(#23) Mystery of the Tolling Bell (10 page)

Nancy had written down the names of the victims mentioned by Mother Mathilda. At least one of them might be able to give a clue to the whereabouts of the swindler. After learning from Mrs. Chantrey where the people lived, the girls set off.

Their first stop was at Maude Pullet’s home. The woman wept on hearing the news that she had been swindled. Sam Metts, white-faced and grim, told the girls that the loss of the money meant his son would be deprived of a college education. The little seamstress, Miss Flossenger, sadly admitted she had given Monsieur Pappier most of her life savings. At each place Nancy acquired the names and addresses of additional persons who had been cheated by Monsieur Pappier.

“This swindle is snowballing,” she said excitedly to her friends. “Unless we can put a stop to it, there’s no telling how many other people will lose their savings!”

Nancy kept hoping she might uncover a clue to the whereabouts of either Monsieur Pappier or Madame. But the people she interviewed had only one address to offer: the New York office, vacated a few days earlier.

Learning that several persons in the little country town of Branford had bought stock, Nancy drove there in the late afternoon with Bess and George. Interviews with two purchasers brought only the familiar story of the fantastic profits which had been glibly promised by Monsieur Pappier and a companion salesman.

Discouraged, Nancy was leading the way to her parked car when she noticed a girl standing on the opposite side of the street.

“Isn’t that Minnie, the girl who bought some cosmetics from Madame?” she asked. “The one whose mother tried to have me arrested?”

“Yes!” George agreed. “Wow! What a costume!”

The girl’s face was made up heavily. She wore a scarlet, sleeveless dress and several necklaces of various colors. High-heeled patent leather shoes fitted her badly. As the girl walked down the street, she kept turning her ankles every few steps.

“Let’s talk to her,” Nancy urged. “She really looks pathetic.”

The three girls crossed the street.

“Hello,” Nancy greeted Minnie with a friendly smile. “Aren’t you a long way from home?”

“Not half far enough!” the girl retorted, tossing her head.

“You’ve run away?” Nancy guessed.

“I couldn’t stand it on the farm another day. I’ve changed my name from Minnie to Marilyn Glaser, and I have a fine jobl”

“In an office?” Bess inquired, wondering who would employ such a gaudily dressed person.

“No, as a model. I demonstrate Mon Coeur cosmetics for a weekly salary,” Minnie went on proudly. “Madame is going to give me a bonus, too.”

This information excited Nancy, but she was careful to keep her voice even as she asked, “Where do you give the demonstrations?”

“We’ll have one tonight at nine o’clock in front of the Branford Hotel.”

“Oh, not until tonight?”

“We never have our demonstrations until late,” Minnie explained. “Madame says night light makes everyone look better.” The girl giggled. “You ought to see me. I pretend to look awful, and then she fixes me up grand.”

“I see,” said Nancy, suppressing a smile. “Well, I wish you luck with your new work.” Then she added casually, “I can see you like working for Madame.”

“She’s a fine woman!” Minnie replied. “She’s promised to pay for these clothes, and she lets me have all the free perfume and cosmetics I want.” Minnie teetered away on her high heels.

“Too bad we don’t know her parents’ address so we could notify them where the girl is!” George exclaimed.

“I’ll try to persuade her to go home,” Nancy said, “but not until after the demonstration tonight. Girls, do you realize Minnie may solve the mystery for us?”

“Will you notify the police to be on hand?” asked Bess.

“I may. How I wish Dad were here!”

“You have a date with Ned tonight,” Bess said. “Why not talk it over with him?”

Nancy said she would. When Ned arrived at Mrs. Chantrey’s house and heard the news, he smiled. “I’m sure I can handle Madame myself, and Minnie, too. There’s bound to be a policeman not far away, if we want him to make any arrests.”

Nancy was not completely satisfied. But she admitted to herself that the presence of the police might forewarn Madame or her accomplices.

She and Ned started off, and shortly before nine o’clock they reached the Branford Hotel and waited near the entrance. Soon Minnie appeared looking very unattractive in a black dress, her face pale, her lips colorless.

“She’s certainly carrying out her part of the bargain,” Nancy mused.

“By the way,” Ned put in, “where is the cosmetic cart woman?” He glanced toward a clock in the square. “It’s ten after nine now.”

The seller of Mon Coeur products had not appeared. Even Minnie showed signs of increasing restlessness. She glanced uneasily up and down the street.

“I have a feeling Madame isn’t going to show up!” Nancy commented presently, beginning to be fearful her plans would fall through.

“I have the same hunch,” Ned remarked.

At nine thirty-five Minnie suddenly lost patience. With an angry exclamation she started away from the hotel, convinced that her employer would not appear. Nancy and Ned sauntered forward and intercepted her.

“Isn’t there to be a demonstration?” Nancy inquired innocently.

“I can’t give it alone!” the girl snapped. “And I haven’t anything to sell. Oh, why didn’t Madame show up?”

“Maybe you’ll never see her again,” suggested Ned.

“I will so! Something must have kept her. I’ll go to her home.”

“Do you know where Madame lives?” Nancy asked, her heart pounding with excitement.

In reply, Minnie took a paper from her purse and read the address aloud.

“We’ll drive you there,” Nancy offered.

CHAPTER XIV

AThreat

DURING the ride to the address where they hoped to find Madame, Minnie kept up a chatter which exhausted both Nancy and Ned. But when they drove up in front of an old, dark house, Minnie became silent.

“It looks as if it’s deserted,” Ned observed. “You two wait in the car while I find out.”

He had been gone over ten minutes when he returned and shook his head.

“No one there?” Nancy asked.

“Only a caretaker. I saw a light in the basement. He has a room there. The owners have gone away for the summer.”

“Madame hasn’t gone away!” exclaimed Minnie. “I know better than that!”

“Madame is not the owner of the house,” Ned corrected. “No such person has ever been here. Madame gave you a false address.”

At first Minnie refused to believe the truth. When it finally dawned upon her that she had been tricked, the girl burst into tears. She had no place to go, she declared. Her last dollar had been spent for clothes.

“We could drive you home,” Nancy suggested.

“And have my family laugh at me?”

Because she had no choice, Minnie finally consented to being driven to her parents’ farm. But as they neared the place, she became more and more fearful of the reception she would receive.

As the car stopped, the door of the farmhouse flew open and Minnie’s parents rushed out to see who was in it. When they saw their daughter they cried out happily, and as she stepped from the car Mrs. Glaser took Minnie into her arms.

“Oh, my dear, don’t ever go away again!” she sobbed.

Tears flowed freely down Minnie’s cheeks, and suddenly she remembered Ned and Nancy.

“These—these people brought me home,” she said. “You can thank them.”

Mr. Glaser put out a gnarled hand, and his wife wiped her tears and said, “Please excuse me. I’ve been so upset these past few days I forgot my manners. Thank you kindly for bringing Minnie back.” She did not recognize Nancy, who was glad of this.

Nancy and Ned left the Glaser family ecstatic in their reunion. As the couple rode toward Candleton, Nancy became very quiet.

“Worried about something?” Ned asked.

“Just disappointed. I had high hopes for solving part of the mystery tonight, but—”

“But instead, you aided a poor girl who needed help badly, and I admire you for it, Nancy.”

After Ned dropped her off at Mrs. Chantrey’s, Nancy continued to think about the strange puzzle. The next morning, however, Nancy was her usual cheerful self. With Bess and George she went to the Salsandee Shop early, and helped Mrs. Chantrey arrange garden flowers on the tables and prepare fruit before any of the regular employees arrived. When three of them called in sick, the girls volunteered to stay and help out.

Soon patrons began coming in for breakfast. The first customer to seat himself at one of Nancy’s tables was a dwarflike man she had seen in the tearoom before. He gave his order in a gruff voice, then became absorbed in the morning paper.

As Nancy went back and forth from the kitchen, she kept stealing glances at the man. Where else had she seen him? To satisfy herself, she asked Mrs. Chantrey about him.

“I don’t know his name,” the tearoom owner replied. “He’s a rather unfriendly customer. Never so much as says hello, although he comes here regularly. Evidently his wife is an invalid, for he always takes food for her when he leaves.”

That night after the shop closed, Mrs. Chantrey invited Nancy, Bess, and George to a concert. The cousins accepted, but Nancy begged off, saying she would rather stay at home because her father might telephone, or even return. June was out and it was very quiet at the house. Nancy picked up a book, but instead of reading it she sat lost in thought.

“Who
was
that man at the tearoom?” she asked herself over and over again.

Presently a car pulled up outside the house. Thinking her father might have arrived by taxi, Nancy ran to the porch. But she was wrong. A stocky man with a dark mustache and beard alighted, pulling his felt hat low over his eyes. Seeing the girl, he stopped abruptly in the shadows and asked gruffly:

“Are you Nancy Drew?”

“I am.”

“Then you’re to come with me.”

“For what reason, please?” The man’s manner had made Nancy suspicious.

“Your father needs you. He’s in trouble.”

“I think you’re lying and I won’t go with youl”

“Oh, you won’t, eh?” the fellow growled, losing his temper. “Well, listen to me! You and that snooping father of yours! Mind your own business, or it’ll be the worse for you both! Understand?”

The stranger advanced toward Nancy. Frightened, she ran into the house, slamming and locking the door. Turning off the lights, she stood behind the living-room draperies and watched the man from the window.

He started toward the door, but changed his mind. He hurried to his parked car and drove away.

Nancy picked up a flashlight and ran outside to look around. Tire tracks were plainly visible on the sandy road. As she examined the pattern, her roving light revealed a small bundle lying close by.

“Here’s something of his!” she thought, picking it up. “This must have fallen from the car!”

Inside the house Nancy examined the package under a bright kitchen light. A crude sketch of three bells in a cluster had been penciled on the plain brown wrapping paper.

Puzzled, she unwrapped the bundle. Hundreds of labels bearing the Mon Coeur trademark fluttered to the table and floor.

“So that man was one of the Mon Coeur crowd!” Nancy thought excitedly. She stared at the sketch on the paper. “I wonder if they’re going to change their design from hearts to bells.”

The idea so intrigued Nancy she decided to phone her father. At that moment the doorbell rang. Startled, Nancy tiptoed to the hall and peered through the window. She could see no one and called out to ask who was there. It was Ned. She let him in and briefed him on the strange man’s visit and the package he had dropped.

“I think you’re lying and I won’t go with you!”

“We must trail that man if we can!” she added. “But someone may be watching the house, so I’ll slip out the back way and meet you over on the next street.”

She hastily wrote a note to her friends telling them where she was going, then let herself out the rear door. By the time she reached the appointed spot, Ned was waiting in his car.

“This may be a futile chase,” Nancy said breathlessly. “But I saw the man’s car turn down this street after it left Mrs. Chantrey’s.”

“Notice the make?”

“No, it was too dark to see the car plainly.”

“Then how can we trace it?”

Playing the beam of her flashlight along the roadway close to the curb, Nancy did not answer.

“What are you looking for?” Ned asked, puzzled, and got out of the car.

Nancy pointed to tire tracks plainly visible in the sandy road. She explained that they were the same pattern as those she had found in front of the Chantrey house after the man’s car had pulled away.

“I noticed that the driver hugged the curb,” she added, “so we may be able to trace him.”

“It’s worth trying,” Ned agreed. “Let’s go.”

Nancy expected the trail might lead to a highway. To her surprise, the driver had selected a back street in the Candleton business district. This made it easy to follow him, for no other automobile had traveled on the same side of the street recently.