As a result of Nancy’s talk with her father and also with Ned Nickerson, another letter went forward to Sadie Green. The note merely said that the girl would be required to attend an important séance the following night. She was instructed to wait for a car at Cross and Lexington streets.
At the appointed hour, Nancy, heavily veiled, rode beside her father in the front seat of a car borrowed from a friend. In order not to be recognized, Mr. Drew had a felt hat pulled low over his eyes.
“Dad, you look like a second-story man!” Nancy teased him as they parked at the intersection. “Do you think Sadie will show up?”
“I see a blond girl coming now,” he replied.
Nancy turned her head slightly and recognized Sadie. Making a slow gesture with her gloved hand, she motioned the girl into the back seat. Mr. Drew promptly pulled away from the curb.
The automobile took a direct route to the vicinity of Blackwood Hall. Nancy covertly watched Sadie from beneath her veil. The girl was very nervous and kept twisting her handkerchief as they approached. But when they got out and started walking, she gave no sign that the area was familiar.
Ned Nickerson had followed in another borrowed automobile which he concealed in a clump of bushes. Then he removed a small suitcase from the trunk, and started off through the woods.
Meanwhile, Nancy and Sadie, with Mr. Drew a little distance behind, approached Blackwood Hall.
“I hope everything goes through as planned,” Nancy thought with a twinge of uneasiness. “If Ned is late getting here—”
Just then she saw a faint, greenish light glowing weirdly through the trees directly ahead. At the same moment came a strange, husky chant.
Nancy stepped to one side so that Sadie might precede her on the path. The girl gazed at the green point of light as one hypnotized.
“The spirit speaks!” Nancy intoned.
Simultaneously a luminous hand seemed to appear out of nowhere. It floated, unattached, and reached out as if to touch Sadie.
“My child,” intoned an old man’s cracked voice, “I am your beloved grandfather on your dear mother’s side.”
“Not Elias Perkins!” Sadie murmured in awe.
“The spirit of none other, my child. Sadie, I have been watching you and I am worried—most sorely worried. You must give no more money to the Three Branch Ranch or to any cause which my spirit cannot recommend.”
“But, Grandfather—”
“Furthermore,” continued the cracked voice, taking no note of the interruption, “follow no orders or directions from anyone, unless that person writes or speaks his name backward. Mind this well, Sadie, my child, for it is important.”
The voice gradually drifted away as the green light began to grow dim. Soon there was only darkness and deep silence in the woods.
“Oh, Grandfather! Come back! Speak to me again!” Sadie pleaded.
“The seance is concluded,” Nancy murmured.
She took Sadie by the arm and led her back to the waiting car. All the way home Sadie remained silent. Only once did she speak and that was to ask “the veiled lady” the meaning of the strange instructions issued by her grandfather.
Nancy spoke slowly and in a low monotone, “You are to reveal no information to anyone and take no orders from anyone unless he spells or speaks his or her name backward.”
“I don’t understand,” Sadie said.
“There are unscrupulous people who seek to take advantage of you. Your grandfather’s spirit is trying to protect you. He has given you a means of identifying the good and the evil. You have been in communication with a Mrs. Egan, have you not?”
The blond girl nodded. And Nancy continued, “Should Mrs. Egan approach you again, saying ‘I am Mrs. Egan,’ then beware! But should she say ‘I am Mrs. Nage,’ then you will know that she is to be trusted, even as you trust the spirit of Elias Perkins.”
“Oh! I see now what Grandfather meant,” Sadie said, and became silent again.
At Cross and Lexington streets, the girl left the car. Nancy and her father drove on home, to find Ned awaiting them.
“How did I do?” the youth demanded in the cracked voice of Elias Perkins as they entered the house together.
Nancy chuckled. “A perfect performance!”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Ned joked. “I almost messed up the whole show.”
As the three enjoyed milk and sandwiches in the Drew kitchen, the young man revealed that he had nearly lost the hand from the end of the rod.
“Next time you want me to perform, buy a better grade of equipment!” He laughed, biting into another ham sandwich.
Ned was referring to the props used during the séance, which Nancy had purchased earlier that day at a store in Winchester. These included a telescopic reaching rod, and the luminous wax hand, as well as a bottle of phosphorus and olive oil, guaranteed to produce a ghostly effect when the cork was removed, which would disappear again at the required moment when it was stoppered.
“When I took the bottle from the suitcase, I nearly dropped it,” Ned confessed. “And what’s a séance in the dark worth without a spooky light?” he added, laughing.
On the following day, Nancy called at Sadie’s home. Sadie was at work, but elderly Mr. Green, eager for companionship, told Nancy everything she wished to know.
“That granddaughter o’ mine ain’t so foolish as I was afeared,” he said promptly. “This morning she says to me ‘Grandpa, I’ve made up my mind to save my money and not give it away to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who asks me for it.’ What do you think o’ that?”
“Splendid!” Nancy approved. “I hoped Sadie would have a change of heart.”
To test Sadie further, Nancy asked Ned the next day to telephone the girl at the Lovelee Cosmetic Company.
“I want to prove a couple of things,” she said. “First of all, I want to find out whether Sadie is really following my instructions, and second, if she knows the name of Howard Brex.”
Ned began to laugh. “How would you pronounce Brex backward?”
Nancy smiled too. “Guess you’ll have to use his first name. ‘Drawoh’ is easy.”
While Nancy listened on an extension at the Drew home, Ned made the call. He addressed the girl as Eidas instead of Sadie and added, “This is Drawoh speaking.”
“My name ain’t Eidas, and I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the girl retorted, failing to understand.
Ned quickly asked her to think hard. Suddenly Sadie said:
“Oh, yes, I remember. And what did you say your name is?”
“Drawoh.”
After a moment’s reflection, the girl said, “I guess I don’t know you.”
“No,” said Ned. “But tell me, have you had any recent communications asking you for money?”
“One came today, but I threw it away,” Sadie replied. “I’m not giving any more of my money to those folks. I have to go now.”
Sadie hung up.
“Good work, Nancy!” Ned declared as he rejoined her. “Apparently that trick séance brought Sadie to her senses.”
“For a few days, anyhow,” Nancy agreed. “The job isn’t over, though, until these swindlers are behind bars! They still have great influence over Lola and Mrs. Putney and goodness knows how many other people.
“I can easily understand how a person like Sadie would be so gullible, but it’s almost unthinkable that Mrs. Putney would fall for that stuff,” Ned said.
While the two friends were talking, Hannah Gruen called Nancy to the telephone. The message was from the clerk at the Claymore Hotel. The late-morning mail had brought two more letters addressed to Mrs. Egan.
“Isn’t that wonderful, Ned?” Nancy cried. “I’ll have to go over to the hotel right away.”
“I’ll take you there,” Ned offered.
He drove Nancy to the hotel and waited in the car while she went inside. The girl was gone several minutes. When she returned, her face was downcast, and she looked very disturbed.
“What’s the matter?” Ned demanded. “Didn’t you get the letters?”
Nancy shook her head. “The regular clerk went to lunch,” she explained. “In his absence, another clerk gave the letters to someone else!”
CHAPTER XIV
The Cabin in the Woods
“A YOUNG woman picked up the letters,” Nancy told Ned. “Mrs. Egan must have discovered our scheme and sent a messenger. She was lucky enough, or else she planned it that way, to have the letters called for when my friend was off duty.”
“Maybe Mrs. Egan’s back in town,” Ned suggested.
“Yes, that’s possible. The police were never able to trace her. According to word Dad received, she left the plane at one of the stops between here and Chicago.”
Ned whistled softly. “Wow! If she’s back here, she’ll be in your hair, Nancy!”
“She hasn’t registered at the Claymore. I found that out. But that doesn’t prove she isn’t in River Heights. Ned, something’s got to break in this case soon. We know that there are several people in the racket and it may be that Brex is the mastermind behind everything. Blackwood Hall evidently had been used as headquarters until we got too interested for their comfort. All of the supernatural hocus-pocus was used not only to fleece gullible victims, but also to scare us off the scent. I feel that there will be a showdown within the next few days.”
“Well, I want to be there when that happens, Nancy,” said Ned.
Later that day, Nancy called George and Bess and asked them to go with her to Blackwood Hall. The drive to the river road was uneventful. They parked their car some distance away and all three trekked through the walnut woods in the direc tion of the historic mansion.
“But, Nancy, what do you expect to find this time?” asked Bess.
“I realized when I was reviewing the case with Ned today that we never had checked those wheelbarrow tracks from Blackwood Hall. They may lead us to the spot where the gang is now making its headquarters.”
The old house looked completely abandoned as the girls approached.
Suddenly George cried, “The wheelbarrow tracks lead away from the house and right into the woods.”
For some distance the girls tramped on, stopping now and then to examine footprints where the ground was soft. Suddenly, in the flickering sunlight ahead, they caught sight of a cabin in a clearing among the trees. Approaching cautiously they noted that all the windows were covered with black cloths on the inside. The wheelbarrow tracks led to what obviously was the back door.
“That must be the place!” Nancy whispered excitedly. “See! A road leads right up to the front door just as Mrs. Putney told me!”
Bess began to back away, tugging at George’s sleeve. “Let the troopers find out!” she pleaded.
Nancy and George moved stealthily forward without her. After circling and seeing no signs of life around the place, George boldly knocked several times on the front door.
“Deserted,” she observed. “We may as well leave.”
Nancy gazed curiously at the curving road which led from the cabin. Only a short stretch was visible before it lost itself in the walnut woods.
“Let’s follow the road,” she proposed. “I’m curious to learn where it comes out.”
Bess, however, would have no part of the plan. She pointed out that already they were over a mile from Nancy’s car.
“And if we don’t get back soon, it may be stolen, just as your father’s was,” she added.
This remark persuaded Nancy reluctantly to give up her plan. The girls trudged back through the woods to the other road. The car was where they had left it.
“I have an idea!” Nancy declared as they started off. “Why don’t we try to drive to the cabin?”
Nancy was convinced that by following the main road they might come to a side lane which would lead them to the cabin. Accordingly, they drove along the designated highway, carefully scrutinizing the sides for any private road whose entrance might have been camouflaged.
“I see a side road!” Bess suddenly cried out.
Nancy, who had noticed the narrow dirt road at the same instant, turned into it.
“Wait!” George directed. “Another one branches off just a few yards ahead on the highway we were following. That may be the one instead of this.”
Uncertain, Nancy stopped the car and idled the engine. Before the girls could decide which road to follow, an automobile sped past on the highway they had left only a moment before. Nancy and the others caught a fleeting glimpse of a heavily veiled woman at the wheel. On the rear seat they thought they saw a reclining figure.
The car turned into the next narrow road, and then disappeared.
“Was that Mrs. Putney on the back seat?” George asked, highly excited.
“I didn’t get a good enough look to be sure,” Nancy replied. “I got the car license number, though. Let me write it down before I forget.”
“Hurry!” George urged as Nancy wrote the numbers on a pad from her purse. “We have to follow that car!”
“But not too close,” Nancy replied. “We’d make them suspicious.”
The girls waited three minutes before backing out into the main highway and then turning into the adjacent road. Though the automobile ahead had disappeared, tire prints were plainly visible.
The road twisted through a stretch of wood-land. When finally the tire prints turned off into a heavily wooded narrow lane, Nancy was sure they were not far from the cabin. She parked among some trees and they went forward on foot.
“There it is!” whispered Nancy, recognizing the chimney. “Bess, I want you to take my car, drive to River Heights, and look up the name of the owner of the car we just saw. Here’s the license number.
“After you’ve been to the Motor Vehicle Bureau, please phone Mrs. Putney’s house. If she answers, we’ll know it wasn’t she we saw in the car. Then get hold of Dad or Ned, and bring one of them here as fast as you can. We may need help. Got it straight?”
“I—I—g-guess so,” Bess answered.
“Hurry back! No telling what may happen while you’re away.”
The two watched as Nancy’s car rounded a bend and was lost to view.
Then Nancy and George walked swiftly through the woods toward the cabin. Approaching the building, Nancy and George were amazed to find that no car was parked on the road in front.
“How do you figure it?” George whispered as the girls crouched behind bushes. “We certainly saw tire marks leading into this road!”
“Yes, but the car that passed may have gone on without stopping. Possibly the driver saw us and changed her plans. Wait here, and watch the cabin while I check the tire marks out at the end of the road.”
“All right. But hurry. If anything breaks here, I don’t want to be alone.”
From the bushes George saw Nancy hurry down the road and out of sight around a bend.
For some time everything was quiet. Suddenly George’s attention was drawn to a wisp of smoke from the wide stone chimney.
“There’s someone in there, that’s sure,” she concluded. “Somebody’s lighted a fire.”
Overpowering curiosity urged George to find out what was going on inside the cabin. She could see nothing through the black-draped windows. Trying to decide whether to wait for Nancy or to make some move of her own, she noticed smoke seeping through the cracks around the door!
“The place must be on fire!” George exclaimed. When still no sound came from inside, she could stand the strain no longer. “I’m going to break in!” she decided.
She flung herself against the locked door, but it scarcely budged. Looking about, she found a rock the size of a baseball. She let it fly at the window nearest the door. The glass splintered and the stone carried with it the black curtain that had covered the window. With a stick she poked out the jagged bits of glass that still clung to the pane. When the smoke had cleared, George stuck her head through the opening.
The one-room interior was deser
ted, and there was no fire, not even in the big stone fireplace! A few wisps of smoke remained. But it did not smell like wood smoke.
“I didn’t dream up that smoke,” George thought, growing more uneasy all the time. “But the door was locked and I saw no one leave.”
Time dragged on, and still Nancy did not return. Finally, after an hour had elapsed, George, alarmed, tramped back to the road where they had taken leave of Bess.
She was about to start for River Heights on foot when the convertible came into view around a bend. Bess pulled alongside.
“Do you know anything about Nancy?” George asked quickly.
“Why, no.”
Her cousin related the strange story of the cabin and Nancy’s disappearance. Bess, too, was greatly concerned.
George hurled a rock at the window
“And I didn’t bring anyone along, either,” she wailed. “Mr. Drew was called out of town unexpectedly, and I couldn’t find Ned.”
“Just when we need them so desperately! Did you find the car owner’s name?”
“Yes, it belongs to Mrs. Putney ! But what are we going to do about Nancy?”
“I think Mr. Drew should be notified if we can possibly get word to him. Hannah may know where to reach him by telephone,” said George.
The girls made a hurried trip to the Drew home. The housekeeper told them that the lawyer had departed in great haste and was to send word later where he could be reached.
“I really don’t know what to do,” Hannah Gruen said anxiously. “The Claymore Hotel has been trying to get in touch with Nancy, too. The chief clerk there wants to see her right away. We’d better notify the police. I dislike doing it, though, until we’ve tried everything else.”
No one had paid the slightest attention to Togo, who was lying on his own special rug in the living room. Now, as if understanding the housekeeper’s remark, he began to whine.
“What’s the matter, old boy?” George asked, stooping to pat the dog. “Are you trying to tell us something about Nancy?”
Togo gave two sharp yips.
“Say! Do you suppose Togo could pick up Nancy’s trail and lead us to her?” George asked.
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