Chapter 11 The Password to Larkspur Lane by Carolyn Keene
The Man with the Whip
“Oh, good afternoon,” Nancy said to the evil-looking man with the whip.
“How’s yourself?” the rider replied, grinning maliciously.
“Is the owner at home?” Nancy asked.
“Naw, the whole family is gone for the summer,” the keeper replied. “What about it?”
“I’m sorry to intrude,” Nancy apologized. “I am interested in carrier pigeons, and I thought I just saw one land here. I notice you have quite a collection of them.”
“Yep, we have quite a few, quite a few,” the man leered. “And so you like pigeons, huh?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, I am very fond of them,” Nancy answered.
“How many ya got? Maybe we can trade a few to get a new strain.”
“I haven’t any just now,” Nancy replied.
“Well, I’m glad you come in, girlie,” the man grinned, advancing toward Nancy. “We don’t get callers very often away out here, and they don’t come as nice lookin’ as you.”
“This is not a social call,” Nancy exclaimed, retreating toward her car. “I’ll get my purse and then we can talk business, if you want to sell a pair of pigeons.”
“Listen, girlie, I’ll give you a pair of pigeons,” the man smirked.
“I don’t accept gifts from strangers,” Nancy retorted. “If you are not in the mood to talk business, I’ll drive on.”
She seated herself behind the wheel and stepped on the starter. The motor whirred into life, and Nancy let it idle for a while. The man dropped his smirking look, appearing to assume a businesslike attitude.
“All right,” he said. “I just wanted to be friendly, that’s all, but if you are the stand-offish kind, it’s all right. Now, what did you have in mind? A pair of pigeons to breed? Want to raise ’em yourself?”
“Yes,” Nancy said. “How much are they?”
“Different prices, of course, according to size and pedigree,” the man replied, putting one foot on the running board of the car. “Some are half a dollar, which is for runts. Then, we’ve got tested homers that have been raced—good, husky mature birds for as high as ten dollars. Don’t you want to see them?”
“Yes, I should like to see a good pair, but they do not have to be champion stock,” Nancy said. “Something around five dollars.”
“Come this way, then,” the man said, without moving. “Climb out and I’ll take you into the coops.”
“Oh, I think I’ll stay here,” Nancy replied. “Just pick me out a pair with nice even markings, and bring them to me in a box.”
“That’s a funny way to buy pigeons.”
“I’ll take a chance on your honesty,” Nancy cajoled the man. “You don’t look as if you would cheat.”
“I wouldn’t,” the man assured her. “But I’d like for you to see the coops, and how nice they are built. It will give you an idea how to keep your own pigeons, too. Come on, girlie.”
“No, I will not,” Nancy said firmly.
“Yes, you will,” the man snarled, his friendly air vanishing in an instant. With one hand he seized Nancy’s arm above the elbow. Dropping the whip in his other hand, he reached for the ignition switch of the car to shut off the motor.
Before Nancy could free herself or utter a word, the weirdest possible sound broke out from the rear of the car. Even Nancy had to think twice before guessing that it had come from the hidden Effie, and that the girl was having a hysterical attack of the giggles.
“Wha—what’s that?” cried the pigeon fancier, releasing Nancy and peering over his shoulder. “That noise——”
Without waiting to satisfy his curiosity, Nancy shifted the gear lever, stepped on the gas pedal, and with a spurt of gravel shot down the drive. The man, whose foot had still been on the running board of the car, was hurled backward, and as Nancy sped toward the highway she could see him just picking himself up.
Reaching the road, Nancy saw an automobile approaching from the direction of River Heights. Rather than risk another encounter with any tenants of the estate, she steered in the opposite direction. A glance in the mirror showed her that the car behind had actually turned into the driveway. Fearing pursuit, she drove around curves and over hills with all the speed she dared.
In this manner she soon put five miles behind her. With considerable relief she saw that she was entering a small settlement. A sign at the outskirts of the village announced that “West Granby Welcomes You.” Inasmuch as she knew Granby well, she was sure she could find her way home without retracing the route over which she had come.
West Granby consisted of only one main street, but on that street was an old-fashioned hotel. Nancy turned up the roadway beside the wooden structure, and drove into the old unused carriage shed in the rear.
“All right, Effie, it’s safe to come out now,” she said, raising the lid of the rumble seat, and assisting the badly jarred and very much disheveled-looking girl to the ground.
“You may not know it, but you saved me from a very unpleasant experience when you had a fit of the giggles back there,” Nancy continued. “I saw nothing to laugh at, but I am glad that you did.”
“I wasn’t feeling funny,” Effie sniffed. “I was scared stiff. I wanted to cry, that’s what, and then I remembered Pearl Peachy in the movie ‘The Lure of the Leopard.’ That was a swell picture. Pearl got trapped by the Leopard and was shut up in the cellar of a burning house, with the cellar being flooded, and the man offered to let her go if she would tell him where the diamonds were, but she just laughed in his face.
“I remembered how Pearl laughed in the Leopard’s face, so I thought if I was captured I would do the same, and I tried to practice her way of laughing. Then you started off in the car and the jolt almost knocked the breath out of me.”
“Never mind the rest of Pearl’s adventures,” Nancy said. “Let us get some lunch.”
Although she did not relish the thought of having to listen to Effie’s chatter during a whole meal, Nancy intended to keep her promise to her father of having either a friend or Effie with her all the time while there was a possibility of her being followed.
Over a substantial meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and peas, Nancy told the maid of the things that had happened on the estate beyond her sight and hearing.
“Ooh, I wouldn’t be as brave as you are for anything,” Effie shuddered. “If I was, think of the places I’d have to go and the bad people I would have to meet. I’d be scared to death.”
While paying for the meal, Nancy asked the hotel proprietor about the occupants of the house where she had had her unpleasant experience.
“Oh, them’s the Tookers,” the countryman said. “They keep pretty much to themselves, the Tookers, but they buy a fair lot of stuff in West Granby, here.”
“They seem to have a number of pigeons,” Nancy observed carelessly.
“Some. Yes, they do have some pigeons,” the proprietor replied. “Their man comes in and buys feed over at Hoskin’s hay, grain, and feed place. Cracked corn and millet and oyster shells. Cash customers, too.”
“It is a lovely place, set back among the trees,” Nancy said, putting her change into her purse and pretending to be ready to leave. “Are they farmers or so-called ‘gentlemen’ farmers?”
“I gather Tooker is a retired professional man,” the hotel keeper said. “Seems to have a lot of money, and been all around the world. He came out here, so folks say, because he wanted peace and quiet—a place where he wouldn’t be disturbed.”
“He couldn’t have picked a better spot,” Nancy smiled.
“Well, ma’am, folks around here think he could have picked a better one so far as they are concerned. There’s something mysterious about them Tookers. Lots goes on there nights, with big cars speedin’ through the village and stoppin’ there at all hours.” The hotel keeper plainly did not approve of the Tookers.
“Mysterious?” Nancy pricked up her ears. “In what way mysterious?”
“They don’t come to church, or don’t subscribe to the local paper,” the man replied. “Just stand-offish and unfriendly. Very free with their money, though. Never bargain or question the price of a thing.”
“Oh, well,” Nancy observed, “that is no fault. I should think you could overlook their other irregularities as long as they pay their bills.”
“We can overlook almost anything except that pesky airplane,” the hotel man said with a shake of his head.
“Airplane?” Nancy asked quickly. “Have they one?”
“Yes,” was the answer. “Now, I don’t want you to think we are backwoods folks that is skeered of modern contraptions. Fact is, Job Green’s boy flew an airplane in the war and come back alive to tell about it. Now, he’s an air-mail pilot. Howsomever, for a man what’s retired and wants to be quiet and secluded, an airplane in the back yard a-roaring and a-hopping every day is either just plain crazy, or else there is some mystery about him.”
That seemed to be about all that the hotel man knew or thought of his strange neighbors. Accordingly, after complimenting him on the meal, Nancy walked back to where her car was parked, and there joined Effie. Skillfully she backed out of the narrow path and headed toward Granby, a drive of three miles. This would bring her to the highway leading directly to River Heights, a total distance of about thirty miles.
As the snappy little maroon roadster passed the last house in the village, its occupants could hear the drone of an airplane engine overhead. Nancy looked up and saw a machine gliding down on a long slant, evidently headed for the Tooker place.
“It looks like the plane that hit the pigeon, but I can’t be sure,” she murmured. “Wouldn’t it be strange if the pigeon and the plane that wounded it came from the same place?”
Stranger facts than this, however, were destined to be revealed to Nancy before the mystery of the carrier pigeon and its strange message was to be cleared up.