The Mystery of the Fire Dragon (2 page)

As soon as they had entered the apartment, and the door was closed, the young sleuth said, “Aunt Eloise, don’t keep us in suspense. Tell us everything about Chi Che and what happened.”

Miss Drew produced the note the Chinese girl had written. At once Nancy noticed that in the lower right-hand corner of the stationery was a small hand-painted dragon in an Oriental shade of red. She pointed this out.

“It may be a clue,” the girl detective remarked.

Aunt Eloise could add little to her story, except to say that the Soongs appeared to be very fine people and very fond of each other. They rarely had guests, because Grandpa Soong was at present spending most of his time writing a book.

“Let’s call on Grandpa Soong,” Nancy proposed, eager to start work solving the mystery.

Her aunt agreed. As Nancy opened the apartment door, she noticed a figure running toward the stairway. The person wore dark trousers and a loose coat.

Nancy stepped into the hall. At that instant something in front of her exploded with a loud bang!

INSTINCTIVELY Nancy put both hands over her face and stepped backward into the doorway. Despite her quick move she was showered with a spray of paper and sandy particles.

“What happened?” Aunt Eloise asked excitedly. “Are you hurt?”

“I—I guess not,” Nancy answered, as brownish-black smoke spread throughout the hallway.

Bess and George dashed from the apartment to look around for the cause of the explosion. Nancy joined them and a few seconds later held up a small tube. “I believe it was a giant firecracker someone set off.”

“A firecracker!” Bess repeated, thinking that mysteries for Nancy Drew had started in many unusual ways but never before with a giant firecracker.

Ever since the time Mr. Drew had asked his daughter to help him unravel
The Secret of the Old Clock
until recently, when Nancy had solved the mystery of
The Clue in the Old Stagecoach,
she had been in many precarious situations. The giant firecracker might have injured the young detective badly.

Nancy was staring at the Soongs’ door. Was the explosion some kind of warning to the Soongs? Or, by chance, had someone learned that Nancy was interested in the mystery and used this means to scare her off the case?

By this time all the doors along the hallway of the apartment house were being opened and curious, frightened faces looking out. When the tenants found that no damage had been done and no one had been hurt, they closed their doors again.

The last apartment to be opened was the Soongs’. An elderly man, with a long beard and wearing a black Chinese suit, looked inquiringly at the girls.

Miss Drew stepped up and said, “Hello, Grandpa Soong. I want you to meet my niece, Nancy Drew, and her friends Bess Marvin and George Fayne.”

Mr. Soong bowed low. “It gives me deep pleasure to meet the relative and friends of my very fine neighbor. I was on my way to answer the buzzer when I heard a loud explosion. Can you good people tell me what happened?”

“Mr. Soong, we think that a giant firecracker was set off,” Nancy replied. “Would you possibly know why?”

Grandpa Soong looked startled. “I know nothing about it. You think perhaps that because most firecrackers are made in Chinese territory I should know the reason?”

“Oh, no,” Nancy replied quickly. Then she told about the figure she had seen running down the hall just before the explosion.

Grandpa Soong smiled. “Without a better description, I could not identify such a man or woman. But I am sure I would not know him, anyway.”

The young sleuth went from door to door along the hallway, asking the various occupants if they had noticed the running figure. Each denied having seen anyone around.

When Nancy returned to the group, Aunt Eloise invited Mr. Soong into her apartment so that the girls might become better acquainted with him. Under the strong light of a reading lamp the elderly Chinese stared at George Fayne.

Suddenly he said, “Please forgive my rudeness, but you remind me very much of my Chi Che. Of course she is Chinese and you are American, but your hair, your flashing black eyes—even your dress reminds me so much of my granddaughter who is away visiting.”

George was startled, not only because Grandpa Soong did not suspect that anything unusual had happened to Chi Che, but also that she herself looked so much like the missing girl. She glanced at her clothes and had to admit that her mandarin-collared overblouse did indeed look Oriental.

Aunt Eloise and the others seated themselves and almost at once Grandpa Soong began to talk about his writing. “My book has been many years in preparation,” he said. “I spent much time in the interior of China gathering very valuable archaeological data. I hope my work will be of great benefit to mankind.”

“I’m sure it will be,” said Aunt Eloise. “Grandpa Soong, did Chi Che give up her after-school job at Stromberg’s Bookshop?”

“Oh, no,” the elderly man answered. “She loves her work and her studies. They mean much to her. I presume she has asked for a leave of absence from the shop while she is away visiting.”

Nancy asked, “Did Chi Che leave you a note, Mr. Soong?”

“Yes.” As he took one from the pocket of his jacket, he said, “I would cherish the idea if you girls would call me Grandpa Soong,” and they nodded.

The note was written in Chinese characters and Grandpa Soong began to translate it. “ ‘Going on holiday with college friends. Home-coming indefinite.’ ”

Nancy had listened intently, but now her attention was drawn to a hand-painted dragon in the lower right-hand corner of the stationery. Curious, she mentioned it.

“This stationery is not the kind used by my Chi Che,” Grandpa Soong explained. “It must have been given to her by the friend she’s with.”

He laid the note on the table, then went on, “The dragon is a very old and sacred symbol of China. The ancient name of the dragon was Lung and children believed in Lung just as Western children believe in Santa Claus.

“Legend tells us also that the dragon is the god of thunder. He appears in the sky as clouds which are said to be formed by his breath. Logically, then, the dragon is good because he produces rain and that, in turn, makes good rice crops, which are so necessary to the life of Chinese people.”

The elderly man’s audience was fascinated. Presently Nancy said, “So often when I have seen pictures of dragons they are accompanied by strings of pearls on the beasts or on the frames. Is there any significance to this?”

“Probably, but the story is lost in antiquity,” Grandpa Soong replied. “The combining of pearls with dragons in decorative designs is an ancient custom, and while used principally in China, it was also used in the East Indies and Japan.”

Grandpa Soong smiled. “I have heard that originally every self-respecting dragon had a pearl embedded under his chin! This gave him a special rank.”

Nancy was thinking that all this information was extremely interesting, but the subject was not furthering her endeavors to glean any clue as to why Chi Che had left the note for Aunt Eloise implying she was in danger.

Finally Nancy said, “Grandpa Soong, have you a good photograph of Chi Che?”

The man’s eyes twinkled. From a pocket of his coat he pulled a picture of a most attractive Chinese girl, dressed in a greenish-blue brocaded Chinese silk dress, with an inch-high tight collar.

“Chi Che
does
resemble you, George,” Bess spoke up. “Of course her hair is arranged a little differently, but she certainly looks like you.”

Grandpa Soong laid the picture on the table next to the note. Deep in thought, he paced up and down Aunt Eloise’s living room, his hands behind his back and his gaze on the ceiling. Finally he turned to the group. “You will excuse me, I am sure,” he said. “A thought just came to me which I must put in my manuscript.”

Without another word he went to the door and out to the hall. “Oh, he forgot Chi Che’s picture! And the note!” said Bess. She picked them up and started after him.

Nancy took hold of Bess’s arm. “Wait! I’d like to keep the picture and note for a little while,” she said. “An idea just came to me.”

“A brain storm?” George asked, chuckling.

“I guess you might call it that,” Nancy replied, smiling. “I think the dragon is a definite clue. But before I tell you any more of my plan, I have another suggestion. I feel sure Mr. Soong as well as Chi Che may be in real danger. The person who lighted that giant firecracker rang Mr. Soong’s buzzer. Perhaps he planned to have the baby bomb go off in the poor man’s face. It might have blinded him! Anyway, I believe we should protect him as well as try to find Chi Che.”

“I agree with you a hundred per cent,” Aunt Eloise declared. “What do you suggest?”

Nancy said she thought they should obtain Mr. Soong’s consent to keep the door between the two apartments unlocked. “We can run in every once in a while and see if he’s all right. Also, being alone, he may not eat properly. How about inviting him to share meals with us?”

“I think that’s a splendid idea,” said Aunt Eloise. “But before I ask him, what is this other scheme you have up your sleeve, Nancy?”

The young sleuth smiled. “It’s a very daring plan, I warn you.”

“GEORGE FAYNE,” Nancy said, “you are about to become Chi Che Soong!”

“What!” George cried out.

Nancy smiled. “I’m sure that with a little change in your hair style, you could pass for Chi Che. We’ll shape your eyebrows and make them heavier. We’ll place a bit of rouge high on your cheekbones and change that boyish hairdo of yours into a pixy cut.”

Nancy picked up the picture of Chi Che. “Look at this photograph and tell me what you think.”

After the others had studied it a moment, Bess gave Nancy a hug. “You’re a genius. It wouldn’t be hard to do at all, and if George puts on the dress Chi Che’s wearing in the picture, I’ll bet people will think she’s Chi Che, at least from a distance. Nancy, what do you have in mind for George to do?”

Nancy said that first they must get Grandpa Soong’s consent to keep the door between the two apartments unlocked. After George was made up, she was to leave by way of the Soongs’ entrance. “Bess, you and I will follow at a distance and see if anyone is trailing her.”

“You mean I’m just to walk up one street and down another and wait to be hit on the head?” George asked with a grin.

“Oh, do be sensible,” Nancy begged. “I haven’t decided yet where I’d like you to go. But please don’t leave this apartment until you go out dressed as Chi Che Soong.”

“I won’t mind,” said George. “There are some good books here to read. But you know me—I like action. So don’t make it too long.”

Bess now spoke up. “I was under the impression, Nancy, that you thought Chi Che was a prisoner. But if George is going to parade around the streets,” she added, “this puts a different light on the mystery. You don’t think Chi Che is being held after all, do you, Nancy?”

Nancy said she had not reached a conclusion as yet. “Chi Che may be a prisoner, or she may only be in hiding. But if the person from whom she’s hiding thinks he sees her on the street, we may be able to find out something worth while.”

Aunt Eloise and the cousins approved Nancy’s idea and George said she would be willing to undertake the experiment.

“Then the next thing,” said Aunt Eloise, “is for me to go next door and make the arrangements with Grandpa Soong.” She left and the girls continued to talk about the mystery until her return.

“I had no trouble at all,” Miss Drew reported. “Grandpa Soong was delighted to accept our invitation, and incidentally we are to call him when supper is ready. The door is unbolted now on his side. Come, I want to show you something exquisite.”

Aunt Eloise went to the connecting door and unlocked it from her apartment. Directly behind the door hung a large silk scroll which reached to the floor.

“This is a perfect screen,” Miss Drew remarked. “Anyone coming into the Soong apartment wouldn’ t know there is a door behind it.”

Nancy and her friends squeezed past the scroll and stepped into the Soong living room. The elderly man was not around and Aunt Eloise whispered that he was writing in his bedroom.

“What a gorgeous hand-painted scroll!” Bess remarked, gazing at the lovely ancient Chinese garden scene with men and ladies strolling about.

Before leaving the apartment, Nancy and the other girls took a quick glance around. The room was tastefully furnished with a Chinese teakwood table, chest, and chairs. There were hand-painted parchment shades on the lamps, and the floor was almost entirely covered by a heavy Oriental rug richly colored in blue and tawny yellow and bordered with a floral design.

“There are two bedrooms and a kitchen,” Aunt Eloise explained. “Grandpa Soong does all his writing in his bedroom.”

Quietly the visitors went back to Miss Drew’s apartment and the girls unpacked their clothes. Presently preparations for supper were started, and when everything was ready, Miss Drew went to call Grandpa Soong.

As she brought him in, the teacher teasingly remarked that it was hard to get him away from his writing. “Perhaps we shouldn’t ask,” she said to him, “but if we promise not to tell, will you give us an idea of what you were adding to your manuscript this afternoon?”

The elderly Chinese smiled, put his fingers together, and looked into space. “The manuscript is finished but I want to write a foreword. I am sure there is no harm in revealing the material I inserted. It is known to many people. In my archaeological work I dug up an ancient frieze. Until my book is printed no one will know its exact origin.

“On the frieze,” he continued, “is pictured one of the early heroes of Chinese history—Fu Hsi. He lived over 4,800 years ago.”