The Secret in the Old Attic (6 page)

“Nancy, you’re a fast worker and a thorough one!” he complimented her. “If that man actually is Bushy Trott—and you say Mr. Dight started to speak his name—then my case seems to be shaping up.”

“What’s the next move?”

“I’ll arrange to have the man watched. We’ll learn everything we can about him.”

“Is there something else I can do?” Nancy asked.

“You’ve already helped me a lot,” Mr. Drew replied. “If there’s anything more, I’ll let you know.”

What she had discovered in the factory had increased Nancy’s interest in her father’s case. She hoped that soon she would be able to follow up more clues for him. In the meantime she must tackle the problems surrounding Mr. March’s mystery.

“Watch your step in that old attic,” Mr. Drew warned his daughter. “No telling what’s there.”

“I promise, Dad,” she said, smiling.

The following afternoon Nancy returned to the mansion. Susan and her grandfather were listening to the radio in the little girl’s bedroom. As Nancy entered, the orchestra was playing a gay, new melody. As the sweet strains continued, Mr. March cried out:

“That’s it! That’s one of my son’s compositions! I can’t remember the name of it, but I certainly recall the tune.”

“It’s called ‘Song of the Wind,’ ” Nancy said.

“Who do they say wrote it?” he demanded.

“I can’t recall,” Nancy confessed. When the composer’s name was not announced, she said, “Suppose I run downtown and buy a copy of the sheet music?”

Mr. March urged her to hurry, and could hardly wait for her return.

“The composer is Ben Banks,” she told him as soon as she got back.

“Ben Banks! Ben Banks!” Mr. March shouted angrily. “Who’s he? The man is a thief! That song was Fipp’s!”

Nancy promised to try locating Ben Banks. She would get in touch with the publisher of “Song of the Wind,” and ask for information about the so-called composer.

“I’ll never rest until that rascal is found and exposed!” Mr. March stormed. “Why, the upstart! Not only does he rob the dead, but he cheats Susan out of her rightful inheritance!”

The elderly man’s tirade went on and on. To quiet him, Nancy offered to play the selection on the piano, so the two went downstairs to the music room.

The old piano was badly out of tune and she soon gave up. Nancy had just begun to sing the lovely song to Mr. March when from upstairs came a bloodcurdling shriek for help!

 

 

 

NANCY raced upstairs two steps at a time. Susan was in her bed, cowering under the covers.

“Thank goodness she’s all right!” Nancy thought and sped on to the attic.

“Who’s up there?” she called.

“Me! Effie!”

Nancy doubled her steps. She found the maid alone, jumping about. She was waving her left hand in the air and wailing pitifully.

“It was that skeleton, I tell you!” Dramatically the maid pointed to the bony figure which leaned forward at a rakish angle from the open door of the wardrobe closet. “He just reached out and bit my finger! Oh, the thing is alive!” Nancy examined Effie’s finger, but in the dim light could see no evidence of a wound. She wondered if the girl’s imagination had been playing tricks on her.

Nancy heard footsteps on the stairway and called down, “Don’t bother to come up, Mr. March. Everything is all right, I guess.”

“Except me,” Effie wailed.

“Let’s go downstairs,” Nancy said to the maid. “I’ll check your finger again. By the way, what were you looking for in the wardrobe?”

“Some clean linen to change the beds. There’s hardly any in the house. Oh, my whole arm hurts now!”

When they reached the second floor, Nancy examined the maid’s hand. She received a distinct shock, and Effie herself began to sob loudly.

“Look at it! I’m going to die!” she cried.

This remark brought Susan to the hall. She and her grandfather gazed in awe at Effie’s swollen forearm and the tiny puncture in her index finger.

“What did that?” the child asked in fright.

Nancy did not reply to the question. Instead she gently told Susan to get back into bed. Quickly she asked Mr. March for a large handkerchief and tied it tightly about Effie’s upper arm.

“We’d better take her to a doctor,” she said. “There isn’t anything here with which to take care of this wound.” To Mr. March she whispered, “I’m afraid a poisonous spider bit Effie.”

Nancy drove speedily to the office of Dr. Ivers. Fortunately he was in. He confirmed Nancy’s diagnosis, adding that the spider probably was a black widow.

“One rarely finds them in this part of the country,” he said, getting a hypodermic needle and filling it with an antidote. By now Effie looked and acted quite ill.

The physician patted her shoulder and tried to keep the girl’s mind off herself. He said, “There’s another dangerous spider, the tarantula, but that isn’t native to these parts either.”

Effie began to moan, saying she knew her young life was over.

“Nonsense,” said Dr. Ivers. “Fortunately, Miss Drew put the tourniquet on, and you won’t suffer as much as you might have otherwise. You’d better keep quiet for a couple of days, though.”

“How am I going to do my work?” Effie asked.

“Don’t worry about that,” Nancy spoke up quickly. “I’ll help you.”

The doctor gave Nancy instructions for taking care of Effie, and told the patient not to be alarmed. He also advised that the old house be searched thoroughly for the black widow spider.

“I believe I’ll go home and get Mrs. Gruen,” Nancy told Effie as they drove off. “She can come out for a few hours to help us.”

The Drews’ housekeeper was glad to be of assistance. As soon as they reached the March home, she and Nancy went immediately to the attic, carrying an insecticide spray gun and a broom. There they brushed down dozens of webs and caught every spider they could locate.

“We’ve found none except the common house variety.” Nancy sighed. “Where
could
the black widow have crawled to?”

“I’m not going to let you stay here unless we find it,” Hannah Gruen said firmly.

Nancy tried to dispel the woman’s fears by saying, “Effie must have scared him off!” But she was worried. Perhaps an intruder had left the deadly spider there as a warning!

“I must write to the publisher of ‘Song of the Wind’ at once for the address of Ben Banks,” Nancy determined. “In all the excitement I completely forgot him.”

“Oh!” Hannah Gruen said suddenly.

Crack!
Her broom came down with a whack on a spider which had just crawled from beneath the wardrobe. Nancy used the spray gun.

“It’s the black widow!” Nancy cried jubilantly. “Now you’ll have nothing to worry about.”

“Unless there are more of these poisonous creatures up here,” declared Mrs. Gruen.

She agreed, however, that it probably would be safe for Nancy to stay, but cautioned her to be extra careful.

While the housekeeper prepared supper, Nancy hurriedly wrote a note to the publisher of “Song of the Wind.” Then she went to make Effie comfortable. The maid was feverish and declared her arm itched dreadfully. When she finally dropped off to sleep, Nancy tiptoed away to see that Susan was all right.

The little girl looked up and said, “A bad spider bit Effie. She told me all about it.”

Nancy was provoked to learn the maid had told the story to Susan, but she merely smiled. “That’s right, Susan, but only good spiders live around here. The bad one is dead now.”

To get the child’s mind off the unfortunate subject, she told her about the funny antics of the jumping spiders and the flying variety.

“Some of them are just like trapeze performers in a circus,” Nancy explained. “They spin a thread and then let the wind carry them through the air. Sometimes they go all the way from shore to a ship at sea.”

“Oh, that kind of spider would be lots of fun to watch!” Susan remarked, her fears gone now.

Hannah Gruen brought up a tray of food for the little girL Nancy decided that while Susan was eating supper, Mr. March might sit with her, and she would drive Hannah home. When they reached the Drew house, Bess and George were just leaving.

“Where in the world have you been, Nancy?” George remonstrated. “We thought something had happened to you. How about having dinner at my house and telling us about your new mystery?”

Nancy thanked her, but explained why she could not accept the invitation. Bess exclaimed in horror when she heard about the black widow episode.

“You’d better stay out of that place,” she advised.

“I’ll be careful. Don’t worry,” Nancy replied. She told the girls to climb into her car and she would drop them off.

Nancy left her friends at George’s house and went on. After stopping to buy a flashlight battery, she drove to the March estate and was in time to tuck Susan into bed. The little girl looked up at her wistfully.

“I wish you’d always stay with me,” she confided. “You’re my best friend.”

Nancy leaned down and kissed her. “I’m going to be here for a while,” she promised. “Suppose we pretend each day is a year.”

Susan liked this game, and soon she went to sleep happily. Nancy joined Mr. March on the first floor, where he was listening to the radio. As they ate supper together, he told her more about his family.

“I guess my son Fipp came by his musical ability naturally,” Mr. March said. “My mother wrote songs for the sheer joy of it. They were composed only for the family though, and never got beyond manuscript form. My son used parts of the melodies in his work. The piece called ‘Song of the Wind’ was based in part on one that my mother wrote years ago.”

Nancy pounced eagerly on this bit of information. It might prove to be good evidence in case of a lawsuit!

“What became of your mother’s old songs?” she asked quickly.

“I couldn’t say. A few of the pieces may have been put away in the attic. I’m sure Fipp didn’t have them. The old melodies had been hummed to him so many times he knew them by heart.”

The clue was sufficient to start Nancy on another intensive search. As soon as she washed the dishes, Nancy put the new battery in her flashlight and went to the attic. She began poking around in boxes. One of these was filled with interesting newspapers, some of which dated back a hundred years.

“I’m reading more than I’m working,” the young detective scolded herself with a laugh. “I’d better get on with the hunt.”

Going hurriedly through the remaining papers, Nancy came at last to the bottom of the box. Her gaze fastened upon a ribbon-tied roll of parchment.

“This may be the very thing I’m after!” she thought excitedly.

Unwrapping it, she discovered the sheet contained the music and words of a song! She hummed the first few bars. They were not familiar.

She started to investigate another box which stood nearby. As Nancy eagerly plunged her hand down, something sharp buried itself in her finger. With a sinking heart Nancy wondered if she might have been poisoned the way Effie had been!

Gingerly she pushed aside the papers, looking for a black widow spider. Then Nancy laughed as she saw what had pricked her finger. Men’s antique shoe buckles!

“What gorgeous ones!” she thought, lifting out several pairs of the old silver ornaments. They were studded with semiprecious stones, one of which had a sharp prong on it.

Nancy was happy over the find. The buckles would bring a nice sum of money for Mr. March. After wrapping them carefully in paper, she put the buckles in her pocket.

At that instant the flashlight which Nancy had laid on the floor rolled away and clicked off. As she leaned forward to pick it up, something landed with a soft thud against her hand.

Out of nowhere floated a few eerie notes of music like the faint strumming of a harp.

 

 

 

NANCY, in the pitch-black attic, kept perfectly still. She hardly breathed. Chills ran up and down her spine.

The music had ceased, but from nearby came the sounds of stealthy footsteps. These were followed by muffled rapping sounds.

“There isn’t a harp or a piano here,” Nancy told herself, trying to regain her composure. “Maybe this is just a trick to keep people out of the attic.”

The rapping had stopped now. Nancy reached again for the flashlight. This time she found it, but to her dismay it would not light.

“The store clerk must have sold me a defective battery,” Nancy said to herself, frowning.

She was too far from the stairway to get there safely in the dark among the maze of boxes and trunks.

“What am I going to do?” Nancy thought.

Suddenly she heard her name murmured. “Naa-ancy! Na-a-ancy!”

“It must be Mr. March,” she concluded as the call became louder. “Thank goodness. Now there’ll be a light.”

She stood up, then froze to the spot as a new thought struck her. If someone really were in the attic, he might harm anyone coming up the steps! Summoning all her courage, Nancy called out loudly:

“I’m in the attic. Don’t come up! Just hold a light for me at the foot of the stairs!”

Nancy had expected a hand to be clapped over her mouth, but nothing happened. In relief she called out again, saying her flashlight was not working.

A few seconds later a light shone up the stairway. Mr. March was speaking to her cheerily.

Nancy gingerly found her way across the attic. Soon she was back on the second floor. Mr. March took hold of her arm.