“No,” the others chorused.
“Then someone was in here while we were all away!” George exclaimed.
When they heard this, everyone rushed into the bedroom. George pointed to her traveling clock which lay on the floor by the bed.
“But how could anyone get in here?” Aunt Eloise asked.
Nancy and Bess looked at each other sheepishly. They had forgotten to lock the door between the Soong apartment and Aunt Eloise’s!
“Evidently the person who has the key to the Soongs’ let himself in and came through,” Nancy said.
Instantly a search was begun, but twenty minutes later Aunt Eloise declared that apparently nothing had been taken.
“Then why was he in here?” George demanded.
No one could answer her question. But suddenly Bess gasped. “Maybe the intruder was hiding in the Soong apartment while Lily Alys was here and overheard our plan!”
Nancy, although concerned, pointed out that this was not necessarily true. The clock, probably knocked to the floor by the intruder, had stopped hours before. “I don’t think the person would have stayed around all this time.”
“I hope you’re right.” Bess sighed.
Nancy was quiet for a full minute, then she said, “Perhaps the intruder was hunting for Chi Che’s note to Grandpa Soong. When he didn’t find it in their apartment, he may have figured it was in here.”
“And it was!” said Bess. “Where is it now?”
Nancy rushed to a desk and pulled open the top drawer. “Gone!” she cried. “I put it in here with Chi Che’s photograph. In fact, that’s gone too.”
“Oh, dear, what’s going to happen now?” Bess worried.
Again Nancy was silent for a while. Then she said, “It’s my guess that the person who came in here wanted a sample of Chi Che’s Chinese handwriting. I believe Grandpa Soong will be receiving a new note. It will be a forgery imitating Chi Che’s writing.”
“And what do you think it will say?” Aunt Eloise asked.
“It will beg Grandpa Soong not to notify the police of her absence.”
Nancy telephoned police headquarters to report the latest theft. Two plain-clothes men arrived a short while later. After making a routine investigation, they said they had found nothing significant and went off.
A few minutes later Aunt Eloise produced a paper bag. “I stopped at a hardware store on my way home,” she told the girls. “I decided that if one more intruder came into either apartment, I was going to put bolts on the hall doors. Who wants to help me play carpenter?”
Bess said, “I’ll be glad to help. But suppose Chi Che should return and can’t get in?”
Aunt Eloise said she felt certain now that Chi Che was not going to return until she was found by Detective Nancy Drew and her friends or by the police. “However, I’ll tell the superintendent I’ve bolted the doors. If Chi Che should come back and not be able to get in, I’m sure she’ll go to him and he’ll explain.”
Suddenly Nancy laughed. “We can barricade the Soongs’ apartment,” she said, “but we’d have to use a little magic to bolt ours after we’ve left it!”
Aunt Eloise blinked and laughed. “Why, of course,” she said. “I was certainly letting my imagination run away with me.”
Nancy added that it would be a good idea to barricade the Soongs’ apartment, nevertheless. “I’m positive that the intruder won’t return here since he found what he wanted—the photograph and the letter.”
She and her aunt attached the bolt to the Soongs’ living-room hall door. Then it was shot into place and the connecting door between the two apartments also bolted.
“Anybody hungry?” the teacher asked as she and Nancy joined Bess and George.
“I’m starved!” Bess answered quickly.
The other girls smiled. It seemed that Bess, who rarely watched her weight, could eat at any time!
“I have a casserole dish in the refrigerator. ready to slip into the oven,” Aunt Eloise said. “I hope you’ll all like it.”
The four entered the kitchen. Miss Drew turned on the automatic pilot to light the oven. Then she turned and started to walk toward the refrigerator.
Suddenly there was an explosion inside the stove. The oven door flew off, hitting Aunt Eloise squarely in the back and knocking her over!
CHAPTER VIII
Angry Neighbors
FEARFUL that there might possibly be a second explosion, Nancy and George lifted Aunt Eloise and rushed from the kitchen. They laid the teacher gently on her bed.
“Aunt Eloise,” Nancy said, trying not to show her fright, “are you hurt?”
Her aunt smiled wanly. “I only had the wind knocked out of me, I guess,” she said.
The girls were greatly relieved, but Nancy felt that she should investigate. She wondered if the explosion might have been caused by an accumulation of leaking gas. “It could’ve been ignited when the pilot was turned on, but we would have smelled the escaping gas when we were in the living room,” Nancy said to herself.
Puzzled, she entered the kitchen and walked to the stove. She gazed into the doorless oven. There were tiny bits of red paper and particles of sand lying about.
“Someone planted another giant firecracker! So that’s what the intruder was doing in here, as well as taking Chi Che’s photograph and letter.”
The young sleuth went back to report to her aunt and the girls.
“How perfectly dreadful!” Bess exclaimed. “In solving a mystery it’s bad enough to go after an enemy, but when he invades your home to k-kill you, maybe, it’s pretty awful!”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean to go that far, but he is trying to scare me into giving up the case,” Nancy remarked.
Suddenly someone began to pound on the hall door. Nancy went to find out who it was. Several people stood there. They announced they were neighbors, on the same floor.
“What’s going on here?” demanded a very stout, red-faced man.
“We—er—had a little accident with our stove,” Nancy answered, thinking it best not to tell him the whole story.
“Is that all?” the man prodded.
“Come see for yourself,” Nancy said. She was sure he would never guess the truth even if he noticed the bits of red paper and sand.
The whole group of neighbors crowded into the apartment and went to the kitchen. “Door blew off, eh?” the red-faced man remarked. “Well, you ought to be more careful how you use gas.”
Apparently he was satisfied with Nancy’s explanation. But a sharp-faced, thin woman in the group said accusingly, “Something strange is going on, and it has to do with those Soongs. And you seem to be pretty friendly with that queer old man.”
“He’s not queer,” Nancy defended the archaeologist. “He’s a very learned and fine person.”
“Maybe so,” the woman admitted. “Just the same, I don’t like living in a place where firecrackers are going off and people are getting knocked out by intruders.”
George, who had appeared in the doorway by this time, could not refrain from commenting, “Then perhaps you should move?”
The woman glared at her.
“Me
move?” she cried out. “I think the Soongs and Miss Drew should be the ones to go. You’re—you’re all dangerous tenants!”
Nancy remarked icily, “Instead of you people becoming so angry and unfriendly, I think you should welcome the chance to help the police capture the person who is responsible for harming Grandpa Soong.”
“What do you mean?” asked a small, shy woman.
The young sleuth told her that if any of the neighbors had seen a suspicious person in the hallway or on the elevator, he should report it now. There was dead silence for several seconds as the men and women looked at one another. Then finally the shy little woman spoke up.
“I’ve been so scared since that firecracker went off in the hall, I’ve hesitated to say anything. But I think Miss Drew’s niece is right. I may have a clue. Early this afternoon I was about to go shopping. As I have been doing, I opened my door a crack and looked out to see if anyone was in the hall. I saw a short, slender man sneaking along from the stairway toward the Soongs’ apartment. I was so frightened I closed my door, so I really don’t know where he went.”
“What time was this?” Nancy asked her.
“About three o’clock.”
Nancy’s thoughts began to race. The short, slender man could be the same one whom she herself had seen in the apartment hallway before the first firecracker went off. He might even have been the man driving the car which had followed George to the hospital when she played the part of Chi Che! He would have had time to change drivers, come to the Soong apartment, let himself in with the key stolen from Chi Che, and plant the firecracker in Miss Drew’s stove!
The outspoken woman apologized for what she had said, and promised to be alert for any suspicious persons and report them to the superintendent or to the police. The group disbanded and Nancy closed the door.
Aunt Eloise declared she was feeling better and she and the girls discussed the affair. “One thing is sure,” George spoke up. “Several people are trying to scare us off the case.”
“And in
my
case,” said Bess, “they’re almost succeeding. Maybe we should give up the entire thing.”
Aunt Eloise said she, for one, would not do this. She felt obligated to the Soongs to keep trying to solve the mystery of Chi Che’s disappearance.
“And I’m certainly going to stick by you,” Nancy determined. “But there is something I think we should do: take Police Captain Gray into our confidence.” Her aunt agreed.
Nancy called the officer, who promised to come to the apartment that evening. After she reported this to the others, Nancy said:
“Tonight I’m going to treat everybody to supper at a nice restaurant. I think Aunt Eloise has seen enough of her kitchen for today.”
Although Miss Drew objected, she finally admitted that she would enjoy going out to eat. Bess and George accepted readily. The foursome had a delightful meal at a small French restaurant famous for its excellent cuisine.
Soon after the group had returned to the apartment, Police Captain Gray arrived. He listened intently as Nancy related the whole story from the discovery of Chi Che’s note addressed to Eloise Drew to the recent explosion.
“Nancy Drew, I’m intrigued by your sleuthing ability,” he said, smiling. “I couldn’t have had a better report from one of my top men.”
Captain Gray said that he would have the apartment house, as well as the Drew and Soong apartments, watched twenty-four hours a day. “All visitors will be checked.”
The officer, as Nancy had requested, promised not to give out the story of Chi Che’s disappearance, except to the particular police who would be assigned to the case. “I agree with you that it might endanger her life,” he said.
Just as Captain Gray was leaving, the telephone rang. Miss Drew answered it, then called Nancy. “Please wait,” she requested the captain.
“This is Lily Alys,” the caller said. “Nancy, I got the job at the bookshop!”
“Good!” Nancy replied. “I’ll probably see you there. But, Lily Alys, if I should come to the shop, or Bess or George, act as if you had never seen us before.”
“All right,” the Chinese girl promised. “And I’ll try hard to do some detecting for you.”
Nancy reported the conversation to the officer, then he left. Before the young sleuth retired she told the others she was going to call on Grandpa Soong the following day. “I’ll take any mail that has come. And if there’s one signed Chi Che, I’m sure it will be a fake. She would never stay away if she knew her grandfather were ill.”
The next morning Aunt Eloise and the girls attended church. Then at about two o’clock Nancy suddenly remembered her promise to check Mr. Soong’s mail and went to the vestibule. There were three letters for the elderly man in the box. One was an advertisement. Another, in a man’s handwriting, was postmarked Hong Kong. The third had been addressed by a woman, Nancy felt sure. It was stamped special delivery and was postmarked New Haven, Connecticut.
“This one might be from Chi Che! The writing is similar,” Nancy thought excitedly, and hurried on to the hospital.
She found Grandpa Soong feeling better, but sad and puzzled about his granddaughter. “I have had no word from Chi Che,” he said.
“I think I have a letter for you from her,” Nancy remarked cheerfully, and handed over the mail.
“This is indeed from my Chi Che!” the elderly man exclaimed. “You will forgive me if I read it.”
With trembling fingers Grandpa Soong opened the envelope and took out a sheet of stationery. From where Nancy had seated herself, she could see that the letter was written in Chinese characters. And in the lower right-hand comer was a fire dragon!
A smile came over Grandpa Soong’s face. “Chi Che’s friends are taking her on a long trip. She says I am not to worry.”
“Well, that is reassuring,” Nancy said with a smile. But inwardly she was more worried than ever. Surely Chi Che would not of her own volition have notified her grandfather of such plans by letter instead of telephoning him. Nancy was fearful that Chi Che had been abducted, and perhaps taken out of the country!
“I wonder how long Chi Che will be gone,” Grandpa Soong mused. “Well, I must be patient. I will work hard on the foreword of my book and help to pass the time,” he said sadly.
The elderly man asked if the police had any clues to the person who had stolen his manuscript. Nancy had to admit that they had turned up none yet, but were working hard on the case.
“Grandpa Soong,” she said, “you may think me very rude, but I should like very much to have this letter from Chi Che. If I bring it back soon, may I borrow it?”
The archaeologist did not even ask her why she wanted the note. “Take it, my dear. And there is no hurry about your bringing it back.”
The next morning Nancy went directly to Columbia University and talked to the young woman assistant in the dean’s office who had been so helpful before. Nancy obtained samples of Chi Che’s handwriting, not only in English, but also in Chinese.