“It does look closed,” Carson Drew admitted as the plane settled gracefully to the aqua and green waters of the cove and taxied toward the smooth white length of the concrete dock that extended out into the water.
The plane bumped to a stop and the copilot, who seemed to have the same morose attitude as the pilot, came back to the cabin. “Anchor Island,” he announced, moving to open the door.
Nancy unfastened her seat belt and followed him, smelling the sweet flower scents that came on the light breeze that wafted through the door. “We’re not sure . . .” she began, wondering what they should do now that they were here. Then a flash of movement on the hill caught her attention.
‘I’ll get your luggage,” the copilot told her, jumping nimbly to the dock and securing the plane with a light rope, then offering her his hand.
“Just a moment, sir,” Mr. Drew began. “We don’t know yet. . .”
Nancy ran along the dock, not waiting to hear any more. She was halfway to the pale sand of the beach when the figure coming down from the resort appeared between two wildly flowering pin hibiscus plants.
“George!” Nancy shouted, waving frantically. “Oh, George, is it really you?”
“Nancy!” The voice was as unmistakable as the slender, dark-haired form.
Nancy stopped at the end of the dock, waiting as George came running through the last of the plants and out across the sand to meet her. For a moment she just hugged the girl, and then she stepped back to look at her.
“We’ve been worried sick about you,” she told her. “Why didn’t you call and tell us that you were here?”
“Oh, Nancy, you . . .” George didn’t finish, as the purring of the seaplane suddenly turned to a roar. Both girls turned to watch as the clumsy-looking craft drew away from the dock and made its way out into the cove again, picking up speed till it lifted off the water.
“Nancy, I—” George began, but Nancy lifted a hand.
“Don’t say anything till Dad’s here,” she told her. “He’s been worried half to death, too.”
Mr. Drew came hurrying along the dock with the luggage. “Where are the resort staff, George?” he asked, setting the suitcases down and mopping his brow in the humid heat of early evening.
“That’s what I was about to tell Nancy,”
George answered. “I think we should have kept the seaplane here.”
“We can radio Swallow Cay and have them come back for us,” Carson Drew said. “I made sure of that before they took off.”
George sighed. “I don’t know,” she said. “We haven’t had much luck with the radio so far. Maybe you can make it work.”
“Where is everyone?” Nancy asked. “There’s just Penny. The resort is closed, Nancy. Penny was the only one here when we arrived yesterday. She’s very nice and we—” “What do you mean when you arrived yesterday?” Nancy interrupted. “We talked to someone here this morning who said that no one was at the resort, that it was closed.”
“You talked to someone on the radio-phone?” George looked skeptical.
“We’d been calling ever since yesterday,” Nancy told her.
“Well, you weren’t talking to Sweet Springs,” George informed them. “The phones haven’t worked since we arrived. Otherwise we would have called you last night.”
“But . . .” Nancy began, then frowned. “Where is Bess?” she asked.
George looked around. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “She said she was going for a little walk while Penny and I were working on the radio, but that was an hour ago.”
“Maybe she’s taking a nap,” Nancy suggested. “Though she should have heard the plane.”
George shook her head. “I was in our room when I heard it. She must be with Penny.”
A pert redhead appeared on the beach at that moment, a ready smile of welcome lighting her green eyes. “You must be the Drews,” she said. “George and Bess have told me so much about you. I’m Penny DeFoe.”
For a moment they were busy with introductions and greetings, Nancy and her father surprised and excited at hearing the name DeFoe. But before they could ask the girl about her name, George asked, “Penny, have you seen Bess?”
Penny frowned. “I thought she was with you,” she answered.
There was a moment of silence, and then they all looked at each other, suddenly aware of the empty beach and the deepening shadows. Where was Bess?
8. Search for Bess
“Let’s get your things up to the resort,” Penny said. “Then we can organize a search for Bess. She can’t have wandered far, and since we’re alone on the island, she’s not in any danger.” “Alone on the island?” Mr. Drew gasped. “But surely there’s someone?”
Penny shook her curly head. “I was really lonesome till Bess and George arrived.”
“What about the DeFoes?” Nancy asked. “Jeff and Lena: are they your parents?”
“Grandparents,” the twenty-year-old answered. “And I honestly don’t know where they are. I arrived just the day before yesterday and there was a note waiting for me, saying that
I should make myself at home, that I’d be hearing from them soon. Nothing more.”
Nancy looked from the redhead to George. “Do they do that often?” Carson Drew asked Penny.
“They’ve never done anything like that before,” Penny answered. Nancy could see the worry in her open face. “They invited me to spend the summer with them, and the last time I talked to them, they were just full of plans for things we’d be doing.” She sighed. “I was a little surprised when they didn’t meet me in Nassau, but I took the island ferry over.” “What about you, George?” Nancy asked. “How did you and Bess get here?”
“A man called Tom came up to us at the airport. He asked Bess if she was Nancy Drew, and she said that she wasn’t, but that we were here to take your place. He seemed a little unhappy about it, but he told us he’d been sent from Sweet Springs to pick us up.” She shrugged. “He brought us as far as the dock in his boat, unloaded our suitcases, and just left.” Penny grinned. “I was so glad to see them. I didn’t know what arrangements my grandparents had made, but I’d missed having someone to talk to.” She paused as they reached the resort building. “Welcome to Sweet Springs Resort,” she said.
“Bess,” George shouted. “Bess, where are you? Nancy and Mr. Drew are here.”
Her words echoed hollowly through the large, comfortable reception area and into the dimness beyond. There was no answer except the soft whispering of the palm fronds above them and the sighing of the waves as they lapped against the well-protected beach.
“I hope you don’t mind taking the rooms next to the one Bess and George have been sharing,” Penny continued. “The cabins are nicer, but I haven’t had time to make them up, and the staff had closed them and covered everything before they left the island.”
“Is that usual?” Carson Drew asked after assuring her that any room would be fine. “I mean that everyone left the island that way.” “Pretty much,” Penny answered. “Most of the people who work in the resort live on the nearby islands, so they go home as soon as my grandparents close for the summer.”
The rooms were small, but handsomely appointed and quite comfortable. Nancy was pleased to see that all three rooms were linked by a narrow, roofed balcony that was reached by sliding glass doors in each room. Still, her pleasure was tempered by the fact that there was no sign of Bess anywhere.
As soon as the luggage was placed in the room, Carson Drew turned to Penny. “George mentioned a radio-phone,” he said. “Do you think I might use it? I’d like to try to contact the seaplane and ask for some kind of help.”
“I’ll be happy to let you use it,” Penny answered. “Maybe it will work for you. George and I haven’t been able to get anything on it so far.”
“Someone called us from here,” Nancy told the redhead. “At least, we were calling this resort, so I assumed the man I talked to was here. He said that the resort was closed and he was alone o
n the island. He claimed he was the caretaker.”
Penny frowned. “That’s not possible, Nancy.”
“The call must have come from another island,” George said.
Nancy started to protest that the man had mentioned the name of the resort, then let it go with a shrug. “While Dad is trying to get help,
why don’t we go look for Bess?” she suggested. “Maybe she sprained an ankle or something.” George nodded. “She’s not going to want to be out there alone after dark.”
Nancy noticed that the light was indeed beginning to dim, and she was well aware of the shortness of the twilight in the area. “Where could she have gone?” she asked George and Penny.
“Beats me,” George said. “She spent most of today lying on the beach and walking around the edge of the cove.”
Nancy sighed, looking around at the thick growth of tropical plants and flowers. Had everything been less orderly, it would have resembled a jungle.
“I doubt that Bess would have gone far from the resort,” George said, echoing Nancy’s thoughts perfectly.
Nancy smiled at her. “She’s not that adventurous,” she agreed.
Penny led the way outside. “Why don’t you two take the beach,” she suggested. “I’ll explore around the cabins and in the gardens, since I know them better.”
“Good thinking,” Nancy agreed, starting to-
ward the path that led to the beach. “We can meet back here as soon as we finish. Maybe by then Dad will have made some contact with the radio-phone.”
“I hope so,” Penny said. But her tone didn’t hold a great deal of confidence.
Nancy followed George to the beach, which was not very wide. They stopped and looked in both directions.
“I guess we won’t be able to find any footprints in the sand,” George observed, watching as the waves lapped the damp sand, erasing all marks. “The dry sand won’t hold prints and the waves take any in the wet sand.”
“Well, we could see her anyway if she was on the sand,” Nancy reminded her. “But if we follow the inside edge of the beach, we should be able to see her footprints leading off the beach.”
“You’re right,” George complimented her. “Let’s get started while we still have some light. This place really gets spooky at night.” “You think so?” Nancy was surprised at the comment from the usually down-to-earth George.
“It’s because there’s no one else on the island,” George explained. “No lights, no noise except for the waves, wind, birds, and cats that roam wild on the island. The chickens run wild, too, but they’re quiet at night.”
“It does sound eerie,” Nancy admitted. “So
let’s find Bess before it gets dark.”
The two girls followed the line of flowering plants that formed the edge of the beach. Nancy quickly slipped off her shoes, enjoying the feeling of the warm sand on her bare feet as she peered into the shadowy area behind the plants. The ground there was still sandy, but much firmer than the beach. There were marks in it, but nothing that resembled a footprint.
The arm of land curved and grew narrower, so that sometimes she could catch small glimpses of the rocks that formed the outer edge of the land and could hear the more violent crashing of the waves on them. Palms shaded the area and the plants.
Nancy was almost to the end of the sand when something caught her eye. There was a tiny flash of bright blue among the soft greens of the remaining plants that clung to the narrowing ridge of land.
Nancy paused, then moved into the shade of the palm fronds and picked up a small triangle of cloth. She recognized it as coming from a flared skirt that she knew was one of Bess’s favorites. She saw the footprints immediately.
“George,” she called to her friend, who had fallen behind to examine a shell. “I think I’ve found something over here.”
“Nancy, did you find Bess?” It was her father calling down the hill from the resort.
“Just footprints,” Nancy shouted.
“We’ll be right down,” Carson called.
Nancy and George waited, watching as Penny and Nancy’s father came down the path from the resort. Neither of them was smiling.
“Any luck with the radio-phone, Dad?” Nancy asked as they neared them.
He shook his head. “There’s something wrong, but I didn’t take the time to really look for the trouble. Perhaps this evening. Now, what did you find?”
“This.” Nancy extended the scrap of material. “Bess’s skirt?” she asked George.
George nodded. “She was wearing it today.” “The footprints lead this way,” Nancy continued, stepping past the barrier of plants and following the marks through the shadowy area
and coming out on the other side. There she stopped, her rising hopes dropping abruptly.
“Where do they go?” Penny asked from behind her.
“Nowhere,” Nancy answered, her voice close
to a wail. “They stop right here!” She pointed to the rocks that stood against the onslaught of
the waves crashing against the shore.
9. Phantom Intruders
The footprints did indeed stop at the rocks. Nancy looked at them carefully. “She must have walked on the rocks,” she murmured, stepping up on the nearest boulder and standing on it to look around.
“But where did she go from here?” George asked.
Nancy shook her head. “I have no idea,” she admitted.
“Maybe we should just go back along the rocks toward the resort,” her father suggested. “She couldn’t have gone the other direction, could she?”
They all followed his gaze. The rocky shore
extended a hundred yards, curving around to the entrance of the cove. The trees and brush ended nearby, and there was a clear view of the protective rocks.
“I’ll walk on the rocks,” Nancy said, “and the rest of you watch for footprints.” The plants on this side of the arm of land were much less lush, and she was sure that Bess would be plainly visible if she’d left the rocks.
Nancy moved toward the resort, hopping as easily from rock to rock as she assumed Bess had. At first it was simple enough, since the rocks were close together and fairly smooth on top. Then however, the coastline grew rougher. Nancy made a long jump from one rock to another, and her foot slipped.
“Careful, honey,” her father said, catching her arm as she stumbled to the sand.
“Bess would never have been able to make that jump,” George commented firmly.
“There’d be no reason for her to,” Nancy agreed. “I was trying to stay out of the sand just to see if I could.”
“But where could she have gone?” Penny asked, looking back the way they’d come. “We didn’t find any more tracks, Nancy.”
Nancy followed her gaze, trying to find another explanation or another way that Bess could have gone, but there was nothing. Areas of crusted sand separated the rocky outcroppings and there were no tracks to mar them.
“Would she have gone into the water?” Carson Drew asked, his gaze directed to George.
George shook her head without hesitation. “Penny warned us about the tides on this side of the island,” she replied. “We swam only in the cove where it’s safe. Besides, Bess wouldn’t be swimming in her clothes—her bathing suit is still hanging on the balcony rail drying out.”
After several more minutes of looking around the area, they all followed Penny through the screening growth of hibiscus and other plants and back along the beach to the path that led up to the resort. There Nancy paused.
“Isn’t there somewhere else we could look?” she asked.
Penny sighed. “Not around the cove,” she replied. “We can search the resort area and look in the cabins again and along the paths to them, but that’s really about all there is on this end of the island—and I did just search them.”
“What’s on the other end?” Carson Drew asked.
“Well, there’s a small road that leads along the ridge, and at the far end of it is
a little village. The regular dock is there. That’s where the inter-island ferry stops when it has a passenger for Anchor Island.”
“When will it be stopping again?” Nancy asked quickly.
Penny shrugged. “The next time someone wants to come here, or if they have a delivery for us. In the winter, they come three times a week; but in the off-season, they might not come for weeks.”
Nancy looked at her father, reading the same worry in his face that she was feeling.
“Are you sure there is no one else on the island, Penny?” Mr. Drew asked.
The redhead considered for a moment, then shrugged. “We haven’t seen anyone, Mr. Drew. And there’s really no reason why anyone would be here. The village is just the houses the staff stay in during the winter, and there’s no one at the resort but us, of that I am sure.”
George nodded. “We explored this end of the island today,” she said, “and we didn’t see anything or anyone but Penny.”
“Well, then I guess we’d better go back to the resort,” Nancy conceded with a sigh. “Maybe Bess is waiting there.”
The rest smiled at her words, but she sensed that they had no more confidence in that than she did. Bess wouldn’t have waited quietly for them to return. If she had come to the resort and found it empty, she would have been looking for them just as they were looking for her.
“You didn’t find anything in the resort grounds, did you?” George asked Penny.
The older girl shook her head. “No footprints, nothing. I checked the cabins, too, and they’re all still locked up.”
“Then where can she be?” George asked. “Could we check the other end of the island?” Mr. Drew asked.
“Not till morning,” Penny answered.