The Message in the Hollow Oak

by Carolyn Keene

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright Page

  CHAPTER I - Indian War Secret

  CHAPTER II - Annoying Traveler

  CHAPTER III - The Weird Voice

  CHAPTER IV - Rough Ride

  CHAPTER V - Air Spy

  CHAPTER VI - Ear to the Ground

  CHAPTER VII - River Pirates

  CHAPTER VIII - Exciting Plans

  CHAPTER IX - Escaping Thief

  CHAPTER X - Disappearances

  CHAPTER XI - Problem in Jealousy

  CHAPTER XII - Rewarding Search

  CHAPTER XIII - Alarming Moments

  CHAPTER XIV - Bess’s Scheme

  CHAPTER XV - Strange Row of Stones

  CHAPTER XVI - Fakers

  CHAPTER XVII - Unexpected Plunge

  CHAPTER XVIII - Well-House Clue

  CHAPTER XIX - Surprise!

  CHAPTER XX - Kit and Caboodle

  Postscript

  THE MESSAGE IN THE HOLLOW OAK

  A group of professional detectives challenge Nancy to tackle a mystery that they have failed to solve: find an invaluable message hidden by a missionary centuries ago in a hollow oak tree in Illinois.

  While searching the woods for the ancient tree, Nancy and her friends live with a group of young archaeologists who are excavating prehistoric Indian burial mounds on a nearby farm. A shadowy enemy stalks Nancy and harasses everyone at the dig. The young investigator pursues her dangerous adversary to an outlaws’ cave, and is threatened when she discovers an unusual treasure.

  How Nancy, with few clues to go on, solves this complex mystery will thrill all readers.

  The car balked at the rocks

  Acknowledgement is made to Mildred Wirt Benson, who under the pen name

  Carolyn Keene, wrote the original NANCY DREW books

  Copyright © 1972, 1935 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

  Published by Grosset & Dunlap, Inc., a member of The Putnam & Grosset Group,

  New York. Published simultaneously in Canada. S.A.

  NANCY DREW MYSTERY STORIES® is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster,

  Inc. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Grosset & Dunlap, Inc.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-07713-9

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  CHAPTER I

  Indian War Secret

  “NANCY,” said the voice on the telephone, “you are wanted in New York City!”

  The eighteen-year-old girl detective looked a bit startled. Was this a joke? Or true? “Why, Aunt Eloise, what for?”

  Eloise Drew laughed at the apprehension in her niece’s voice. “For a mystery,” she replied.

  Nancy relaxed. “Oh! For a moment you had me scared. Your announcement sounded as if I was being brought up on some police charge.” Then she added, “Tell me about the mystery. That’s more to my liking!”

  To Nancy’s disappointment, her aunt said it was too long a story to explain over the phone. “I was calling to see if you would like to visit me and meet a friend of mine, a detective. He wants some help on a baffling case.”

  Nancy’s pulse quickened. She was only an amateur detective. How could she possibly assist a man with professional training and ability in capturing criminals?

  “Aunt Eloise, please tell me more!” Nancy pleaded, rumpling the reddish-blond hair that framed her attractive face.

  “No, I’ll leave that to my friend. His name is Boyce Osborne. All I can say is that the case involves a trip to Illinois.”

  “It sounds interesting,” Nancy replied. “I’ll have to ask Dad if he has made any plans for me this weekend.”

  Her aunt laughed again. “We’re one step ahead of you. He has already given his permission for you to come. Can you be here some time tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Yes,” the young detective answered. “See you then, Aunt Eloise.”

  Nancy hung up. She was excited at the thought of a puzzling new case to solve. Going into the Drews’ cheerful living room, she exclaimed, “Well! The things that go on behind my back!”

  Carson Drew, a prominent lawyer in River Heights where he and Nancy lived, glanced up from his paper. He was a tall, handsome man who had been a widower since Nancy was three years old.

  Seeing his daughter’s teasing expression, he relaxed. “Going visiting?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she replied. “Have you ever known me to turn down a mystery? Maybe Bess or George will drive me to the airport tomorrow.”

  Bess Marvin and her girl cousin George Fayne were Nancy’s closest friends and she was eager to tell them about her latest assignment. She secretly hoped that somehow they could be included in it.

  Nancy hurried to the telephone and called the two girls. Both of them were excited at her news and agreed to take their friend to the airport.

  After hanging up, Nancy went to the kitchen to tell the housekeeper, Mrs. Hannah Gruen, about the trip to New York. The motherly woman, who had taken care of Nancy since the death of Mrs. Drew, smiled. “Please give your aunt my warmest wishes,” she said.

  “I certainly will,” Nancy replied.

  The following noon Bess and George arrived. Bess was a slightly plump blond with delightful dimples. George, in contrast, was very slender and athletic looking and wore her dark hair short. Both of them had on casual summer dresses.

  “Oh, Nancy, you look neat!” exclaimed Bess as she and her cousin admired the young detective’s smart beige suit.

  After saying good-by to Hannah, they drove at once to the River Heights airport and Nancy hurried off to catch her plane to New York.

  By midafternoon she was entering her aunt’s apartment house. To Nancy’s surprise the elevator was no longer manned. A self-service car had been installed. It was standing open. She walked in and pushed the fourth-floor button.

  The door closed and the car slowly started upward. Halfway between the second and third floors it stopped suddenly. The next moment the lights went out.

  “Oh dear!” thought Nancy. “The power is off!”

  She took a flashlight from her purse and beamed it on the bank of buttons near the door. She pushed one marked “Emergency,” but it did not ring.

  “Now what am I going to do?” she asked herself. “Without power, there’s no way of moving this car.”

  Nancy waited several minutes for the electricity to come back on, but nothing happened. She began to pound on the door. Surely someone would hear the noise and investigate. But no one did.

  Nancy decided to shout. “Help! Help! I’m stuck in the elevator!”

  It seemed to her like a very long time before there was any response. Then faintly she could hear a man’s voice.

  “I’ve been ringing for the elevator. There must be a power failure. Where are you?”

  “Between the second and third floors,” Nancy called. “Please get me out!”

  “Hold on!” the man yelled back.

  There was silence for the next ten minutes and Nancy became disheartened. Had the man gone off and failed to keep his promise? How long would she be a prisoner?

  Nancy shouted, “Help! Help! I’m stuck in the elevator!”

  Finally the stranger called loudly, “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” Nancy responded. “Is somebody going to start the elevator?”

  “I’m afraid not,” he called back. “I reported this to the superintendent and he called the elevator company. There’s nothing they can do. It’s a power failure in this part of town. You’ll just have to be patient.”

  Nancy stifled a groan. “Just as I was about to find out about my new mystery!” she said to herself. Then she thought of her aunt and
Boyce Osborne. They would be wondering what had become of her.

  “Are you still there?” she shouted.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Nancy Drew and I’ve come to visit my aunt, Miss Eloise Drew. She lives on the fourth floor. Would you mind going to her apartment and telling her what happened?”

  “I’ll do it at once,” the man promised.

  By this time the superintendent had come and other tenants on the third floor had gathered. There were exclamations of “You poor thing!” “Keep your chin up.” “I think this is terrible.”

  In a few minutes a welcome voice called down. “Nancy?”

  “Aunt Eloise!” How relieved Nancy felt!

  “Honey, I’m so sorry this had to happen, but I’m sure we’ll have you out of there in a little while.”

  Nancy and her aunt kept conversing and occasionally the neighbors, and even Boyce Osborne, came to lend encouragement. An hour went by. Then suddenly the lights in the elevator came on and with a sigh of relief Nancy ascended to the fourth floor.

  Aunt Eloise greeted her niece with open arms. Miss Drew, a schoolteacher, was tall and lovely looking. She led the girl to her apartment and introduced her to Boyce Osborne who had gone back.

  “Call me Boycey, as everyone else does,” he said, shaking Nancy’s hand. The detective was of medium height. Although he was rugged looking, the man had a very kind face and Nancy thought his smile was enchanting. How different from many comic-strip detectives!

  “I’m looking forward to working with you,” Nancy said. “Do tell me about the mystery we’re to solve together.”

  Boycey smiled. “Not together,” he told her. “You are going to solve it yourself.”

  Nancy’s eyes opened wide. “Alone?” she asked. Aunt Eloise spoke up. “Suppose you two talk things over while I prepare dinner.”

  After she had left the room, Boycey Osborne selected a chair next to Nancy’s. “First I must tell you that a group of us detectives have a sort of club. We take our vacations together at the same time every year and compete with one another in solving a mystery. Recently we returned from Illinois, defeated. When I told your aunt about it, she immediately laughed and said, ‘I’ll bet my niece could find the message in the hollow oak.’ ”

  “The message in the hollow oak?” Nancy asked, puckering her forehead.

  “Here is the full story,” Boycey began. “Our club’s so-called fun mystery this year turned out to be more baffling than tracking down a criminal. In the river country area around Cairo, Illinois, there is a certain legend about a French missionary from Canada named Père François. He is supposed to have hidden a message of great importance. He had been traveling from village to village, converting Algonquin Indians.

  “Then suddenly the powerful Iroquois swarmed down and nearly annihilated them. This was in 1680. Père François escaped but he had been wounded by an arrow. Later he was found unconscious by a pioneer many miles from the battle scene. He was nursed by this man and regained consciousness only long enough to say, ‘Valuable message in hollow oak.’ Then he died.”

  “A sad story!” Nancy commented. “What makes you think the secret message wasn’t found or that the hollow oak hasn’t long since been blown over and disintegrated?”

  Boycey smiled. “I can see that you are a practical young lady with a logical mind.”

  Nancy blushed a little at the compliment and said, “Perhaps I inherited these traits from my father. But tell me more of your story. Why did you and your friends give up the search?”

  “For one thing, we used up all our vacation time and had to return here,” he responded. “But we did make a little headway. Apparently Père François wanted to leave a record of the Indian villages he visited. We found a hollow oak which had blown over. On the trunk was a bulging area which we cut away.

  “Underneath the bark was a lead plate with the name Père François and the date 1675. Below it was an arrow. There was nothing inside the trunk. Some of us figured out which direction the arrow had originally pointed. We took an easterly course, but before we could locate another hollow oak, it was time for us to go for our plane and fly home.”

  “I’m amazed,” said Nancy, “that a tree three hundred years old and hollow in 1675 would have survived all this time.”

  Boycey told her that oaks are very sturdy trees and have been known to live for many centuries so it was not surprising to find one three hundred years old. “By the way,” he added, “the oak is the state tree of Illinois.”

  The detective leaned forward in his chair and asked, “Would you like to finish the case my friends and I had to abandon?”

  Nancy’s eyes danced with excitement. “Right now I can’t think of anything I’d rather do more.”

  “Good!” Boycey said. “And I wish you all the luck in the world.”

  Aunt Eloise announced dinner was ready. During the meal, the conversation continued about the message in the hollow oak.

  “It certainly sounds interesting,” Miss Drew commented. “Boycey, I just want to ask you one question. Do you think it will be perfectly safe for Nancy to go to that area and undertake a search?”

  The detective took several seconds before answering the question. Finally he said, “There’s one thing which perhaps I should warn you about. We detectives had a little trouble with a man named Kit Kadle. He’s eager to find the message himself and told one of my friends he wouldn’t let anything stand in his way of getting it!”

  CHAPTER II

  Annoying Traveler

  AUNT Eloise put down her forkful of roast beef and looked intently at her niece.

  “Nancy, I don’t like the sound of this man named Kit Kadle. If he’s so eager to find out what the message in the hollow oak is, he may be dangerous. I can’t imagine that he would let a girl outsmart him, and if you should succeed, he would be right there to harm and rob you.”

  “Oh, Aunt Eloise, aren’t you painting a much worse picture than the way things really are?”

  Boycey Osborne answered. “Eloise, I’m afraid you are. I was merely telling Nancy to keep her eyes open in case this Kit Kadle should still be around. He may have given up the search, just as my friends and I did.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Miss Drew conceded. “Anyway, it would be your father, Nancy, who would make the decision about your going.”

  The girl detective nodded. She realized Aunt Eloise wanted to protect her, but not necessarily stop her from the fun of solving another mystery.

  Many times before, friends had tried to dissuade Nancy from pursuing the work she loved so much. She found each new mystery intriguing and was always impatient to start solving it. This had been true from her first adventure, The Secret of the Old Clock, to the previous one, The Clue of the Broken Locket. Now Nancy could not wait to get to southern Illinois and begin work on her new assignment.

  Boycey said, “I’m sorry I brought up Kit Kadle’s name. So far as I know he is merely overaggressive and doesn’t play the game fairly. But I wouldn’t say he’s dangerous.”

  The detective now brought a map for her from his pocket. In one place there was a big red X. He explained that this was the spot where he and his friends had found the hollow oak.

  “Here are pictures.” He produced snapshots which showed the stump with hundreds of age rings and also the fallen tree among some bushes a short distance away. The section he had gouged to uncover the lead plate could be seen clearly.

  “Whenever the bark of a tree is removed or disturbed,” he explained, “a new surface gradually appears to heal the wound.”

  Suddenly Boycey Osborne snapped his fingers. “I just thought of something. In the general area where this oak is there’s a dig going on. It’s under the auspices of the Archaeological Department of Paulson University and is open to students. The name of their leader is Theresa Bancroft. The girls in the group are staying in a rented farmhouse with Miss Bancroft. The boys live in another old house about half a mile away.

 
“I’m sure the girls would let you room with them. The only trouble is it’s very difficult to get in touch with Miss Bancroft. She has no telephone and doesn’t go to town very often to pick up mail.”

  Nancy thanked him for the information, thinking, “If I can’t contact the leader, I certainly can’t stay there.” But she said nothing to the others.

  At ten o’clock Boycey announced he must leave. He gave Nancy a warm handshake.

  “Just concentrate on the mystery,” he said, “and I’m sure you’ll solve it somehow.” He grinned. “Wait until I tell my friends a girl found the message in the hollow oak!”

  Nancy chuckled. “I hope I won’t disappoint you, but I realize you’ve given me a really big job.”

  Aunt Eloise remarked that it would be a miracle if Nancy could solve the mystery with so few clues to go on. Her niece agreed.

  The following morning, after attending Sunday church services with her aunt, she left for home. Mr. Drew was away, but Hannah Gruen greeted her and wanted to know at once what the new mystery was.

  When she heard about it, the housekeeper shook her head. “I’m sure your father will never agree to this Illinois trip, unless friends are with you.”

  Hannah was right. When Nancy made the proposal to Mr. Drew that evening, he shook his head.

  Seeing the look of utter disappointment on Nancy’s face, he said, “When your Aunt Eloise asked me if you could work on this case she didn’t mention you would be by yourself. She probably didn’t know. It would be too dangerous for you alone, Nancy. But if Bess and George can accompany you, I’ll give my consent.”

  The next minute Nancy was on the phone talking to Bess and telling her about the mystery.

  “How exciting!” Bess exclaimed. “But what’s this about a dig?”

  Nancy told her, whereupon Bess cried out, “You mean you might have to help dig up skeletons?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Nancy replied, “but that’s what these students are doing. We’d just board at the farmhouse.”