The Haunted Carousel (9 page)

The cruiser skipper, by now sympathetic and concerned over the girls’ plight, offered to tow them back to the marina if they would throw him their towline.

George hurried forward to haul it from the water under the cruiser’s powerful searchlight. Nancy saw her gasp and frown when the end of the rope was in her hand.

“What’s wrong, George?”

“See for yourself, Nancy!”

The end of the rope had been cleanly and freshly cut!

“We didn’t just come adrift,” George went on, putting their mutual thought into words. “Some-

one cut us loose from our mooring!”

Bess was nervous and shaken by this discovery, but Nancy tried to allay her fears. “Never mind, we can worry about that later,” she soothed. “The most important thing right now is to get back to the marina!”

George tossed the line to the waiting cruiser captain, and he promptly took them in tow. Within an hour, the girls were back safe and sound in their slip at the marina. After thanking their rescuer emotionally, they lost no time in crawling back into their bunks, and all three were soon sinking into an exhausted slumber.

Next morning, the girls slept late. Then, after a light breakfast, Nancy dropped Bess and George at their homes and drove on to her own house.

“Nancy, your dad called about an hour ago,” Hannah Gruen greeted her. “He’s going to be in court the rest of the day, so he asked me to tell you that he’s talked to Mr. Trimble, and you’re to call him when you get in.”

As she spoke, the housekeeper took Nancy’s overnight bag and handed her a slip of paper bearing the lawyer’s phone number.

“Okay, Hannah. Thanks.” Nancy went to the front hall telephone and dialed the number. When Hannah returned a few moments later,

she was just hanging up. “Well, I’m off to lunch with Mr. Trimble,” the teenager reported. “It’s the only time he can see me, so I’ll just have time to change!”

Ten crowded minutes later, she was on her way to La Cuiller d’Argent, the restaurant where she had arranged to meet the attorney.

As she entered, Nancy was greeted by a dark-eyed headwaiter with a waxed mustache. “Mam’zelle Drew? M’sieu Trimble is waiting for you. Come this way, please.”

He showed her to a table occupied by an elderly man with a mane of white hair.

“So you’re Carson Drew’s daughter!” The lawyer stood up with a smile and shook hands with the young sleuth.

“I’m very grateful to you for seeing me on such short notice.” Nancy dimpled.

“Not at all, my dear. I don’t often have a chance to lunch with a lovely young lady.” After they had ordered, Mr. Trimble said, “Now, how can I help you, Miss Drew?”

“I understand you were Mr. John Trent’s lawyer. Could you tell me about him?” Nancy asked.

“Well, there’s not much to tell, really. John Trent was a self-made man. He started from scratch, opened up his own small machine

shop, and built it into a major machine-tool company. And made a fortune while doing so, I might add.”

“Do you know much about his background or his past?”

“Not a great deal. I gathered from various remarks he made over the years that he came from a poor background—and he certainly adored his only child, Joy. A lovely girl, by the way.”

Fred Trimble paused to offer Nancy a roll, then went on, “He never spoke about his wife, you see. Apparently, her death must have been a bitter blow. I do know that during most of the time I served as his personal attorney, he employed babysitters and housekeepers to care for Joy. And then, recently, his widowed sister, Selma Yawley, came to live with them to help out.”

He fell silent while the white-coated waiter served their eggs Benedict. Once they were eating, Nancy said, “Joy mentioned something about her Aunt Selma being only her temporary guardian.”

“Hmph.” The lawyer cleared his throat, looking slightly uncomfortable. “Yes, well, my client was concerned that Joy might not be too happy under her aunt’s guardianship. So he specified privately in his will that, under certain circumstances, other arrangements might be worked out.”

“You mean, a different guardian might be appointed?”

“Ahem!” Once again Mr. Trimble looked uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, Miss Drew, but I’m not at liberty to discuss that subject. Joy is now seventeen. I can only tell you that when she reaches the age of twenty-one, she will come into her father’s fortune. Until then, it will remain in trust under the control of myself, as the executor of his estate, and her guardian, who at present is Mrs. Yawley.”

As she enjoyed her eggs Benedict, Nancy sat thinking of Mr. Trimble’s phrase, “under certain circumstances.” The question was, what circumstances?

Only one thing seemed clear, Nancy reflected. John Trent must have sensed instinctively that his sister, Selma Yawley, was not the ideal guardian for his beloved daughter, Joy!

The young detective and the elderly attorney finished their delicious meal while chatting pleasantly about various subjects.

“Thank you for a lovely lunch, Mr. Trimble,” Nancy said as they parted.

“The pleasure was all mine, Miss Drew, I assure you!”

Nancy decided to call Joy Trent to arrange

another visit that afternoon. But on her way to the Trent house, she stopped off at police headquarters to speak to Chief McGinnis.

“Nancy! I was just going to phone you!” the chief declared as she walked into his office. “I just had a report from our fingerprint lab about that stolen boat.”

“They found the prints of the boat thieves?” iVaricy ijxrerr'ec? hopefully.

“That’s right. And believe it or not, they belong to Fingers Malone and Baldy Krebs! Our boys matched them up with a complete set of prints Detective Norris brought us from the St. Louis Police Department.”

“Oh, wow!” Nancy was excited. This news strongly suggested that Fingers and Baldy were the two dark figures whom she and Ned had seen on the carousel Monday night, and that they had made their getaway by stealing the boat, as she had already guessed.

But why were they so interested in the carousel?

After pondering for several moments, Nancy said, “Chief, is Detective Norris still in River Heights?”

“Yes, he’s still keeping watch for those two crooks at Riverside Park.”

“Is there any way I could reach him?”

“Sure, no problem.” McGinnis promptly had a radio call sent out to the park policeman, Officer Doyle, asking him to have Detective Norris phone police headquarters.

Within a few minutes, the telephone rang on Chief McGinnis’s desk. Detective Norris was on the line. After acknowledging the call, McGinnis handed the phone to Nancy.

“Nancy Drew here,” she said. “I’d like to ask you a question, Detective Norris. You told me Fingers Malone was almost caught at the park in St. Louis, but got away when Baldy Krebs wounded the arresting officer. Did that by any chance happen at an amusement park, or was it just an ordinary public park?”

“No, an amusement park, Miss Drew.”

With a growing feeling of excitement, Nancy continued, “Did either of them have any previous connection with amusement parks? I mean, for example, is that where Fingers has usually operated as a pickpocket?”

“Funny you should ask,” Norris replied. “As a matter of fact, Fingers Malone was caught in that same amusement park just before he was sent to prison. You remember I told you he’d served twenty years of a twenty-five year sentence just before he broke out and became a fugitive? Well, it was really on account of that

amusement park that he got sent up in the first place. I’ll tell you how it happened.”

Norris explained that, at the time, Fingers was being hunted for his part in a serious gangland crime, quite different from his usual specialty of picking pockets. But he had gone into hiding and could not be found.

“Then one night a prominent St. Louis businessman, a jeweler, got his pockets picked while he was at the park with his family. He was sore as the dickens and raised the roof down at headquarters. As a result, the chief of the bunco squad assigned an extra detail of detectives to patrol the park. And on the second night there, one of them spotted Fingers with his hand in a lady’s purse and nabbed him right in the act!”

Detective Norris chuckled dryly over the phone and added, “Turned out Fingers had been lying low and working as a ‘carny’ there in the amusement park, while he waited for the heat to cool down. But he couldn’t resist temptation. Those expert fingers of his turned out to be his downfall!”

After thanking both Detective Norris and Police Chief McGinnis, Nancy drove on to Joy’s house in an optimistic frame of mind.

Joy herself opened the door. “I saw you coming up the drive, Nancy. I’m so glad you came!” “I thought we might rack our brains a little more over your father’s puzzle,” Nancy said with a smile.

“Oh, great! I’m just in the mood!”

On entering the spacious front room, Nancy saw Joy’s Aunt Selma seated in front of the television set, watching an afternoon soap opera. “Oh, good afternoon, Mrs. Yawley,” she said politely.

The woman looked up and nodded coldly. Joy took Nancy on through the house to her father’s study. No sooner had she closed the door behind them than she whirled eagerly to face her visitor. “Nancy, do you think I should get in touch with that Mrs. Harrod, even though Aunt Selma forbids it?”

Nancy replied calmly, “I think you should be guided by your own conscience, Joy.”

A relieved smile came over the red-haired girl’s face and she clapped her hands. “Then I’m going to do it!”

She started toward the phone, only to stop short a moment before lifting the receiver. “No, on second thought, I won’t do it right now. Aunt Selma might listen in on the extension—and it would be just like her to make an unpleasant fuss! I’ll call later when she’s out.”

Meanwhile, Nancy had already begun drifting about the room, looking for iris clues and scrutinizing the many colorful objects with which John Trent had decorated his study.

Suddenly, Nancy snapped her fingers and exclaimed excitedly, “Joy, I think I may have found part of the answer!”

“What is it, Nancy?” said Joy, flashing her an eager look. “What have you found?”

Her own eyes followed the direction of Nancy’s gaze. The young detective was staring at a wall painting of a Civil War battle scene. It showed a line of blue-coated Union soldiers

charging into the smoke and gunfire of a Con- rtacidic icuuuui.

“Look there, Joy!” Nancy pointed at two of the figures in the painting. One, the Union color sergeant, had evidently just been hit by an enemy bullet. As he fell, a companion was snatching the flag from the dying sergeant’s hand.

“Look at what?” Joy’s face took on a puzzled

frown. “I mean, I see what you’re pointing at—but so what?”

“That’s an American flag—Old Glory.”

“Oh, yes—of course! But ...” Joy’s voice trailed off uncertainly and she still looked puzzled.

The flag was rather small in the picture, and its bright stars and stripes were dimmed by the gunsmoke, so that it did not readily strike the eye at first glance. Nancy realized that she must have noticed it the first time she inspected the room, even though the impression had merely glimmered at the back of her mind and she had been unable to bring it into clear focus.

But now the flag’s significance seemed obvious!

“Notice where the flagstaff is pointing.” As she spoke, Nancy’s finger traced an invisible line from the spearpoint at the tip of the flagstaff, across the painted canvas, and out beyond the edge of the picture frame.

The line pointed straight toward a single iris in a slender glass vase standing on a shelf close by!

“Oh!” Joy caught her breath with excitement as she realized what Nancy was getting at. “Iris and Old Glory—just like in that riddle in Daddy’s letter!”

“And you did tell me, didn’t you, that all the fresh irises in the house are replaced daily, by your father’s standing order?”

“Yes, that’s right! So this must be what his riddle referred to—because he knew there’d always be an iris in that vase for the flag to point at!”

Nancy nodded thoughtfully. “It certainly seems like more than a coincidence,” she mused aloud, “but we still don’t know what the question mark in the riddle stands for.”

She was silent for several moments, then turned to her red-haired friend. “Those words— ‘iris’ and ‘Old Glory’—what do they suggest to you, Joy? . . . Anything at all?”

Joy wrinkled her forehead and shrugged. “Not really . . . Well, wait a minute. They do remind me of something.”

“Such as?” Nancy inquired keenly.

“That carousel horse I told you about. When Daddy first bought him for me as a birthday present, I named him Glory, because he was so beautiful. And sometimes, in those days, when I’d talk about him, I’d refer to him as ‘Old Glory.’” Joy flashed a rueful smile. “But I guess that doesn’t help much, does it?”

“Hm, you never know. You said you lent your horse to the River Heights Day-Care Center?”

“That’s right. Would you like to see it?” “Very much,” declared Nancy. “Let’s drive over there right now, Joy!”

“Okay, suits me.”

The day-care center was located in a big, old house, not far from Riverside Park, in what had once been a neighborhood of aristocratic mansions. Two other houses in the same block were now empty, and, according to a builder’s sign, were soon to be tom down to make way for an elevated parking garage, leaving the center as the only occupied site. Its grounds were overgrown with shrubbery and shaded by tall, ancient oaks and hemlocks.

Despite these rather gloomy surroundings, however, the house itself had a cheerful air and bustled with the sounds and laughter of children at play. It was staffed by volunteer members, one of whom—a Miss Blandish—greeted the two visitors cordially.

“The children are just about to have their afternoon nap,” she informed Joy, “so you and Nancy will be able to look over your hobbyhorse undisturbed.”