“There’s some more news in this case,” the captain went on. “Night before last Madame Tarantella’s hut in Vernonville was burned down.”
“On purpose?” Nancy asked.
“We don’t know,” the officer said. “But this part of the story will particularly interest you ghost hunters. Neighbors declared that they saw the medium’s ghost floating out in the smoke.”
Rita caught her breath. “Oh dear! That means Madame Tarantella is dead.”
George smiled. “Or wants people to think she is. The whole thing is probably a hoax.”
The officers looked at her amused. Then Watson said, “I’m glad you don’t believe such nonsense.”
After checking the scene of the explosion in the basement, the officers left, taking the collection of shells with them. Captain Watson said they would find out if it had been reported stolen.
The ghost hunters continued to discuss the news about the medium. Bab said, “I don’t see the point of burning the hut.”
Jim chuckled. “Maybe that strange woman is trying to make a comeback. She’ll pretend she has been visiting the spirit world and can now bring more fabulous messages than ever in her séances.” He grinned. “Messages that are out of this world.”
When the laughter died down, they discussed what the next step in their ghost hunting should be.
“We seem to have been stymied at every turn,” Ned remarked, “although we’ve practically pin-pointed who the ghost makers are.”
Rita declared she was not convinced of this. “I believe in spirits! Don’t forget there are many ghostly happenings in this world that haven’t been explained.”
“Granted,” her husband agreed. It seemed to Nancy and her friends that this was the way Rod invariably closed off debates on the supernatural.
Nancy changed the subject. “Do you all realize that trouble has been arranged for us in various places before we arrive? Let’s see if we can get to the next place first and set a trap.”
“You mean,” Ned spoke up, “we should circulate a rumor that we’re staying here but sneak over to the skull-and-shell collector’s house?”
“Yes.”
Jim asked, “Surely you aren’t suggesting that all the ghost hunters sneak out of here in the middle of the night and storm Mr. Cranshaw’s place?”
Nancy chuckled and Dave said with a grin, “I can just see a headline. ‘Ghost hunters become storm troopers.’ ”
After further discussion it was decided that only Nancy, Ned, Helen, and Jim would make the trip to the Cranshaw home. They would wait until just after dark and be driven there inside the panel truck which belonged to the inn.
Meanwhile, the other ghost hunters would assemble on the stone parapet. They would watch for any signs of fireworks or rockets or other kinds of tricks.
“To make it look as if none of us is missing,” George proposed, “how would it be if we start some games? They’ll be the kind that require us to move around a lot, making it hard to count noses.”
“Good idea,” said Nancy. “And, Bess, you do plenty of laughing and talking. Keep the party gay and busy, so it seems as if there are a lot of us.”
Bess agreed, declaring she liked her part in the evening’s work. “But, Nancy—and the rest of you who are going—please be careful. We’ve had enough scares to last a lifetime.”
The four adventurers laughed and Ned said, “Jim and I will dc our best to keep Nancy and Helen safe.”
When Nancy spoke to Mr. Hesse about using the truck, he consented but said there was no one to drive it.
“Perhaps Mr. Warfield would,” she suggested.
“If so, I’ll be glad to let him take it.”
Mr. Warfield said he would be delighted to participate in the adventure.
At nine o’clock the covered truck was backed up close to the delivery entrance of the inn. Quickly the four young people jumped into the rear of it and locked the door. Mr. Warfield turned around and started down the driveway.
They had barely reached the main road when a car came whizzing along. With screeching brakes it turned into the driveway of the inn and disappeared up the hill.
“I wonder who that was,” Nancy said.
Jim replied, “Whoever’s driving that car ought to have his license taken away. He’s crazy.”
The two couples settled down for the five-mile drive to the Cranshaw estate.
“It strikes me as rather gruesome,” Helen spoke up, “for anyone to collect skulls. Shells are all right, but dead people’s bones—ugh!”
Nancy said she was rather curious to meet Mr. Cranshaw. “He certainly is eccentric.”
Meanwhile, the young man driving the speeding car had arrived at the front door of the inn. He jumped out hurriedly and handed the desk clerk a special-delivery letter for Nancy. It bore the postmark of a nearby town. The boy left immediately.
Feeling that the letter must be important, and knowing that Nancy had left the hotel, the clerk went to find George. He found her on the parapet.
“Maybe you’d better read this letter,” he suggested.
George consulted her friends and all felt it probably would be wise to open the letter. The games, the chatter, and the laughter had stopped. Everyone waited for George to read the message.
She scanned it quickly and gasped.
Bess asked, “What does it say? Bad news?”
George said solemnly, “The message is, ‘Stay off the highway if you value your life!’ ”
“Oh!” Bess cried out. “Nancy is in danger again! What can we do?”
George tried to take a sensible view of the matter. “Since this message didn’t come until after Nancy had gone, the sender doesn’t know she isn’t here. I believe it’s just a warning to keep her from pursuing the mystery.”
The other ghost hunters were inclined to agree with her. In any case it was too late to overtake Nancy.
Finally Rita spoke up. “There’s one thing we can try. Let’s all concentrate very hard and hope to get a thought wave across to Nancy.”
Although no one said anything, each of them said a silent prayer for the safety of Nancy and her companions. Bess thought, “If there were only some way to stop them!”
At that very moment Nancy had a feeling they were being followed. Looking out of the peephole in the rear of the truck, she saw a car a short distance behind. It was keeping pace with them. Nancy mentioned this to Ned, then stepped forward to speak to Mr. Warfield.
“There’s a car not far behind us. Do you think we’re being followed?”
“I saw it before. I admit I’m a little worried about that possibility,” he said.
“Why don’t we find out by playing the cat-and-mouse game with it?” Ned suggested.
“Good idea,” Mr. Warfield replied. He stepped on the accelerator. The other vehicle did the same.
“Oh, oh!” Jim said. “Looks like trouble.”
Suddenly, with a new burst of speed, the oncoming car shot forward and started catching up to the truck.
Nancy’s heart beat faster. Who could it be? The Prizers?
Rounding a sharp bend in the road, Mr. Warfield announced, “I see a farmhouse on a side road up ahead. I’ll turn in there.”
A few seconds later he pulled into the empty driveway and put out the lights. The trailing car shot past them. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
“Well,” said Helen, “either the driver didn’t see us come in here or else he wasn’t chasing us after all.”
The words were hardly out of her mouth when they saw the car begin to back up. It quickly reached the farmhouse driveway and pulled in behind them!
CHAPTER XIX
The Weird Room
THE hidden passengers in the truck waited anxiously to see what was going to happen. To their amazement they heard Mr. Warfield call an affable greeting.
“What are you doing here, Officer?” he asked.
“Oh, hello, Mr. Warfield,” said a man’s voice. “I might ask you the same
thing.”
Then he went on, “Police headquarters was notified about a stolen truck that was headed in this direction. When you raced along so fast and then turned in here as if you were trying to hide, we thought sure we’d located the thief.”
Mr. Warfield laughed. “I was hiding all right.”
“But why?” another officer queried.
“I have four young people inside the truck who didn’t want their identity known.”
The first officer said, “Suppose you tell us what it’s all about.”
Mr. Warfield called, “Come on out, everybody!”
Ned unlocked the door, swung it open, and the two couples jumped down. Mr. Warfield introduced them to Officers Canfield and Sumter, whom he knew from town. The men asked for an explanation of the young people’s trip.
“You tell them, Nancy,” urged Helen. She said to the officers, “Nancy Drew is an amateur detective. A group of us formed a ghost hunters’ club and invited her and her special friends to come along.”
In as few words as possible Nancy told of their adventures of the past several days. “We ghost hunters are suspicious that all the mysterious happenings are the work of a group of swindlers trying to defraud people in one way or another.”
“So you’re the folks who have been giving clues to the police?” Officer Canfield said with a smile. “The authorities in every town are looking for a couple named Wilbur and Beatrice Prizer, a Madame Tarantella, and also a kidnapped boy named Steve Rover. We haven’t found out a thing about any of them.”
Mr. Warfield chuckled. “You men and the rest of the police had better get on the job pretty quick or this case is going to be solved by these ghost hunters.”
The officers smiled and the one named Sumter said, “More power to you. Well, we’ll be on our way after that stolen truck.” The two men left.
The four young people hid once more in the truck, and Mr. Warfield drove off. Nancy had arranged ahead of time for him to stop some distance from Mr. Cranshaw’s home. He was to drive on alone, while the ghost hunters vanished among the trees.
“Come back for us in two hours, please,” Nancy requested as they hopped out.
“I’ll do that.”
He had not gone far when a voice behind him said, “You will not be back here in two hours!”
Startled, Mr. Warfield realized that a young man wearing a mask had hidden in the truck after Nancy and the others had left. He climbed to the front and seated himself alongside the driver. He was holding something under a bandanna that looked ominously like a weapon.
As soon as Mr. Warfield collected his wits, he asked, “Who are you?”
“Don’t ask questions,” the young man replied. “Just keep driving, and whenever I tell you to make a turn, do so. You’d better not cry for help or you’ll get hurt!”
While this little drama had been going on, Nancy, Ned, and the Archers were getting closer to the Cranshaw house, which stood far back from the road. Only a few lights were on.
“Let’s walk all the way around the house before we ring the bell,” Nancy suggested.
“You and Ned go,” Jim suggested. “Helen and I will stay near the driveway in case anyone comes in.”
The windows of the old mansion were close enough to the ground so that Nancy and Ned could peer into the house easily. Nothing looked unusual until they came to a large window on the south side. Then both caught their breath in amazement. The place was filled with lighted human skulls!
“Weird!” Ned muttered. “And see what’s on the wall above the fireplace!”
In the center hung a large sting ray which looked like a devil’s face. Its glowing eyes flickered on and off. Stretched along the mantel on both sides of a starfish were skulls.
As the couple stood there, mesmerized by the sight, they could hear a low voice. The words were indistinguishable. They could see no one in the room but wondered if someone might be talking softly over a telephone which they could not see.
“I’d like to go into that room,” Nancy whispered. “Let’s walk around to the front now and ring the bell.”
Nancy and Ned returned to where Helen and Jim were waiting. Together they walked up the front-porch steps. Ned turned the big old-fashioned handle of the bell. It rang loudly, reverberating throughout the house.
Several minutes went by before they heard footsteps. Then a tall, slender, sour-faced man in a butler’s uniform opened the door. A puzzled frown crossed his face and he looked over their heads at the driveway.
Seeing no car, he said, “How did you folks get here?”
The callers smiled and Nancy said, “We were out strolling. We’re staying close by and heard that Mr. Cranshaw has a wonderful collection of skulls and shells. Do you think he’d let us see them?”
“I’m Jeffers,” the man replied. “I’ll go ask the old gentleman if it’s all right.” The butler closed the door.
“Nice reception,” Jim remarked with a chuckle.
Ned laughed. “I don’t blame him. These days one can’t be too careful whom he lets in. Why, we could be a bunch of thieves!”
A moment later the door opened again. Jeffers said, “Mr. Cranshaw will want to know who you are. What are your names?”
Ned told him. Once more the door was closed and the butler went off.
This time he was gone a long while and the two couples were beginning to think they would surely be turned away. But in about ten minutes Jeffers returned. This time he seemed to be in a better mood and opened the door with a smile.
“Come in,” he said. “Unfortunately Mr. Cranshaw isn’t feeling well, but he said it would be all right for you to look at his collection. You’ll find this place is more like a city museum than a house way out in the country.”
He led them into the weird room Nancy and Ned had seen from outside. At close hand, it was even more fantastic, although the sting ray had stopped blinking.
One wall was lined with locked glass cabinets, containing beautiful shells. Each had a card with the generic name and popular name, and a legend.
Nancy was particularly intrigued by one called the Xenophora. The sign said that this little snail was unable to protect itself and therefore collected other shells to wear on its back for protection.
It attached them by means of a gluey substance from its mantle. On a sandy beach or in the water the strange-looking shell was not appealing to other sea creatures’ appetites.
“Funny-looking thing!” she thought, and smiled. “He’s the original shell collector!”
Helen was interested in a shell called Conus Gloria-mario. The sign said that there were only twenty-five specimens of this cone-shaped shell known to be in existence. One which had sold for twelve thousand dollars was now worth twenty-five thousand.
“Listen to this!” Helen said. “Several of the Cone family have a poisonous sting more lethal than the bite of a poisonous snake. I had no idea that innocent-looking shells could harbor dangerous snails.”
The two girls walked over to the boys who were reading the card below the starfish. It said starfish come in many sizes and colors. This one from the Pacific, near the Fiji Islands, was called the blue starfish and measured twenty inches across.
“Starfish have many pointed rays, ranging from five to forty,” they read. “They have an amazing ability to restore one of the rays if it is damaged or broken off. Also, a five-ray starfish may break into five separate rays and as long as it has a portion of the center of the body it may regenerate. In this way each ray can become a whole new starfish.”
There was no card by the sting ray, but the ghost hunters knew it was called the rattlesnake of the sea and that its spinelike tail can inflict a deep, jagged wound, hard to heal.
“This is a small one,” Ned remarked. “I understand they grow as long as twelve feet.”
At that moment Jeffers, who had left the callers in the room, returned.
“I’m sorry to have been gone so long,” he apologized. “Mr. Cranshaw needed a
little attention. The old gentleman told me to show you around the house, particularly the basement. He used to be a big-game hunter and has some interesting specimens down there.”
As they proceeded from room to room, each one cluttered with skulls, Nancy thought how glad she was Bess had not come along. “The poor girl would have had one continuous shiver.”
Nancy said to Jeffers, “With all these skulls around, it makes one think of ghosts. Have you ever seen any here?”
The butler gave a hollow laugh. “To me all these skulls are ghosts. Now I’ll take you to the basement. That’s where the zoo is.”
On the way down the stairs the visitors passed skeleton after skeleton. Most of them hung loose from brackets on the wall, but at the foot of the stairs there were several in glass cases.
“We keep the real prizes locked up,” Jeffers remarked. “You’ll see a dinosaur and other prehistoric specimens. They’re in cages, but I’ll let you in to get a close look at a fossil.”
The visitors glanced at one another. What was the purpose of keeping the dinosaur fossil in a cage?
“I should think it would be pretty hard to steal,” Nancy thought, “but, as Jeffers said, it’s probably one of Mr. Cranshaw’s prizes so he doesn’t want to take any chances.”
Along the walls of the dimly lighted corridor were several enormous cages and in each was a monster skeleton. They passed the dinosaur and went on to another cage in which there was a diplodocus. Jeffers unlocked the door and urged his callers to go in and inspect the restored skeleton.
Helen and Jim walked in, followed by Ned. Instinct warned Nancy not to go, and to get the others out as quickly as possible.
She grabbed Ned’s coat. “Don’t go in there!” she whispered.
But her warning came too late. With a violent push Jeffers sent her reeling into the cage, nearly knocking Ned over. The butler slammed the cage door and quickly locked it.
He stood staring at the four visitors, then burst into maniacal laughter. The next moment the butler started to walk up the corridor toward the stairway, leaving his prisoners helpless.
CHAPTER XX