The Spider Sapphire Mystery (15 page)

But her hope was shattered when Dhan ordered excitedly, “Open that box!”

Jahan did so. He gave a cry of dismay upon finding it empty. He screamed at Nancy and Ned, “Where’s the spider sapphire?”

The couple made no response. The two Indians were furious. As Dhan snapped and cracked the whip, it came within inches of the couple.

“Search them!” he cried.

Jahan carefully went through Ned’s pockets, then he turned to Nancy’s shopping bag. Her heart almost stopped beating. Would he discover the hiding place of the spider sapphire?

She and Ned gave no sign by the expression on their faces that they were worried. Though Jahan searched carefully, he hardly looked at the mask and did not even turn it over.

“The jewel’s not here,” he reported to his father.

The older man, his face livid with rage, cracked the whip several times. Finally he faced Nancy.

There was a cruel, unrelenting look in his eyes as he said to her, “Tell us where the spider sapphire is or I’ll use this whip on your friend here!”

ALMOST speechless with terror and yet determined not to give up the spider sapphire, Nancy jumped in front of Ned.

“Don’t you dare strike him!” she cried out.

Jahan and Dhan were taken aback by the young detective’s defiance. As Ned stepped in front of her so she would not be harmed, Nancy began to talk fast.

“No matter what you do to us,” she said, “it will not keep you from being arrested. Your whole scheme has been found out!”

Dhan stopped the whip in mid-air. As he was trying to make up his mind whether to strike Ned, the squeaky sliding door opened a bit farther. Swahili Joe walked into the room.

He spoke to the men in Swahili, then advanced toward the prisoners.

“Stand back, Nancy!” Ned ordered. “I’m not going to let this big baboon pull another kidnap· ping!”

Nancy went on, “There’s a police net around here. All three of you will be caught.”

“They can’t arrest us,” said Dhan, “because we have not done anything.”

“Oh no?” said Ned. “You nearly smothered Nancy with a plastic-lined sack and stuck a warning note in her hand. And you burned all the clothes and suitcases of Miss Drew and two other girls. You even stole their jewelry. After you kidnapped me, you sabotaged Miss Drew’s car and tried to keep her from flying to Africa by phoning her father’s office that I wasn’t coming. And you put acid on the handle of her suitcase to delay her work. It might have scarred her for life!” The men did not deny the accusations.

Nancy’s eyes snapped. “You men stole the spider sapphire from Mr. Tagore,” she said. “Then you came to the United States and tried several ways to get the synthetic gem in the River Heights museum to bring back here and put in place of the original—even hoped to blackmail Mr. Ramsey with a sign saying his gem was a stolen one.”

“It was not our idea,” Jahan spoke up.

“We suspected that,” Nancy continued. “It was Mr. Tagore’s secretary, Rhim Rao, who engineered the whole scheme. He paid for your trip to our country. You came there under the false name of Prasad.”

The two Indians stared in amazement. Swahili Joe stood looking blankly at Nancy. Apparently he did not know what she was talking about.

Ned took up the story. “You used Swahili Joe as your strong-arm man. The poor fellow is under your domination. After his bad fall in the circus, he became an easy dupe for you people. I don’t know what the penalty is in your country for kidnapping, but he has a count against him up at Treetops for carrying off one of our girls.”

The three men stared speechless at Nancy and Ned. They translated a bit of the conversation to Swahili Joe, who suddenly looked frightened. Nancy went on with her accusations, to gain time until she and Ned could be rescued. She mentioned that Ross and Brown were part of the gang and the Indians did not deny this.

“Tizam—whom you planned to kill and who you thought was killed by a lion—is alive,” Nancy said. At that, Jahan and Dhan actually jumped in astonishment.

She asked suddenly, “Do you trust Rhim Rao?”

The two Indians exchanged glances, then Jahan finally admitted that Rao had thought up the whole scheme. “He was going to collect the insurance for Mr. Tagore and later sell the spider sapphire. But the company has been making a thorough investigation, and he became a little worried. When he heard about the synthetic gem in the United States, he thought if he could hand it to his employer as the real sapphire, he would be safe and Mr. Tagore would not know the difference.”

Nancy thought, “So Rhim Rao doesn’t know about the spinnerets! Mr. Tagore would have detected the substitution at once!”

Dhan now seemed ready to talk. “Rhim Rao never told us where he hid the spider sapphire. He promised us our share when he sold it.”

Ned spoke up. “He couldn’t have sold it. The gem would have been traced too easily.”

“He was going to break it up into smaller stones,” Jahan explained.

Dhan said, “We have been following you people. When you came into this building, we thought you had found the hiding place of the spider sapphire. Both of us know this old building well. We locked the outside door to this dungeon and then went around to the inside and came down here.”

His son’s face took on an angry expression. “Since you two didn’t find the spider sapphire, I guess Rao hid it somewhere else. Maybe he has already sold it and is going to freeze out my father and me.”

Nancy and Ned did not comment, but it served their purpose to let the men think this. Now maybe they would release their prisoners.

Dhan spoke up again. “Rhim Rao is a thief. He steals from Mr. Tagore, his employer, all the time. This is how he got the money to send us to River Heights. Mr. Tagore doesn’t suspect his secretary. In fact, it was Rhim Rao who told him Tizam had taken the spider sapphire.”

Suddenly Dhan said, “We have talked too much. If we let this girl and her friend go, they’ll tell the police. Let’s leave them locked in and get out of here!”

The two Indians and Swahili Joe were about to depart through the sliding door when there was a commotion outside. Several police entered the dungeon. They quickly arrested the three Africans and explained that when George and Burt had seen them enter the building, George had notified the authorities.

As Nancy and the others reached the street, George and Burt rushed up, relieved to see that she and Ned had not been harmed.

“When I saw that whip, I wanted to go right in after those men,” said George, “but Burt wouldn’t let me.” She smiled. “And I wouldn’t let him go either. We might all have been trapped and unable to summon the police.”

“You did the right thing,” one of the officers told her. “Do I understand other people are involved in this theft of the spider sapphire?”

Nancy quickly told what she knew and said that two friends of hers had gone to the Tagore home to keep an eye on Rhim Rao.

“I think we should go there,” she said, “and give Mr. Tagore his spider sapphire.”

“And arrest Rhim Rao,” Ned added.

At that announcement Jahan’s and Dhan’s eyes bulged. “You found it?” Jahan screamed. “Rhim Rao didn’t double-cross us after all?”

Nancy did not reply. Instead, she told the police where she had found it and they agreed she should be the one to return it. Two detectives would go to the Tagore home with her and arrest Rhim Rao if he were there.

“In order to avoid suspicion,” said one of the detectives, “I think you four young people had better go in one cab. We will follow in another. If Rhim Rao suspects the police are after him, he will certainly try to get away.”

Taxis were summoned. When Nancy and her friends reached the Tagore home, they saw Bess and Dave just coming out. They were followed by an Indian about forty-five years old.

Ned paid the taxi driver and the visitors walked forward. “Hello!” Bess called cheerfully. The others knew she was eager to ask them how they had made out, but her expression gave no sign of this. “I would like you to meet Mr. Rhim Rao,” she said, and presented him to her four friends.

Nancy kept up a running conversation until she saw the detectives’ taxi coming. As soon as the policemen got out, she introduced them. Rhim Rao looked puzzled, but the expression on his face changed when the detectives announced that he was under arrest.

“This is preposterous!” Rao shouted.

His further protests were interrupted by the appearance of Mr. Tagore. He bowed to the callers, then asked what the trouble was.

“These men are trying to arrest me and I have done nothing!” Rhim Rao exclaimed.

During the conversation, Nancy had taken the mask from her shopping bag. Now she turned it over and lifted the tiny door back of one eye.

“Here is your missing spider sapphire, Mr. Tagore,” she announced, and handed it over. The owner stared unbelievingly. “You found it? Where?”

“Perhaps you should ask Mr. Rhim Rao where he hid it,” she answered.

The thief became bold in his reply. “Me!” he cried out. “I know nothing about the disappearance of this gem. I am delighted that it has been recovered.”

Ned gave him a dark look. “Your friends Jahan and Dhan have confessed,” he said. “They are in jail.”

Hearing this, Rhim Rao lost all his bravado. He changed into a sniveling, pleading individual, assuring his employer that no harm had been intended. Mr. Tagore stared at him in disgust. “Your defense can be brought up in court. Take him away, men.”

When the excitement had died down, Mr. Tagore invited his callers to enter the house. He led them through a richly carpeted hall to a rear garden. It was filled with beautiful flowers, and had a large pool partly filled with water lilies. At the end of it stood an attractive white summerhouse.

“Let us go over there and talk,” their host suggested.

“Isn’t this picturesque?” Bess whispered as they followed Mr. Tagore.

A servant, wearing a white tight-fitting suit and a bright-red turban, entered the summerhouse, carrying a huge tray. Tea was served and with it delicious pastries and a bowl of fruit. As they ate, Mr. Tagore asked for full details of the young people’s adventures since meeting them at the Mount Kenya Safari Club.

At the end he said, “I must talk with Tizam. You say he is not far away. Perhaps I could send for him.”

Ned offered to go for the wood carver. While he was gone, the others continued to exchange stories about the mystery. Nancy asked Mr. Tagore if he had ever heard of men named Ross, Brown, Ramon, and Sharma.

“I do not know the first two, but they are probably part of Rhim Rao’s gang. I think we should ask our police to get in touch with the authorities in Nairobi and find out if the men have been picked up yet.

“Ramon and Sharma are friends of mine. They advised me some time ago not to put so much trust in Rhim Rao. Unfortunately I did not take their advice.”

As Bess finished her second cup of tea, she said, “Mr. Tagore, do you know that at one point in solving this mystery we all distrusted you? Please forgive us.”

George grinned. “We were even going to give back the necklaces you left for us.”

Mr. Tagore chuckled. “I don’t blame you one bit for mistrusting me. The disappearance of my gem was so strange it must have seemed to you like a fraud. Incidentally, sometime I should like to see the gem your friend Mr. Ramsey has produced. He must be an exceedingly fine chemist.” Mr. Tagore went on to say that the jewelry he had given the girls was small reward for all they had done. When they refused anything more, he said, “It would give me pleasure to entertain your whole Emerson safari at a very special dinner Indian style.”

“Thank you very much,” said Nancy.

A few minutes later Ned arrived with Tizam, who had brought along several wood carvings of the three gazelles standing together. After introductions he presented the first figurine to Mr. Tagore, then handed one to each of the young people.

“I have had the pleasure,” said the Indian, “of hearing your sister Madame Lilia Bulawaya sing. She has a remarkable voice.”

Tizam smiled and said through the efforts of Mr. Nickerson she had been located and had already communicated with him. “I am very happy about this and will see her as soon as her tour in the United States is over.”

Tizam turned to the young people. “The money she was raising through her concert tour to find me should go to Nancy Drew and her friends.”

Again the Americans refused any remuneration for their work and Bess said, “We’re just pleased to have had a part in solving the case.”

This remark made Nancy realize her work was finished. But not for long. Soon she would be starting to solve the challenging mystery of
The Invisible Intruder.

“Mr. Tizam,” said Nancy, “wouldn’t you like to see the spider sapphire?”

“Indeed I would,” he replied.

When it was shown to him, he looked at it in astonishment. “It is an amazing gem.”

“I should say,” George spoke up, “that Nancy Drew has made this spider the most famous one that ever lived on this earth!”