Chapter 25 The Clue of the Velvet Mask by Carolyn Keene
Unmasked
In a flash, Nancy and Bess seized the man’s arms and legs and held him down. He kicked and fought but could not get away.
“Quick! Help me tie him up!” Nancy directed her friend.
Efficiently they bound the man’s hands and ankles and stuffed the gag in his mouth. Nancy switched on the light for a moment to look at the captive.
“I’m sure he was one of George’s kidnapers!” she exclaimed. “Are you Mr. Snecker?” she asked him.
He remained motionless, glaring at her malignantly.
She must find out! Slipping her hand into his coat pocket, she pulled out a wallet. Opening it, Nancy found a driver’s license issued to Burt Snecker.
“Maybe he has a key to the store!” Nancy thought.
The clerk’s keys were handy. Under the circumstances Nancy thought it permissible to borrow them and get into the store.
“We must prevent the robbery if we can, Bess,” she said. “Come on!”
The girls closed the heavy metal door behind them and tiptoed through an adjoining darkened room. Crossing the alley between the buildings, Nancy tried one key after another in the first door she came to. At last she found one that fit. She turned it and quietly let herself and Bess in.
“Do be careful,” her friend urged. “Nancy, there ought to be a night watchman around. Where is he?”
“I wish I knew.”
The girls ascended a short pair of stairs and pushed a swinging door which opened into the first floor of the store.
“Ghosts!” whispered Bess as she stared at the white-draped sales counters and merchandise.
She and Nancy moved forward in the dimly lighted building until the jewelry counter came to view. Two women and a man who wore velvet masks were systematically looting the glass cases of their valuable pieces!
“How dreadful!” Bess murmured. “What’ll we do? We can’t capture all three.”
“With luck, we can,” Nancy whispered. “We’ll find a phone and call the police.”
Quietly retreating, the girls located a telephone booth in the rear. Nancy called headquarters. She had hardly spoken her name when Chief Denny said:
“Where are you? There’s a three-state alarm out for you!”
“In Taylor’s. There’s a robbery going on. Come quick! I’ll meet you at the employees’ entrance in the alley.”
“We’ll be right there!”
The girls crept back to see what was happening in the jewelry department. Time seemed to drag.
“I wish the police would hurry,” Bess whispered uneasily. “If they don’t get here soon—”
Just then the girls heard the wail of a police siren from the street. The sound also reached the ears of the masked thieves.
“The cops!” exclaimed one of the women shrilly. “We’ve got to get out o’ here!”
In panic the three rushed for the employees’ entrance. But Nancy and Bess had hurried there ahead of them and blocked their way.
Seeing that escape was cut off, the man wheeled and ran in the opposite direction. The women made the mistake of trying to overpower Nancy and Bess.
They were still engaged in a fierce struggle when the police, led by Detective Ambrose, rushed up with clubs. Both women were seized and handcuffed.
“The man with them got away!” Nancy gasped. “But another, Burt Snecker, is tied up in the shipping room.”
Two officers started a search while another removed the masks from the two women.
“Florence Snecker!” Nancy cried, recognizing one of them.
The other was the woman who had costumed herself as a Javanese beauty and had otherwise disguised her appearance. Both glared at Nancy with hate in their eyes.
Though the police searched the store from roof to cellar, the only person they found was the night watchman bound and gagged in the elevator. Snecker was brought from the shipping room, and the three prisoners were taken to the office of Mr. Taylor, who had been summoned by Ambrose and had just arrived.
No accurate check or inventory was possible, since the missing thief had taken a quantity of jewelry, but Mr. Taylor estimated that Nancy and Bess had saved the store a huge loss.
“I can’t thank you enough, Miss Drew. How did you ever trail these people?”
Nancy gave a brief account of the case, ending with, “I began to suspect Snecker when I found out that he was a friend of Mr. Tombar’s. I wonder if the man who escaped could be Tombar.”
“Is he?” Ambrose asked his prisoners.
Silence.
“I’ll make you talk!” the detective barked.
Assisted by Nancy, who supplied much of the evidence, he rigidly questioned the three. At first they refused to talk, but after he warned them that their sentences would be lighter if they confessed, Mrs. Snecker finally broke down. She gave a whining account of her part in the sordid affair, which was mostly writing letters to a certain pawnshop dealer and another fence. This was her first burglary job, she insisted.
“If we’re going to jail, so are the others!” Snecker burst out bitterly. “There are two men in this who are more guilty than we are.”
“Tell your story,” Detective Ambrose said. “First of all, what’s the right name of that woman we’re holding in jail?”
“Mrs. Ridley. She’s Mrs. Snecker’s half sister,” the man answered sullenly. “She didn’t join the gang until lately.”
“And your name?” the detective demanded.
“She’s Ermintrude Schiff, an actress,” Snecker informed him as the woman remained stubbornly silent. “If she hadn’t been hard up for cash, she wouldn’t have been mixed up in it, either.”
Snecker then went on to place most of the blame on Peter Tombar, who, he said, had worked closely with Mrs. Snecker’s brother, the man who had escaped from the store.
“What’s his name?” Ambrose asked, jotting down the information Snecker had provided.
“Jerry Goff. He’s well educated, Jerry is. He uses an Oxford accent sometimes to impress people.”
“And also to disguise his voice,” Nancy thought, recalling her adventure of being almost suffocated at one of the parties. Aloud she said, “Wasn’t he the man who wore the black cloak at the Hendricks’ masquerade?”
“Yes. Tombar lent it to him. When you found a hole in it, Tombar took the cloak away in a hurry.”
“This Jerry Goff was one of the men who helped with George Fayne’s abduction, wasn’t he?” Nancy asked.
“Yes. He sat in front of you.”
“You were in on it, too, weren’t you?” Nancy prodded.
“Yes,” Snecker admitted. “I helped Mrs. Schiff. We muffed the job getting the wrong girl.” He said that Tombar’s wife was not involved in any way.
“You also slipped up when you dropped your department-store charge plate.”
“It fell out of my breast pocket when I leaned out the car window. It wouldn’t have mattered except that Miss Drew found out.”
“Then you must have been the one who advised the store employees not to turn in their plates after the credit manager gave the order,” Nancy remarked.
“Sure,” Snecker said with a shrug. “I sent around a fake order. I knew I’d be caught if all the plates except mine came in.”
Questioned further, Snecker identified Jerry Goff as the member of the gang who made friends with the servants and kitchen help at various parties. In this way he could slip unchallenged to the basement and switch off the lights.
“Jerry thought up the scheme in the first place and sold Tombar the idea,” Snecker disclosed. “But if it hadn’t been for Tombar, the rest of us never would’ve got in this mess.”
“He planned all the robberies?” Nancy questioned.
“Every one. He gave us a list of the places we were to knock off, supplied masks and costumes, and room plans of the houses.”
“And cards to admit you?”
“Oh, sure. Tombar thought of everything. Or he did until you made the going tough, Miss Drew. Then he began to make stupid mistakes.”
“Tell me how the stolen Marie Antoinette miniature got to the store’s gift department,” Nancy asked.
“It was a slip-up. The miniatures were at Tombar’s hide-out in the country. By mistake I put that one in my pocket and my helper saw it. I had to send it to the gift department then, and I didn’t dare recall it. In my excitement I marked it at a ridiculously low price.”
Nancy next asked Snecker if he had any idea how Peter Tombar might be captured.
“He’ll get out of town as quick as he can,” the clerk replied. “But he may have headed back to the country to get some things he had stored in the inn.”
With this full confession, the three prisoners were escorted to headquarters to be booked on robbery and kidnaping charges. Bess and Nancy accompanied the officers to make a report on their part in the capture. While they were talking to Chief Denny, Mr. Drew hurried in with George, her father, and Mr. Marvin.
“Nancy! Bess!” George cried wildly, flinging her arms about them. “You’re safe!”
Mr. Drew clasped his daughter in his arms, and Mr. Marvin hugged Bess. Information was exchanged hurriedly. Nancy was thrilled at the change in George and whispered this to Bess.
“Yes, isn’t it wonderful!” she answered.
When Nancy learned a few minutes later that Ned had remained at the Blue Iris Inn as guard in case one of the abductors should return, she became alarmed.
“We think Peter Tombar may go back there, especially if Goff gets word to him what happened in the store,” Nancy told her father. “If Ned should be taken by surprise—”
“We’ll return there right now,” Mr. Drew broke in. “And we’d better notify the state police to meet us there.”
“I hope we’re not too late,” Nancy said as they raced from the station house.
George insisted upon going along, despite protests from Bess and Mr. Fayne.
“I feel fine,” she insisted stubbornly. “Now that I know the Velvet Gang is nearly rounded up my worries are ended. I guess it was the threat more than anything else that kept me down. This excitement tonight has cured me!”
“Ah, that’s our old George,” Mr. Fayne declared happily. “It seems like old times to hear you talk that way.”
At the Blue Iris Inn two troopers were waiting for them. Neither Ned nor the escaped leader of the party thieves was in evidence. Finding the rear door unlocked, they rushed in. A muffled shout reached them from the kitchen area.
“Come here!” Ned called. “I need help!”
Everyone rushed to the kitchen. The officers’ flashlights disclosed Peter Tombar pinned to the floor, with Ned sitting on his midriff.
“I’m sure glad you got here,” the youth said in obvious relief. “I’ve been holding this guy for half an hour, trying to figure out a way to get him to headquarters.”
Relieved of his prisoner, Ned related how he had broken in and hidden in the old inn. His wait had not been in vain. Tombar had arrived by taxi.
“I think he has a car in one of the buildings here,” Ned disclosed. “Likewise, a lot of money in the cupboard under the sink. He was just reaching for the roll when I tackled him.”
Tombar’s clothing had been torn in the fight and both eyes were blackened. Glaring at Nancy from beneath swollen lids, he savagely berated her for the capture of the Velvet Gang. Still fuming, he was taken off by the troopers.
Later that night Goff was caught as he attempted to board a plane at the River Heights airport. Several days elapsed before Nancy and her friends were assured that the two remaining members of the band had been rounded up. The police arrested a pawnbroker in one city and a fence in another.
Dozens of cartons of silver and other valuables stolen from River Heights homes were recovered and returned to their owners. In a few instances, missing treasures already sold could not be traced. The owners were promised that the money recovered at the Blue Iris Inn would nearly repay them for their losses.
Mr. Lightner’s valuable ceremonial masks which Nancy had found in the shipping room of Taylor’s store were returned. He came to call personally one evening to thank her.
“I value these masks almost as much as I do my business,” he told the girl and her father. “And you saved both for me.”
“By the way, Mr. Lightner,” interposed Carson Drew, “I have good news for you. Your troubles are really at an end. We’ll have no damage suits to defend. Your clients have agreed to settle for the amounts you offered to make up the small differences.”
“All the claims against me will be dropped, and there’ll be no notoriety?”
“Yes. Your customers are happy to have recovered most of their heirlooms. I have the signed releases in my pocket.”
“That’s wonderful! Wonderful!” Mr. Lightner declared. “Again I say, I owe everything to Nancy. Don’t you agree, Mr. Drew?”
“If I weren’t afraid of turning her pretty head with too much praise, I might really air an opinion!” The lawyer laughed.
At this moment Bess, George, and Ned arrived. After Mr. Lightner had been introduced to them, he told the trio why he was there at the Drews’.
“There’s so little I can do to show my appreciation,” he added. “But I’m giving Nancy a mask as a small token of my gratitude.”
“Not a velvet hooded mask?” Nancy joked.
“No, indeed. We’re through with those forever. I’m giving you an ancient mask of a beautiful Egyptian queen.”
The man smiled and from a box took two identical masks. It was evident that one was very old, the other a new copy.
“How lovely!” Nancy exclaimed. “Thank you very much, Mr. Lightner. But why two of them?”
“One for your own museum, one to wear to a masquerade.”
“That may not be for some time,” Nancy said.
“It’s sooner than you think,” Ned spoke up, grinning. “We had to miss the picnic last Saturday, so the fellows decided on another summer party—this time a masquerade. You’ll go as an Egyptian queen.”
“What fun!”
“Nancy ought to go as the Queen of Mystery,” Bess remarked. “It won’t be long before she’ll be in the midst of another puzzle.”
Bess’s prophecy came true when Nancy was confronted with one of the most puzzling problems of her sleuthing career and had to ask her friends to help her solve The Ringmaster’s Secret.
“What are you girls going to wear to the masquerade?” she questioned Bess and George.
“You know me—always Bopeep.” Bess giggled.
“I’ll have to think it over,” George replied. “But there’s one person I know I’ll never try to imitate.”
“Who is she?” Bess asked.
“That well-known detective Nancy Drew.” George pretended to shiver. “I tried it once and found it too dangerous!”