Nancy reached in her pocket and took out the key Joy Trent had given her. She inserted it in the lock, turned it, and cautiously pushed open the big front door. It swung inward with faintly creaking hinges. Inside, all was dark.
Nancy and Ned held their breath for a moment to make sure no one had heard the creaks. Then they slipped into the house and inched the door shut behind them.
Having visited the day-care center many hours earlier, Nancy fortunately was able to
lead the way. Groping for obstacles in the darkness, they crossed a tiled vestibule, then went down a central hall and veered off through two carpeted rooms toward what was now the nursery playroom.
Here, they paused and, with bated breath, maneuvered themselves into suitable positions from which to peek into the lighted playroom.
Two men were standing near Joy’s carousel horse. One was a thin, scar-faced elderly fellow in a dark business suit with glasses, mustache, and a large hooked nose. The other, who looked like an overage hippie, was big and fat with long, blond hair and a beard.
They appeared to be tampering with the saddle pad of the wooden horse, trying to pry it up—first on one side, then on the other—but without success.
“You sure you got the instructions right?” the bigger man growled at his partner. “Read the letter again!”
The elderly scar-faced man took a folded paper from his pocket and started to read it aloud in a low, muttering voice. Nancy, much to her vexation, was unable to catch most of the words.
Meanwhile, Ned was leaning on the back of a chair, while he craned to peer around the edge
of the archway into the playroom. Suddenly, he felt his fingers slipping.
He struggled desperately to keep his grip and his balance, but it was no use. A moment later, the chair slipped out from under him, and Ned went crashing to the floor!
With a snarl and an oath, the two intruders realized they were being spied on. They rushed at Ned and Nancy!
The elderly mustached man grabbed Nancy by the shoulder. He pushed her back against the wall, pinning her tightly.
Before Ned could scramble to his feet to help her, the burly hippie booted him down again with a hard, vicious kick!
19. A Precious Parcel
Ned grabbed the crook’s foot to keep from being kicked again. He tried to twist his ankle and topple him at the same time. The crook started to fall, but managed to clutch on to the chair Ned had overturned. He swung it sideways with both hands, grazing Ned’s shoulder and arm. Out of the corner of her eye, Nancy saw her bovfriend wince with Dain and let go his grip on his enemy’s foot.
At the same time, Nancy saw the distraction in her captor’s eye. His grip loosened, and she shoved him backwards. She bolted forward, snatching up one of the small, child-sized chairs in the playroom and began to swing it at her mustached assailant.
With an angry oath, he backed away. Al-
though Nancy kept him at bay, she soon found she was being expertly maneuvered into a comer.
She caught a fleeting glimpse of Ned. By now, he had regained his feet and was fighting back gamely against his burly foe. But he was using only one arm and, with a sinking heart, Nancy realized it was only a matter of time before they might both find themselves at the mercy of their ruthless attackers.
Suddenly, a third man rushed into the room. At first, Nancy took it for granted that he must be an ally or partner of the other two crooks. Her hasty glance in the dim light registered only the fact that he was stocky and gray-haired and wore a clay-colored safari jacket. She tried not to panic at the thought that, with this additional help for their enemies, she and Ned would now probably be overpowered in short order.
Instead, to Nancy’s astonishment, the newcomer grabbed one arm of her assailant and twisted it behind his back. As he bent forward, trying to wrench himself away, Nancy knocked him to the floor with a blow of the chair which she had been using as a shield. The crook groaned and went limp, too stunned to resist further.
Without a word, Nancy and her rescuer
turned to help Ned. His attacker grunted and gulped as the gray-haired man grabbed him around the neck. Ned seized his chance to plant his fist in the big crook’s stomach. Then, as the fellow crumpled, Ned laid him a hard punch on his jaw!
With a cry of relief, Nancy hugged her friend. “Oh, Ned . . . thank goodness!” was all she could say for a moment.
“Are you all right?” he asked anxiously.
Nancy smiled up at him. “I will be . . . when I catch my breath!”
Nancy had already deduced the identities of their two attackers, partly from their voices. Their present appearances confirmed her guess. The burly hippie had lost his blond wig, and his fake beard was hanging loose. Nancy easily recognized him as Baldy Krebs. As a result of the frantic struggle, his companion’s mustache and putty nose were both crooked, and the reddish fake scar had partly rubbed off his cheek when he fell to the floor.
No wonder Bess didn’t recognize him as Fingers Malone after I chased him in the park that day, thought Nancy. He probably put on his disguise before he came out of the Haunted House!
Meanwhile, Ned was shaking hands with the gray-haired man in the safari jacket. Nancy, too, started to thank him—then broke off with a gasp as she got her first good look at their rescuer.
“Why, Mr. Franz, what are you doing here?” she blurted out as she recognized the retired businessman and amusement-park buff.
“Luckily, you left your key in the door just now,” Franz chuckled. Turning serious, he added, “I must apologize for deceiving you, Miss Drew. Actually, I’m an insurance investigator, and I’ve been trailing these crooks ever since Fingers Malone broke out of prison.” “An insurance company after a crook for a prison break?” Ned looked puzzled. “I don’t get it.”
“It wasn’t the prison break that brought him here,” Nancy deduced. “I’ll bet you’re looking for something Fingers stole twenty years ago— right, Mr, Franz?”
It was the insurance investigator’s turn to look startled. “Absolutely right, Miss Drew. But how did you know?”
“Because I learned his background from a St. Louis police detective, who’s also in town looking for him.”
Arno Franz explained that he had seen and heard the news stories about the carousel horse at the day-care center and, like Nancy, had suspected this might prove an irresistible bait to the criminal he was after. Accordingly, he had
come to the day-care center late at night, arriving just before Nancy and Ned entered the big, old house.
Franz eyed the wooden steed in perplexity. “You know, I have a strong hunch that what I’m looking for may be hidden inside this thing,” he mused aloud. “But don’t ask me exactly how or where!”
Nancy smiled mysteriously. “I’ll try to answer that question tomorrow, when everyone can be here,” she said, “especially Joy Trent, who owns this carousel horse. In the meantime, I think we’d better let Police Chief McGinnis and Detective Norris know about these two. I’ll go and phone them from the office in the next room.”
A police cruiser soon arrived outside the house, and the two crooks were whisked off in handcuffs. Nancy was praised and congratulated for the clever way in which she had brought the manhunt to a successful conclusion. But the complete solution of the case still remained unknown.
When Nancy walked into the playroom at the day-care center at eleven o’clock the following morning, accompanied by Bess and George, she found an expectant group of people seated and eagerly awaiting her revelations. Among them were Arno Franz, Police Chief McGinnis,
reporter Rick Jason, Detective Norris, a smiling Joy Trent, and her haughty Aunt Selma.
Bess and George found chairs next to Ned, who had arrived a few minutes earlier in his own car. “I’m dying of curiosity, Nancy!” Bess whispered to her friend. “Hurry up and start explaining!”
Nancy smiled and cleared her throat. “We’ve had a number of mysterious happenings in River Heights recently, but on
e way or another they all have to do with this carousel horse of Joy’s—which, incidentally, happens to be extremely valuable.”
Joy Trent shot a quizzical glance at the young detective. “Glory certainly means a lot to me, Nancy,” she said, “but you mean he’s valuable for some other reason, too?”
“Very much so. He was carved by a famous western artist named Walter Kruse, and the director of the River Heights Art Museum estimates your horse may be worth a great deai— thousands of dollars, in fact!”
Joy’s eyes widened, and the audience gasped at Nancy’s announcement. The teenage detective explained that horses had been one of Kruse’s favorite subjects, as both a painter and a sculptor, and that she had easily identified his style after consulting the library book that contained pictures of his work.
“When Kruse carved this horse,” Nancy went on, “he was an unknown artist. At the time, he was working as a carny roustabout at the same amusement park in St. Louis where the Wonderland Gallop was located. The lead horse on the carousel was damaged by a truck. So as a favor to his girlfriend’s father, who then owned the merry-go-round, Walter Kruse carved a replacement horse.”
“No wonder it’s so beautiful!” Bess murmured.
Nancy related that Leo Novak was only an employee of the owner, Mr. Ogden, when the horse was carved. Later, Ogden moved the carousel to River Heights, but after several years he took it back to the same amusement park in St. Louis. On Ogden’s death, Novak took over the Wonderland Gallop.
“Then last winter,” Nancy went on, “Novak read a newspaper story about the late artist, Walter Kruse, and how his work was now bringing record prices in New York art galleries. He suddenly realized that this was the same Walter Kruse who had carved the replacement horse for the carousel which Ogden had sold to Joy’s father—and if he could get it back, it might be worth a small fortune.”
Unfortunately for Novak, however, he had been unable to recall the name of the little girl or her father. So he devised a clever plan and moved the carousel back to River Heights.
“By playing the carousel spookily at night,” said Nancy, “Novak gained a lot of free publicity for the Wonderland Gallop—which, of course, also helped to make it a popular attraction at the amusement park. But his real purpose was to make sure Joy heard that the carousel had returned to River Heights. He was hoping that the news might draw her out to the park for a nostalgic visit. If so, he was sure he would recognize her by her flaming red hair and different-colored eyes—especially since he still had the photograph of her as a little girl that Mr. Trent had presented to Ogden at the time. It’s still stuck up on the wall of the trailer that Novak took over when he bought the carousel.”
Fingers Malone and Baldy Krebs, however, had spoiled Novak’s plan. They, too, were after the horse which Kruse had carved—for a different reason. They were the two dark figures seen by Ned and Nancy the night they kept watch in the park. After failing to find what they were looking for that night, they realized that a new lead horse had been mounted on the merry-go-round. So they came to Leo’s trailer later on that same night, and scared the truth out of him. He knew the two wanted criminals
were highly dangerous, so he told them the whole story of how the horse had been bought by Joy’s father.
But next day, Nancy went on, when they saw Detective Norris from St. Louis hunting them at the park, they jumped to the conclusion that Leo Novak had betrayed them to the police. So they beat him up as a warning and gave him a black eye. When Joy came to the park, they trailed her home and returned that night to break into the Trent house, but failed to find the horse. Novak, guessing what they would do, had vengefully tipped off the police, but Fingers and Baldy managed to escape capture.
“If you’ll excuse me for interrupting, Nancy,” Rick Jason cut in, “you still haven’t told us why those two crooks—Fingers Malone and Baldy Krebs—were after Joy’s horse.”
Nancy smiled. “I was just coming to that. The reason goes back twenty years to a time when Fingers was first being hunted by the law. He was hiding out in that same St. Louis amusement park where the Wonderland Gallop was situated—working as a carny—but he couldn’t resist picking pockets. He even persuaded one of the young park employees to help him on occasion. Detective Norris says he was arrested the other day.”
The St. Louis officer nodded, then told the
history of Fingers Malone, beginning with a prominent local jeweler who had been robbed at the park. The loot was a small parcel of diamonds which he had just received from New York that afternoon. Fingers Malone was nabbed soon afterward, but the diamonds were never recovered.
“In fact,” said Nancy, “the insurance company that Mr. Amo Franz works for has been trying to trace those diamonds ever since.” “Do you know what happened to them?” Rick Jason inquired keenly.
Nancy smiled and nodded. “I think so. Fingers knew he might soon be arrested, so he entrusted the diamonds to his friend, Walt Kruse.” “You mean a famous artist helped this pickpocket hide his loot?”
“Remember, Kruse wasn’t a famous artist yet at that time,” Nancy pointed out. “As a matter of fact, he was quite a rough-and-ready, happy- go-lucky type—an ex-cowboy and cattle rustler, who didn’t give a hoot for the law. Mind you, I’m not saying he knew the parcel Fingers gave him contained stolen goods. He simply didn’t ask any questions and agreed to keep the jewels.”
Soon afterward, Nancy continued, an art dealer saw some of Kruse’s work and invited him to come to New York and pursue his career.
As an impish joke, Kruse decided to hide the diamonds inside the carousel horse, which he had just about finished carving for his girlfriend’s father. By then, Fingers had been arrested and placed on trial. Kruse, however, managed to get word to him through a confidential letter smuggled to him in the courtroom by a friend.
“As a result,” Nancy concluded, “Fingers went looking for the loot when he broke out of prison twenty years later.”
“And I’ve been trailing him ever since,” said Arno Franz. “But if Fingers received Kruse’s letter, why couldn’t he and Baldy find the diamonds in the horse last night?”
“Because,” Nancy replied with a twinkling glance at Joy, “they didn’t know that John Trent had already found the diamonds when he remounted the horse on a stand of his own design!”
“What?! ” Joy looked astounded. “But, Nancy, Daddy never said a word to me about finding any such thing!”
“No, I think he kept them as a surprise for you, Joy—along with another surprise.”
20. Picture Story
“Another surprise?” Joy gave Nancy a bewildered stare and giggled nervously. “I’d say there’ve been enough surprises already to . . . oh, wait!” she broke off eagerly. “Does this one have something to do with that drawing we found tucked in the statuette in Daddy’s study?” “Good guess, Joy. Do you have it with you?” “Oh yes, of course!” With trembling fingers, Joy fished the crumpled piece of tissue paper out of her bag and handed it to the teenage sleuth.
Nancy showed the drawing to her audience, all of whom were watching and listening with intense fascination as she unraveled the tangled mystery. “As you see, it’s a drawing of a frog
on a horse. For a long time, I couldn’t imagine what it might mean . . . until I suddenly realized that there is a frog on every horse—in fact four of them!”
“Four frogs on every horse?” Police Chief McGinnis scratched his balding head. “You’ll have to explain that to the rest of us who aren’t expert riders like you, Nancy.”
Nancy grinned back and explained. “The tough, spongy part in the center of a horse’s foot, I mean the part enclosed by the hard hoof, is called the ‘frog.’”
Nancy gestured toward the carousel horse. “Since Glory is a lead horse rather than a jumper, he has three feet on the ground and only one upraised. So I’m sure that Mr. Trent’s sketch of a frog on a horse was intended to draw Joy’s attention to this one particular foot.” Nancy’s brow
puckered slightly. “In Glory’s case, of course, his whole foot and leg are made of wood, so . . . No, wait a minute!” An excited look came over Nancy’s face as she pressed hard on the bottom of the horse’s upraised hoof. “The frog on this foot is not wood—it feels more like hard rubber!”
She broke off long enough to get a nail file from her shoulder bag, then returned to her examination of Glory’s foot. The glossy paint
made it appear that the horseshoe, hoof, and frog were all made of wood. But when Nancy ran the point of her nail file around the inside curve of the horseshoe and then began to gouge and pry as deeply as she could, it gradually became apparent that the frog had been crafted separately from the rest of the foot.
At last, after minutes of effort, she succeeded in pulling the frog out of the rest of Glory’s foot, like a cork out of a bottle!
Joy gasped in excitement. “His foot’s hollow!”
“Right.” Nancy probed inside with her fingers and extracted a tightly rolled brown-paper package. When unrolled, it proved to contain a handful of small, glittering gems wrapped in several sheets of letter paper that bore a man’s handwriting.
“These stones,” Nancy went on, turning them over to Police Chief McGinnis and Arno Franz, “are, of course, the diamonds that Fingers Malone stole at the park in St. Louis twenty years ago. And these sheets of paper are a letter to Joy from her father.”
Silence settled over the room as Joy read the letter. Her eyes were misting as she handed the sheets to Nancy, one by one. The first page began:
Joy dear,
This is the hardest letter I have ever had to write. For years I could never decide whether or not to tell you the truth about your mother and the unhappy early days of our marriage. Now I have decided to leave it up to fate.