Chapter 9 The Clue in the Old Stagecoach by Carolyn Keene
Trouble on the Road
Nancy started toward the woods to investigate the strange clicking sound.
Rick followed. “You’d better stay here,” he cautioned her. “I’ll go.”
Just then the clicking ceased and Ross Monteith emerged from among the trees! He was carrying a cane!
“Oh!” Ross cried out as he almost ran into the couple. “I didn’t see you!”
“Have you taken to walking alone in the woods after dark?” Rick asked him.
Ross Monteith laughed lightly. “I had a good old flashlight to help me.” He tapped his jacket pocket. “Audrey thought she’d lost one of her favorite earrings in the woods this morning and I offered to try to find it for her. No luck, though.”
As Ross started to move off, Nancy asked him, “Did you hear a peculiar clicking noise while you were in the woods?”
“Clicking noise?” he repeated. “No, I didn’t. Why?”
“Oh, we thought we did and wondered what it was.”
“Sorry I can’t help you,” Ross said, and hurried off.
Nancy and Rick discussed the whole episode. It was evident from their frowns that neither of them quite believed what Monteith had said. Why had he been in the woods? And was he telling the truth about not hearing the clicking noise?
Rick suddenly chuckled. “Nancy,” he said, “how about this deduction from a novice at sleuthing? I think Ross Monteith’s cane contains a Geiger counter. After dark he goes around prospecting for valuable minerals.”
Nancy laughed. “Well,” she said, “your theory is more comforting than having the cane turn out to be a deadly weapon!”
Long after Nancy had gone to bed that evening, she continued to think about the various angles of the mystery which she was trying to solve. Two questions concerning the Monteiths kept recurring to her mind. Were the couple just being nuisances? Or was there more to their always trying to be wherever Nancy was?
As the young sleuth was finally falling asleep, she decided to stay out of the couple’s way as much as possible. “And I’ll warn Bess and George not to say anything in front of them which would give away any of our plans.”
Nancy awoke early the next day and decided at once on one way to start her campaign of secrecy. She would move her car from the parking lot to a little-used side road a short distance from the lodge. “Then Ross and Audrey can’t spy on me so easily.”
She dressed quickly and went outside. No one was around. Nancy drove off, but was back at the lodge on foot within fifteen minutes.
Bess and George were just waking up. Nancy told them what she had done, and also her suspicions about the Monteiths.
“They haven’t really done anything,” she said, “but I think it would be just as well to throw them off our trail if possible.”
“It sure would,” said George. “The thing for us to do is get out of this hotel without their seeing us. What say we dress for tennis after breakfast and head for the courts, but carry skirts and purses in our beach bags?”
“Good idea,” Nancy agreed.
When the girls reached the tennis courts, only the boy who put up nets was there. He was so busy with his chore that he did not even notice Nancy and her friends, who avoided the courts, went through a trail that led out to the main road, and on down to Nancy’s car. Here they put on their skirts, then set off in the open car. Bess suddenly giggled. “This is like playing hare and hounds in reverse. Usually we’re the hounds. This time we’re the hares.”
Nancy asked George to get the map out of the instrument-panel compartment. “Tell me when I’m nearing that road which Mrs. Strook penciled in,” she requested.
Nancy drove for several miles, turning from one road to another, trying to get to the exact spot. It was very confusing but at last George cried out:
“Here’s a road—that is, if you can call it a road. I’m sure this is the right one.”
The one-car lane was rutty, bumpy, and full of stones. As rocks banged against the under part of the chassis, Nancy slowed to a crawl. In many places the grass in the road was so tall that George declared it was like driving through a wheat field. The girls were joggled from side to side.
Finally Bess said she thought it was foolhardy to go on. “Nancy, we’ll break a spring on the car or do some other damage,” she declared.
“I agree with you,” Nancy replied. “But I can’t turn around here. I’ll have to go on until I come to a wider spot. You notice it’s kind of mucky along the edges here—I guess from that rain yesterday. I’m afraid we’d get stuck.”
There was a sharp turn a short distance farther on and just beyond it the girls found themselves confronted by a chain across the road. From it hung a sign, on which was printed in large letters:
UNITED STATES
GOVERNMENT PROPERTY
KEEP OUT!
“They certainly don’t want any visitors here,” Bess remarked. “This must be an experimental station of some kind.”
Nancy had a hard time getting her convertible turned around. She had to do it inches at a time. But finally she was headed in the opposite direction and started the jolting ride back to the main road.
“Since this wasn’t the right road,” said Bess, “I wonder where the one to the Zucker farm is. We might be miles from it.”
Nancy disagreed. “Mrs. Strook seemed so sure of the spot, I believe we’ll find the road not far from here.”
“I hope it isn’t as bad as this one,” Bess worried, as she suddenly flew off the seat. “I’d better stop talking or I’ll bite my tongue!” she added with a giggle as she landed.
Bess had no sooner said this when the car stopped abruptly. The engine had died.
“Goodness, what’s the matter?” Bess asked.
Nancy’s eyes had darted to the fuel tank. “It’s empty—completely empty!”
“But you just had the tank filled while we were in Francisville,” George told her.
“I know,” Nancy replied. “It’s my guess that one of the rocks we went over punctured a hole in the tank.”
“And all our gas is gone?” Bess exclaimed in dismay.
“I’m afraid so,” Nancy told her.
The girls got out of the car and looked back of them. There was a long trail of gasoline on the grass-covered road.
“This is a fine predicament!” said Bess. “Here we are in the middle of nowhere. What are we going to do?” Just then she glanced up and gave an earsplitting scream. “Look!”
Nancy and George glanced up just in time to see a large black bear, its teeth bared, loping toward them. He was not more than fifty feet away!