A Hidden Discovery

THE secret panel dosed in Nancy’s face. A few moments later she felt the rope beside her moving and the lift began to rise slowly upward with a creaking, groaning sound.

What were John and Howard Brex going to do now? Move out their loot? Capture Ned?

With a jerk, the elevator suddenly halted. Nancy tugged at the rope. It would not move!

At the same moment, Nancy saw a faint, greenish glow arising from one corner of her prison. Presently she became aware of an unpleasant odor rapidly growing stronger. Then Nancy understood.

“Those fiends uncorked a bottle of phosphorus and oil in this elevator, and they’ve probably added a deadly sleeping potion for me to inhale, ” she thought, breaking out in cold perspiration. “That’s what they meant by saying that in a few moments I would join the ghost of Blackwood Hall. They meant Jonathan Humphrey, who died in the duel. I’ll die at Blackwood Hall too! ”

For an instant Nancy nearly gave way to panic. Then reason reasserted itself.

From her pocket she took a handkerchief. Covering her nose and mouth with it, she groped about frantically on the floor of the dark elevator. Guided by the greenish glow, she found a small bottle in one corner.

Already weak and dizzy, Nancy had no time to search further for the stopper. Instead, she pulled off her suit jacket and jammed part of the sleeve into the opening of the bottle.

Immediately the light was extinguished. But Nancy by now felt so drowsy that she was forced to sit down.

Sleep overcame her. She had no idea of how much later it was when she awoke. But now she felt stronger. The sickening odor was gone. She could think clearly.

She pounded against the wooden sides of the elevator shaft. Three of the walls seemed to be as solid as stone. Only the fourth seemed thin. Could this be the panel of the third-floor hallway?

The old house was as still as death itself. Nancy was certain Howard and John Brex had fled, and no doubt they had captured Ned too. As time dragged on and still no one came, she became convinced that her friend had met with disaster.

“I told Hannah that Ned and I were coming here, ” Nancy thought. “She’ll be worried about our long absence and send help.”

Then a harrowing thought came to her. Maybe her friends had come and gone while she was asleep! By the luminous hands of her wrist watch, Nancy knew she had been in the elevator over two hours

“It’s no use! ” she despaired. Then instantly she added, “I mustn’t give up hope! ”

Nancy sat down again on the floor, trying to figure out some means of escape. But scarcely had she closed her eyes to concentrate than she became aware of sounds.

Pressing an ear against the crack between the elevator floor and the wall, Nancy listened intently. With a thrill of joy she recognized Bess’s high-pitched voice. Then she heard others speaking: her father, Hannah Gruen, and George Fayne.

Nancy began to shout and pound on the elevator door. Attracted by the noise, her friends came running up the stairway. Nancy kept shouting directions, until finally they were able to locate the wall panel behind which she was imprisoned.

“Nancy! ” her father called. “Are you all right? ”

“Yes, Dad, but I’m in an elevator and can’t get out. I can’t even move it.”

“We’ll soon find a way. If we can’t open this panel, we’ll tear the wall down! ”

“Is Ned safe? ” Nancy asked anxiously.

“Haven’t seen him, ” her father replied. “Hannah got worried after you’d been gone so long, and told us you had come here. Ned isn’t with you? ”

“No, ” Nancy replied in a discouraged voice, then added, “Please go down to the ghost room and see if you can find out how to move this elevator.”

Several minutes passed, then Mr. Drew reported no success.

“It’s a very old-fashioned hand type and works by pulling a rope, ” he said. “Evidently they have locked the wheel over which the rope passes at the top. Well, here goes the wall! ”

Nancy heard a thud, then the sound of splintering wood. A moment later light beamed through a small hole.

“Hand me the flashlight, ” said Nancy. “Maybe I can find out how the panel opens.”

In a few moments Nancy located a lock. Releasing it, she pushed up the section of wall and tumbled into her father’s arms.

“Thank goodness you’re safe! ” Hannah cried, hugging her in turn. “When you didn’t come home, I knew something had happened! ”

“Bless you, Hannah, for bringing help! ” Nancy exclaimed.

From the yard came the sharp yipping of a dog. “Why, that sounds like Togo! ” Nancy exclaimed.

“We left him in the car, ” her father explained. “Something must have excited him.”

Hastening downstairs, the party reached the front porch just as several state troopers, surrounding two women and two men, emerged from the woods. Nancy was overjoyed to see Ned leading the procession!

“They’ve captured Howard and John Brex! ” she cried. “And that first woman with them—she’s the one we met on the plane. The other must be the veiled chauffeur! ”

Ned ran to Nancy’s side. Breathlessly he explained that upon seeing the two men leaving Blackwood Hall, he had hurriedly summoned state troopers by means of the short-wave set.

“Then I trailed the Brex brothers and kept sending my location to the police. What a chase! ”

“You did a swell job, fellow, ” complimented one of the troopers. “We sure had a hard time trying to keep up with you.”

“We caught the men and the women at a little hotel down the river, ” Ned added. “They were packing their duds, intending to make a getaway.”

“Good work, Ned! ” Nancy congratulated him. “This practically winds up the case, except for capturing Joe Brex.”

“Don’t worry about that, ” Mr. Drew interposed. “The police will run him in before forty-eight hours have elapsed.”

The four prisoners refused to talk when confronted by Nancy and her party. Though they would not admit that they had any loot hidden at Blackwood Hall or elsewhere, their arrogance was completely gone. Howard Brex looked completely crestfallen when Nancy repeated to the troopers all the damaging evidence he had boastfully revealed to her a few hours earlier.

When Ned heard how they had put her in the elevator to die, he was filled with remorse. Having no idea anything more had happened than Nancy had smoked out the gangsters, he had felt it all right to leave her and go after them.

“I’ll never do that again! ” he vowed.

Tearfully, John Brex’s wife, the woman they had seen on the plane, admitted her identity. She acknowledged having trailed the three girls to New Orleans after learning that Mrs. Putney had engaged Nancy to find the stolen jewelry. When they threw her off the scent, and she saw them coming out of the Church of Eternal Harmony and heading for the photographer’s, she hastened to warn Joe. John happened to be there, and the three concocted the scheme of putting the warning on the plate and carrying Nancy away in a car to an empty house in order to frighten her off the case.

Mrs. Brex’s friend also admitted her guilt. She had adopted clever disguises for the sole purpose of deceiving Nancy, as well as the people the group sought to cheat. It was she who had picked up the Egan letters at the hotel.

“Don’t say another word! ” John shouted. “You’ve said too much already! ”

Here George interrupted to address Howard Brex. “After you had abandoned having seances at Blackwood Hall and moved your equipment by wheelbarrow to the cabin, we tracked you there and found smoke—acrid smoke, not wood smoke, coming out the chimney and from under the door.”

Howard sneered. “Had you guessing, eh? All I was doing was trying out a new brand of spirit powder. I ducked out a back window when I heard someone trying to break into the place.”

After the prisoners were taken off to jail, Nancy suggested that a trooper remain at Blackwood Hall with her and the others to investigate the paneled walls of the rambling old house.

“I want you all to take an elevator ride with me! ” Nancy said gaily, “and see if we can locate the gangsters’ loot.”

The wall panel on the third floor still stood open. Nancy swung a flashlight around the elevator. In a moment she found what she was looking for: the mechanism to run the car. It was high up in the shaft under the roof. An iron bar was thrust through the wooden wheel over which the rope ran.

In a moment the wheel again was free. Using the rope, Nancy lowered the elevator platform to the level of the second floor. There she examined carefully each wall of the elevator shaft. To her joy she located the spring that operated the panel from the inside. It rolled back exposing the second-floor hall.

Then she turned her attention to the opposite wall of the elevator shaft. It, too, seemed to be a panel, and she went over every inch of it for a catch. When she found it, she pressed the release and the panel slid noiselessly upward.

“A secret room! ” she cried.

The others crowded around her. Before them stood a manikin dressed in flimsy white, as well as reaching rods, bottles of phosphorus, oil, and several books on hypnotism.

Besides these, the searchers found box upon box of envelopes stuffed with bills. But most important was a notebook containing the names and addresses of people who had been swindled by the spirit racket.

“This money will help repay all those people who have been robbed, ” Nancy declared.

Under the eaves Nancy came upon a large chest which proved to contain a complete set of crafts-men’s tools such as a jeweler would use—Howard Brex’s outfit.

“I suppose those clever imitations which Mr. Freeman detected when Mrs. Putney took them to be cleaned were fashioned right here in Blackwood Hall, ” Mr. Drew said thoughtfully.

“But where are Mrs. Putney’s missing gems? ” Nancy asked.

“Right here in this envelope! ” George spoke up. “Now your work on the case is really complete.” Turning to the officer, she said, “Nancy got into this thing trying to trace Mrs. Putney’s stolen jewelry. Whoever would have thought that all this could happen before the thieves were caught? ”

The following day, events occurred very rapidly. Joe Brex and his mother were arrested in Chicago. Joe acknowledged he had built up a good business in spirit photography.

He and the others finally confessed their full part in the sordid Three Branch swindle, and admitted that they first cajoled, then threatened their victims when they did not yield to the suggestions of the spirits. The men also admitted having stolen Mr. Drew’s car to move out some of their props.

To celebrate the successful conclusion of the mystery, Hannah Gruen planned a surprise dinner and invited all of Nancy’s closest friends, and also Mrs. Putney.

“Oh, my dear, ” the widow said, tears in her eyes, “I was so unfair to you in my thoughts. At times I felt you lacked all understanding of my case. But you’ve made me realize how utterly stupid I was to be fooled into thinking my husband’s spirit was giving me messages. Now, dear, I know you won’t accept money as a reward for the work you have done in my behalf, but I hope you will take as an expression of my everlasting gratitude this cameo ring which belonged to my husband’s mother. It is one of the jewels you helped me to recover.”

“Oh, Mrs. Putney, I couldn’t, ” protested Nancy.

“Nonsense, ” Mrs. Putney interrupted. “I have no one to inherit my lovely things when I go. I want you to have it as a memento of a case you solved in which many innocent people were saved from serious loss.”

“You are very generous, Mrs. Putney. I would love to wear it. I enjoyed every moment I was working on the mystery—except the quagmire and the elevator incident, ” Nancy declared. “Dad, ” she said, turning to Mr. Drew, “I would never have done it without all the help you gave me.”

“Ridiculous, ” Mr. Drew objected.

“I’ll bet you could tackle your next case single-handed, ” Mrs. Putney insisted.

That exciting mystery, The Clue of the Leaning Chimney, was to come as a baffling surprise to the girl detective.

“Say, ” said George, laughing, “we learned enough about magicians’ tricks to go into the ghost business ourselves. How about fitting up a studio at Blackwood Hall and running sé ances? ”

Bess shivered. “No, thanks. We’ve just learned that it never pays to flimflam the public.”

“Anyway, it’s much more fun to catch the people who try to do the flimflamming! ” Nancy said, smiling.

Текст подготовлен эксклюзивно для группы ВК

Dare to read: Нэнси Дрю и Братья Харди

(https://vk.com/daretoreadndrus)

СПАСИБО, что читаете книги!