Chapter 2 The Secret of the Wooden Lady by Carolyn Keene
The Stolen Ring
Nancy found the light switch and the three of them stood there a moment, blinking. There were no signs of a struggle in the hall. The telephone was back in place and the big bowl of peonies beside it was undisturbed.
“Bess!” Nancy called. “Bess, where are you?” There was no answer.
“You two look around down here and I’ll go upstairs,” Mr. Simmons suggested.
Mr. Beaman was already going through the first floor, switching on lights.
“Somebody’s raised cain up here,” Mr. Simmons called down in a moment.
Mr. Beaman hurried upstairs. Nancy, left alone in the hall, had an idea. She reasoned that someone had come up behind Bess as she stood at the telephone. He probably had knocked her out. If so, where could he have concealed her?
This was not the first time Nancy had been called upon to rescue someone in trouble. Ever since people had known she possessed unusual ability to solve mysteries, Nancy had been sought out to track down scoundrels of various types. Only recently she had solved the strange case of “The Clue of the Leaning Chimney.”
Bess’s present predicament seemed like the beginning of another case for Nancy. As she looked about the hall of the Marvin home, she remembered the deep closet back of the stairway. Nancy opened the door and peered into the darkness.
“Bess,” she called. “Bess!”
There was a murmur from back of the coats and rubbers. Nancy shoved them aside, and bent down. Bess was lying on the floor.
“Bess, are you hurt?” Nancy exclaimed, kneeling beside her friend.
The girl slowly opened her eyes. “Nancy, what happened?”
“Somebody knocked you out,” Nancy said. “Don’t you remember?”
Bess sat up and cautiously rubbed the back of her head. “I saw him, all right. He came tearing down the stairs, holding a handkerchief over his face. Then he grabbed me around the shoulders and pressed his thumb into the back of my neck. Oh, it was awful!”
“The same man who put me out!” Nancy decided. “I wonder when he got into the house.”
“While I was out,” Bess replied. She was calmer now. “I left the car at Larry’s to have a tire changed, and walked home. I suppose the man didn’t hear me come back, so he was trapped.”
Nancy called Mr. Simmons and Mr. Beaman.
“It was a thief, no doubt about it,” Mr. Simmons told Bess. “You should see your parents’ bedroom. Looks like the day after a Florida hurricane.”
He telephoned City Hall, got Mr. Marvin out of the council meeting, and told him to come home at once. A police siren came screeching up the street, and in a moment officers Kelly and Flynn walked in the front door.
“Nancy Drew on the job already?” Officer Kelly asked, smiling. “What’s the trouble?”
They told him what had happened.
“Robbery?” Flynn suggested.
“It was a thief all right,” Mr. Beaman nodded. “Come upstairs and see for yourselves.”
When they entered Mr. and Mrs. Marvin’s bedroom it was obvious that someone had made a hasty and rather clumsy search for jewelry. Bess picked up a blue velvet box from the bed.
“Mother kept her valuable jewelry in this,” she said. “A pearl necklace, some pins, and several rings.”
“Does your father own a diamond ring, Bess?” Nancy asked suddenly.
“Yes. Why?”
“The man who pushed me into the car was wearing one on the little finger of his left hand.”
“Can you describe the fellow?” Officer Flynn inquired, taking out his notebook.
Nancy shook her head. “He came up behind me—all I really saw were his coat sleeve and his right hand.”
“He wasn’t tall,” Bess put in, “and he wore a baggy gray suit. I think he had on sneakers—he made hardly any noise.”
While they were talking, Nancy was turning over in her mind the peculiar actions of the thief. It was easy to understand why he had wanted to get rid of Bess—undoubtedly he had heard her say she knew there was someone in the house. He did not want her to call the police.
But why had he taken such effective means to keep Nancy out of the house, she wondered. He already had stolen the jewelry and left Bess unconscious. Why didn’t he escape?
Nancy thought she knew. He needed more time for something else. She got down on her hands and knees and began a search of the bedroom carpet, inch by inch.
“What are you up to?” Kelly asked.
“Just a hunch,” Nancy told the officer.
Lifting the edge of the bedspread, she reached as far under the bed as she could. Nothing there. She went around to the other side and did the same thing. This time her hand touched a small, hard metal object.
“Nancy, you’ve found something,” Bess cried.
“Get me a sheet of your mother’s stationery,” Nancy ordered.
Bess obeyed and Nancy carefully slid the paper under the object so as not to destroy any fingerprints, and brought it out.
“A man’s signet ring!” Mr. Simmons exclaimed. “Perhaps it belongs to Mr. Marvin.”
Bess shook her head. “I’ve never seen it before. And the initial on it is F.”
At that moment Mr. Marvin came running up the stairs. “Bess,” he cried, “are you all right? What’s going on?”
“I’m perfectly all right, Dad,” Bess assured him. “I’m afraid most of Mother’s jewelry has been stolen, and your diamond ring. This isn’t your ring, is it?”
Mr. Marvin glanced at it. “No.”
“Then it was dropped by the thief,” Flynn concluded. “But I can’t understand why the fellow took off his ring while he was doing a job here.”
Nancy said she thought the thief had picked up the extension telephone to listen to Bess’s conversation. While he listened, he had slipped his own ring off to try on Mr. Marvin’s diamond. The signet ring had rolled off the telephone stand and under the bed. Then he heard Bess say someone was upstairs, so he had to quiet her before she called the police.
“Before he had a chance to hunt for the ring, I drove up to the house,” Nancy went on. “So he knocked me out and came inside again. When I leaned on the horn a couple of minutes later, he fled, probably through the back door.”
“Right,” Kelly said. “It was open.”
“Can you get a set of fingerprints from this ring?” Nancy asked the policeman.
Flynn shook his head. “All we can hope for are partial prints from such a small surface. But the initial may help. Anyway, Miss Drew, you did a nice job of deduction.”
The policeman took an envelope from his pocket and dropped the ring into it.
Nancy drove home, followed by the police car, although she did not think she needed their protection. The young detective felt sure that the man who had lost the ring was far from the scene of the robbery by this time. Perhaps he had even left River Heights.
The girl thought about him as she put the convertible into the garage. Her father and Mrs. Gruen had not yet returned. She went on thinking about the thief as she entered the house, climbed the wide stairs, and went to bed.
Somewhere, sometime, she had seen that man’s right hand before. There was something different about it. What was it? Unable to find the answer, she fell asleep.
Nancy was awakened early the next morning by a joyful bark outside her door. Togo, her terrier, wanted to come in. Nancy reached over and opened the door. Togo put his front paws up on the bed and barked again.
“Good morning, silly,” Nancy said, grinning at him. “Togo, I have a big problem, but I’ll get up in a minute and play with you.”
Her thoughts returned to the puzzle of the night before. She recalled vividly the rough arm flung around her throat, the hand gripping her left shoulder. The hand with broken nails and a diamond ring. The middle finger, she recalled, was unusually short.
Suddenly Nancy sat straight up. She remembered where she had seen a hand like that! It belonged to a fellow who used to work at Larry’s service station. She had not liked his insolent manner; neither had Bess Marvin. Everybody had breathed a sigh of relief when he left.
Of course, it might not be the same man. Probably lots of people had short middle fingers. But it was a clue.
Nancy dressed quickly, and hurried down to breakfast to tell her father and Hannah Gruen of the night’s excitement. When she finished, Mr. Drew reached over and put his hand on his daughter’s arm.
“Be careful, Nancy. This thief sounds like a person who might become extremely dangerous if he thought you were being too helpful to the police.”
“Don’t worry, Dad.”
Mr. Drew folded his paper. “I think we’ll take the midnight train to Boston tomorrow night. That all right with you, Nancy?”
“I’ll be ready. You know I’m going up to Emerson to the dance tonight. I’ll be back by noon tomorrow.”
“Remember me to Ned,” her father said, a twinkle in his eye.
As soon as breakfast was over, Nancy hurried out to the garage, jumped into her convertible, and drove to Larry’s service station.
“Good morning,” Larry greeted her. “What’ll you have?”
“Fill it up,” Nancy said. “And I want to ask you some questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Go ahead,” Larry started filling the tank and listened while Nancy described the man who had once worked for him.
“You mean Howard Fay.” Larry frowned. “We fired him two years ago. Light-fingered, I thought, but I couldn’t catch him with the goods.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
“No, but I heard he left town to go to sea.”
Nancy thanked Larry and started the motor. “By the way, his nickname was Flip,” he shouted as she pulled away.
Nancy drove to the police station, went directly to the captain, and gave him the information, along with her reason for thinking Howard Fay might be the man who had robbed the Marvins.
“Thanks very much, Miss Drew,” the officer said. “Just one more debt this department owes you.”
Before starting on her trip to Emerson College, Nancy stopped at the Drew home. She put a pale-green evening dress and slippers into her bag which already was half packed, and drove off. The closing dance of the college year was a gala one, and good-looking athletic Ned was unusually attentive.
When the dance was over Ned suggested that Nancy take a walk with him around the campus in the moonlight before returning to the cottage where she was staying.
“A last request for many a moon,” sighed Ned.
“Why, what do you mean?” asked Nancy, laughing.
“Here you are off to Boston tomorrow on a ghost hunt,” Ned explained, “and I thought we’d see a lot of each other before I left for my counselor job at camp.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Ned,” said Nancy, “but Captain Easterly really needs our help.”
“Well, I suppose you must go,” Ned continued, “but I’ll miss you.”
“Look,” said Nancy suddenly. “Your camp isn’t far from Boston. If you get a chance why don’t you stop at the hotel where Dad and I’ll be staying?”
“Oh, good!” said Ned, excited. “That ship’s ghost is going to have competition when I arrive in Boston.”
Happy but a bit weary from the late hour, Nancy said good night and hoped to see him in Boston.
She arrived in River Heights the next morning as the town clock was striking twelve. As she carried her suitcase up to her room, Mrs. Gruen called:
“Good morning, Nancy. Someone’s on the phone. Man says he’s in Boston. I can’t make head nor tail of what he wants.”
Nancy picked up the telephone.
“I want Mr. Drew, Mr. Carson Drew,” a voice said gruffly.
“He’s not at home. May I take a message? This is his daughter.”
“You’ll do. Tell your father to stay away from Easterly’s ship. Do you hear?”
“Yes, I hear. But why—”
“I said stay away from Boston and that clipper.”
“Who are you?” Nancy demanded.
There was no reply. The instrument clicked and the connection was broken.