring!

Karen tugged at it. At last, with Sue’s help, she pulled up the slab of cement. Underneath lay a metal box. The girls lifted it out.

“This must contain the treasure!” Karen cried out. She tried to open the lid of the metal container, but it would not budge.

Everyone sighed in frustration, then Nancy spoke up. “Karen, maybe your dad has a key to this.”

“Right. Let’s take the box to his office.”

The girls locked the house and left hurriedly in the station wagon. Mr. Carpenter had returned from his meeting and stared unbelievingly at the metal box when Karen set it on his desk. Quickly she told how the girls had solved the mystery.

“Please open it if you have a key,” she begged.

Her father took a large bunch of keys from his desk drawer. “I hope one of these fits,” he said. “I found them in Mr. Carvello’s house, but they were not marked.”

After several tries he picked a slender key that fit. There was a click of the lock, then he raised the lid.

“Money!” Karen cried out.

Bills were tied in bundles. Mr. Carpenter lifted them out one by one and asked the girls to count them. For several minutes no one spoke, then one by one the club members called out a sum.

Karen’s father added them on a machine. Finally he exclaimed, “That’s unbelievable! There is a hundred and fifty thousand dollars here!”

“And it’s all for the children’s home!” Karen exclaimed.

Her father looked at Nancy Drew. “This is an amazing bit of detective work.”

She smiled and said, “There are very bright girls in our club.”

“I still can’t figure out why Mr. Carvello hid the money in the refrigeration room and left this complicated code for his executors to figure out!” Karen declared.

“As I told you before,” Mr. Carpenter replied, “he was an eccentric person. Even though he was an engineer by profession, he was an expert on codes, which he studied as a hobby. He often helped the police with this type of thing.”

Peg giggled. “Well, he certainly didn’t help us! He went out of his way to make matters complicated.”

“He must have known Nancy Drew was around to solve his puzzle!” Karen concluded.

“SUE’S fifteen minutes late,” Nancy remarked to the members of the Detective Club. “Were any of you in touch with her?”

“No,” the girls responded.

Just then the telephone rang. Nancy hurried to answer it. The caller was Sue Fletcher, and she was quite excited.

“Please come downtown right away! There’s a big fire! The neighbors think an arsonist set it. I found some shoe prints leading from the back door. Maybe we can find the person who set the fire!”

“Good idea,” Nancy said. “We’ll be right there. Where is it?”

“On the corner of Krum and Archer streets. It’s a big, old white house. Hurry!”

Nancy hung up and gave the girls Sue’s message. The club members jumped up and seconds later piled into Nancy’s car. Soon they arrived at the scene of the fire.

The old dwelling was burning briskly. Sparks were flying in every direction. The ornate old-fashioned trim on the building was igniting and falling in flaming chunks to the ground.

Fire engines, pumpers, and a hook and ladder were already in action, with some of the firefighters manning hoses and others climbing to the upper floors. A sizable crowd of onlookers was held at a safe distance by police.

“Let’s find Sue,” Nancy suggested, and the girls circumvented the crowd to reach the back of the house.

Here, flames were bursting through broken windowpanes. Sue stood near a rear hedge watching in fascination.

“This is dreadful!” she said. “Can you imagine anyone setting fire to a beautiful old home like this?”

“No,” Nancy spoke up, “or to any home. A person must be insane to do such a thing. What did the neighbors say, Sue?”

“The woman next door saw a figure in a long raincoat and a rain hat run out of the back door and go through the hedge over there. Soon afterward the fire broke out in several places at once. That’s why she believes he set the fire.”

“It was a man?” Peg asked.

“The neighbor thinks so,” Sue replied.

Martie said thoughtfully, “Maybe the man was a burglar. But why he would bother to wreck the place afterward?”

“To make sure no clues are found,” Peg replied. “Don’t you think so, Nancy?”

Nancy smiled. “You’re jumping to conclusions. You don’t even know if the man was a burglar.”

Her friends admitted this was true. But then why was the home set on fire?

“Let’s begin by examining the shoe prints,” Nancy suggested.

“They’re funny!” Martie declared. “They don’t match. Maybe the arsonist has a clubfoot and wears special shoes?”

“That’s a good guess,” Nancy agreed, “but why wouldn’t the two resemble each other? These are totally different. One has a smooth sole and a corrugated heel and is smaller than the other, which has a rubber heel with a star on it and a corrugated rubber sole.”

“What does it mean?” Karen asked.

Nancy shrugged, then said, “The Federal Bureau of Investigation has a complete record of the soles and heels of every pair of shoes manufactured in the United States.”

“But how can you get these prints to the FBI in Washington, D.C.?”

Sue said, “You could photograph them.”

“That’s true,” Nancy agreed. “But you have to measure the length and width of each section—the front part, the arch, and the heel. These measurements must be sent along with the photographs.”

Martie sighed. “Sounds like a lot of work.” She was glancing at the house, and suddenly started to scream. “Oh!”

The others stared in the direction she pointed, and they cried out, too. A large, flaming cornice had broken loose from under the overhang of the roof and was hurtling toward the garden. Instinctively, the girls pushed through the hedge into a large flower bed on the other side. They were not a moment too soon. The cornice landed and split into hundreds of pieces, sending a shower of sparks high into the air.

“Maybe we shouldn’t stay here,” Peg said fearfully.

Nancy was calm now. “I’m sure we’re safe on this side,” she said. “And we should work on the footprints. Those in the garden are ruined, so we must pick up the ones over here. I’ll dash home and get my camera and my moulage kit. You wait here.”

As the young sleuth hurried off, Honey Rushmore asked, “What’s a moulage kit?”

“It holds material for making a plaster cast of things like shoe prints,” Peg replied.

Sue thought the girls should hunt for a good sample of the suspect’s impressions for Nancy to use. It took them several minutes to locate a perfect right and left print in the soft earth, since their own were there, as well as those of another person, presumably the gardener.

Nancy arrived just as the club members made their decision. “They’re excellent,” she agreed. “Deep enough that we won’t have to make a wall around the prints to keep the plaster from running over the sides.”