Chapter 14 The Secret of the Wooden Lady by Carolyn Keene
The Figurehead Shop
Nancy caught his arm and tried to take the little box from him. But Grizzle Face, muscular and wiry, shook her off easily.
“You can’t have that!” Nancy cried out, running after him.
“It’s mine!” he flung over his shoulder.
She tried desperately to catch up to him. One of her sandals slipped off. She went back and picked it up. Grizzle Face now was several yards ahead of her.
Her mind raced with only one thought. “I must stop him! I must!” She had to question him.
“I know you were a stowaway on the Bonny Scot!” Nancy called after him. “Please! I only want to question you.”
But Grizzle Face kept on running. If only someone would come to help her capture him! No one appeared, and they were going in the opposite direction from town. Nancy must do something quickly!
“The police will get you!” she threatened, hoping to scare him.
The word police worked like magic. Grizzle Face halted in his tracks. “Police?” he said. “I ain’t a thief.”
“You can keep the snuffbox,” Nancy said, stopping. If she kept a few feet away from him, she reasoned, he might not run away again. “Just answer a few questions for me.”
“What do you want?” he asked.
“What do you know about the Bonny Scot?”
“Don’t come any closer,” Grizzle Face ordered, “and maybe I’ll talk.” Nancy did not move. “Yeah, I was on the clipper. That satisfy you?”
“Where were you during the storm?” Nancy asked. “We looked everywhere for a stowaway.”
The sailor seemed gratified. “I know that ship better’n old Easterly does. There’s places.”
“What sort of places?” Nancy insisted.
“Never mind.”
“You’ve sailed on her before?” There was no answer to that, so Nancy continued, “The snuffbox has some connection with the Bonny Scot, hasn’t it? The cameo is like the figurehead that used to be on it.”
Involuntarily the man opened his big hand and glanced at the snuffbox. “Where’d you get that idea?” he grunted.
Nancy felt that she was getting nowhere. If she could take him off guard, perhaps he would say something revealing.
“You stole the box!” she accused him suddenly.
“I did not! It was given to me.”
“Is that so?” Nancy looked at him skeptically. “You stole it from Captain Easterly’s cabin.”
“You think you know a lot, don’t you? Well, maybe you can tell me how the mate happened to have it, then.”
“The mate?” Nancy repeated eagerly.
Red Quint gave her a startled look, as if just realizing he had said something wrong. With three long strides he was at the top of the nearest dune and down the other side.
Nancy ran after him, tripped as her heel caught the top of a hummock, and fell. By the time she struggled to her feet and reached the top of the dune, Quint had vanished.
The little mounds of sand, tufted with stiff grass, stretched for miles along the shore. He probably had dropped flat behind one of them and was waiting for her to go away.
Quint was not a savory character, Nancy knew. She decided it would be wiser for her to find the dinghy and return to the clipper than to hunt for him.
“But I ought to notify the police,” she told herself. “After all, Quint was mixed up with the captain’s kidnaper.”
The girl retraced her steps to town and found the magistrate. His eyes opened wide at her story. He promised to put the wheels of the law in motion at once.
“I hope Quint won’t shave off his grizzly beard, so he can’t be identified,” Nancy reflected as she hurried back to the beach.
She shoved the dinghy into the water, and jumped in. How welcome the Bonny Scot looked, riding serenely at anchor out in the cove!
As Nancy bent to the oars, she reflected on the strange information Red Quint had given her. Where had he managed to hide on the ship so that even the captain could not find him? What had he meant when he said the mate had the snuffbox? The mate of the Bonny Scot in the old days? She wondered if Red ever had sailed on the clipper.
She was still some distance from the ship, her oars dipping rhythmically, when Bess shouted, “Here she comes!”
The girls put down the ladder and helped her aboard, scolding and asking dozens of questions. “We thought you’d been drowned, kidnaped, or cut in small pieces!” George told her. “Where were you?”
Nancy told them and Captain Easterly of her visit to Mr. Frisbie’s library and of the struggle with Grizzle Face.
“I’m sure he’s the one who dropped the snuffbox in your cabin, Captain Easterly,” she concluded. “He says he got it from ‘the mate.’ What mate do you suppose he means?”
The captain looked thoroughly puzzled, and finally said he had no idea.
“Quint said there are hiding places on the clipper that even you don’t know about,” Nancy went on.
“That’s possible,” Captain Easterly admitted reluctantly. “Especially if the ship was ever used by pirates. They were a devilish, clever lot. But look here, we’re wasting time. Red Quint’s getting away, and nobody’s notified the police.”
Nancy smiled and said she had done so. Captain Easterly shook his head and said, “You beat me. I certainly wish I had a daughter like you.” Then, looking embarrassed, he added, “It’s high time to eat.”
Nancy and the girls followed him down to the galley where they ate the delicious supper Bess had prepared.
Next morning George and Bess said they wanted to go along with Nancy to Mr. Frisbie’s shop. They left Captain Easterly to guard the clipper and enjoy the cool breeze under the deck awning.
The three girls rowed to shore. The first thing Nancy did was go to the magistrate and ask if Red Quint had been found. There was no word about the man.
“Now let’s go and see your wood carver, Nancy,” George insisted.
She was as eager as Nancy to renew the search for a clue to the Bonny Scot’s figurehead.
“I see you brought reinforcements,” Mr. Frisbie smiled when they arrived at the barn.
“Yes,” said Nancy, and introduced her friends. “We’d like to see your interesting old books and drawings again, if you don’t mind.”
“Go ahead. Glad to find somebody that enjoys them,” he said.
For an hour the girls pored over the yellowing volumes, then Bess yawned and stretched.
“It’s getting awfully warm up here,” she complained. “I don’t think we’ll ever find anything about P. R. or the Bonny Scot.”
George, however, was showing more enthusiasm as the search went on. She told Bess to “shush”; that she was right in the middle of a story about a fair maiden kidnaped by pirates. Nancy decided to keep Bess occupied by dictating a few notes as she read along.
Bess subsided for another hour, then insisted they have lunch. The three friends dined in a little garden tearoom, and afterward walked along a winding road to a cluster of weathered gray cottages. They were occupied by artists who came to paint the sea and the quaint village. The girls watched some of them at work, and Bess thought she would buy some paints and try it herself.
“You know what she’ll paint,” George scoffed. “Still-life pictures of double-chocolate sundaes and strawberry shortcake!”
George said she would rather go swimming, and Bess agreed she liked the idea, too. “The water’s as warm as a bathtub. I tested it when we rowed over,” she said.
Nancy declined, however, saying she could not spare the time from her investigation. At her insistence, Bess and George returned to the ship, donned their suits, and spent a delightful afternoon in the water and on the sand. Bess, as usual, turned a fiery red and had to be smeared with soothing lotions.
While they were swimming, Nancy came upon an exciting clue in one of Mr. Frisbie’s old books. A Spanish vessel, with the initials P. R., and named the Puerto Ricardo had set sail from Spain with a cargo of cork and olives. It had been sighted off the Falkland Islands, but after that the clipper had never been seen again. It was assumed the Puerto Ricardo had been wrecked.
“I must show this to Mr. Frisbie,” Nancy decided excitedly.
Racing down the steps, she found him chipping at the block of wood. He turned his head.
“You’ve found something,” he said. “I see it in your eyes.”
Nancy explained, ending with, “Do you suppose the P. R. engraved on the snuffbox refers to the Puerto Ricardo?”
“Could be. It means Port Richard.” The sculptor bounded up the stairs and thumbed through an atlas. Then he reached up to a shelf for a dusty volume, flipped several pages, muttered something under his breath, and searched for a third book. He opened this one to a certain page, and finally said:
“Here’s a picture of the ship. Doesn’t look much like your Bonny Scot. Heavier. More like a schooner.”
Nancy peered at the figurehead on the Puerto Ricardo. It was not very distinct, but she was sure it was a warrior; not the dreamy-faced woman carved on the snuffbox.
“A good try,” Mr. Frisbie said. “Keep on.”
Nancy read for some time, but came upon no more information on ships with names whose initials could be P. R. At five o’clock the girls picked her up and rowed back to the Bonny Scot. After supper they came up on deck and dropped into comfortable chairs.
Bess’s sunburn made her restless. She got up, walked over to the rail, and looked down. Suddenly she screamed.
“There’s someone in the water! He’s drowned!”
George and Nancy rushed to the rail. In the dusk they saw something floating face down, close to the side of the ship!