Кэролайн Кин - Тайна загадочной лестницы [with w_cat]

[994] "I shouldn't have signed! I shouldn't have sold Twin Elms!"

[995] Dr. Morrison took the patient's pulse and listened to her heartbeat with a stethoscope. A few moments later he said, "Mrs. Turnbull, won't you please let me take you to the hospital?"

[996] "Not yet," said Miss Flora stubbornly. She smiled wanly. "I know I'm ill. But I'm not going to get better any quicker in the hospital than I am right here. I'll be moving out of Twin Elms soon enough and I want to stay here as long as I can. Oh, why did I ever sign my name to that paper?"

[997] As an expression of defeat came over the physician's face, Nancy moved to the bedside. "Miss Flora," she said gently, "maybe the deal will never go through. In the first place, perhaps we can prove that you signed under coercion. If that doesn't work, you know it takes a long time to have a title search made on property. By then, maybe Comber will change his mind."

[998] "Oh, I hope you're right," the elderly woman replied, squeezing Nancy's hand affectionately.

[999] The girls left the room, so that Dr. Morrison could examine the patient further and prescribe for her. They decided to say nothing of their morning's adventure to Miss Flora, but at luncheon they gave Aunt Rosemary a full account.

[1000] "I'm almost glad you didn't catch Comber." Mrs. Hayes exclaimed. "He might have harmed you both."

[1001] Nancy said she felt sure that the police of one town or the other would soon capture him, and then perhaps many things could be explained. "For one, we can find out why he was turning his lights off and on. I have a hunch he was signaling to someone and that the person was hidden in Riverview Manor!"

[1002] "You may be right," Aunt Rosemary replied.

[1003] Helen suddenly leaned across the table. "Do you suppose our ghost thief hides out there?"

[1004] "I think it's very probable," Nancy answered. "I'd like to do some sleuthing in that old mansion."

[1005] "You're not going to break in?" Helen asked, horrified.

[1006]    Her friend smiled. "No, Helen, I'm not going to evade the law. I'll go to the realtor who is handling the property and ask him to show me the place. Want to come along?"

[1007] Helen shivered a little but said she was game. "Let's do it this afternoon."

[1008] "Oh dear." Aunt Rosemary gave an anxious sigh. "I don't know whether or not I should let you. It sounds very dangerous to me."

[1009] "If the realtor is with us, we should be safe," Helen spoke up. Her aunt then gave her consent, and added that the realtor, Mr. Dodd, had an office on Main Street.

[1010] Conversation ceased for a few moments as the threesome finished luncheon. They had just left the table when they heard a loud thump upstairs.

[1011] "Oh, goodness!" Aunt Rosemary cried out. "I hope Mother hasn't fallen!"

[1012] She and the girls dashed up the stairs. Miss Flora was in bed, but she was trembling like a leaf in the wind. She pointed a thin, white hand toward the ceiling.

[1013] "It was up in the attic!  Somebody’s there!"

[1014] CHAPTER XVII. Through the Trap Door.

[1015] "LET'S find out who's in the attic!" Nancy urged as she ran from the room, Helen at her heels.

[1016] "Mother, will you be all right if I leave you a few moments?" Aunt Rosemary asked. "I'd like to go with the girls."

[1017] "Of course. Run along."

[1018] Nancy and Helen were already on their way to the third floor. They did not bother to go noiselessly, but raced up the center of the creaking stairs. Reaching the attic, they lighted two of the candles and looked around. They saw no one, and began to look behind trunks and pieces of furniture. Nobody was hiding.

[1019] "And there's no evidence," said Nancy, "that the alarming thump was caused by a falling box or carton."

[1020] "There's only one answer," Helen decided. "The ghost was here. But how did he get in?"

[1021] The words were scarcely out of her mouth when the group heard a man's spine-chilling laugh. It had not come from downstairs.

[1022] "He—he's back of the wall!" Helen gasped fearfully. Nancy agreed, but Aunt Rosemary said, "That laugh could have come from the roof."

[1023] Helen looked at her aunt questioningly. "You —you mean that the ghost swings onto the roof from a tree and climbs in here somehow?"

[1024] "I think it very likely," her aunt replied. "My father once told, my mother that there's a trap door to the roof. I never saw it and I forgot having heard of it until this minute."

[1025] Holding their candles high, the girls examined every inch of the peaked, beamed ceiling. The rafters were set close together with wood panels between them.

[1026] "I see something that might be a trap door!" Nancy called out presently from near one end of the attic. She showed the others where some short panels formed an almost perfect square.

[1027] "But how does it open?" Helen asked. "There's no knob or hook or any kind of gadget to grab hold of."

[1028] "It might have been removed, or rusted off," Nancy said.

[1029] She asked Helen to help her drag a high wooden box across the floor until it was directly under the suspected section and Nancy stepped up onto it. Focusing her light on the four edges of the panels, the young sleuth finally discovered a piece of metal wedged between two of the planks.

[1030] "I think I see a way to open this," Nancy said, "but I'll need some tools."

[1031] "I'll get the ones I found before," Helen offered.

She hurried downstairs and procured them. Nancy tried one tool after another, but none would work; they were either too wide to fit into the crack or they would not budge the piece of metal either up or down.

[1032]   Nancy looked down at Aunt Rosemary. "Do you happen to have an old-fashioned buttonhook?" she asked. "That might be just the thing for this job."

[1033] "Indeed I have—in fact, Mother has several of them. I'll get one."

[1034] Aunt Rosemary was gone only a few minutes. Upon her return, she handed Nancy a long, silver-handled buttonhook inscribed with Mrs. Turn-bull's initials. "Mother used this to fasten her high button shoes. She has a smaller matching one for glove buttons. In olden days," she told the girls, "no lady's gloves were the pull-on type. They all had buttons."

Nancy inserted the long buttonhook into the ceiling crack and almost at once was able to grasp the piece of metal and pull it down. Now she began tugging on it. When nothing happened, Helen climbed up on the box beside her friend and helped pull

[1035] Presently there was a groaning, rasping noise and the square section of the ceiling began to move downward. The girls continued to yank on the metal piece and slowly a folded ladder attached to the wood became visible.

[1036] "The trap door's up there!" Helen cried gleefully, looking at the roof. "Nancy, you shall have the honor of being the first one to look out."

[1037] Nancy smiled. "And, you mean, capture the ghost?"

[1038] As the ladder was straightened out, creaking with each pull, and set against the roof, Nancy felt sure, however, that the ghost did not use it. The ladder made entirely too much noise! She also doubted that he was on the roof, but it would do no harm to look. She might pick up a clue of some sort!

[1039] "Well, here I go," Nancy said, and started to ascend the rungs.

[1040] When she reached the top, Nancy unfastened the trap door and shoved it upward. She poked her head outdoors and looked around. No one was in sight on the roof, but in the center stood a circular wooden lookout. It occurred to Nancy that possibly the ghost might be hiding in it!

[1041] She called down to Aunt Rosemary and Helen to look up at the attic ceiling for evidence of an opening into the tower. They returned to Nancy in half a minute to report that they could find no sign of another trap door.

[1042] "There probably was one in olden days," said Aunt Rosemary, "but it was closed up."

[1043] A sudden daring idea came to the girl detective. "I'm going to crawl over to that lookout and see if anybody's in it!" she told the two below.

Before either of them could object, she started to crawl along the ridgepole above the wooden shingled sides of the deeply slanting roof. Helen had raced up the ladder, and now watched her friend fearfully.

[1044] "Be careful, Nancy!" she warned.

[1045] Nancy was doing just that. She must keep a perfect balance or tumble down to almost certain death. Halfway to the tower, the daring girl began to feel that she had been foolhardy, but she was determined to reach her goal.

"Only five more feet to go," Nancy told herself presently.

With a sigh of relief, she reached the tower and pulled herself tip. It was circular and had openings on each side. She looked in. No "ghost"!

[1046] Nancy decided to step inside the opening and examine the floor. She set one foot down, but immediately the boards, rotted from the weather, gave way beneath her.

[1047] "It's a good thing I didn't put my whole weight on it," she thought thankfully.

[1048] "Do you see anything?" Helen called.

[1049] "Not a thing. This floor hasn't been in use for a long time."

[1050] "Then the ghost didn't come in by way of the roof," Helen stated.

[1051] Nancy nodded in agreement. "The only places left to look are the chimneys," the young sleuth told her friend. "I'll check them."

[1052] There were four of these and Nancy crawled to each one in turn. She looked inside but found nothing to suggest that the ghost used any of them for entry.

[1053] Balancing herself against the last chimney. Nancy surveyed the countryside around her. What a beautiful and picturesque panorama it was, she thought! Not far away was a lazy little river, whose waters sparkled in the sunlight. The surrounding fields were green and sprinkled with patches of white daisies.

Nancy looked down on the grounds of Twin Elms and tried in her mind to reconstruct the original landscaping.

[1054] "That brick walk to the next property must have had a lovely boxwood hedge at one time," she said to herself.

[1055] Her gaze now turned to Riverview Manor. The grounds there were overgrown with weeds and several shutters were missing from the house. Suddenly Nancy's attention was drawn to one of the uncovered windowpanes. Did she see a light moving inside?

[1056] It disappeared a moment later and Nancy could not be sure. Perhaps the sun shining on the glass had created an optical illusion.

[1057] "Still, somebody just might be in that house," the young sleuth thought. "The sooner I get over there and see what I can find out, the better! If the ghost is hiding out there, maybe he uses some underground passage from one of the outbuildings on the property."

[1058] She crawled cautiously back to the trap door and together the girls closed it. Aunt Rosemary had already gone downstairs to take care of her mother.

[1059] Nancy told Helen what she thought she had just seen in the neighboring mansion. "I'll change my clothes right away. Then let's go see Mr. Dodd, the realtor broker for Riverview Manor."

[1060] A half hour later the two girls walked into the real-estate office. Mr. Dodd himself was there and Nancy asked him about looking at Riverview Manor.

[1061] "I'm sorry, miss," he said, "but the house has just been sold."

[1062] Nancy was stunned. She could see all her plans crumbling into nothingness. Then a thought came to her. Perhaps the new owner would not object if she looked around, anyway.

[1063] "Would you mind telling me, Mr. Dodd, who purchased Riverview Manor?"

[1064] "Not at all," the realtor replied. "A man named Nathan Comber."

[1065] CHAPTER XVIII. A Confession.

[1066] NANCY DREW'S face wore such a disappointed look that Mr. Dodd, the realtor, said kindly, "Don't take it so hard, miss. I don't think you'd be particularly interested in Riverview Manor. It's really not in very good condition. Besides, you'd need a pile of money to fix that place up."

[1067] Without commenting on his statement, Nancy asked, "Couldn't you possibly arrange for me to see the inside of the mansion?"

[1068] Mr. Dodd shook his head. "I'm afraid Mr. Comber wouldn't like that."

[1069] Nancy was reluctant to give up. Why, her father might even be a prisoner in that very house! "Of course I can report my suspicion to the police," the young sleuth thought.

[1070] She decided to wait until morning. Then, if there was still no news of Mr. Drew, she would pass along the word to Captain Rossland.

[1071] Mr. Dodd's telephone rang. As he answered it, Nancy and Helen started to leave his office. But he immediately waved them back.

[1072] "The call is from Chief Rossland, Miss Drew," he said. "He phoned Twin Elms and learned you were here. He wants to see you at once."