“Bess, you’re the heroine of the occasion!” George told her cousin. She grinned. “And you know I don’t say that often.”
The others laughed, heaving sighs of relief. When they saw Longman’s van coming, Nancy and Ned moved to another side of the house, so she would not be seen by the animal trainer. Bess and George followed.
As he jumped down, Burt told him that they had tranquilized his leopard. He looked at the boy disbelievingly. “How?” he asked.
Burt explained what Bess had done. “That tranquilizer should keep your animal quiet for a while.”
“Very good.” Longman looked around and asked, “Where are your friends?”
No one answered his question. But Dave said quickly, “Let’s get to work. You’d better move the leopard to your place before the tranquilizer wears off.”
“That’s right,” said Longman, and opened the rear door of his van.
The young people saw that a cage had been fitted inside. Longman opened the gate to it.
Burt and Dave rolled up the garage door gradually, in case the leopard was not asleep as they thought. This precaution was unnecessary, for the beast lay peacefully on the floor. It took the combined strength of Longman and the two boys to lift the leopard into the van. Then the cage gate and the van door were locked. The animal trainer murmured something that sounded like “thanks,” and swung himself up into the driver’s seat.
Instantly Nancy and Ned came from hiding. In a jiffy they had climbed to the van’s roof and lay face down. By holding onto each other with one hand and grabbing bars along the sides with the other, the couple felt reasonably secure. Silently their friends watched them leave, hoping for safety and success.
Fortunately there was no one on the road to observe the two stowaways. The van turned into the grounds of the moss-covered mansion. When it reached the fence at the house, Longman got down and unlocked a gate. Then he drove through. The gate swung shut and locked itself.
Nancy saw a clump of bushes which would make a good hiding place. She whispered to Ned, “Here’s where we get off.”
The van was going so slowly toward the animal cages that the couple accomplished this easily without being injured. Instantly they dodged behind some bushes.
After Longman had unloaded the leopard, he secured the beast’s cage with a double lock. Then he drove off.
“Now what?” Ned asked Nancy.
“I’m sure there’s an outside entrance to the basement,” she said. “Let’s see if we can get in.”
Luck was with them. They found a narrow door on the opposite side of the house. It was unlocked!
“Someone may be in there!” Ned cautioned in a whisper. “Let me go first.”
Carefully he pushed the door open. It made no sound. The couple stepped inside. They were in the large basement room where Nancy had come with Inspector Wilcox.
The first thing she noticed was that all the debris had been moved away from the walls. Several doors were revealed. On tiptoe she and Ned walked toward the first one and Ned opened it. The place was well lighted and before them was a swimming pool filled with steaming, boiling water!
Nancy and Ned looked questioningly at each other. What was the pool used for? they wondered. Ned quickly closed the door. They moved to the steel door where the load of furniture had fallen on Nancy two days earlier.
In the room beyond, also well lighted, was an amazing laboratory. A complicated-looking machine with a dish-shaped parabolic reflector stood in the center of the floor. It faced the outside wall, which was made of glass building blocks.
“What is it?” Nancy whispered.
Ned walked around the machine, squinting at the various parts. He came back to Nancy and said, “Unless I’m all wrong, it’s a very powerful transmitting antenna—a beamer.”
“You mean some kind of signal is sent out from down here?” Nancy asked.
“Yes,” Ned replied. “The telescope you told me about that’s in the tower may act as a sighting device. It could locate the exact bearing and elevation of an object to be destroyed by the beamer.”
Nancy was horrified. The telescope was aimed directly at the rocket scheduled for lift-off the next morning. She also thought about Antin’s phone message regarding R-day. Instead of meaning Ruth, it could have referred to Rocket day.
“Ned,” she said quickly, “would you know how to deactivate this machine?”
“I can try,” he said. “But Fortin would have time to fix it before the launch.”
“Meanwhile we could send the police here,” Nancy told him.
Ned found some tools on a workbench near a series of wall cabinets. He worked with the tools for several minutes.
Presently she and Ned heard voices. To their amazement they were coming through a loud speaker in the ceiling.
While listening, Nancy felt that no doubt Fortin, if it was necessary, could barricade himself in the laboratory and listen to conversations taking place upstairs. It would be a means of finding out how trustworthy his fellow conspirators were.
The couple recognized two voices as those of the tear-gas assailants at the Space Center. Nancy and Ned learned that Fortin was a clever and well-known scientist who had once been connected with NASA. He had become imbued with the ideology of a foreign power and was now using an assumed name.
He had entered into a conspiracy to undermine the U. S. space program and had agreed to cause great damage at the Center and to wreck the moon rocket. To accomplish this he had a spy working with the men in top-secret procedures. From this traitor Fortin had obtained the secret signals for the exact frequency and modulation for lift-off. In this way he could set his beamer to destroy the rocket.
Nancy whispered tensely to Ned, “He’ll be murdering the astronauts!”
Just then Fortin spoke up. “Scarlett,” he said, “I’m paying you off but not so much as I promised if you had done a good job.”
Scarlett whined, “I did the best I could. I discouraged people from looking at the Webster house, but when Nancy Drew arrived, she was determined to see it. I pretended to go on vacation but she found me. I flooded the place to keep the Drews away, but she discovered it in time to avert any great damage.”
“That’s enough,” said Fortin. “Ivanson, you certainly bungled that explosive orange deal. You were supposed to put those oranges around in strategic spots, so the lift-off would be delayed until my beamer was perfected. Luckily I have it ready in time.”
Ivanson said belligerently, “You don’t know what it feels like passing yourself off as somebody else even if I look like him. Fortunately they didn’t examine the oranges while I was there. I guess Billington delivers lots of oranges to the Base, and since I had his truck, they must have thought the delivery was all right. I had no chance to drive around, though. A guard got aboard and directed me to the Space Center food supply depot and made me leave the sacks there.”
“Here’s your money,” said Fortin. “Get out of here and never let me see you again.”
A younger voice spoke. “Dad, I want to leave and go far away. I’m through!”
Fortin laughed. “You couldn’t take care of yourself, son. You haven’t been able to hold a job. I kept you away from here and even forbade phone calls so you wouldn’t be involved if anything went wrong. You did think up that great father-son code but that backfired. We don’t know yet who figured it out. But you came here to hide in case it was the FBI.”
Young Fortin was not to be put down so easily. “If you expect me to stay, you’ve got to get rid of every one of those wild animals. You know they scare me to death.”
Longman shot back, “We need those wild animals here to protect us.”
“What’s the latest news on Antin?” Fortin asked.
His son replied that a newscast had reported both the Resardos were in jail.
“What!” the scientist shouted. “There’s no telling what they’ll say to the authorities!”
“I can assure you,” said one of the tear-g
as attackers, “they won’t talk. I made it pretty plain that if they ever did, their lives wouldn’t be worth a nickel. And don’t forget, boss, the Resardos did some good work. They stole those photographs and passed them around to us so we’d recognize Mr. Drew and the girls and their boy friends.
“Antin found out where they were going so we could watch them. Stevie here and I fooled them completely at the Vehicle Assembly Building and knocked them out with tear gas.”
During the ensuing conversation Nancy and Ned learned that it was Max Ivanson who had started the fires in the Billington grove.
“Another stupid idea,” complained Fortin.
Ivanson defended his actions. “I thought Drew would get scared and send his daughter and her friends home, but nothing shakes that bunch loose.”
Scarlett grumbled, “Until Nancy Drew came along, we had the charge of the explosive oranges pinned neatly on Billington.”
Nancy whispered to Ned, “I think we’d better go before some of those men come down here. Besides, we should notify the authorities at once!”
The two tiptoed to the door through which they had entered. They were taken aback when the huge form of Longman appeared in the opening.
“You!” he cried and reached up to push a button on the wall. An alarm sounded upstairs.
“Let us out!” Ned demanded.
The towering Longman looked at the couple in amusement. “We have a special treatment for snoopers.”
Nancy and Ned tried to break past him, but his huge, powerful body blocked the doorway like a stone wall.
Within seconds footsteps pounded down the stairway from the kitchen. Fortin appeared, leading the rest of his gang.
He glared at Nancy. “So you finally found out my secret. But you won’t have a chance to tell anyone else. Ivanson, you and Stevie take these young detectives,”—he sneered—“and put them in the room with the steaming pool!”
CHAPTER XX
Countdown
EXERTING every bit of resistance they could, Nancy and Ned tried to escape from their captors. But their efforts were futile. They were shoved toward the room with the boiling pool and put inside.
“That’s what happens to snoopers!” Fortin shouted excitedly. “I won’t be thwarted in what I intend to do!”
The heavy door was swung shut and locked. The captured couple was forced to hug the wall since the ledge around the water was only six inches wide.
“Oh, Ned, I’m so sorry,” Nancy said. “It’s all my fault. I never should have asked you to come to this place with me.”
“I certainly wouldn’t have let you come alone,” he replied. “Let’s not give up hope of rescue.”
Nancy nodded. Surely as soon as their friends realized Nancy and Ned had been gone too long, they would make a search.
“Only I hope they won’t be captured as we were!” she worried.
Nancy and Ned tried changing their positions but almost tumbled into the water. To keep their balance they stood as straight and immovable as wooden soldiers.
“Something’s got to break soon!” Ned remarked. “Maybe some of our captors will be afraid of a worse charge if they’re arrested and the authorities find us in this pool. One of them may open the door.”
No one did, however. Nancy and Ned assumed the men had left the basement. As the couple shifted their gaze, they noticed two tiny barred openings in the walls near the ceiling. One evidently admitted fresh air from the outside, the other from the basement.
Meanwhile, back at the Webster house the other young people were becoming more and more alarmed about their missing friends. Burt and Dave paced up and down the front yard. Bess nervously rumpled her hair, then smoothed it out and in a few seconds repeated the operation.
Finally George burst out, “We’ve got to do something! I just know Nancy and Ned were caught in a trap!”
The rest agreed. “We’ve waited long enough,” said Burt.
Bess offered to drop the others off at the moss-covered mansion. “I’ll drive over to the Nickersons and get help.”
When they reached the entrance, George and the two boys got out of the car and set off along the winding road that led through the jungle. They listened and watched carefully.
“Do we dare pound on the door?” George asked.
Both boys vetoed this idea. “We’d surely be captured,” Dave replied.
By this time Bess had reached the Nickersons. When Ned’s father heard her story, he immediately rushed to the telephone. First he called Mr. Drew and Mr. Billington, who notified NASA headquarters. He reported the group’s suspicions regarding the activities of the occupants in the moss-covered mansion, and the disappearance of Nancy and Ned.
“We’ll send men at once,” the man at NASA promised.
Mr. Billington telephoned the local police, who also said they would rush to the suspected house immediately.
Twenty minutes later, just as Nancy and Ned felt completely discouraged, they heard a loud commotion outside.
“Open up!” came a shout.
The couple heard no reply, but moments later there was a stampede of footsteps on the stairway to the basement. Fortin’s voice rang out, “Police! NASA agents! FBI! Open the secret lock, Longman! Let the animals loose!”
The pounding on the front door became more insistent and a voice cried out, “Open in the name of the law!” Inside the house the two dogs were barking madly.
The noise, coupled with Fortin’s orders to release the wild animals, made chills go up and down the spines of Nancy and Ned.
“This is horrible!” she wailed.
Her remark was followed by screams from outside the house. Then came a roar. Had the animals attacked the law-enforcement men?
Suddenly there was silence in the basement. Moments later a voice called out, “Nancy! Ned! Where are you?”
Mr. Drew!
“Oh, Dad,” Nancy cried out, “open the door that’s below the vent near the ceiling.”
Within seconds the heavy door was unlocked and opened. Nancy and Ned had inched along the ledge of the steaming pool and now literally fell into the arms of their waiting friends.
Bess gave a scream of horror. “Oh, you might have fallen into the boiling water!”
Nancy and Ned were pretty shaken by their experience, but recovered in a few minutes.
“Who’s with you?” Nancy asked.
“FBI and NASA men and the police,” George replied.
Quickly the couple reported what they had overheard before being captured. “I think I’ve deactivated the machine in the laboratory, but a NASA expert had better check,” Ned said.
He walked over to open the heavy steel door to the laboratory. It would not budge. They all looked for a way to unlock it but could not find any.
“Let’s go upstairs,” Mr. Billington suggested. “I want to see what’s happening.”
They hurried to the kitchen and watched from a window. There was a great deal of excitement on the grounds of the moss-covered mansion. Tranquilizer guns were being used on the escaping animals. Finally all of them quieted.
Longman came from the house with a policeman and one by one they dragged the beasts into their cages, then locked the gates. Looking around furtively, Longman tried to escape but was caught and taken indoors.
The Drews and their friends found that the suspects, handcuffed, had been herded into the living room. Nancy and Ned were asked to come forward and tell the officers what they knew.
Before beginning, Nancy looked over the assembled crowd. Fortin was missing!
“The ringleader-the scientist isn’t here!” she exclaimed.
Nancy was assured that the man could not have left the house because it had been surrounded.
“Then I believe he’s hiding in his laboratory,” she stated.
Nancy led the NASA and FBI men downstairs, while the police stayed to guard the other prisoners. Engineers from the Space Center tried to unlock the steel door but concluded it must be fastened inside.
Nancy and Ned pleaded with them to break in. “I tried to deactivate the beamer that’s going to destroy the rocket,” he said, “but I can’t be sure I was successful.”
One FBI man suggested that they use a steel drill, but a NASA engineer said, “No. Vibrations might set off the beamer.”
Nancy caught her breath. Suppose Fortin had decided not to wait until the next day to use his nefarious machine! He might blow up the rocket at any minute!
Quickly she told about the telescope in the tower which she and Ned believed was part of Fortin’s setup.
Ned added, “Perhaps it’s a sighting device to locate the exact bearing and elevation so Fortin can aim the parabolic reflector antenna in his workshop.”
“We’ll go right up there,” one engineer stated. He and the two FBI men hurried to the third floor.
Meanwhile, the other NASA man put a radiation detector against the steel door. The results were negative.
Nancy and Ned returned to the living room. The saboteurs waived their constitutional rights to have a lawyer present and confessed their guilt. All were taken to jail except Longman.
“He will remain here with two detectives until the authorities can make arrangements for the wild animals to be moved,” said one of the policemen.
The trainer told them he had become involved in Fortin’s sabotage plan after forging the scientist’s name on some bank checks. To avoid arrest, he had acceded to Fortin’s demands that he care for the animals and keep intruders away.
“Fortin is a brilliant man,” Longman went on as the other prisoners were led off. “But Fortin became obsessed with some dangerous political ideas and joined a radical group. I’m glad he’s going to be prevented from doing the terrible thing he planned.”
George asked Longman about the boiling pool. “Did Fortin build it?”
“Yes. It was one of his cruel ideas to dispose of intruders in case his animals didn’t get them.”
The trainer was questioned about how the authorities could get into the laboratory but he declared he did not know. They also asked him if Fortin could destroy the rocket from his basement laboratory. Again Longman insisted he did not know.