The Moonstone Castle Mystery
Page 12
This time the girls were armed with three flashlights, and the weird, dank passageway of the castle did not seem so forbidding. Their hunt revealed nothing until they came to what looked like a dungeon with a barred door. It was not locked and they went inside the cell-like room. Although they beamed their lights all around the walls, nothing suspicious was revealed.
“I think if there is anything hidden here it will be under this earthen floor,” said Nancy. “It would be easy to dig up.”
She sprawled full length on the ground. “What in the world are you doing?” Bess asked.
“Looking for a hump in the earth, even a slight one.”
Suddenly Nancy stood up and dashed toward the corner of the dungeon. “Here’s one!” she said. “Now what can we dig with?”
George remembered that she had seen a shovel in the old kitchen and hurried off to get it. She came back with the long-handled shovel, and at once began to dig. In a short time she uncovered a large brass box. Their pulses quickening, the girls lifted it out.
“You open it, Nancy,” said George.
Nancy lifted the lid and the three girls gasped. The chest was filled with negotiable securities and money. Besides these, the girls found a list of people who had been swindled and also the names of two other couples in the gang.
“We’d better bury this again,” Bess said, “and let the police come for it.”
Before Nancy could answer, George protested, “No sir! After all the trouble we’ve had, I’m not going to let one of those crooks come here and take this fortune away!”
“I think you’re right,” said Nancy.
Since the chest was very heavy, all three girls helped to carry it to the car. Nancy drove at once to Deep River Police Headquarters. Chief Burke was amazed to receive the cache and said he would put it in his office safe at once.
“Then we’ll round up those four other people in the gang whose names are on the list,” he told the girls. “I have an idea that now the entire gang is accounted for.”
Nancy smiled and thanked the chief for all his help. She did not tell him that there was still one matter to clear up—that of Jody Armstrong’s reunion with her grandparents.
When Nancy and her friends reached the motel, they found Mr. Drew, Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong, and the Bowens there. All looked very pleased.
Nancy’s father, smiling, said, “The Armstrongs want Jody to meet Mr. and Mrs. Bowen tomorrow. They have invited the rest of us to come to their home after they’ve all spent an hour together.”
The following day, when the Drews, Bess, and George arrived at the Armstrong home, they found an excited and happy group. Jody rushed up to the girls and hugged them.
“Oh, I have so many wonderful things to thank you for,” she said. “And don’t you think I’m about the luckiest girl in the whole world to have such wonderful adoptive parents and to have found these marvelous grandparents? They’ve told me a number of things about my mother and father who passed away when I was very young—how they loved me and how happy they would be to know I have such fine adoptive parents.”
“You certainly are fortunate,” said Nancy, smiling. “We’re all so happy for you.”
Mr. Drew announced that about half of Grandma Horton’s stolen securities had been found intact in the brass box at police headquarters and that in due course Jody would receive it. The lawyer explained:
“What started the Omans on their kidnaping idea, and having their own daughter pose as the Horton beneficiary, was the fact that Ben Oman had seen a copy of the will. The age of the granddaughter was not mentioned, nor any guardian. It was then that he began formulating the fraud. He kept little Joanie out of sight. Poor Grandma Horton was underfed and kept under sedation until her death.”
“How perfectly dreadful!” Bess said softly.
“Before a physician was called to administer to her,” Mr. Drew went on, “Mrs. Oman took little Joanie to the adoption society and left her so no one coming to the house ever saw her.”
“How can people be so wicked!” George burst out.
Jody said that of course it would be very nice to receive the money. “But I’m going to give a lot of it to my grandparents to use in their work,” she said. “Part of what I have left will be for beautiful presents for Nancy Drew, Bess Marvin, and George Fayne,” she declared. “They deserve the best rewards in the whole world!”
Nancy laughed. “That is sweet of you, Jody. But the only reward I want is to know what those strange code words ‘Wolf’s Eye’ mean.”
Jody went to the bookcase and began looking in dictionaries and encyclopedias and other reference books. Nancy, meanwhile, could not help but wonder when she might encounter as strange a mystery as the recent one. Such a case was to confront her soon, The Clue of the Whistling Bag-pipes.
Jody had been consulting one of the reference volumes which contained interesting information about all sorts of unusual subjects. Excitedly she cried out:
“I’ve found It!” Jody giggled. “Nancy, believe it or not, wolf’s eye is a nickname for moonstone!”