Chapter 17 The Secret of the Wooden Lady by Carolyn Keene
The Shadowy Figure
Heavy mist swirled about the ship, making the masts and rigging seem vague and unreal. Somewhere in the distance a foghorn wailed.
Nancy stopped at the top of the companionway. She could see nothing clearly. If someone had come aboard he might be crouching close to her on the shadowy deck. She moved forward cautiously.
Suddenly she froze, her hands clenched. A figure was coming over the rail, directly in front of her! Nancy slipped quickly into the shadows. Whoever he was, he had not seen her. She had the advantage!
The intruder dropped catlike to the deck, and moved quickly out of sight in the mist. Nancy made her way cautiously after him, almost fell over the captain’s deck chair, but caught her balance. Luckily, she had made no noise!
Suddenly a match flared up in the darkness, not two paces ahead of her! The man had bumped into the figurehead of Neptune and wanted to see what it was. He stared at it a moment with great interest. If only she could see the stranger’s face!
Would he turn around if she flashed her light on him?
“I’ll try it,” she decided, and snapped on the light.
The man was startled but did not turn around. Bent almost double, with his sleeve raised to conceal the side of his face, he scurried ahead into the shrouding mist.
Nancy ran after him, but he disappeared. Either he had vaulted over the rail or was hiding in the inky shadows. She had not heard a splash. He must still be aboard!
Nancy’s heart beat rapidly. It was one thing for her to follow a fugitive she could see, but quite another to have a stranger jump at her from some dark spot.
Where was Captain Easterly, Nancy thought uneasily, as she pondered what to do next. To her relief the skipper’s voice boomed out behind her.
“Nancy Drew, where are you? What’s up?”
Quickly Nancy retraced her steps and in whispered tones told him what had happened. “I’m sure the man’s still aboard,” she concluded. “Maybe he’s gone below.”
“We’ll look up here first,” the captain ordered.
Swinging their flashlights, he and Nancy covered the damp planking, the coiled ropes and hawsers, the rigging, the hatch covers. There was no sign of the man they were hunting. Before going below to continue the search, Captain Easterly said:
“Where did he come aboard?”
Nancy led the skipper to the spot where she had seen the intruder come over the side. As they reached it, their flashlights revealed a rope wriggling over the rail. A moment later it dropped to the water. Together they bent over the rail, sweeping the water with their flashlights. A man was sitting in a rowboat!
“Who are you? Stop!” the captain roared.
The fugitive did not answer. He hunched his head into his shoulders, shoved an oar against the Bonny Scot, and the rowboat slid away into the billowing mist.
“Oh, dear,” Nancy sighed. “I didn’t get a good look at him. Did you, Captain?”
“No, but he’s probably a desperate character, Nancy. You were mighty foolish to come up here without me.”
“I know,” Nancy said contritely, “but I was afraid we’d lose him.”
In the dim light Nancy could see the captain’s face break into a broad smile. He took her arm. “Now that I’ve scolded you, I want to thank you for driving him off the ship. Better get below now and finish your night’s sleep,” he added.
“Wait, Captain Easterly!” Nancy begged. “The fellow may have dropped something that will identify him. By morning it might be gone.”
“You’re right. I wouldn’t have thought of such a thing,” the skipper said.
Already Nancy was hurrying toward the spot where the intruder had looked at the Neptune figurehead. She beamed her light around the planking all the way to the rail. A moment later, she stooped down, picked something up, and cried out:
“He did leave a clue! Captain Easterly, it’s a good one! He dropped a book of matches!”
The skipper came running up. “A book of matches?”
Nancy grabbed his arm. “Captain, look! It’s an ad for the Owl Restaurant in River Heights!”
“You mean where you live?” the captain asked, astounded.
“Yes. And that means—”
Nancy paused a moment as more evidence presented itself. Upon opening the matchbook, she had seen something scribbled in pencil.
“What does it say?” the captain demanded, looking over her shoulder. “My eyes aren’t that good.”
“M-A-R-V-I-N.” Nancy spelled out the crudely printed name, which was followed by Bess’s address. Without doubt the matchbook belonged to the robber of the Marvin jewels. The person whom they had chased off the clipper was Fay, The Crow! Captain Easterly was correct in his hunch. Their caller was a desperate character!
It took Captain Easterly a few minutes to follow Nancy’s reasoning. When he did, he became very concerned.
“What was this unsavory character doing on my ship?” the master of the Bonny Scot stormed. “I don’t understand.”
Nancy agreed it was puzzling. “I’m sure now that Flip Fay and Red Quint are working together. Grizzle Face notified him where we are.”
“But what are they working at, that’s what I want to know.” The captain pounded the rail. “What is on this ship that robbers and kidnapers go creeping through her like a lot of devilish ghosts!”
Nancy gave him a puzzled smile. “I don’t know, Captain, but I’m going to find out what it is and where it is before somebody steals it!”
“Fine, fine,” he agreed. “But let’s not worry any more about it tonight,” he added, calming down. “That crook won’t be back in a hurry. He knows we’re waiting for him. Go to bed, Nancy, and be sure to lock your cabin door. We’ll have a conference over the breakfast pancakes.”
Nancy went below, and slid quietly into her bunk without waking the other girls. She lay there a long time thinking about the many baffling things that had happened on the Bonny Scot since the first day when she and her father had come aboard to meet Captain Easterly.
She wondered whether Flip Fay and Grizzle Face had known each other before Fay came to Boston. Perhaps they had been to sea together and had learned something that had led them to the clipper. Could it be that Fay was the “mate” that Grizzle Face had referred to on the dunes? And what about the man who had drugged and kidnaped the captain—was he Fred Lane? What had become of him?
The three sinister characters paraded on the stage of Nancy’s imagination, mocking her as she tried to doze off. But she could not sleep. She always came back to the original question—what was the true name of the Bonny Scot? It seemed impossible to get anywhere with the puzzle until they knew that. Undoubtedly Quint, Fay, and Lane all knew the ship as something else.
They had heard some tale about the clipper’s past which had led them to believe a treasure was concealed on it. What was the treasure? Something very small, Nancy decided, or it would have been found long ago. Something small and priceless, something . . .
Nancy awakened to the delicious odor of frying bacon, floating in from the galley. The girls’ bunks were empty. It must be late, she thought, jumping up.
Nancy quickly dressed and joined the captain and the girls, who already were at breakfast in the officer’s quarters. Bess and George were talkative, but Captain Easterly was silently thoughtful. He set down his second cup of coffee onto the saucer with a little click of finality.
“Girls,” he announced with effort, “you can’t stay here any longer. None of you must remain another day on the Bonny Scot!”
“What!” The three girls stared at him in amazement.
“It isn’t safe. Flip Fay was on board last night.” The skipper frowned. “And Nancy was up on deck chasing him.”
“Nancy, you weren’t?” Bess shuddered. “Oh, how awful!”
“Hypers! Why didn’t you call me?” George demanded.
Nancy said she would have, if she had guessed what was going to happen. She told them about the matchbook, and about her thoughts of the night before.
“We must find out if the original name of this clipper was the Dream of Melissa,” she said earnestly. “Captain Easterly, wouldn’t a ship’s name be marked on furniture and things?”
He gave her a shrewd smile. “You’re trying to distract me. The question before the council is, when do you girls leave?”
Bess faced him with unexpected vigor. “We’re not leaving, Captain. We can’t leave you here all alone with these vicious characters sneaking around.”
“That goes for me, too,” George said stoutly.
“So you see, Captain,” Nancy concluded, “you may as well forget about dropping your crew over the side and take up the matter of the true name of the Bonny Scot.”
Captain Easterly rubbed his face with a big red hand and looked from one to the other. “I surrender. You may stay, but I’m going to ask for a guard to watch this ship tonight. Now about the name being on furniture—how long do you think seagoing furniture lasts? The clipper’s been scudding around this world a good many years, and I would guess that most of her original fittings have been replaced.”
“Perhaps something remains,” said Nancy, as George rose to make more pancakes. She went into the galley and was gone an unusually long time.
“George, what’s keeping you?” Bess called.
A moment later her cousin cried out excitedly, “Come here, everybody! I’ve found it!”