The Spider Sapphire Mystery (2 page)

Presently Nancy smiled to herself. “Hannah always says that things come in threes. I wonder what’s in store for me now.”

Hannah Gruen, the Drews’ housekeeper, had lived with Nancy and her father since the death of Mrs. Drew when Nancy was three years old. The warm-hearted woman was like a mother to Nancy and worried constantly about the strange situations which the young sleuth faced when solving mysteries.

“Poor Hannah!” Nancy thought. “She’ll be so upset when I tell her what happened this morning.”

By now Nancy had reached the museum. The curator, Mr. Sand, was standing in the entrance hall.

“Good morning, Nancy,” he said. “Have you come to see Mr. Ramsey’s gem?”

“Yes, I have,” Nancy replied. “I understand it’s exquisite.”

The curator nodded. “I defy anyone to tell the gem from an original. You’ll find it in the room to the right of the one where the prehistoric animals are.”

Nancy hurried through the big room and turned into the smaller one. A glass case stood in the center. On a mound of white velvet lay the unique gem.

Before Nancy had a chance to examine it carefully through the glass, a homemade printed sign tacked to one corner of the case caught her attention. She read it and frowned, puzzled. The sign said:

THE curator had followed Nancy to the spider sapphire case.

“Well, what do you think of—” Mr. Sand began. He stopped speaking abruptly as Nancy pointed to the sign saying the gem had been stolen.

The man’s face turned red with anger. “That is not true!” he cried. “Someone put the sign there—someone who is trying to cause trouble!”

He called to a guard standing near the door and quizzed him about recent visitors. “Everybody looked all right to me,” the guard answered. He smiled. “Maybe some teen-ager put that up there for a joke.”

“Maybe,” the curator agreed, calming down.

Nancy was inclined to disagree, but did not voice this opinion to the others. She asked the guard to describe all the men who had been in the museum recently.

Her pulse quickened when he said, “One of the visitors looked to me like a native of India. He kept walking around and around the case and seemed mighty interested in the gem.”

This was all the proof Nancy needed. The Indian visitor fitted the description of the older of the two men who had imprisoned her in the car.

After the guard had gone back to the door, she said to Mr. Sand, “I don’t trust that Indian. If he ever returns, watch him carefully.”

The curator smiled. “You’re mixed up again in some mystery and this time it involves an Indian?” he asked.

Nancy did not reply. She merely gave the man a wink.

The young detective rarely discussed her cases with anyone except her father, closest friends, or police and detectives. Mr. Drew had given her this advice on her first case,
The Secret of the Old Clock,
and Nancy had followed his wise counsel in solving all her other cases, including the most recent one,
The Clue in the Crossword Cipher.

Nancy now gave her full attention to the magnificent, almost round, inch-long gem in the case with the spider embedded in it. The sapphire, a shade darker than pale blue, sparkled brilliantly. The gem was transparent except where the spider lay. A card in the display case stated that Mr. Floyd Ramsey had produced this sapphire synthetically.

“The gem is absolutely beautiful,” she said to Mr. Sand. “What gave Mr. Ramsey the idea of embedding a spider in the sapphire?”

“He saw a picture of a similar gem—a real one —and decided to experiment to see if he could imitate it.”

After a pause Mr. Sand remarked, “You know, spiders are one of the oldest living creatures on earth. They appeared at least three hundred million years ago.”

“Really?” Nancy asked, amazed.

The curator said that the study of spiders was intriguing. “The whole earth is covered with them. They’re man’s best friend. If spiders weren’t around, we’d be overrun and eaten up with insects.”

Amused by Nancy’s frown, Mr. Sand went on, “I read recently that a man in England made a study of spiders to determine how many there were in a certain area. A census of one acre was two and a quarter million spiders!”

Nancy gasped. Then she laughed. “Mr. Sand, you make me feel positively crawly.”

The curator’s eyes twinkled. “Do you know how old the world’s sapphires are—I mean the kind that Mother Nature fashioned?”

Nancy shook her head. “How old?”

“So far as is known they first appeared in the Carboniferous Era. That’s roughly two hundred and fifty million years ago.”

“So spiders and sapphires are much older than man,” Nancy observed. “I believe human beings first appeared on the earth ten million years ago.”

“That’s right.”

Mr. Sand was summoned to the telephone and Nancy spent a few more minutes admiring the spider sapphire.

“I must go to Dad’s office and ask him all about the spider sapphire mystery,” she told herself, and left the museum.

She found tall, athletic Mr. Drew dictating a letter to one of his secretaries, Miss Hanson. Nancy offered to wait in the reception room, but he insisted that both she and Miss Hanson remain.

“You never come here unless you have something important on your mind,” he teased Nancy. “What is it this time?”

His daughter told about the “stolen” sign tacked onto the spider sapphire case.

“It may involve the ancient spider sapphire owned by the Indian, Shastri Tagore,” the lawyer said. “His agents are in this country. They revealed the theft of his gem. These agents, who are Indians, live in Mombasa, East Africa, where Mr. Tagore has a home. They had heard about the gem Mr. Ramsey claimed he made. The men don’t believe his story and insist that the gem is Mr. Tagore’s stolen property.”

“But you believe Mr. Ramsey, don’t you?” Nancy asked.

“Of course I do. I have known Floyd for a long time. There’s not a more honest man in the world.”

Nancy had not intended to tell her father about the purse-snatching incident, but he surprised her by saying, “I hear a man grabbed your handbag and almost knocked you down.”

Mr. Drew added that someone who had seen the incident had called him and related the story.

“I hope the person also told you about the nice man who retrieved my bag. And here’s a story I’m sure you haven’t heard.”

Nancy told him of her experience in the parking lot and her suspicion that the man who had grabbed her handbag was one of the drivers. It was the lawyer’s turn to look amazed, and Miss Hanson gasped.

“I’m sure the whole thing is bound up with the spider sapphire mystery,” Nancy told her father.

“Then I’m glad you’re going away so soon,” Mr. Drew said. “In the meantime I insist that you have someone with you whenever you leave the house.”

Miss Hanson spoke up. “Oh, you’re going away, Nancy?”

“Yes, on an African safari. Isn’t it marvelous?”

“Will you be with a group?” the secretary inquired.

Nancy nodded. “You know that my friend Ned Nickerson attends Emerson College. The safari has been organized by some of the professors. Boys who are majoring in botany, zoology, and geology are making the trip. They’re being allowed to ask friends to go at the students’ rate. Bess and George and I have signed up. Burt and Dave, their dates, will be along, too.”

“It sounds thrilling,” Miss Hanson remarked.

Nancy said that the leaders of the Emerson safari were Professor and Mrs. Wilmer Stanley. “He’s always called Prof and she’s affectionately known as Aunt Millie to the boys.”

“It certainly sounds like fun,” Miss Hanson remarked as she picked up the telephone which had started to ring.

Mr. Drew and Nancy stopped speaking. Miss Hanson said, “Mr. Drew’s office.... She’s here. Do you wish to speak to her?” Then the secretary became silent. Presently her brow furrowed. Finally she said, “Thank you. I’ll tell her.”

Miss Hanson put down the phone and looked directly at Nancy. “The call was from Professor Stanley. He said he was in a hurry and wouldn’t take time to speak to you. I’m terribly sorry to give you his message, Nancy. Ned Nickerson can’t go on the safari after all.”

Nancy’s heart sank. What had happened? She forced herself to say, “That is bad news,” She had talked to Ned only two days before and he was extremely eager to go on the safari. He had said, “Nothing in this world will keep me from going.”

Mr. Drew declared that it was strange Ned had not telephoned Nancy direct. Why should he have asked Professor Stanley to make the call?

Nancy’s suspicions were aroused at once. She asked Miss Hanson to put in a call to the college and ask for Professor Stanley. It took some time to locate him, but finally the secretary reached the professor at his home.

“Miss Drew wishes to speak to you,” Miss Hanson told him.

“Hello, Nancy,” he said genially. “How are you? All ready for the trip?”

“Yes, I’m ready. But what’s all this about Ned not going?”

“What do you mean?” the professor asked.

“Didn’t you phone my father’s office during the past few minutes?”

“Why no.”

When she told what had occurred, Professor Stanley said of course Ned was going. Someone was just playing a prank.

Nancy doubted this but made no comment. She said she would be seeing the professor soon and hung up. Next, Nancy asked Miss Hanson to call Ned at the Omega Chi Epsilon Fraternity House at Emerson.

When the connection was made, Nancy learned that Ned was not there, so she asked for Burt Eddleton.

When he came on the wire, she told him what had happened. Burt was amazed at the story and also disturbed.

“Ned left the dorm yesterday afternoon. Later he phoned and gave someone a message that he was going home. I don’t like this at all,” Burt added.

“I’ll call the Nickersons right away and see if he’s there,” Nancy said.

She spoke to Mrs. Nickerson, who said that her son had not come home and she had not heard from him. Because Nancy did not want to alarm his parents unnecessarily, she did not express the fear which was forming in her mind. Ned might have met with foul play!

ALTHOUGH Mrs. Nickerson tried to remain calm, Nancy could tell that she was disturbed by the news. “It’s unlike Ned not to be in touch with his father and me and his friends.”

“I’ll ask Bess and George to go with me to Emerson tomorrow morning and help search—if that’s necessary,” Nancy told her.

“I’m glad to know that,” Ned’s father said on their extension phone. “If you hear from him, please ask him to phone us.”

Nancy promised to do so, then hung up and turned to her father. “What do you think I should do now?” she inquired. “I have a strong hunch something is wrong.”

“Why don’t you telephone Burt and Dave? Ask them to make a thorough search of the campus to see if they can locate Ned.”

Miss Hanson was already reaching for the telephone and again dialed the number of the Omega Chi Epsilon house. She asked for Burt Eddleton and Dave Evans. Both came on the wire and Nancy told them that Ned had not come home.

“I’m afraid he may have met with foul play,” she said. “Would you make a thorough search of the campus and let me know what you find out?”

Neither of the boys answered at once and she could hear them whispering in the background. Finally Dave said, “That’s kind of a large order, Nancy. Perhaps we should get all our fraternity brothers to help in the search. And maybe we should report this to the police.”

Burt spoke up. “Personally I feel that Ned went off of his own accord to study. He’d be mighty embarrassed having a whole bunch of us burst in on him. You know we’re all cramming for exams. We have a tough one coming up tomorrow morning.”

There was another long pause, during which a plan was formulating in Nancy’s mind. At last she said, “Would it help if Bess and George and I come up to help search—that is, if you don’t find any trace of Ned this afternoon?”

Burt said this was exactly what the boys had hoped she might suggest. “We’ll get busy at once and let you know at suppertime what we find out.”

Nancy’s next call was to Bess, who was astounded at the news. She agreed at once to go to Emerson. Her cousin, George Fayne, an athletic-looking girl, was eager to help.

“Great,” said Nancy. “I’ll let you know as soon as I hear from Dave and Burt.”

The afternoon hours dragged by. Nancy took her convertible to be repaired so the top would raise and lower again. The mechanic said it had been tampered with-and Nancy was sure the sabotage had been committed in the Drews’ garage. “And by those men who imprisoned me in the parking lot!”

In her alarm over Ned, Nancy had forgotten about the African safari and the spider sapphire mystery. The whole thing came back to her as she packed a few clothes into a suitcase and talked to Hannah Gruen. The housekeeper was dismayed by the strange turn of events.

“No doubt about it,” she said. “There are villains in this picture somewhere. The extent to which some people will go to gain dishonest ends is frightening. Please, Nancy, promise me that you will be very careful.”

Nancy smiled and hugged the housekeeper, for whom she had a deep affection. “I promise.”

At seven o‘clock the telephone rang and Nancy ran to answer it. Burt was calling. There was a note of deep concern in his voice. Twenty-five boys had taken part in a thorough search of the campus. They had not found Ned.

“Nancy, do you think he has been kidnapped?” Burt asked.

She closed her eyes as if to shut out the dreadful thought and said, “It looks so. I’ll get in touch with the Nickersons immediately.”

With a heavy heart Nancy dialed the number of the Nickerson home. This time Ned’s father answered. Though he tried to keep his voice steady, it was evident he was apprehensive over his son’s safety when he heard the upsetting news.