Swiss Secrets

by Carolyn Keene

  Erich seemed so involved with the family business that it was a surprise to learn that he hadn’t always been interested in it. “And Franz?”

  “I don’t think Franz has ever cared much for the business,” Erich said, frowning slightly. “One day, you know, he and I will head the company. I hope he is as eager for that to happen as I am, or it will be an awful burden on him.”

  When Franz had spoken to her at the concert, he’d said that the company business did mean a lot to him, Nancy recalled. Now she wasn’t sure what to believe.

  “I see,” she said, stifling a yawn. The compartment the five of them were riding in felt hot and airless. Across from her, Bess and George were already dozing in their seats. Mick was engrossed in a book. It was completely dark out now, and Nancy had no idea what town they were passing. It was only nine o’clock, and she was unwilling to give in to sleep so early.

  “I think I’ll stretch my legs a bit,” she told Erich. “I could use some fresh air.”

  “Sounds good,” he said. “ ‘I’d join you, but I feel too lazy. It has been a long day.”

  Mick glanced up from his book. “Want company?” he asked.

  “No, it’s okay.” Nancy felt oddly shy about the idea of being alone with Mick again. Slipping out of the compartment, she stood in the hall for a second. There was an open window at one end of the car, she realized. That end of the car was empty, so she wouldn’t be in anyone’s way if she stood by the window for a while. Shaking the kinks out of her legs, she walked to the end of the car.

  “Ah, that’s better.” Nancy breathed deeply, leaning her head out the window. The crisp Alpine air was refreshing on her hot face, and she loved the wind blowing through her hair.

  The Alps hovered in the darkened view. They seemed so close that Nancy felt as if she could reach out the window and touch them. By the lights on the side of the train she could see that they were passing along a narrow gorge that dropped precipitously for several hundred feet. Nancy could just manage to see the jagged rocks at the bottom. She shivered. It was a pleasantly creepy feeling to be safe inside when the world rushing past outside was so forbidding.

  Just think, she said to herself. A week ago about the most exciting thing that happened to me was ordering a pizza to go in River Heights. And now here we are in—

  Suddenly Nancy heard footsteps coming swiftly toward her. Before she could turn to see who was approaching, two strong hands closed around her waist and hoisted her into the air. The next thing she knew, she was being pushed—hard—out the window.

  Nancy’s legs flew into the air. She struggled desperately to dislodge herself from the hands that were pushing her, but it was no use. Her stomach lurched sickeningly as she realized that she was already plunging headfirst toward the jagged rocks at the bottom of the gorge!

  Chapter

  Nine

  NANCY’S BLOOD RAN COLD as she realized what was happening to her. Just as her body was about to slip past the confines of the window, she kicked out with both her feet and caught the sides of the window frame.

  Her attacker must have already left her to her fate because he didn’t push on Nancy’s feet. She was left to dangle freely by her legs.

  Nancy shot her right hand up and made a grab for the frame. In seconds she was seated on the window ledge, sweat streaming down her face, her knees knocking, and her heart thudding in her chest. She was safe though.

  The train lurched beneath her, and Nancy exhaled shakily. She needed to get back to the compartment and sit down. Everyone else was sound asleep when she reached the doorway. Bess and George were curled up with their heads on the overnight bag between them, Mick slept with his head tipped back as if he were sunbathing, and Erich had a magazine balanced precariously against his chest.

  As Nancy watched, the magazine slid off and thudded to the floor. The eyes of her friends fluttered open sleepily and came to rest on Nancy.

  “Wh-what’s the matter?” Bess asked groggily. “You look as though you’ve just seen a ghost.”

  “I hate to disturb you, guys, but I have to tell you something,” Nancy said, sitting back down. Trying to sound as matter-of-fact as possible, she related what had just happened. When she had finished, there was an appalled silence in the compartment.

  “Then that means that Bart could be on this train!” George said.

  “Who’s Bart?” Erich wanted to know as Mick slipped a comforting arm around Nancy’s shoulders.

  Nancy leaned back against his shoulder. “He’s the man we believe is trying to hurt your cousin.” Nancy had to explain the Bart incident in Monaco to Erich—she hoped Franz would forgive her.

  “I can’t seem to take this in.” George looked as stunned and sick as Nancy felt. “How does Bart know who you are, Nan? How does he know you’re investigating this for Franz?”

  “I don’t know,” Nancy said soberly. She turned to Erich. “Maybe he recognized you, Erich. Maybe he decided to follow you onto the train, hoping that you’d lead him to Franz. Or maybe he planned to track Franz down himself and just happened to take the same train.”

  “Only how would he know where Franz is?” Mick objected. “We don’t know he’s in Zermatt. We’re just guessing.”

  Nancy sighed. “That’s true. All of this is guesswork so far. All I know is that someone on this train tried to kill me or warn me off this case. If that person is trying to find Franz, too—well, all I can say is that we’d better find him first.”

  • • •

  When Nancy awoke Wednesday morning, she had no idea where she was. All she knew was that she was stiff, cold, and very uncomfortable.

  Lifting her head slowly, she realized that the reason for her discomfort was that she was sleeping on a flimsy wood and canvas folding cot—just like every other girl in the room. Then she remembered where she was.

  When their train had finally reached Zermatt at ten the previous night, Nancy and her friends had asked for directions to the youth hostel they had called from Geneva to hold space for them. Nancy had been so exhausted that she remembered little except being shown to the large, bare, dormitory-style room she now shared with Bess, George, and about twenty other girls. On one side of Nancy, Bess was sleeping; George was on the other side. Mick and Erich were off in the men’s section on the other side of the building.

  Nancy grinned to herself. This place made their hotel room in Geneva look like the Ritz! Not that they would be spending much time here. They had to start looking for Franz as soon as possible.

  Reaching over, Nancy shook Bess gently by the shoulder. “Wake up, sleepyhead,” she whispered. Bess groaned and mumbled something Nancy couldn’t understand. “We’ve got a big day ahead of us. I’ll wake up George—and then we’d better track down Erich and Mick.”

  • • •

  “Have you thought about what our first step should be?” Erich asked Nancy while they ate bread and drank coffee in the barrackslike community room at the front of the hostel. “I am completely in your hands. I will do whatever you say.”

  “Me, too,” said Mick. “Just give me a job.”

  “Well, since both of you speak French better than I do,” Nancy said, “why don’t you make a quick phone check of the hotels in Zermatt to see whether Franz is registered at any of them? There must be a couple of pay phones around here somewhere. In the meantime, we’ll pack up our stuff.”

  Mick and Erich disappeared while the three girls brushed their teeth and packed. When they returned to the community room, the guys were waiting for them.

  “Bad news,” Mick said grimly. “Franz isn’t registered at any of the Zermatt hotels—at least not under his own name.”

  “Great,” George said, frowning. “We came here on a total wild-goose chase.”

  Erich held up a hand. “Wait a minute. Franz loves hiking, camping, that kind of thing,” he said. “If he did come to Zermatt to escape, I think he would most likely be out climbing on Mont Cervin—what you call the Matterhorn. We could look for
him there.”

  “Well,” Mick put in, “it’s a beautiful day to climb, even if we don’t find Franz.”

  “Climb the Matterhorn?” Bess looked completely horrified. “What if we wind up in an avalanche or something?”

  “It’s summer,” George reminded her cousin. “The snow is pretty much under control. And we can buy trail maps, can’t we, Erich?”

  With a nod he replied, “The mountain has trails for every kind of hiker. I have been here often before, so perhaps I should look for Franz on one of the difficult trails by myself,” he suggested. “Nancy, you and Mick could pick out another route, and Bess and George could choose a third.”

  “A very flat route,” Bess interjected.

  George groaned. “My big chance to climb the Matterhorn, and I’ll be doing it with the only person in the world who’s allergic to heights!”

  “Let’s mark a few rendezvous spots on the maps we get,” Erich went on. “That way we can check up on each other every hour or so.”

  “Great,” Bess grumbled. “That way an avalanche can wipe out all five of us at once.”

  • • •

  “I can’t help feeling as though I’m in a production of The Sound of Music,” Nancy commented to Mick a few minutes later.

  Mick laughed, pausing to gaze down at the flower-covered fields and swift-running streams stretching out below the trail they’d chosen. “It does look like a stage set—or a picture postcard,” he said.

  The trail had been marked Moderately Easy on the map, but for the first few minutes it was rougher going than Nancy had expected. She and Mick had to climb single file along a rocky path before the trail widened.

  Nancy raised her eyes and in the distance could see the snow-covered crags of other mountains. Far below the flower-filled meadows were neat squares of fields, looking like a doll’s landscape.

  “At first I was afraid I was going to have to spend the whole time looking at your back. Not that it’s not a very nice back,” he added with a smile, “but I’d still rather see your face.”

  “Isn’t this a gorgeous view?” Nancy said, more to cover her confusion than anything else. This was the first time she’d been alone with Mick since the cathedral, and she felt self-conscious.

  “It’s perfect,” Mick answered. For a moment the two of them stared in silence at the majestic panorama below and around them. Then Mick slipped his arm around Nancy’s shoulders and drew her close to him.

  A little shiver ran through her at his touch. “We-we’d better get going,” she said quickly, pulling away. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover before we meet up with the—”

  “Nancy, am I making you nervous?” Mick interrupted.

  “Nervous? No! I mean, yes.” Nancy could feel her face growing warm as she met Mick’s gaze. “Yes, I—I guess you are.”

  “Why?” Mick asked. “I don’t think of myself as being that terrifying.”

  “You’re—you’re not terrifying. In fact, it’s kind of the opposite. I mean—well, what I mean is—” Nancy broke off. I can’t believe what an idiot I sound like, she thought in agony.

  “I think I know what you mean.” Mick took a step closer. “You’re kind of the opposite of terrifying, too.”

  Nancy couldn’t help laughing.

  “That’s more like it,” Mick said gently. He reached out and touched her cheek. “You don’t have to be afraid of me,” he said. “I’m not going to bite you. In fact”—he smiled—“it’s kind of the opposite.”

  Mick bent his face closer to hers.

  “Wait a minute,” Nancy said breathlessly, her eyes still fixed on his. “There’s something you should know. Back home, I have a—”

  “We’re not back home.” Mick was almost whispering. “We’re in the most beautiful spot in Switzerland. Together. Right now, that’s all that matters.”

  He took her in his arms and covered her mouth with a kiss that made Nancy feel faint. Her whole body tingled with electric emotion as she leaned dizzily against Mick and kissed him back.

  “Oh! Pardonnez-moi!”

  It was a girl’s voice, and it was coming from right behind them on the trail. Mick and Nancy sprang guiltily apart, turned around—and saw Monique Montreux staring at them.

  “M-Monique!” It was hard for Nancy to put her thoughts in order. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hiking, of course!” Monique was blushing. “I-I’m sorry I disturbed you.” Then she shook her head. “But—what are you doing here?”

  “We’re looking for Mick—I mean Franz,” Nancy corrected herself quickly. “Have you seen him?”

  “But of course I have. He is here in Zermatt with me.” Monique bit her lip. “In fact, until just a moment ago he was right here on the trail with me. But—but that was before our fight.”

  “Your fight?” Nancy repeated.

  Monique’s eyes filled with tears. “I have ruined everything,” she blurted out, fumbling in her pocket for a handkerchief. “I brought Franz here to calm him down, and instead all I have done is upset him. What kind of girlfriend am I?”

  What’s going on? Nancy wondered. “Do you want to tell us about it?” she asked aloud.

  “Franz has been so—so worried lately that I said we had to get away on a little vacation,” Monique began. “He didn’t want to go and leave work, but I insisted. I could tell he needed a break. His job is eating him dead—is that how you say it?”

  Monique drew a quavering breath. “We have been camping here in Zermatt since yesterday morning. But then this morning we saw—we saw Bart on the trail ahead of us.”

  Bart! So he was here, just as they had thought! Nancy couldn’t hold back a shudder at the thought. “Wait a minute—you knew about Bart.”

  “Knew about him?” Monique laughed bitterly. “My father hired him! Bart is a private investigator. He even has a temporary office in our house. My father was worried that Franz wasn’t good enough to me, so he hired Bart to check up on Franz, but not to hurt him, of course. I still don’t know why he attacked Franz at the club. I hated Papa’s hiring him, but I knew Papa only thought he was doing what was best for me, so I went along with it. When we saw Bart on the trail, I blurted out to Franz who he was without meaning to.”

  For a second Nancy was too shocked to speak. It seemed hard to believe that Monique could so successfully have concealed her knowledge of Bart at the club when he attacked Franz. What else did Monique—or her family—have to hide? How did this all fit together? After Bart had been hired by Monique’s family, did he decide to go off on his own to demand the gold shipment route? Or was he still acting for Monique’s family? Nancy’s head was swimming.

  “I bet Franz didn’t like your news much,” Mick commented.

  “To say the least,” she answered. “I shouldn’t have said anything, but I was so startled to see Bart that I didn’t think.”

  Monique paused to wipe her eyes again. “So then Franz started shouting and said that Bart had been blackmailing him and trying to hurt him.” Monique’s dark eyes widened. “So Franz naturally thinks my parents put Bart up to this, but my father is not a criminal! He would never hire a blackmailer. I am sure if Bart is doing these awful things, it is not because my father asked him to. Now Franz will never trust me or my parents again! And how can I blame him?”

  Monique’s explanation sounded like the truth. No one could make up these connections, and Nancy was convinced that she believed what she said. That didn’t clear Monique’s parents, however. Could they really have hired so sleazy a character as Bart without realizing what he was like?

  Nancy hesitated before asking her next question. “Monique, does your family have a big black speedboat?” she inquired.

  “Why, yes, we do,” Monique replied, perplexed. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  Nancy explained that the speedboat that had nearly run over her and Franz had been black. She said no more, letting the implication of what she said speak for itself.

  Ju
st then Nancy thought of something else: With Bart on the mountain, Franz was still in danger. “Is Franz still on this trail?” she asked Monique.

  “I—I don’t know.” Monique faltered. “He was angry and stormed off.”

  “I’ll go look for him,” Mick offered quickly.

  Nancy nodded gratefully. “Monique and I will wait here,” she said. “We won’t move.”

  Mick strode along the trail in the direction Monique had come from. As the two girls watched him disappear, Monique said, “Now I have ruined your time alone with Mick, too.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that.” The truth was, Nancy wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed that Monique had interrupted her and Mick. “We have nothing serious going on,” Nancy said. “At least, I don’t think we—”

  “There you are, Monique! I’ve been looking all over!” Franz’s voice interrupted them. He came running down toward the two girls from a point above them and off the trail. He seemed puzzled to see Nancy but didn’t ask any questions. Rushing up to Monique, he folded her in his arms.

  “I took a shortcut so I could catch up with you,” he panted. “I wanted to apologize for being such a fool. It was wrong of me to accuse your parents of trying to hurt me, but when I heard they had hired Bart, I just naturally assumed they wanted to—”

  Suddenly there was a strange slithering sound. A handful of rocks and dirt skidded noisily down from an overhanging ledge and rained down on Franz and Monique. Startled, Nancy stepped back and looked up at the ledge—just in time to get hit in the face by another shower of dirt and pebbles. Coughing, she strained to see what was happening above them.

  Then came an ominous rumble—almost like thunder. The next thing she knew, an immense boulder was hurtling down the hill toward them!

  Chapter

  Ten

  WITHOUT CONSCIOUS THOUGHT, Nancy hurled herself at Franz and Monique. She caught them low and shoved them out of the way.

  A split second later the boulder crashed past them, missing them by inches. Nancy actually felt the ground lurch beneath her feet. Another shower of dirt and rocks rained down from the ledge, and a bird screamed from somewhere up in the sky. Then all was quiet again.