The Strange Message in the Parchment (13 page)

Eezy, who had grabbed his shepherd’s crook when they left the cabin, brandished it in the air. Then he said, “Nancy Drew is not a kidnapper, and I think you two had better get out of here quick before my dog Rover chews you up!”

The man who had not spoken now urged his companion to leave, but the other one stood his ground. “We’re taking the guilty girl along with us!” he shouted.

Nancy spoke up. “I am not a kidnapper and I am not going with you!” she declared.

“Oh yes you are!” one of the men snarled and grabbed Nancy’s arm. “You’re coming with us whether you want to or not!”

His strong fingers dug into Nancy’s skin as she tried to wrench herself away. “Let go of me!” she cried, as the man’s partner took her other arm.

“Stop it! Stop it!” George shouted at the pair, pulling hard on the second man’s wrist.

He released his hold briefly and swung his fist at the girl, who ducked. As she dodged his attack, she-got a closer view of his badge.

“C’mon,” he said to his companion, “let’s get out of here before I really lose my temper.”

“Just a minute!” George cried. “I think your badge is phony!”

“Aw, now who’s crazy!” her attacker exclaimed.

His partner quickly loosened his grip on Nancy, allowing her to retreat toward Eezy. The other girls stepped forward to look at the badges.

“They certainly look like play badges and not real ones,” Junie remarked, scrutinizing them closely.

The men glanced nervously at each other and tried to sidestep her. “I’ve got better things to do than play games with a bunch of teenagers!” one man snapped.

Rover was still growling and trying to get out of Eezy’s grasp to attack the two strangers. Eezy straightened himself to his full height, brandished his shepherd’s crook and bellowed, “Get out of here! And don’t ever show your faces here again!”

The intruders, apparently bewildered at this point, suddenly turned and ran down the hillside. Rover tried to get loose from his master and follow them, but Eezy kept a tight hold on his collar.

Suddenly one of the men turned and cried out, “Nancy Drew, don’t think you’re free! We’ll get you yet!”

Nancy was glad to see the men go, but would have liked to find out more about them. She felt sure they were working for Mr. Rocco.

“Let’s follow those men!” she urged the others. “Eezy, please let us take Rover. I promise I won’t let him hurt them. But I’d like to see where they go.”

The shepherd agreed and said he would go back to the cabin. The chase started and the girls managed to get within shouting distance of the men.

Suddenly one of them turned around. He cupped his hands to his lips and shouted, “You give us back Tony and we’ll drop the charge!”

Nancy did not answer. With another thought in mind, she shouted back, “You tell me where the stolen parchment is hidden, and maybe we can manage some kind of a deal!”

There was no answer, although the two men looked at each other as if wondering what to say. They kept quiet, however, and soon reached the foot of the hillside. At the road a car with a driver was waiting for them. The motor was running, and as soon as the men jumped into the vehicle, it took off in a hurry.

Nancy memorized the letters and numbers of the license plate. “It’s an out-of-state car! This complicates matters,” she thought. “If those men were from some local welfare association, I’m sure they wouldn’t be driving an out-of-state car.” Then she argued with herself, “But maybe they did it on purpose to avoid identification.”

Nancy, Junie, and George had reached the road and stood looking after the fleeing car. Bess had followed at a slower pace. She had seen something glistening on the ground and stooped to pick it up. When she reached the girls, she showed them the shiny object.

“It’s one of the phony badges!” Junie cried out. “What a clue!”

Nancy examined it and remarked that there was no identification on it. “I think we should take the badge to the police and tell them what happened here.

“Besides,” she added, as they started to climb the hillside with Rover, “I noticed that the man who did the talking had a lot of fresh-looking scars on his hand.” She paused. “Here’s another one of my wild hunches: Do you suppose he could have handled the parchment picture with the broken glass in it? He may be a friend of Sid Zikes.”

Junie declared it was worth investigating. When they reached the top of the hill, Nancy showed the badge to Eezy.

He became angry and said, “Those men are nothin’ but a couple o’ crooks! I’ve been thinkin’ about what they said. I never heard o’ any welfare committee around here. They weren’t talkin’ sense.”

Nancy said, “At least we know they’re a couple of fakers. My guess is that these are real badges and the men stole them.”

At this point Bess heaved a sigh. “Do you realize that George and I have been here less than twenty-four hours, and already we’re in the midst of one of Nancy Drew’s mysteries? And what a mix-up! We were supposed to help figure out some paintings on a parchment. Instead we are learning the secret of a runaway boy: waiting for the woman who painted the parchment to come from Italy, and looking on as Nancy is accused of being a kidnapper!”

The other girls laughed and George said there was a lot of truth in what Bess had said.

Nancy added, “And now more excitement. I’m going to introduce you to a real thief! Our next stop will be the jail to interview one Sid Zikes!”

 

 

 

ALTHOUGH George was intrigued by the idea of meeting a real thief face to face, Bess demurred. “There’s no telling what he might do to us,” she said. “Besides, he’s probably a horrible person with a long record and I don’t even want to meet him.”

George looked disgusted. “Don’t be such a sissy, Bess. The man can’t possibly hurt you if he’s in jail.”

Bess said no more, but when they reached headquarters and were introduced to Officer Browning, she at once changed the subject. Handing him the badge, she asked if it was real or a fake. The officer examined it carefully and even got a magnifying glass.

“This was a police badge,” he said, “until someone got hold of it and obliterated all the identification. Where did you find it?”

Nancy told him she had been threatened with “arrest” for kidnapping by two apparently phony county agents. The officer looked grave.

Bess asked, “Why would they tamper with the badges if they were pretending to have authority to take Nancy away?”

Officer Browning said he thought the men were trying to fool the girls, not the police. “But fortunately it didn’t work.”

George asked, “Then we can assume this badge and the other one were stolen from some policemen?”

“It’s a good guess,” the officer said. “Suppose you leave the badge here. We’ll give it an acid bath and see if we can determine anything about the owner or the phony who was wearing it.”

Nancy now asked permission to talk with Sid Zikes. Browning said he had been transferred to the county jail until the date of his trial.

“But I’ll be glad to give you a letter to the warden there, and he’ll let you in.” He looked at the four girls. “Only two visitors are allowed at a time,” he remarked.

“You can count me out,” Bess said quickly, and George added politely, “And I’ll be glad to stay away too,” although she was disappointed.

As soon as the note was ready, the four girls rode off. On the way to the county jail, the group became quiet, each girl thinking about some angle of the mystery. Bess’s mind was still on the badge, George was intrigued by Eezy and his influence over the intruders, while Junie kept thinking of young Tony. “How wonderful it would be,” she told herself, “if Mrs. Bolardo should turn out to be his mother! But I mustn’t get my hopes up too high.”

Nancy was alarmed by Mr. Rocco’s power and his underhanded method of using other people to extract money from farm workers and swearing them to secrecy.

“He’s a sly, untrustworthy person!” she decided. “The sooner we can prove something against him and have him arrested, the better it will be for the whole community.”

In a little while the girls reached the county jail and went inside. Almost at once Bess said the atmosphere was too depressing and she would wait outside in the car. She got up and George followed.

“Don’t run off with the car and leave us here,” Nancy teased.

“It’s only a ten-mile walk back,” George retorted.

When Nancy and Junie were admitted to Sid Zikes’ cell, he looked at them but said nothing. They tried to talk to him but he acted very childish. The young man pouted and declared he had done nothing wrong. “I wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for you, Nancy Drew!” he told her bitterly.

The young detective had decided to talk to the prisoner in a completely different way than she had before. In a gent voice she said, “Sid, I want to tell you that in casc you don’t know it, there’s a big fraud going on in this area. It won’t be long before the whole thing will be known.

“It would be best for you to admit any connection you have with it and act right now rather than wait. We already know of some thefts you have committed. That’s bad enough, but to be involved in a really big scheme to defraud is something else again.”

Sid looked at the two girls as if he were going to cry. A moment later he began to shake violently. He grabbed a blanket from his cot and wound it around his body.

Finally he said, “I’m not ill. I’m not really cold. I’m shaking from fear. If you’ll promise not to tell anyone something I know, which might be part of the fraud you were talking about, I’ll tell you a secret.”

Nancy and Junie said nothing and apparently Sid Zikes interpreted this as an assent to his request. He went on, “Mr. Rocco has several men working for him—I don’t know their names. Two of them came to me and said they wanted the parchment picture that hung over the fireplace in Mr. Flockhart’s living room.

“At first I said I wasn’t a thief and wouldn’t go for any burglarizing. They just laughed and told me they already knew my record. If I didn’t do this for them, they would harm me. I guess I’m chicken, but I don’t like to be hurt.”

Sid went on to say that he had finally agreed to the arrangement. He was to get the picture and take it to the two men at a designated place on the edge of the Rocco farm. He had done this and been paid well for his part in the scheme.

Nancy asked, “Did you deliver it before or after you ordered the new glass?”

“After. I couldn’t deliver the picture with the glass broken.”

Junie asked him, “Have you any idea where the parchment is now?”

Sid shook his head. “It means nothing to me. The whole point in taking it was that Mr. Flockhart didn’t need the picture, but somebody else did. I can’t see what’s wrong about that.”

It flashed through Nancy’s mind that here was a person who firmly believed robbing the rich and giving to the poor was perfectly all right. Laws, conscience, and possible harm to an innocent party meant nothing to him!

Nancy looked Sid straight in the eye. He lowered his head but she asked him please to lift it and look at her. She said, “Did it ever occur to you that there’s always somebody poorer than yourself?”

The prisoner said no. Nancy went on, “What you have just told me proves that you think it is all right to take something from a person who has a little more than you have yourself.” She stared at his right hand. “I see you have on a very good-looking ring.”

“The police let me keep it. It’s special.”

“How would you feel if some really poor boy were to steal it from you?” Nancy asked him.

Sid sat up on the couch. “I’d feel awful. My girl friend gave this to me.”

Suddenly the young man looked at Nancy with a totally different expression on his long, lean face. “Hey, I see what you mean. You know, Miss Drew, you’ve given me an idea. I think maybe I’ll go straight from now on.”

Nancy and Junie could have leaped for joy. There was something in the tone of Sid’s voice that made them think he really meant this. Both of them walked over and shook hands with him and said how glad they were that he had come to this decision.

The prisoner actually smiled. “Hey, thanks an awful lot,” he said. “Maybe staying in jail for a short time won’t be so bad after all.”

At this moment the jailer came and told the girls their visiting time was up. He let them out of the cell. The two waved to Sid, then walked off.

As soon as they reached the street, Junie congratulated Nancy. “It was absolutely marvelous the way you handled Sid.”

The girl detective smiled. “Making a prisoner turn over a new leaf is something I’ve never done before,” she admitted. “I feel good about it myself.”