“I could not see either man and did not hear them call each other by name,” Tizam went on, “but I judged they were from India, because every once in a while they would slip in an Indian word.”
“Were they talking about you?” Nancy queried.
“Yes. They said they were going to take a valuable spider sapphire in Mombasa and then start a rumor blaming the theft on me!”
“And they did just that,” George spoke up, recalling Mr. Tagore’s accusation.
Although Tizam was still angry over this injustice, he spoke softly to the girls.
“I was sure those two men intended to kill me, so I could never report them. I turned to confront them, forgetting the lioness. At that moment the animal attacked. The two men apparently thought I had been killed and in order to save their own lives I guess they ran away.”
George told Tizam that the guide Butubu who had saved his life had spotted a lioness, evidently the companion of the one he had killed. It sprang at him so he too had run.
“By the time he got back to help you, Mr. Tizam, you had disappeared.”
When Nancy revealed that the spider sapphire was gone, and told how she had become involved in the mystery, the wood carver looked amazed.
“Did those men say where they intended to take the gem after they had stolen it?” Nancy asked.
Tizam thought a moment. “They mentioned something about a dungeon and Vasco da Gama. He was a Portuguese explorer who came here many years ago. A street was named after him.”
“Then it’s probably in an old part of town,” Nancy surmised.
“It is,” Tizam replied.
Nancy said she would investigate the dungeon as soon as possible. In the meantime her friend Ned Nickerson would cable the college to try to find out Madame Lilia Bulawaya’s address.
“Are you sure you will be all right here alone?” Bess asked the wood carver.
He smiled. “I think so. But perhaps, until the mystery is solved, I had better remain as Mr. Huay.” The others agreed this was a wise decision.
When the girls returned to the hotel, stories of the day’s events were exchanged with Ned, Burt, and Dave, but none could compete with the astounding adventure of finding Tizam.
“I’ll cable the college at once,” Ned offered, and went to do this.
The others sat in a quiet corner of the lobby, discussing how to go about locating the spider sapphire. “I think we should alert the police,” Bess said positively.
George did not agree. “Wouldn’t it be more sensible to go to Mr. Tagore? He seemed honest to me, and after all the spider sapphire belongs to him.”
Nancy, who had been deep in thought, spoke up. “I now suspect not only Jahan and Dhan, but Mr. Tagore’s secretary Rhim Rao. I suggest that we go right to that dungeon.”
Gwen, in the meantime, had asked to be excused and had gone to her room. Nancy asked the desk clerk where Vasco da Gama Street was and was directed to a section some distance from the hotel.
“You had better take a taxi,” he said.
Nancy went back to her friends and there was more discussion on how to proceed. Finally it was decided that Bess and Dave would pay a friendly call on Mr. Tagore. The couple would not mention what they had learned or what their group suspected. The main reason for their visit would be to check on the secretary, Rhim Rao.
The other four would go directly to Vasco da Gama Street. If they could find the dungeon, George and Burt would stay outside and act as lookouts. Nancy and Ned would enter and search for the missing spider sapphire.
One taxi carried Bess and Dave to Mr. Tagore’s home. Another took the others to the old part of the city where Vasco da Gama Street was located. They got out and dismissed the driver. Smiling, Nancy approached a small, barefoot boy. She asked him if he knew where there was a dungeon on this street.
The grinning little native said, “Americans ask me funny questions. Yes, I know where a dungeon is. I show you.”
Ned handed the boy a coin and the four followed him down the street. On either side were ancient stone buildings. The boy stopped in front of one.
“No one inside,” he said. “You go to dungeon alone. Many sightseers do. I will not enter. Evil spirits might be in there.”
He scampered off. George and Burt took up posts on opposite sides of the street. George walked across while Burt remained near an unlocked basement door. Nancy and Ned knocked. Receiving no answer, they stepped inside.
The place was dank and dark and at once the searchers turned on their flashlights. A steep incline led them to a door which opened into a wine cellar with a great many kegs. It was apparent that the place had not been used in some time.
“I’m sure nobody would hide a precious gem in one of these kegs of wine,” Nancy remarked. “It might mar the luster.”
Nevertheless, Ned shook each keg to be sure of this. He and Nancy heard nothing but the sloshing of wine.
Next, they began an examination of the walls, which had once been covered with plaster, but now most of it had crumbled away, revealing the rock foundation. There was no noticeable hiding place in the wall Ned was examining.
Nancy had turned her attention to another wall where the upper section set back about six inches making a narrow earthen shelf. As she beamed her light along it, Nancy saw that in one spot the dirt and plaster had been dug out, then replaced. She called softly to Ned.
He held both flashlights as Nancy quickly removed the soft dirt with her fingers. At the bottom of the hole lay a gold box. The two young detectives held their breath. Had they solved the mystery?
Hoping against hope, Nancy opened the box. Inside lay a gleaming sapphire and in its center rested a spider!
“This is it!” she whispered excitedly, and asked Ned to hold the light closer. “The gem’s not synthetic! See, that spider has no spinnerets!”
The couple continued to stare at the magnificent gem, which sparkled like a weird, unearthly fire.
Finally Ned said, “Nancy, you’ve done it again! You’ve solved a very puzzling mystery!”
She smiled at him, then said, “I think we had better get out of here as soon as possible and take this to Mr. Tagore.”
“You’re right.”
Still carrying the box, Nancy led the way to the door. It would not open.
Ned yanked and pulled at the latch but it did not budge. “Someone has locked us in!” he said.
Nancy’s heart sank. Any minute their enemies might come in and take the spider sapphire away from her!
“I must hide it,” she thought. “But where?” There was no likely place in the dungeon.
Just then she thought of the mask which was in her shopping bag. Handing it to Ned, she whispered, “Help me!”
She handed him the jewel box, then reached into the bag and pulled out the mask. Quickly she lifted the little door behind one of the eye sockets and slipped the precious gem inside it. Then she tucked the mask back into her bag.
At the same instant she and Ned heard a sliding door scraping open. They looked toward the sound which came from the opposite side of the room. A concealed door was slowly being opened. Two men in Indian dress walked in.
Jahan and Dhan!
The latter was carrying a whip which he began to brandish.
“So you thought you would spoil our little game!” Jahan said. “You underrated us.”
He reached toward Ned’s hand and grabbed the jewel box. Nancy had a fleeting hope that he would not open it, that the men would leave, and she and Ned escape.
But her hope was shattered when Dhan ordered excitedly, “Open that box!”
Jahan did so. He gave a cry of dismay upon finding it empty. He screamed at Nancy and Ned, “Where’s the spider sapphire?”
The couple made no response. The two Indians were furious. As Dhan snapped and cracked the whip, it came within inches of the couple.
“Search them!” he cried.
Jahan carefully went through Ned’s pockets, then he turned to N
ancy’s shopping bag. Her heart almost stopped beating. Would he discover the hiding place of the spider sapphire?
She and Ned gave no sign by the expression on their faces that they were worried. Though Jahan searched carefully, he hardly looked at the mask and did not even turn it over.
“The jewel’s not here,” he reported to his father.
The older man, his face livid with rage, cracked the whip several times. Finally he faced Nancy.
There was a cruel, unrelenting look in his eyes as he said to her, “Tell us where the spider sapphire is or I’ll use this whip on your friend here!”
CHAPTER XX
A Double Cross Backfires
ALMOST speechless with terror and yet determined not to give up the spider sapphire, Nancy jumped in front of Ned.
“Don’t you dare strike him!” she cried out.
Jahan and Dhan were taken aback by the young detective’s defiance. As Ned stepped in front of her so she would not be harmed, Nancy began to talk fast.
“No matter what you do to us,” she said, “it will not keep you from being arrested. Your whole scheme has been found out!”
Dhan stopped the whip in mid-air. As he was trying to make up his mind whether to strike Ned, the squeaky sliding door opened a bit farther. Swahili Joe walked into the room.
He spoke to the men in Swahili, then advanced toward the prisoners.
“Stand back, Nancy!” Ned ordered. “I’m not going to let this big baboon pull another kidnap· ping!”
Nancy went on, “There’s a police net around here. All three of you will be caught.”
“They can’t arrest us,” said Dhan, “because we have not done anything.”
“Oh no?” said Ned. “You nearly smothered Nancy with a plastic-lined sack and stuck a warning note in her hand. And you burned all the clothes and suitcases of Miss Drew and two other girls. You even stole their jewelry. After you kidnapped me, you sabotaged Miss Drew’s car and tried to keep her from flying to Africa by phoning her father’s office that I wasn’t coming. And you put acid on the handle of her suitcase to delay her work. It might have scarred her for life!” The men did not deny the accusations.
Nancy’s eyes snapped. “You men stole the spider sapphire from Mr. Tagore,” she said. “Then you came to the United States and tried several ways to get the synthetic gem in the River Heights museum to bring back here and put in place of the original—even hoped to blackmail Mr. Ramsey with a sign saying his gem was a stolen one.”
“It was not our idea,” Jahan spoke up.
“We suspected that,” Nancy continued. “It was Mr. Tagore’s secretary, Rhim Rao, who engineered the whole scheme. He paid for your trip to our country. You came there under the false name of Prasad.”
The two Indians stared in amazement. Swahili Joe stood looking blankly at Nancy. Apparently he did not know what she was talking about.
Ned took up the story. “You used Swahili Joe as your strong-arm man. The poor fellow is under your domination. After his bad fall in the circus, he became an easy dupe for you people. I don’t know what the penalty is in your country for kidnapping, but he has a count against him up at Treetops for carrying off one of our girls.”
The three men stared speechless at Nancy and Ned. They translated a bit of the conversation to Swahili Joe, who suddenly looked frightened. Nancy went on with her accusations, to gain time until she and Ned could be rescued. She mentioned that Ross and Brown were part of the gang and the Indians did not deny this.
“Tizam—whom you planned to kill and who you thought was killed by a lion—is alive,” Nancy said. At that, Jahan and Dhan actually jumped in astonishment.
She asked suddenly, “Do you trust Rhim Rao?”
The two Indians exchanged glances, then Jahan finally admitted that Rao had thought up the whole scheme. “He was going to collect the insurance for Mr. Tagore and later sell the spider sapphire. But the company has been making a thorough investigation, and he became a little worried. When he heard about the synthetic gem in the United States, he thought if he could hand it to his employer as the real sapphire, he would be safe and Mr. Tagore would not know the difference.”
Nancy thought, “So Rhim Rao doesn’t know about the spinnerets! Mr. Tagore would have detected the substitution at once!”
Dhan now seemed ready to talk. “Rhim Rao never told us where he hid the spider sapphire. He promised us our share when he sold it.”
Ned spoke up. “He couldn’t have sold it. The gem would have been traced too easily.”
“He was going to break it up into smaller stones,” Jahan explained.
Dhan said, “We have been following you people. When you came into this building, we thought you had found the hiding place of the spider sapphire. Both of us know this old building well. We locked the outside door to this dungeon and then went around to the inside and came down here.”
His son’s face took on an angry expression. “Since you two didn’t find the spider sapphire, I guess Rao hid it somewhere else. Maybe he has already sold it and is going to freeze out my father and me.”
Nancy and Ned did not comment, but it served their purpose to let the men think this. Now maybe they would release their prisoners.
Dhan spoke up again. “Rhim Rao is a thief. He steals from Mr. Tagore, his employer, all the time. This is how he got the money to send us to River Heights. Mr. Tagore doesn’t suspect his secretary. In fact, it was Rhim Rao who told him Tizam had taken the spider sapphire.”
Suddenly Dhan said, “We have talked too much. If we let this girl and her friend go, they’ll tell the police. Let’s leave them locked in and get out of here!”
The two Indians and Swahili Joe were about to depart through the sliding door when there was a commotion outside. Several police entered the dungeon. They quickly arrested the three Africans and explained that when George and Burt had seen them enter the building, George had notified the authorities.
As Nancy and the others reached the street, George and Burt rushed up, relieved to see that she and Ned had not been harmed.
“When I saw that whip, I wanted to go right in after those men,” said George, “but Burt wouldn’t let me.” She smiled. “And I wouldn’t let him go either. We might all have been trapped and unable to summon the police.”
“You did the right thing,” one of the officers told her. “Do I understand other people are involved in this theft of the spider sapphire?”
Nancy quickly told what she knew and said that two friends of hers had gone to the Tagore home to keep an eye on Rhim Rao.
“I think we should go there,” she said, “and give Mr. Tagore his spider sapphire.”
“And arrest Rhim Rao,” Ned added.
At that announcement Jahan’s and Dhan’s eyes bulged. “You found it?” Jahan screamed. “Rhim Rao didn’t double-cross us after all?”
Nancy did not reply. Instead, she told the police where she had found it and they agreed she should be the one to return it. Two detectives would go to the Tagore home with her and arrest Rhim Rao if he were there.
“In order to avoid suspicion,” said one of the detectives, “I think you four young people had better go in one cab. We will follow in another. If Rhim Rao suspects the police are after him, he will certainly try to get away.”
Taxis were summoned. When Nancy and her friends reached the Tagore home, they saw Bess and Dave just coming out. They were followed by an Indian about forty-five years old.
Ned paid the taxi driver and the visitors walked forward. “Hello!” Bess called cheerfully. The others knew she was eager to ask them how they had made out, but her expression gave no sign of this. “I would like you to meet Mr. Rhim Rao,” she said, and presented him to her four friends.
Nancy kept up a running conversation until she saw the detectives’ taxi coming. As soon as the policemen got out, she introduced them. Rhim Rao looked puzzled, but the expression on his face changed when the detectives announced that he was under arrest.
“This is preposterous!” Rao shouted.
His further protests were interrupted by the appearance of Mr. Tagore. He bowed to the callers, then asked what the trouble was.
“These men are trying to arrest me and I have done nothing!” Rhim Rao exclaimed.
During the conversation, Nancy had taken the mask from her shopping bag. Now she turned it over and lifted the tiny door back of one eye.
“Here is your missing spider sapphire, Mr. Tagore,” she announced, and handed it over. The owner stared unbelievingly. “You found it? Where?”
“Perhaps you should ask Mr. Rhim Rao where he hid it,” she answered.
The thief became bold in his reply. “Me!” he cried out. “I know nothing about the disappearance of this gem. I am delighted that it has been recovered.”
Ned gave him a dark look. “Your friends Jahan and Dhan have confessed,” he said. “They are in jail.”
Hearing this, Rhim Rao lost all his bravado. He changed into a sniveling, pleading individual, assuring his employer that no harm had been intended. Mr. Tagore stared at him in disgust. “Your defense can be brought up in court. Take him away, men.”
When the excitement had died down, Mr. Tagore invited his callers to enter the house. He led them through a richly carpeted hall to a rear garden. It was filled with beautiful flowers, and had a large pool partly filled with water lilies. At the end of it stood an attractive white summerhouse.
“Let us go over there and talk,” their host suggested.
“Isn’t this picturesque?” Bess whispered as they followed Mr. Tagore.
A servant, wearing a white tight-fitting suit and a bright-red turban, entered the summerhouse, carrying a huge tray. Tea was served and with it delicious pastries and a bowl of fruit. As they ate, Mr. Tagore asked for full details of the young people’s adventures since meeting them at the Mount Kenya Safari Club.
At the end he said, “I must talk with Tizam. You say he is not far away. Perhaps I could send for him.”
Ned offered to go for the wood carver. While he was gone, the others continued to exchange stories about the mystery. Nancy asked Mr. Tagore if he had ever heard of men named Ross, Brown, Ramon, and Sharma.