“I shan’t,” he said.
The Drews rode quickly to the Maywood jail and were taken to Krill’s cell.
The prisoner was defiant. “I said I ain’t talk-in’,” he greeted them.
“To the police perhaps, but how about just to us?” Mr. Drew suggested.
“Huh! And have you blab it to them? No, sir.” Krill turned his back on the callers.
Nancy was convinced this man could not be wheedled into giving information about the Jemitts. She used another method.
“Mr. Krill, there’s been a kidnapping and you’re involved,” she said.
The prisoner did an about-face and yelled, “I am not! I told Frank I wouldn’t have any part of it!” Suddenly he stared at Nancy “Who was kidnapped? You were supposed to be the one!”
Mr. Drew spoke up. “Things will go a lot easier with you, Krill, if you tell everything you know.”
The prisoner walked up and down nervously. “I needed money. Frank Jemitt said he knew an easy way to get it and that would square him with me. I’d done him a big favor. In return he’d pay me well to get Nancy Drew off the case and try to find some papers hidden in the tower room by the man who died.
“He told me where the ladder was. When you drove in, Miss Drew, I thought up the scheme to fool and drug you. But I couldn’t take you along with me because your boy friend was around. I knew Jemitt would be mad because he told me to bring you to—”
“Yes?” Nancy said.
Krill walked back and forth several times before replying. At last he said, “I may as well tell you. The Jemitts own a little cottage along a branch of the Muskoka River. I don’t know exactly where it is, but they said it was sort of in a woods at the end of a road called something like ‘student.’ They call the cottage Restview, I think.”
Just then a guard came to say, “Time’s up, Mr. Drew.”
Nancy was thrilled by what they had learned. “Dad, can you go there with me right away?” she asked as soon as they were outside.
“I wouldn’t miss the chance.” He smiled.
Looking for a road with a name like “student” that ran to a branch of the Muskoka proved to be frustrating. After two hours of fruitless searching Nancy and her father stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant. They discussed where to go next.
Presently they became aware of a woman at the next table who seemed to be interested in their conversation. Finally she leaned over and said, “Perhaps I can be of some help. Do you think the road you’re looking for could be Steuben? There is such a road about a mile from here. It leads directly to the water.”
“Oh, thank you,” said Nancy. “We’ll try it.”
To the Drews’ delight, Steuben Road led directly to Restview Cottage. There were no other houses around. No car was in sight and the place appeared to be deserted.
“I guess the Jemitts aren’t using this,” Mr. Drew remarked.
“But they may have left Carol here,” Nancy said. “We must find out.”
She and her father stepped from their car and knocked on the door. There was no answer and not a sound inside or outside the cottage.
“Carol may be tied and gagged,” Nancy said. “We
must
make sure she isn’t in there.”
“I agree.” Mr. Drew was grim.
They walked around the building and began looking in the windows. No one was in sight. Suddenly Nancy grabbed her father’s arm and pointed into the living room.
“See those boxes along the wall? They’re just like the ones Frank Jemitt was taking out of the tenant house at Asa Sidney’s. And they’re marked like the cartons I saw in the warehouse yard. I’m sure they contain stolen property!”
“You’re probably right,” the lawyer agreed. “We have no right to break in, of course. I guess we’d better—”
He stopped speaking as they heard a car coming. Nancy and her father braced themselves. Were they going to come face to face with the Jemitts and perhaps Carol?
In a few seconds they saw the approaching sedan was not that of the Jemitts, but a police car. The driver was a state trooper, who said he was on a routine checkup of all roads in the vicinity.
“You’re just the man we need,” Mr. Drew told him and showed his business card. “This is my daughter Nancy.”
“I’ve heard of you both,” the trooper said. “My name’s Hatch. What can I do for you?”
“Tell him, Nancy.”
After hearing the story, Trooper Hatch said, “We mustn’t lose any time. I’ll force a window and we’ll go in.”
The three climbed into the living room. First they looked for Carol and called her name several times. She was not there. Nancy was disappointed. Now the search would have to be continued. But where?
“Let’s examine these boxes,” Mr. Drew suggested.
Nancy and the two men began to untie them. She had chosen a heavy cardboard box with many perforations in the top. Nancy knelt on one knee, pulled off the lid, then shrieked in terror!
CHAPTER XIX
A Risky Climb
THE box contained a large copper-colored snake! Disturbed, it reared and the head darted toward Nancy, fangs out.
In horror she fell backward and scrambled out of the way. The snake wriggled to the floor. By this time Mr. Drew and the trooper had picked up iron fireplace tools and quickly killed the reptile.
“Oh, thank you,” said Nancy. As Trooper Hatch dragged the snake outside, Nancy recovered from her fright and went to look in its box. A velvet cloth was spread across the bottom of it. Nancy whipped it off, wondering if she would find more snakes beneath. Instead, she saw a large quantity of flat silverware on which the initial S was engraved.
“Asa Sidney’s silver!” Nancy exclaimed, and told the trooper about the thefts and her father’s responsibility for the silver as executor of the estate.
Trooper Hatch nodded understandingly. “We’ll look for anything else marked S, and whatever other objects you recognize, we’ll take to headquarters.”
More flatware and an initialed silver coffee service were found, but nothing else that could be definitely identified as Asa Sidney’s property.
“Do you think,” Nancy asked the trooper, “that the Jemitts will come here?”
“If they’re sure nobody knows about the place, I believe they will.” He grinned. “I’ll have this property staked out.”
Nancy and her father led the way from Steuben Road. “Do you suppose,” she asked him, “that Carol knew about Restview Cottage but didn’t mention it?”
“I doubt that she ever heard about it or she would have told you,” the lawyer replied. “The Jemitts may have used the place as a temporary drop for their stolen goods.”
Despite the progress that had been made in solving the mystery of the thefts, Nancy reflected sadly that Carol had not been found. “There’s not one single clue,” she said to herself.
When they reached River Heights, Nancy told her father she would like to stop at his office and make a few telephone calls. First she got in touch with Hannah, who had no news to report. Next, Nancy called the Fernwood Orphanage but they had heard nothing.
Then she tried Police Chief McGinnis. There was still no clue to Carol, or her foster parents’ whereabouts, he told her.
Nancy said, “I have one good thing to tell you, Chief.” She gave a detailed account of the trips to Maywood and Restview Cottage.
Chief McGinnis chuckled. “You’re certainly on the job, Nancy.”
After she hung up the phone, Nancy asked her father for his report from the two guards. Both had called in to say no one had come to the tenant house and the only visitor to the inn had been Jacob Sidney. “He was not admitted.”
“I wonder what he wanted,” Nancy said to her father, then added quickly, “Guess Ned’s warning wasn’t enough to keep Jacob from the Sidney mansion.”
That evening Mr. Hill came to dinner. Directly afterward, Nancy said to him and her father, “I have a new idea where the Jemitts may be hiding Carol.”
“Where?”
“At The Sign of the Twisted Candles.”
The men were amazed at this deduction. “But with a guard there constantly, how could three of them get in without being seen?” Mr. Hill objected.
“Mr. Jemitt is clever,” Nancy answered. “He probably used a key to one of the doors while the guard was patrolling the other side of the house. Dad, won’t you and Mr. Hill go out there with me?”
Mr. Drew smiled. “Everything else has failed. I suppose we may as well try this.”
The three set off with dire warnings from Hannah Gruen. As they reached the driveway leading to the inn, Nancy suggested that she and her companions walk the rest of the way and go cautiously.
“Good idea,” her father agreed.
He locked the car and they set off on foot. Not a word was spoken. The three walked as noiselessly as possible, but were puzzled as to why the watchman did not come to see who was approaching.
Nancy thought, “If the Jemitts
are
here, maybe they knocked him out!”
The Drews and Mr. Hill circled the house, but did not see the watchman. “I don’t like this,” Nancy’s father said. “But let’s walk around once more.”
As the two men started off, Nancy did not follow. She was contemplating the front of the building. Her eyes swept up and down the sprawling contours, then stopped at the window of the tower room.
“Is that a light?” she suddenly asked herself.
The window seemed to show a lesser degree of darkness than the blank panes elsewhere in the house. Nancy looked more sharply.
“I believe the window has been covered so a light won’t shine through,” she said to herself. “That certainly looks like a crack of light at the bottom.”
Nancy started for the front door but realized that her father had the key. She could not afford to lose a moment in investigating the tower room. But how would she get in?
Suddenly the young detective remembered the ladder on the porch roof, where Krill had played his trick on her. Perhaps it was still there!
Flanking the porch steps on either side were stout lattices. Nancy reached through the vines and gripped the sturdy wooden support. Her toes found a foothold, and she was soon stepping over the edge of the porch roof.
Yes, there was the ladder! It was slow work to handle the ladder without making a sound, but Nancy managed to rest the top rung just below the sill of the tower window.
She carefully mounted the rungs. The ladder gave a sickening lurch as she came close to the top. Nancy reached up and clung to the sill.
She did not dare look downward for fear of losing her balance. With most of her weight supported by her hands Nancy continued her climb. Two steps more, and she was able to put her forearm on the sill and curl her fingers around the iron peg that once had held shutters. Cautiously Nancy raised her head until both eyes were on a level with the window frame.
Nancy could hear the low rumble of a masculine voice! Frank Jemitt’s!
Taking infinite pains to retain her balance, she thrust her fingers under the edge of the window. Nancy was rewarded as the sash moved upward half an inch, an inch, and yet another half inch. Then the frame gave a tiny squeak and seemed to stick. For one breathless moment Nancy ducked her head and waited to see if anyone came to the window to investigate.
To her relief, the voice droned on without interruption. Nancy again dared to raise her eyes to the level of the sill. The cloth had evidently been fastened to the inner frame, not to the sash, because the gap she had made by raising the window was still covered.
Although Nancy could not see inside the tower room, she could hear plainly what Frank Jemitt was saying:
“—you and that Drew girl spent a lot of time up here. I’m sure you know where the papers I want are hidden. Don’t sniffle. Where are they?”
No answer.
Jemitt went on, “And there are hidden treasures in this room. If you’ll tell us where the stuff is, you’ll get your share. If you don’t, then you got to be hurt until you do.”
“I’ve told you I don’t know,” a weepy-voiced girl answered.
Carol!
The relief Nancy felt at having located her friend was instantly dispelled by Jemitt’s next threat.
“I’ll give you one minute more to tell, and then you’ll get a taste of this whip!”
Mrs. Jemitt added her own threat. “What’s more, if you won’t tell us, we’ll get Nancy Drew as easy as we got you. We’ll set a trap for her because we’ll make you phone her to come to see you secretly. Then you can watch us force her to tell!”
“Oh, please don’t,” Carol begged. “I’ll do anything for you, but don’t harm Nancy.”
“Time’s up!” Mrs. Jemitt said.
Nancy, shaken with horror, lifted the cloth that hung over the window. She peered in on a strange drama.
Carol, her new dress rumpled and her hair in disarray, stood leaning against the old desk-table with the secret drawer, not three feet from Nancy. Her face was turned in profile as she stared at Frank Jemitt. His wife stood with arms folded, an evil smile on her face, while he slowly rolled up his sleeves. Then he picked up a thick willow reed.
“Open the closet, Emma,” he said. “We’ll stick this girl in there when we’re through with her.”
Mrs. Jemitt turned toward a door in the wall.
Nancy had less than a minute to act! While the attention of the couple was momentarily diverted, she reached through the opening and tapped on the desk.
“Carol!” she whispered.
At the voice coming out of nowhere Carol’s overwrought nerves snapped. She screamed loudly and toppled to the floor.
“What’s going on?” Jemitt cried.
He wheeled and saw the fluttering cloth at the window. With a snarl he rushed forward, his hands thrust out. Nancy was sure he meant to topple the ladder on which she swayed.
CHAPTER XX
Startling Confession
AT that moment a muffled scream reached the ears of Nancy’s father and Mr. Hill.
“What was that? It came from upstairs in the house!” Mr. Drew exclaimed. “Quick! Inside!”