(#28) The Clue of the Black Keys (10 page)

At lunch Carson Drew noticed that Nancy was not eating with her usual appetite. “Is that quiz on your mind?” he asked kindly.

Nancy admitted that it was. Then she changed the subject and tried to act cheerful. But after her father had left for his office, she looked at her watch anxiously. How could she spend those four long hours, waiting for Fran to call?

Nancy had just settled down to a new novel when, shortly after one-thirty, the River Heights fire siren blasted. Mrs. Gruen came hurrying from the kitchen.

“It’s our district,” the housekeeper announced. “That fire must be right in this neighborhood.”

She and Nancy rushed out to the front porch. Black smoke was pouring from the Hackley house, two doors up the street.

Nancy and Hannah raced across the lawns, reaching the scene just before the fire engines. From somewhere in the rear of the house, Nancy heard a woman screaming. Leaving Mrs. Gruen, she ran to the back door. Mrs. Hackley came staggering out, carrying her year-old baby. The woman and her infant were crying hysterically.

“Let me help you,” Nancy offered and did her best to calm them.

Meanwhile, the firemen had gone inside the house. Presently one of them ran out of the cellar carrying a bucket full of black, smoldering rags.

The fireman approached Mrs. Hackley. “Here’s your trouble,” he said. “Know anything about this?”

Mrs. Hackley stared. “N-no. Where did you find that?”

“These rags were stuffed into a duct from your furnace. They’ve got oil on them and some sort of chemical. That’s what made the terrible smoke in your house.”

“Mercy!” cried Mrs. Hackley. “Whoever would do a crazy thing like that?”

Nancy shuddered. The Drews’ front door had been left open. The firebug might have gone into their house!

Not seeing Hannah, Nancy hurried home alone. Quickly she went to the kitchen and opened the cellar door. There was no sign of smoke. She was breathing a sigh of relief when she heard a stifled cough.

Nancy’s heart pounded. Was the man who had started the fire at the Hackleys’ starting a fire here?

Then another thought came to her. Had he set the Hackley fire to lure her and Hannah away so he would have time to look for something—and steal it?

“Let me help you,” Nancy offered

Nancy thought with regret of the plainclothesman who had been on guard during the day. If only he had not been dismissed!

She tiptoed through the kitchen, and cautiously crept across the lower hall and up the carpeted stairway. As she reached the upper hall, Nancy saw a man emerge from her bedroom.

The intruder turned, saw her, and stiffened. Juarez Tino! He was clenching something black in his hand.

Terry Scott’s half-key!

CHAPTER XIV

Danger and Diplomacy

JUAREZ TINO gasped in astonishment. He stood irresolute, then wheeled around and started for the back stairs.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Nancy cried. With a lightning lunge she was after him, reaching for his clenched right hand.

“Give me that key!” she demanded.

“I will not!” Juarez muttered.

Nancy was desperate now. She tore at his right hand with both of her own and managed, for a moment, to wrest the key from the man’s grasp.

But not for long. With an angry oath, Juarez wrenched his arms free and pushed her violently through the bedroom doorway. Prying her fingers loose, he once more took possession of the key, dropping it into his breast pocket.

“Help! Help!” Nancy screamed, hoping Mrs. Gruen was near the house.

“That won’t do you any good.” Juarez leered triumphantly, and forced Nancy to her knees. “I’ll teach you,” he sneered.

His knee against her back, he sent her sprawling face downward. Then he seized both her hands and pinned them behind her. With his necktie, he quickly tied her wrists together.

Nancy twisted and thrashed away from him. Though she was powerless to escape, the struggle delayed him a few seconds. She tried to scream again, but Juarez clamped a hand over her mouth.

“When I get through with you, you won’t be able to talk,” the swarthy man threatened.

He whipped a handkerchief from his breast pocket to gag her. Nancy saw the half-key fly through the air. Then he gagged her, and she did not see the key land. Juarez, apparently, did not know he had lost it.

Next, he tore a blanket from her bed and stretched it on the floor. He rolled her over and over until it encased her from toes to shoulders. Then he tied it with a sheet.

At that moment the front door slammed, and Hannah Gruen called, “Nancy, are you home?”

Muttering to himself, Juarez pushed Nancy out of sight under the bed.

“You should have stayed at the fire a while longer, Detective Drew,” he sneered.

Creaking footsteps told Nancy he was sneaking down the back stairs. If only she could scream Hannah’s name! She could barely moan.

Nancy desperately tried to roll out from under the bed. She heaved against the night table and shook the lamp. The noise brought Mrs. Gruen to her side immediately.

“Nancy!”

Hands trembling, she removed the gag from the girl’s mouth. As Hannah untied the sheet, Nancy explained what had happened.

“Juarez Tino started that fire and tied you up?” Hannah Gruen cried. “If I ever get my hands on that—that—!”

She flew to the window. Not seeing him, she rushed to the telephone. As Mrs. Gruen dialed police headquarters, she stormed:

“They shouldn’t have let that daytime plainclothesman go. Leaving you here at the mercy of that maniac!”

Nancy got to her feet stiffly, rubbing her arms to bring back the circulation. She stood deep in thought, wondering about the key. It was not in sight. Had Juarez discovered his loss and retrieved the key?

Hopeful that he had not taken the precious relic with him, she examined every inch of carpet. The key was not in sight.

Hannah called, “Nancy, I have Sergeant Malloy on the phone. He wants to talk to you.”

The officer asked a number of questions about Juarez Tino. He said he would put several of his men on the trail immediately.

“We’ll comb this town,” he declared. “I’ll be up to see you later.”

After Nancy had hung up, Mrs. Gruen joined in the search for the missing obsidian key. When neither of them could find it in Nancy’s room, they were forced to conclude that Juarez must have taken it with him.

Nancy was blaming herself for not having chosen a safer hiding place, when she heard a car in the driveway. Glancing from the window, she saw Sergeant Malloy step out. Hannah admitted the policeman and brought him upstairs.

“You found Juarez?” she asked hopefully.

“Not yet, but the men are out looking. I stopped in to get a full report on what happened, and to tell you we heard from Savannah, Georgia.”

“About the Wangells?”

“No, the Porterlys. The police there say a couple who gypped a gas-station attendant, and rode off just before the police got our message, were probably the Porterlys. The Savannah police are trying to track them down.”

“I thought they were already in Florida,” Nancy said. “I wonder when the Wangells expect to meet them.”

The officer said he wished he knew. Malloy made an examination of the premises. He was just leaving when George and Bess came in. When Nancy walked outside with him to conclude her conversation, Mrs. Gruen told the two cousins the story.

“Hypers!” said George when Nancy returned. “Talk about a cat having nine lives! This must be your forty-ninth!”

“That awful man!” Bess wailed. “He might have killed you!”

George gave her friend a searching glance. “You don’t seem very happy,” she remarked. “Aren’t you glad to be safe?”

“I’m afraid Juarez took the key with him. Terry will never forgive me!”

George and Bess made Nancy tell everything that had happened, moment by moment. They ended re-enacting the drama together, with Nancy’s bedroom key substituting for the black half-key.

George suddenly had an inspiration. “Which blanket did Juarez use?”

“The dark navy one from my bed.”

George spread the blanket on the floor. Caught in the fleecy wool was the black half-key! It was hardly noticeable against the navy color.

“George! You found it!” cried Nancy, delirious with joy.

In the midst of the excitement, the telephone rang. Hannah answered, then called up the stairway, “It’s for you, Nancy. The girl says her name’s Frances Oakes.”

Nancv sobered at once. On the wav to the telephone in her father’s study she tried to calm herself.

This was a decisive moment. She was about to learn whether she had passed Dr. Anderson’s quiz. Upon this call would depend her chance of a trip to Florida to continue her quest for the black keys and the Frog Treasure!

“Hello, Fran,” Nancy said into the telephone, her heart thumping. “What’s the news?”

“Nancy, you made it! I don’t see how you did it without going to class. But you passed!”

Nancy had to giggle, she felt so relieved. “I was lucky, I guess. How did you girls make out?”

“We passed, and we’re thrilled you’re going to Florida with us.”

Nancy asked when the trip would start.

“Dr. Anderson has chartered a morning plane for day after tomorrow. It leaves from the airport near the Institute,” Fran replied. “Why not spend the night at my dorm?”

“Wonderful!” Nancy exclaimed. “I’ll be there. Any special clothes I should bring?”

“A few cotton dresses, slacks or dungarees, and high-laced boots for trips in swampy terrain. The going will be rough in some places, Dr. Anderson says. Snakes and things.”

“Mm! What else?”

“Bring a bathing suit—naturally. Say, do you like to water ski?”

“Love to.”

“My cousin Jack Walker who lives in Miami has a motorboat,” Fran said. “When we’re not working, maybe we can go out with him.”

Nancy promised to meet Fran at her dormitory for dinner the next evening. Then she said good-by, and hurried to tell the good news to Bess, George, and Hannah.

“I don’t envy you one bit!” exclaimed Bess.

“I’m afraid of snakes.”

“When I was about ten years old,” said George reminiscently, “my family took me to Key West.”

Suddenly she snapped her fingers. “Maybe the treasure is buried on one of the Florida Keys!”

“What treasure?” Bess asked.

“The Frog Treasure. The ancient secret which Terry thinks is hidden in a silver frog.”

“I thought it was in Mexico,” Bess said. “You mean Juarez Tino found out where it’s buried?”

“Or buried it there himself after he brought it from Mexico,” George replied. “Remember how Wangell scared his wife, striking those black keys on the piano? Maybe it was a sort of pun.”

“You mean,” Nancy spoke up, “that Wangell knew the story from Juarez and might have been reminding Mrs. Wangell of something that happened on a
Black Key
in Florida?”

“Exactly.”

“The way the reminder bothered her, the happening must have been pretty bad,” Bess declared. “Burying a treasure isn’t so awful.”

“That’s right,” Nancy said, frowning. “There must have been something more to it than just that. But anyway, if Juarez Tino had the treasure, why would he still want the half-key?”

“I didn’t think of that,” said George.

Nancy decided to look at a map of the area to which she was going. Perhaps an answer to the problem would present itself. She went to the bookcase for an atlas. She quickly flipped the pages to a detailed map of the Florida Keys.

As the cousins looked over her shoulder, Nancy ran her finger along the many Florida islands, scanning them quickly for their names.

She sighed. “No Black Key yet.”

“Here it says ‘Ten Thousand Islands,’ ” Bess remarked. “I wonder if all of them have names.”

Once more Nancy ran her finger along the fine print of the map. No Black Key listed. But probably many of the small islands had names known only locally, she concluded. As soon as she reached Florida, she would find out if there were an island called Black Key.

It was possible that such an island might be uninhabited and unexplored. A perfect spot for hiding a captive—like Dr. Joshua Pitt!

Long after Bess and George had left, Nancy continued to brood over this possibility. Alternately she was excited about the prospect of finding the elderly professor hidden there, and afraid he might have been starved or tortured by Juarez Tino and his friends.

A voice from the second floor brought her back to reality. “If you don’t come and see about your clothes, Nancy, you won’t be ready to go.”

“Coming, Hannah.”

Nancy went upstairs and picked out a few summer dresses, skirts, slacks, and sweaters. Then as Hannah started the packing, Nancy went downtown to buy heavy, high-laced boots.

Upon her return, Hannah told her that Ned Nickerson had telephoned. Hearing of Nancy’s plan to join Dr. Anderson’s expedition at Clifton Institute, he had decided to come down and drive her there.

“He’s expecting to take you to lunch and spend part of the afternoon with you,” the housekeeper reported. “That means you’ll have to be ready early.”

Next morning, after kissing her father good-by and promising to write often and not take dangerous risks in her sleuthing, she and Hannah went to Nancy’s bedroom to finish the packing. As the housekeeper opened the young detective’s handkerchief drawer, she found Terry Scott’s half-key.