(#26) The Clue of the Leaning Chimney
Read (#26) The Clue of the Leaning Chimney Online
Authors: Carolyn Keene
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I - The Mysterious Stranger
CHAPTER III - The Secret Panel
CHAPTER IV - The Blinding Glare
CHAPTER VI - The Vanishing Vase
CHAPTER VIII - Mystery in Manhattan
CHAPTER XVI - The Riddle Unravels
CHAPTER XVIII - Meeting the Enemy
THE CLUE OF THE LEANING CHIMNEY
AS a result of an encounter with a sinister stranger on a lonely country road, Nancy Drew and her friend Bess Marvin discover that a rare and valuable Chinese vase has been stolen from the pottery shop of Dick Milton, a cousin of Bess.
Dick had borrowed the vase from his Chinese friend, elderly Mr. Soong. He is determined to repay Mr. Soong for the loss and tells Nancy that if he can find “the leaning chimney,” he feels he will be on the track of a discovery which will solve his financial problems.
Nancy finds the leaning chimney, but it only leads her into more puzzles. Can there be any connection between the vase theft—one of a number of similar crimes—and the strange disappearance of the pottery expert Eng Moy and his daughter Lei?
Join Nancy and her friends in their exciting adventures as they unravel all the twisted strands of this intriguing mystery.
A man was stepping through a panel in the rear of the closet
Copyright © 1995, 1967, 1949 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by Grosset & Dunlap, Inc., a member of The Putnam &
Grosset Group, New York. Published simultaneously in Canada. S.A.
NANCYDREW MYSTERYSTORIES® is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster,
Inc. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Grosset & Dunlap, Inc.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 67-20845
eISBN : 978-1-101-07727-6
2007 Printing
CHAPTER I
The Mysterious Stranger
“OH, Nancy, this road is so lonely! And here we are with all this money. It’d be awful if it were stolen!”
Bess Marvin gripped the handbag in her lap a bit more tightly and peered nervously through the windshield of the convertible.
A dark forest flowed past the car on either side of the road. Black clouds were gathering in the night sky, and the wind whispered dismally through the swaying trees.
The pretty, somewhat plump girl shivered slightly.
“Cheer up, Bess,” comforted the slim, titianhaired driver. “We’ll soon be home.”
Nancy Drew spoke with more confidence than she felt. As she deftly steered the car around a turn in Three Bridges Road, her blue eyes mirrored a slight uneasiness in her own thoughts. She glanced at the handbag in Bess’s lap. It contained three hundred and forty-two dollars and sixty-three cents, the proceeds of a charity rummage sale the two eighteen-year-old girls had run that evening in Masonville.
Nancy, who was treasurer of the group, had the responsibility of depositing the money in a River Heights bank. Studying the dark, deserted road ahead, she wondered if she had not made a mistake in taking the lonely short cut. The attractive girl tucked a stray wisp of hair into place and put the thought firmly out of her mind.
“Don’t be a ninny,” she chided herself. “Just because there’s no traffic, that’s no reason to start imagining things.”
“Nancy, can’t you drive faster?” Bess asked.
Stealing a look at her nervous companion, Nancy smiled with affection. Bess was one of her closest friends.
There was a sudden flash of lightning, followed by a clap of thunder. A few drops of rain spattered against the windshield.
“Oh dear!” wailed Bess. “More trouble.”
Nancy did not comment. The car was approaching a series of sharp, twisting curves in the road just this side of Hunter’s Bridge. Driving safely around them required all her attention.
As they rounded the final turn, the headlights suddenly focused on a man. He was bending over something in the road, directly in the path of the car! He was unaware of Nancy’s car!
The man was unaware of Nancy’s car!
Bess screamed. Nancy twisted the steering wheel frantically, at the same time jamming her wrist against the horn and stepping on the brake. There was a screech of tires as the car swerved past the man and came to a stop thirty feet beyond.
“D-did we—?” Bess stuttered, unable to speak the awful thought that they had hit the man.
Nancy quickly took a flashlight from the front compartment and got out of the car. The man was lying in the middle of the road!
“Oh, Bess!” she cried fearfully. “He’s hurt!”
But even as she hurried toward him, the man stumbled to his feet and began looking around him in the road as if he had lost something.
“Are you all right? I didn’t hurt you?” Nancy asked.
To her astonishment he growled, “Go away!”
The brim of his battered felt hat was pulled low over his forehead and the turned-up collar of his topcoat concealed his mouth and chin. But Nancy got a quick glimpse of a pair of piercing, black eyes. Abruptly the man ran across the road and ducked behind some bushes.
“Is this what you’re looking for?” Nancy called, picking up a bundle which had rolled off to one side.
“Put that bundle down and get out of here!” he ordered sharply.
“But I want to help,” Nancy protested. “You may be hurt—”
“Listen, sister, I’m okay,” his rough voice cut in. “But if you don’t go now,
you’ll
get hurt!”
As if to emphasize the threat, a rock, hurled out of the darkness, struck the road a scant six inches away and bounded into the ditch.
Bess, who had come up behind Nancy, tugged at her friend’s sleeve. “Come on!” she whispered nervously. “He means it!”
But Nancy, her suspicions aroused, turned over the bundle she was holding. As she stared through a large tear in the paper, another rock, well aimed this time, smashed Nancy’s flashlight. It also shattered Nancy’s chance of getting a better look at the stranger’s bundle.
Bess uttered a squeak of fear. “Oh, Nancy, hurry! Put that thing down and come on!”
This time Nancy obeyed the warning and hurried back to the car. Rain was falling in large drops as she started the motor. Nancy looked back, but neither the man nor the bundle was in sight.
“Whew!” said Bess as they drove through the downpour. “Next time you stop to talk to a man on a deserted road, count me out!”
Nancy laughed. “He certainly was nasty,” she agreed. “Too bad we couldn’t get a good look at him.”
“What do you suppose was in that old bundle that made him act so funny?” Bess asked.
“A vase,” Nancy told her. “At least, from what I could see, it looked like one. Green porcelain with an enormous red claw.”
“Green porcelain with a red claw?” Bess repeated. “That’s odd.”
“Why?”
“Well, it sounds an awful lot like a vase on display in the window of Dick Milton’s pottery shop,” Bess went on. “Dick’s vase is green, too, and it has a black Chinese dragon with red claws!”
Dick Milton was a cousin of Bess’s. He had a small shop on Bedford Street in River Heights where he made and sold pottery. The young man also held classes in ceramics, one of which Bess was attending.
“The vase is beautiful,” Bess went on. “Dick didn’t make It—somebody lent it to him, I think.”
Bess babbled on, explaining the perfection of the vase with the enthusiasm of one who has just learned how various pottery pieces are made.
“You ought to join our class,” she said. “It’s lots of fun.”
Nancy found her attention wandering. Her thoughts went back to the man in the road. What was he doing in such a deserted place so late at night? Obviously he had not wanted to be seen. Her car, suddenly rounding a curve, had caught him unawares. And why had he behaved so strangely about the vase? Could it, by any chance, be the one from Dick Milton’s shop?