Chapter 2 The Clue of the Dancing Puppet by Carolyn Keene
A Startling Call
“Something has happened to Nancy!” Bess exclaimed fearfully.
George was already racing up the attic stairway. “I’m afraid so,” she muttered.
With Bess at her heels, George reached the large, cluttered attic. Three small windows, dusty and full of cobwebs, let in just enough light for the girls to see Nancy lying unconscious on the floor. They rushed to her side.
“Oh, Nancy!” Bess wailed.
George, who was more practical-minded, felt Nancy’s pulse. “It’s strong,” she reported. “This is a temporary blackout. Nancy must have hit her head.”
Both girls looked around. Nearby lay a doll’s trunk. It was upside down and spread open. Directly above it was a wide beam.
“Maybe this trunk fell off the beam and hit Nancy,” Bess suggested.
“It doesn’t look heavy enough to knock anyone out,” George replied. “Bess, run downstairs and get some cold water and a towel.”
Bess hastened off on the first-aid errand and soon returned with the water. George bathed Nancy’s forehead with the wet towel. In a few seconds the young detective opened her eyes.
“Thank goodness you’re all right,” Bess said. “Do you know what hit you?”
“N-no,” Nancy answered weakly. “Whatever it was hit me from the back.”
George, sure that something heavier than the doll trunk had injured Nancy, was searching the attic floor. Not far from where her friend lay, she made a discovery.
“Look!” she exclaimed. “A cannon ball! I guess this is what did it,” she went on thoughtfully. “It’s not covered with dust like everything else up here, so it must have been inside the trunk.”
Nancy sat up and smiled wryly. “I guess I’m lucky it only hit me a glancing blow.”
George was angry. “Whoever put a cannon ball in a doll’s trunk must have been crazy!”
Before she had time to go on with her tirade, the girls were startled to hear the stairs creak.
“Sh-h,” Nancy warned in a whisper. “Let’s see who’s coming up.”
To their astonishment no one appeared. “Someone was eavesdropping,” Nancy said.
She rose and hurried to the stairway. Seeing no one, she descended quickly, with Bess and George following. Nobody was in sight on the second floor.
“Bess, run down the front stairway and find out if anyone is around,” George ordered. “I’ll take the back stairs. Nancy, you’d better take it easy.”
Nancy needed no second urging. She was feeling very dizzy and went to lie down on her bed. Bess and George returned in a few minutes to report that no one seemed to be in the house.
“Old houses are sometimes squeaky,” George remarked. “Maybe no one was on the stairs after all.”
At this moment she looked at Nancy, who was very white. Worried, George recommended that they call a doctor. Nancy tried to protest, but was overruled.
“Where’s the phone?” George asked Bess.
“I don’t know,” Bess said. “Anyway, I think I should go and get Mr. and Mrs. Spencer.”
She hurried off and in a few minutes returned with the couple. Margo Spencer, about forty years old, blond, and attractive, was extremely concerned about what had happened. She agreed that the Drews’ family physician should be called.
“Our phone is on a table in the lower hall,” she said. “I guess you didn’t notice it because I always keep a large bouquet of flowers there.”
George put in the call, then returned to the second floor. As she started down the hall, a man came up the rear stairway. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and had thick, curly, graying hair. His eyes were deep-set and penetrating.
As he walked past Nancy’s bedroom, Mr. Spencer called, “Hi, Cally old boy!” He turned to the three girls. “I’d like you to meet my friend Emmet Calhoun. Cally old boy is a Shakespearean actor. Right now he’s looking for another show. Meanwhile, he’s helping us coach.” He gave Mr. Calhoun the details of Nancy’s accident.
“Most unfortunate!” the actor said dramatically. “Those beautiful eyes—they might have been closed forever!” Striking a dramatic pose, Cally old boy began to quote a Shakespearean verse:
“ ‘From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain, and nourish all the world.’ ”
“Thank you,” said Nancy, smiling.
Bess’s eyes sparkled. “That’s from Love’s Labour’s Lost, isn’t it?” she asked.
Mr. Calhoun beamed. “Yes, it is, my dear. It is regrettable that most young people cannot quote from the Bard. We can learn so much from Shakespeare.”
Mrs. Spencer took the actor by the arm and went with him to the door. “Come, Cally,” she said. “Let’s leave the girls alone. Nancy should rest.”
The girls were a bit amused at her diplomacy. They saw at once that Cally old boy might easily become a bore!
“Here comes the doctor,” Bess said presently. She was glancing out the window at the parking lot.
Doctor Black examined Nancy’s head thoroughly, then said she would be all right in a few hours. “You are to eat nothing but broth and crackers, and rest for five or six hours,” the doctor said sternly.
Bess went to the kitchen, found some concentrated bouillon, and arranged Nancy’s prescribed diet on a small tray. Soon after eating the soup, Nancy fell asleep.
About ten o’clock that evening she awakened completely refreshed. Finding Bess and George in their room, she announced she would like to go over to the playhouse to see the rest of the show.
Bess and George agreed, but paused to comb their hair first. Nancy waited a moment for them, then started ahead down the front stairway. As she reached the first floor, the phone rang.
“I’ll answer it,” she thought, and went over to the hall table.
“Hello?” she said, just as Bess and George walked up to her.
A woman’s shrill voice asked, “Is Nancy Drew there?”
“This is Nancy Drew speaking. Who is this?”
The voice at the other end, obviously disguised, cried out loudly in a cackling, witchlike tone, “I’m the dancing puppet. If you know what’s good for you, Nancy Drew, you’ll leave me alone. Get out! Go away!” The speaker hung up.
Nancy’s expression had become one of complete amazement. When she relayed the message to Bess and George, they, too, looked stunned and worried. But in a moment all three girls regained their composure.
“Who was it, do you suppose?” Bess asked. “Some girl who plays the part of the puppet?”
Nancy shook her head. “Mr. Spencer assured me that the puppet is not alive.”
“It was probably the puppeteer,” George guessed.
“Perhaps,” Nancy conceded. “Or it might just be someone playing a joke.”
“This is no joke, Nancy,” Bess declared. “I think it is all part of a plot against either the Spencers or the Footlighters. Now that you’re in the group, that unidentified woman is your enemy too!”
“That might be,” Nancy agreed. “And it is just possible that the doll trunk with the cannon ball in it didn’t just fall off the beam above my head.”
Bess looked aghast. “You mean that someone sneaked up to the attic and deliberately knocked you out?”
“I’m inclined to think so,” Nancy said. “And I intend to find out who it was!”
She asked the other girls if they knew whether or not there was a phone extension in the house which the “puppet” might have used.
“Mr. Spencer didn’t say,” George answered.
The girls searched but found none. Nancy suggested that perhaps there was an extension out in the theater, but she found that the phone in the theater was in a booth and had a different number from the one in the house. “There’s no telling where that mysterious call was dialed from,” she said. “The speaker might have been nearby, or at a distance.”
By this time Bess was thoroughly alarmed. Grabbing Nancy’s arm, she looked at her and said, “We haven’t been here one night yet, and awful things are happening! Nancy, the case isn’t worth it. Let’s do as that caller said. Let’s leave!”