Читать книгу The Password to Larkspur Lane - Walter Karig - Страница 4

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Nancy wrote out the message, for she felt that sooner or later it would be of vast importance. Beside it she put down the license number of the car in which Dr. Spires had departed so unceremoniously and mysteriously.

Then she smoothed out the message the pigeon had carried, and tried to ferret a meaning from the ludicrous words.

“Could it be a code?” Nancy wondered. She tried to choose alternate letters, starting at various places in the sentence, but none of the methods she knew produced any results. She determined that this was no cipher, but that the words had a special meaning apparent only to those who held the secret contained therein.

“This is a real mystery,” muttered the girl, puzzling over the message. Suddenly she heard a faint moaning.

“Help! Help——”

She leaped to her feet, straining her ears.

There was no clue as to where the wailing might be coming from. The girl, now worried, ran to the kitchen, but found it to be empty. So were the living room, the dining room, and the library.

As she stood in the hallway she could hear the moaning again, and this time she detected her name being called.

She thought that it came from the floor below, and ran back into the kitchen and then to the cellarway. The switch for the basement light was turned on. She threw open the door and saw a huddled form at the foot of the stairs.

“Hannah!” she cried in alarm, a catch in her throat. “Are you badly hurt?”

The words were spoken as she raced down the steps to the side of the housekeeper.

“I dropped a potato out of the pan and slipped on it,” Hannah moaned. “My back hurts terribly.”

“Can you stand up if I help you?” Nancy asked, putting her arms around Mrs. Gruen. The woman, leaning heavily on the girl, struggled to her feet, groaning and moaning all the while, her face white with pain.

“Now see if you can climb the stairs with my help,” Nancy urged. “Then we’ll get into my car, run around to Dr. Spires and have him examine you.”

“Oh, no, the dinner,” Hannah protested, “Your father——”

“We’ll leave him a note,” Nancy said, as the top stair was reached. “Never mind your dress—come along!”

Pausing to scribble a line of explanation and to leave it in a conspicuous place, Nancy assisted Mrs. Gruen to her roadster and drove off to Dr. Spires’s home. Although Nancy was extremely solicitous about Hannah’s injury, she could not help anticipating a meeting with the physician in the hope that his strange departure in the closed machine might be explained.

To her disappointment, Dr. Spires was not at home.

“But do come in and bring Mrs. Gruen into the office,” Mrs. Spires urged. “We can make a place on a lounge for her to rest, and I am sure the doctor will be here very soon.”

Hannah was made as comfortable as possible on the couch in the doctor’s waiting room. Nancy decided to remain with her while Mrs. Spires excused herself to finish preparations for her dinner. Nancy chatted with Mrs. Gruen to keep up her spirits, and read jokes to her from a magazine she found on a table. Ten minutes passed in that way. Suddenly the telephone rang.

“It may be Father,” Nancy said eagerly, lifting the receiver from the hook and speaking the usual “Hello!” into the mouthpiece of the instrument.

It was a strange voice that inquired if Dr. Spires had returned as yet. When Nancy replied in the negative, the voice at the other end of the wire spoke with someone in a muffled tone, directing her to take a message which he would dictate.

Nancy found a pencil, and while writing down the words which were slowly given to her Hannah noted a strange expression creeping over the girl’s face. It was a mixture of unbelief, joy, and keen alertness. Hannah had seen that look before and knew that her beloved mistress was scenting a new mystery.

Mysteries were the delight of Nancy’s existence. Many a problem which had baffled professional mystery-solvers had been cleared up by her keen mind, coupled with what Nancy herself called “a sort of sixth sense, probably inherited from Father.”

Carson Drew had always been close to his only daughter, whose mother had died many years before, and often discussed his legal work with her. At first he did so just for the sake of reasoning aloud. Then, as Nancy Drew grew into her ’teens he learned that her advice was often very valuable, regardless of how involved the cases were.

It was not long before Nancy began to establish a reputation of her own by finding out what came to be known to her friends as “The Secret of the Old Clock,” the title of the first volume of this series. Before long—after “The Hidden Staircase” had delivered up its secret to Nancy and “The Bungalow Mystery” had been solved—it seemed as if persons had more faith in Nancy’s genius than they had in the skill of professional detectives, and not without reason. A long list of thrilling adventures proved this.

“Nancy’s Mysterious Letter,” for instance, won her the appreciation of the United States Government itself once the mystery was unraveled. What she learned at “The Sign of the Twisted Candles,” the adventure which gave the title to the volume preceding this one, brought great wealth to a poor girl who had been brought up as a kitchen drudge.

Hannah had long since ceased worrying over Nancy’s various encounters, convinced that her beloved young mistress was the match for anyone’s wits. Nevertheless, she regarded the present expression on the girl’s face with dismay, for Nancy was in the habit of forgetting about food and rest when on the trail of a mystery. To Hannah it was almost a crime to let a good dinner grow cold!

“What is it, Nancy—certainly not from your father, is it?” Hannah asked weakly.

“No,” Nancy replied, “it wasn’t. But just the same I’m glad I was here to take the message. It explains something, yet makes everything more mysterious, if you know what I mean.”

“I certainly don’t,” Hannah Gruen retorted a little tartly. “Anything that explains something but makes it more mysterious is beyond me. What was it?”

At this juncture a brisk step was heard outside the door, and Dr. Spires strode into the room.

“Well, well,” he cried. “What is the matter now? Are you the patient, Mrs. Gruen? It can’t be Nancy, for I never saw a more perfect picture of health.”

“Hannah fell down the cellar stairs and hurt her back,” Nancy explained rapidly. “I hurried her over here, for fear her spine might be injured.”

“We’ll soon find out,” the doctor said, as he donned a white jacket and washed his hands vigorously with antiseptic. Swiftly he examined the injured woman.

“Who put this bandage on her?” he asked.

“I did, Doctor,” Nancy replied. “I hope I didn’t make her worse. I thought she might need support——”

“A perfect job,” Dr. Spires said warmly. “No hospital interne could have done better in an emergency. I see that it is a good linen tablecloth, however, so you had better take it back.”

Nancy, snatching up the first thing at hand, had taken the tablecloth that Hannah was about to lay for dinner, and, making a triangle of it, had knotted the linen to support the housekeeper’s back against any shock from the journey to the doctor’s office.

“A bad sprain is the sum and substance of what is wrong with you, Mrs. Gruen,” the surgeon said. “Rest it a day in bed, with compresses of this liniment I will give you, and in a few weeks you won’t know anything happened.”

Hannah was able to move by herself, once she heard that no bones were broken. Nancy offered her arm to the housekeeper, and as she left the office she told the doctor she would return for a moment as soon as she had made Hannah comfortable in the roadster.

“There, are you quite all right?” asked Nancy presently.

“Thank you—yes,” responded Mrs. Gruen.

“I wish to speak to the doctor for a minute.”

“Oh, yes,” answered the housekeeper. “You failed to give him his message.”

Quickly Nancy went back to the surgeon, who was seated at his desk smoking a cigar and gazing thoughtfully into the blue vapors which curled around his head.

“Did you forget something?” he asked.

“No, I didn’t forget. I haven’t had a chance to tell you something,” explained the girl.

“Well,” smiled the surgeon, “what is it?”

“I took down a message for you over the telephone,” she responded.

“What was the call, Nancy?” he asked. “I hope it does not mean I must go out again tonight. I have had an unusual afternoon.”

“This is what was dictated to me,” Nancy explained, opening the paper she had carried folded in her hand.

The doctor took it, wrinkling his brow as he looked at the penciled words. Then he read them aloud, pronouncing each one slowly.

“If you say blue bells, you will get into trouble, for they are no longer used here.”

He looked up to encounter Nancy’s dancing eyes.

“It doesn’t make sense to you, does it?” the doctor sighed.

“No, but—” Nancy began, hesitating as the doctor suddenly stood up and strode across the room, his head bent and his hands clasped behind his back.

“Queer,” muttered the medical man.

“Rather,” said the young woman.

“Nancy,” Dr. Spires said suddenly, “you have a wonderful mind, and a talent which I respect very highly. Above all, you have common sense—which is far from being a common thing at all.”

He stopped and faced the girl.

“I need some help in solving a strange mystery, Nancy Drew,” the surgeon said. “I know of nobody with whom I should rather discuss it than you and your father. Will you help me?”

“Of course,” Nancy replied quickly and firmly.

The doctor smiled warmly.

“I’m eager to get started on it,” the girl said, a merry light shining in her blue eyes.

“I had a queer experience this afternoon.”

“Yes,” responded Nancy breathlessly.

“Very queer, indeed.”

“While you were out calling?”

“Yes, while I was out.”

The sound of ice being cracked made the doctor and Nancy realize he was delaying the evening meal. Mrs. Spires was prompt with the surgeon’s repasts, so that his office appointments following them could be promptly met.

“I guess I cannot go into detail just now,” he decided, “for evidently supper is ready.”

“I’ll be glad at any time to hear the story of your mysterious adventure, Doctor, and so will my father.”

“Great!” said the bone specialist, shaking hands with affection. “You are a splendid detective.”

“Together we should be able to assist you,” said the girl modestly, allowing the compliment to slip by unnoticed.

“Then will you come back here this evening with him? I shall be counting upon you.”

“We certainly will,” Nancy declared warmly, “and if Father cannot come, I will come alone.”