Chapter 3 The Secret of Red Gate Farm by Carolyn Keene
Work on a Code
Had the man heard her rush from the telephone table? Nancy wondered. Was he suspicious of her actions during his absence? If so, what reason did he have and what business deal was he hiding in this dingy excuse for an office? Nancy pretended not to notice his penetrating, questioning eyes, but she was ill at ease.
The hostile man spoke up. “You girls better get out of here!” he blurted. “I got no more time to waste. And don’t bother to come back!”
Nancy and Joanne looked hastily at each other and moved toward the door. Once outside the building, Nancy breathed a sigh of relief and turned toward Joanne, who was close to tears.
“Don’t feel bad because you didn’t get the job,” Nancy said gently as they walked to the car. “You wouldn’t have wanted it, I’m sure.”
“That man was detestable!” Joanne shuddered. “I had just given my name and address when he started to shout. You must have heard him.”
Nancy nodded. “I think he had already found another girl to work for him,” she said. “At least I heard him say something like that over the phone.”
“I knew I wouldn’t get the job.” Joanne sighed dejectedly. “He told me I wasn’t the type!”
“I’d count my blessings if I were you,” said Nancy soberly. “There’s something strange going on in that office and I’d like to know what it is.”
“Why, what do you mean?” Joanne asked quizzically.
“Well,” Nancy began carefully, “I’m not sure my suspicions are just, but I have a hunch there’s something shady about the telephone message he got when you were in the inner office.” Nancy explained about the series of numbers on the sheet of paper and how she suspected they might form some sort of code.
“At any rate,” Nancy went on, “we can’t be sure of anything, so this must remain confidential.”
Joanne nodded and fell silent.
Many thoughts raced through Nancy’s mind as she remembered the day’s encounters. First there had been the perfume shop and its mysterious saleswoman, then the curious man on the train who had been attracted by the strange fragrance. And now, this crude, gruff man in Room 305!
“What should I do now?” Joanne asked forlornly. “I can’t go back to Red Gate Farm and let Gram down. I simply must find work!”
“Why not come home with me?” Nancy suggested as they paused beside her car. “I’ll be glad to have you as my guest for the night, and in the morning you’ll feel better and can decide what to do then.”
Joanne shook her head proudly. “Thank you, but I wouldn’t think of letting you go to any more trouble. I have a little money. I can find a boardinghouse and I’ll keep on looking for work here.”
Nancy saw that Joanne was disappointed and discouraged and hated to leave her on her own, but finally conceded. “I guess you’re right,” she admitted. “But at least let me help you hunt for a place to stay.” Joanne accepted the offer gratefully.
Even with the car, it was difficult to locate a pleasant room. Joanne could not afford a high-priced place, and the cheaper ones were unsatisfactory. Finally, however, they found a suitable room on a quiet street and Nancy helped Joanne get settled.
“I may be driving over this way tomorrow,” she said. “If I do, I’ll stop in to see what luck you’ve had.”
“I wish you would,” Joanne invited shyly. “I’ll need someone to bolster my morale.”
“All right, I will,” Nancy promised.
After a few words of encouragement she said good-by, then drove slowly toward River Heights, her mind again focused on the various events of the day.
“I don’t know what will happen to Joanne if she doesn’t find work,” Nancy told herself. “It would be a shame if her grandmother loses Red Gate Farm. I wish I could do something, but I don’t know of any available jobs.”
It was nearly dinnertime when Nancy reached River Heights. As she passed the Fayne home, she saw George and her cousin Bess on the front lawn and stopped to tell them about Joanne’s unsuccessful interview.
“Isn’t that too bad?” Bess murmured in disappointment. “She seems such a sweet girl. I’d like to know her better.”
“I promised I’d drive over to see her tomorrow,” Nancy told the girls. “Why don’t you come along?”
“Let’s!” George cried enthusiastically. “I love going places with you. We always seem to find some sort of adventure!”
Nancy’s blue eyes became serious. “I’d say this has been a pretty full day! I can’t seem to forget that mysterious saleswoman in the Oriental perfume shop or the strange man on the train. I wasn’t going to say anything to you about this, but something odd happened this afternoon in that office.”
Nancy then related the mysterious actions and behavior of the man named “Al.”
“You mean you think his telephone conversation was a little on the shady side?” Bess asked, wide-eyed.
“It seemed that way to me,” Nancy answered. “I doubt very much that it’s a manufacturing business and those numbers I copied from his pad were anything but stock-market quotations!”
“Well, here we go again! Never a dull moment with Nancy around!” George laughed gaily.
“Don’t be too impatient, George,” Nancy advised with a grin. “We don’t have proof that any of today’s incidents is really cause for suspicion.”
At this moment a foreign-make car went by. Nancy glanced casually at the driver, then gave a start. He was the man who had spoken to her on the train!
He slowed down and stared at the three girls and at the Fayne home. Nancy felt at once that he was memorizing the address. He gave a self-satisfied smile and drove on. Nancy noted his license number.
“I almost feel as if I’ll hear from him again,” she told herself, then revealed to the girls, who had not noticed the car’s driver, that he was the man who had confronted her on the train.
“He’s still interested in you,” Bess teased.
But George found nothing to laugh about. “I don’t like this, Nancy,” she said seriously. “I remember he had a hard, calculating face.”
Nancy, too, remained serious. A disturbing thought had suddenly occurred to her.
“Why,” she told herself, “that man must have been trailing me. But I wonder for what reason?”
She determined, for the moment at least, not to mention her suspicions aloud and dropped the subject of the mysterious man. Presently she bade Bess and George good-by, climbed into her convertible, and drove home.
“I think I’ll ask Dad what he thinks about that man Al’s mysterious telephone message,” Nancy decided as she hopped from the car.
She had often taken some of her puzzling problems to her father. He, in turn, frequently discussed his law cases with his daughter and found Nancy’s suggestions practical.
“You look tired, dear,” Carson Drew observed as she entered the living room and sank into a comfortable chair. “Have a big day shopping?”
“I can’t remember when so much ever happened to me in one day.” Nancy smiled despite her fatigue.
“I suppose I’ll be getting the bills in a few days,” her father remarked teasingly.
“It wasn’t just the shopping, Dad,” Nancy returned gravely.
Nancy now plunged into the story of the Oriental shop and the dropped perfume bottle, of her encounter with the stranger on the train, and the strange fact of having seen him a short while ago in a foreign-make car.
“What do you make of it?” she questioned.
Mr. Drew shrugged. “What did he look like?”
“The man seemed very polite, but he had a cruel look in his eyes.” Nancy gave a brief description of him.
“Hm,” Mr. Drew mused, “I can’t say I like the sound of this.”
“I wouldn’t wonder about it,” said Nancy, “except that the girl in the shop seemed so reluctant to sell the perfume. Why do you suppose she cared whether someone bought it?”
“Maybe she was instructed to save it for special customers,” Mr. Drew suggested.
“Dad, you may have something there!” Nancy exclaimed.
She told her father about Joanne Byrd and described the office which they had visited together. She ended by showing him the figures which she had copied.
“This was almost all of the message,” she explained. “I didn’t have time to copy the rest. Can you figure it out?”
Carson Drew studied the sheet of paper. “I’m not an expert on codes,” he said finally, “but I suspect this might be one, since the man lied in saying these figures are market quotations.”
“Can you decipher it?” Nancy asked eagerly.
“I wish I could, but it looks like a complicated one. It would probably take me days to figure out what these numbers stand for. Why don’t you work on it yourself?”
“I don’t know too much about codes,” Nancy declared, “but perhaps I can learn!”
“I have a book you might use,” her father offered. “It may not help much, since every code is different. Still, all codes have some features in common. For instance, in any language certain words are repeated more frequently than others. If you can figure out a frequency table, then look for certain numbers to appear more often than others, you may get somewhere.”
“I’d like to try,” Nancy said eagerly.
“This will be a good test for your sleuthing mind,” her father said teasingly. “If you don’t figure out the code, you can always turn this paper over to an expert.”
“Not until I’ve had a fighting chance at it myself,” Nancy answered with spirit.
“I’d really like to help you with this mystery,” her father said, “but I’m so tied up with this Clifton case I just can’t tackle anything else right now.”
Immediately after dinner Mr. Drew retired to his second-floor study to work on his law case. Nancy went to her bedroom to read the book on codes. When she finished, the girl detective took out the sheet on which she had copied the numbers and studied the figures intently.
“I’m sure the numbers stand for letters of the alphabet,” Nancy told herself. “They must have been arranged in some pattern.”
For over two hours Nancy tried combination after combination and applied it to the code. Nothing showed up until she hit upon the plan of four letters of the alphabet in sequence by number, the next four in reverse. Alternating in this manner and leaving two in the end bracket, Nancy scrutinized what she had worked out:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M
1 2 3 4 8 7 6 5 9 10 11 12 16
N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
15 14 13 17 18 19 20 24 23 22 21 25 26
“I’ve hit it!” she thought excitedly.