The Clue in the Old Stagecoach (7 page)

Nancy did not answer. She felt positive that Judd Hillary had given himself away: He had some connection with the hijackers!

Having proved that fact to herself, she decided on a new tack to disarm him. “Yes, I felt that there was something very valuable hidden in that old stagecoach. But I was wrong. It has all been taken apart and thoroughly searched. Not a thing was found.” She smiled at Judd Hillary. “So you won’t have to worry about it any longer.”

The man gave Nancy a searching look as if he could not make up his mind whether or not to believe her. Finally he mumbled something to himself she could not hear.

In a louder voice he said, “I’m warnin’ you again. Don’t be pokin’ into the business o’ other people!”

He got into his truck, started the motor, and jerkily drove up the street.

Nancy gazed after him wonderingly. “So he was the whistler!” she told herself. “That is a clue I’m certainly going to pursue.”

Nancy opened the car door and found the road map. Returning to the house, she spread it out on Mrs. Strook’s dining-room table. She pointed to Francisville and then asked the elderly woman if she could locate the spot where Abner Langstreet had spent his last days.

It took Mrs. Strook some time to figure this out. At last she put her finger on an area about half a mile in from a side road marked 123A. “I think this is the place.”

“There’s a private road leading to the farm?” George asked.

“I believe so,” Mrs. Strook said. “I have never been on it myself, but I’m told it’s only a dirt road.”

She warned the girls that this was a desolate area.

“Does anyone live on the farm now?” Nancy asked.

“Oh, yes. In fact, people have lived on the place ever since Great-uncle Abner passed away. But no one has improved the farm much. I understand that right now a young couple are living on it. They’re having a struggle financially.”

“That’s a shame,” said Bess sympathetically.

Mrs. Strook nodded. “Their name is Zucker. I believe the husband was advised by a doctor to live on a farm for health reasons. Mr. Zucker is feeling better but knows little about farming, so it’s difficult to make ends meet.”

The elderly woman wished the girls luck as Nancy folded up the map and said they must go. At that moment all of them heard thunder. Flashes of lightning streaked across the sky.

“Oh, you must stay until the storm is over,” Mrs. Strook insisted.

“I guess we’d better,” said Nancy. “I’ll run out and put up the top of my car.”

Rain came down in torrents for about twenty minutes, then slackened off slightly. The thunder and lightning ceased, but the rain continued.

“I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Strook, “that it will rain all the rest of the day. I’d advise you girls not to try going out to the Zucker place. You’d certainly get stuck on those bad roads.”

Nancy realized the wisdom of this. “I’ll take your advice, Mrs. Strook,” she said, “and make the trip tomorrow.”

The girls said good-by and dashed through the rain to the convertible. As Nancy turned it left upon reaching Main Street, and Bess realized that they were headed for the business section of Francisville rather than Camp Merriweather, she inquired the reason. Nancy told of her recent clash with Judd Hillary outside Mrs. Strook’s house.

“Oh, how dreadful!” Bess exclaimed. “You really think Judd Hillary is mixed up with those hijackers?”

As Nancy nodded, George remarked, “Since Judd Hillary knows you’re an amateur detective, he has no doubt told that to those crooks.”

Bess agreed, and added worriedly, “We’ve never even heard their names. When you know who your enemies are it’s bad enough, but when you don’t—well, it gives me the shivers to think about it.”

Nancy remarked, “Since I told Judd Hillary no clue had been found in the old stagecoach, I believe they’ll leave me alone.”

“I certainly hope so,” said Bess. “And what are we going to do in Francisville?”

“First, quiz the druggist, Mr. Benfield, then other shopkeepers to learn if any of them ever saw Judd Hillary with two tall men, one a blond and the other dark with a scar across his left wrist.”

Bess and George offered to help. By the time they were ready to start their inquiry, the rain had let up enough for them to dodge from place to place without getting too wet. They agreed to meet at the Willow Tearoom for a late lunch.

When the three girls gathered together again, each reported failure. “I suppose that proves,” said George, “that Judd Hillary meets these friends of his out in the country where nobody will see them.” Nancy nodded.

After the girls had eaten, they found that the rain was still coming down fitfully so Nancy, Bess, and George decided to return to the lodge. Here they found that the management had arranged an eight-o’clock dinner dance. Tables had been taken from the center of the dining-room floor and only a ring of them left around the edges.

Nancy, Bess, and George also learned that the special group whom they dated, Rick, Jack Smith, and Hobe White, had engaged a long table with places for the three girls. Dressed in pretty frocks, Nancy in blue, George in deep yellow, and Bess in pale green, the girls arrived in the lobby just before eight.

Rick and the other two boys immediately came up to them and together they walked into the dining room. The rest of their group was already there. They also found Ross and Audrey Monteith dragging chairs from another table with the thought of joining them.

Rick scowled. Going up to the couple, he told them that there were no places left at the table. “Oh, two more won’t hurt,” Audrey argued, trying to smile bewitchingly but failing completely.

“It is already crowded,” said Rick, his eyes flashing.

“Now you know,” Ross spoke up, “that there’s always room for two more.”

“In this case there’s not,” Rick said with such finality that the Monteiths pulled their chairs back to the other table.

“Good for you,” Nancy whispered to her partner. Soon the first course was served and the music started. She forgot all about the unpleasant couple.

The rain had stopped several hours before and about ten o’clock the moon came up. Nancy and Rick, after a dance, strolled outside into the lovely garden. Deep in conversation, they walked to the very end of it.

“One more year of college, then I’ll be a full-fledged engineer,” Rick remarked. “I can hardly wait to get out and start work.”

Before Nancy had a chance to comment, she and Rick became aware of someone walking in the woods beyond the end of the garden. They stopped to listen. The other person had paused also, but now they could hear a faint clicking noise.

“What is that?” Nancy whispered.

Rick listened a few seconds, then he said in surprise, “It sounds like a Geiger counter. But who in the world would be hunting uranium ore or other metals around here?”

NANCY started toward the woods to investigate the strange clicking sound.

Rick followed. “You’d better stay here,” he cautioned her. “I’ll go.”

Just then the clicking ceased and Ross Monteith emerged from among the trees! He was carrying a cane!

“Oh!” Ross cried out as he almost ran into the couple. “I didn’t see you!”

“Have you taken to walking alone in the woods after dark?” Rick asked him.

Ross Monteith laughed lightly. “I had a good old flashlight to help me.” He tapped his jacket pocket. “Audrey thought she’d lost one of her favorite earrings in the woods this morning and I offered to try to find it for her. No luck, though.”

As Ross started to move off, Nancy asked him, “Did you hear a peculiar clicking noise while you were in the woods?”

“Clicking noise?” he repeated. “No, I didn’t. Why?”

“Oh, we thought we did and wondered what it was.”

“Sorry I can’t help you,” Ross said, and hurried off.

Nancy and Rick discussed the whole episode. It was evident from their frowns that neither of them quite believed what Monteith had said. Why had he been in the woods? And was he telling the truth about not hearing the clicking noise?

Rick suddenly chuckled. “Nancy,” he said, “how about this deduction from a novice at sleuthing? I think Ross Monteith’s cane contains a Geiger counter. After dark he goes around prospecting for valuable minerals.”

Nancy laughed. “Well,” she said, “your theory is more comforting than having the cane turn out to be a deadly weapon!”

Long after Nancy had gone to bed that evening, she continued to think about the various angles of the mystery which she was trying to solve. Two questions concerning the Monteiths kept recurring to her mind. Were the couple just being nuisances? Or was there more to their always trying to be wherever Nancy was?

As the young sleuth was finally falling asleep, she decided to stay out of the couple’s way as much as possible. “And I’ll warn Bess and George not to say anything in front of them which would give away any of our plans.”

Nancy awoke early the next day and decided at once on one way to start her campaign of secrecy. She would move her car from the parking lot to a little-used side road a short distance from the lodge. “Then Ross and Audrey can’t spy on me so easily.”

She dressed quickly and went outside. No one was around. Nancy drove off, but was back at the lodge on foot within fifteen minutes.

Bess and George were just waking up. Nancy told them what she had done, and also her suspicions about the Monteiths.

“They haven’t really done anything,” she said, “but I think it would be just as well to throw them off our trail if possible.”

“It sure would,” said George. “The thing for us to do is get out of this hotel without their seeing us. What say we dress for tennis after breakfast and head for the courts, but carry skirts and purses in our beach bags?”

“Good idea,” Nancy agreed.

When the girls reached the tennis courts, only the boy who put up nets was there. He was so busy with his chore that he did not even notice Nancy and her friends, who avoided the courts, went through a trail that led out to the main road, and on down to Nancy’s car. Here they put on their skirts, then set off in the open car. Bess suddenly giggled. “This is like playing hare and hounds in reverse. Usually we’re the hounds. This time we’re the hares.”

Nancy asked George to get the map out of the instrument-panel compartment. “Tell me when I’m nearing that road which Mrs. Strook penciled in,” she requested.

Nancy drove for several miles, turning from one road to another, trying to get to the exact spot. It was very confusing but at last George cried out:

“Here’s a road—that is, if you can call it a road. I’m sure this is the right one.”

The one-car lane was rutty, bumpy, and full of stones. As rocks banged against the under part of the chassis, Nancy slowed to a crawl. In many places the grass in the road was so tall that George declared it was like driving through a wheat field. The girls were joggled from side to side.

Finally Bess said she thought it was foolhardy to go on. “Nancy, we’ll break a spring on the car or do some other damage,” she declared.

“I agree with you,” Nancy replied. “But I can’t turn around here. I’ll have to go on until I come to a wider spot. You notice it’s kind of mucky along the edges here—I guess from that rain yesterday. I’m afraid we’d get stuck.”

There was a sharp turn a short distance farther on and just beyond it the girls found themselves confronted by a chain across the road. From it hung a sign, on which was printed in large letters:

“They certainly don’t want any visitors here,” Bess remarked. “This must be an experimental station of some kind.”

Nancy had a hard time getting her convertible turned around. She had to do it inches at a time. But finally she was headed in the opposite direction and started the jolting ride back to the main road.

“Since this wasn’t the right road,” said Bess, “I wonder where the one to the Zucker farm is. We might be miles from it.”

Nancy disagreed. “Mrs. Strook seemed so sure of the spot, I believe we’ll find the road not far from here.”

“I hope it isn’t as bad as this one,” Bess worried, as she suddenly flew off the seat. “I’d better stop talking or I’ll bite my tongue!” she added with a giggle as she landed.

Bess had no sooner said this when the car stopped abruptly. The engine had died.

“Goodness, what’s the matter?” Bess asked.

Nancy’s eyes had darted to the fuel tank. “It’s empty—completely empty!”

“But you just had the tank filled while we were in Francisville,” George told her.

“I know,” Nancy replied. “It’s my guess that one of the rocks we went over punctured a hole in the tank.”