Chapter 1 The Sign of the Twisted Candles by Carolyn Keene
The Tower Room
“Oh, Nancy, this is like a hurricane! We’ll be blown off the road!” cried Bess Marvin.
“We’d better try to go on,” Nancy Drew told the worried girl beside her in the convertible.
“Yes,” said George Fayne, the other girl with them. “A tree might fall on us. I’ll bet this wind is a hundred miles an hour!”
Bess, her cousin, shuddered. “No mystery is worth our taking this chance.”
The three friends were headed for a secluded inn called The Sign of the Twisted Candles. The Marvin family and the Faynes were related to a very old man who lived there. Rumors had recently come from neighbors of theirs who had overheard a conversation at the inn that he was virtually a prisoner in the tower of the old-fashioned mansion.
Bess and George had never been there and had asked attractive, titian-haired Nancy to drive out to investigate the rumors. If there was a mystery, it would be a challenge to Nancy, affectionately called by her friends “our detective.” It had been agreed that the girls’ mission to the inn would be kept secret from its occupants.
“It’s our mothers’ uncle we’re going to see. His name is Asa Sidney,” said George. “He owns the place, but turned over the management of it a few years ago to a couple named Jemitt.”
Trees and bushes swayed in the wind, which had blown up suddenly and now shrieked like a siren. It slammed against the car with terrific force as dust and leaves swirled through the air.
“Oh!” Bess screamed suddenly. “Look!”
Not far ahead of the car a giant elm had started to topple. As Nancy jammed on her brakes, the tree fell with a thundering crash across the road.
The three girls sat stunned, but finally Bess said, “Now we’ll have to turn around and go home.”
“Don’t be silly,” said George. “I can see the inn just beyond the tree. We can walk there.”
Nancy drove up to the tree, which might offer protection for the car against the storm’s blast. She and her friends stepped out into the wind, which whipped their hair and stung their faces. With eyes almost closed, they locked arms, skirted the fallen tree, and set off for the inn.
Progress was slow, but finally they came to the inn’s spacious front lawn and curving driveway at the end of the road. Several cars were parked there. The building was a rambling structure in three sections. Its central portion was two stories high and had a flat-roofed tower room. Wings on either side were one story and also flat-roofed.
There was a dim glow of light from the ground-floor windows. In the arched casement of the tower a sturdy candlelight gleamed a welcome. Almost breathless, the three girls dashed up the broad front steps onto the wide porch just as it started to rain.
George glanced at the parked cars and remarked with a grin, “I wonder what their drivers will say when they see that fallen tree across the road.”
“They’ll be wild,” Bess prophesied, and added, “I’m sure I look a fright.” She ran her fingers through her tousled, blond hair.
George, a brunette with short hair, remarked, “Who wouldn’t, when we’ve just barely escaped being blown into space!”
Nancy led the way to the door and opened it. The three girls found themselves in a long hall, lighted only by electric sconces on the walls. The candle bulbs in them were large and twisted.
To the left and right arched doorways opened into high-ceilinged rooms where tables, each with a similar candle, were set in rows. Half a dozen couples looked up curiously as the girls entered, then resumed eating.
From a doorway in the rear of the hall a woman wearing a black dress with a small, frilled white apron approached Nancy and her friends.
“Good afternoon,” Nancy said. “We’d like to have some tea and cinnamon toast, and stay here until the storm dies down.”
The woman, a gaunt, thin-lipped person past middle age, nodded her head.
“Just take any table,” she replied.
“Is there a room where we can comb our hair?” Nancy asked.
The woman nodded. “Go to the head of the stairs. You’ll see a powder room there.”
The girls climbed the creaky staircase to the upper hall and opened the door marked Ladies. They washed their hands, then began to comb their hair. Suddenly they heard an angry masculine voice outside the door.
“Where do you think you’re going with that?”
Nancy, alert to any clue in the mystery at the inn, turned to her friends, fingers to her lips. A girl’s voice replied, but the three visitors had difficulty hearing what was said because of the roaring wind.
“He’s one hundred today, so I thought you wouldn’t mind—”
“It’s too much!” shouted the man. “Take that tray back! There are three young ladies just in to be fed. Get downstairs and help. And be quick about it!”
“But on his hundredth birthday—” the girl protested.
“No back talk! I’ll take something to the tower later.”
Nancy and her friends were startled by the crash of glass on the first floor and assumed that the wind had blown in several panes. Quick footsteps indicated the man was running down the steps.
The door of the powder room creaked on its hinges and slowly opened inward. Hesitatingly a slender girl of about sixteen came into view. She seemed to be dazed and frightened. Was it from fear of the storm or of the man?
Like the woman who had greeted them, the girl wore a black dress with a frilled white apron. Clenched in her hands was a tray. A bouquet of flowers and several dishes of food were in imminent danger of sliding to the floor.
“Here, let me take that,” Nancy said quickly.
“Oh! Who—?”
The girl gave a faint scream and swayed. Nancy seized the tray, thrust it into the hands of the amazed Bess, then put an arm about the girl’s quivering form.
As Bess and George regarded the frightened girl with pity, Nancy led her to a couch and gently urged her to sit down.
“Just take it easy,” she said. “I think the wind is dying down a little. Maybe there won’t be any more trouble.”
The girl sank down obediently. “No more trouble?” she muttered.
Then suddenly she leaped to her feet. “Oh, what am I thinking of?” she cried out. “I—I must go! At once! The twisted candles—”
“The twisted candles?” Nancy repeated.
“Yes, I should help him light them. It’s getting dark.”
Nancy, Bess, and George exchanged sideways glances, then Nancy asked, “He? The man who was in the hall?”
“Oh, no, the one who lives in the tower. He’s a dear old man, but—” The girl stopped speaking and looked into space.
After a pause she went on, “I’ll be right down to serve you.” But she lingered as if wanting to tell something else.
When she remained silent, Nancy said, “I’m Nancy Drew. These are my friends Bess Marvin and George Fayne.” On purpose she slurred the last names so the girl could not repeat them.
“I’m Carol Wipple,” the waitress replied. “I—I must do what the Jemitts say. I can’t stand here talking. I must get to work, or else—”
“Or else what?” Nancy asked. “In the excitement no one will miss you for a few minutes.”
George spoke up. “If I were you, Carol, I’d take the tray upstairs. The man in the tower has to eat.”
“I’d like to, but I don’t dare,” Carol said, her eyes widening with fear. “I was forbidden.”
Nancy saw a chance to do some sleuthing. Perhaps she could go to the tower. “But this tray of food—it’ll go to waste,” she said. “It’s for Mr.—”
“Mr. Asa Sidney. He lives alone in the tower room. He’s one hundred years old today.”
Nancy smiled. “I should like to meet a man one hundred years old. And I certainly think he deserves a party on his birthday—a real celebration.”
“Mr. Jemitt thinks it is too expensive a trayful,” Carol said. “You see, Mr. Sidney lets my foster parents, Frank and Emma Jemitt, use this property in exchange for taking care of him. I don’t know why I’m telling you girls all this.”
“You’re not to worry,” Nancy said firmly. “I’ll pay for the food on the tray, and I’ll carry it up and serve it myself.”
“Oh, would you do that?” Carol cried happily.
From somewhere downstairs a voice thundered, “Carol! Where are you?”
“Oh, I must go!” Carol said, and darted from the room.
“Nancy, you old dear,” Bess said affectionately. “You’re always putting yourself out to be kind to others.”
“And you did a great bit of sleuthing,” George remarked. “I’d like to meet Asa Sidney, but Mr. Jemitt might become suspicious if we all barge in on him.”
“That’s right,” said Bess. “Nancy, why don’t you go alone?”
“Okay, but I’ll try to work out something so you girls can come up too.”
Bess and George said they would share the expense of Mr. Sidney’s dinner, then went down to the dining room. Nancy climbed the stairs, carrying the tray. The stairway was unlighted, and the swaying tree branches made queer-shaped shadows on the walls. The door above was closed.
“A perfect setting for a spooky mystery,” Nancy thought. “The biggest problem right now is how I’m going to knock on the door, with both hands balancing this tray!”
She reached the top of the stairway and stood in front of the heavy paneled door. A dim light showed beneath it, but no sound came from the other side.
“I’ll just tap on the door with my foot,” Nancy decided.
Leaning against the doorframe, she tapped with one heel. To her surprise the door swung silently open. Evidently the lock had not caught fast.
Nancy gazed into one of the strangest rooms she had ever seen. It was fully twenty feet square, and from all of its walls candles gleamed—candles by the dozen, all winking in the draft from the open door. Evidently Mr. Sidney had not waited for Carol to light them.
It was warm in the room, and the heavy air was pungently scented by burning tallow. In the great arched window directly in front of Nancy was the massive twisted candle whose light she had seen from outdoors.
From a low, broad chair before this window, the gaunt figure of a very old man arose. The candlelight showed his long, silver-white hair sweeping over stooped shoulders, and merging with the snowy beard that spread across his chest. Shaggy white eyebrows half concealed glowing eyes—strangely youthful eyes—that peered at Nancy from either side of a jutting, hawklike nose.
“Good evening,” she said. “I have brought your dinner.”
The old man stretched out his bony, trembling arms. In a deep, husky voice that faltered as he spoke, Asa Sidney cried out:
“Jenny—my Jenny, you’ve come back to me!”