(#23) Mystery of the Tolling Bell (9 page)

“You’re probably right,” her father agreed.

“Maybe,” Nancy said, “you weren’t drugged in New York but by the woman in the taxi.”

“But how?”

“With the perfume.”

“You mean the woman may have mixed that sweet-smelling perfume with something to drug me?”

“Yes.”

At that moment an automobile horn began to toot and shouts of “Nancy! Ned!” reached their ears.

“You’d better go along,” the lawyer urged. “I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

For several hours Nancy enjoyed the music and dancing at the Candleton Yacht Club. When the girls reached Mrs. Chantrey’s, they tumbled into bed and awakened rather late the next morning. As Nancy came downstairs she heard her father phoning the airport.

“Are you going away?” she asked as he hung up.

“I must leave at once for New York, but I’ll return as soon as I can,” he promised. “My assistant picked up what may be an important clue.”

“About the Mon Coeur people?”

“Yes, Nancy. I haven’t time to explain the details. A neighbor is taking me to the airport. Will you pack a few things in my bag?”

“Then I’m to stay?”

“Yes, I talked with Mrs. Chantrey before she left for the tearoom. She won’t hear of you or your friends leaving. You’re to remain and work on the case here. You don’t mind?” he added, a twinkle in his eye.

“Maybe I’ll have the whole thing solved by the time you return. And the mystery of the tolling bell, too,” Nancy countered, hugging her father affectionately.

She ran upstairs to pack his bag, and a few minutes afterward he rode away. Bess and George were surprised to hear of Mr. Drew’s departure.

“Let’s hurry up and eat. We ought to get started,” Nancy said suddenly.

“Started where?” Bess wanted to know.

“I want to talk to Mother Mathilda, the candlemaker Mrs. Chantrey told us about. She’s supposed to know everything that has happened around here for the past sixty years.”

Presently the three girls set off in Nancy’s car for the old section of Candleton. Bess declared that riding down Whippoorwill Way among the quaint houses and shops was like stepping into another era.

Soon after passing a moss-covered stone church, the girls came to an old-fashioned dwelling of pounded oyster-shell brick. Attached to it at the rear was a fairly new stone addition.

“This is the place,” Nancy announced. A wrought-iron sign read “Mathilda Greeley. Hand-poured, perfumed candles for sale.”

She parked and they rang the doorbell. When no one came, the girls circled the building to investigate the rear. Nancy peered through the open doorway.

“This is where the candles are made!”

From the ceiling hung hundreds of gaily colored wax candles of many lengths and sizes.

“Doesn’t it remind you of a rainbow?” Bess gasped in delight.

At the rear of the room, a bent-over woman with white hair stood with her back to the girls. She was stirring a kettle of hot, green wax.

Nancy tapped lightly on the door before crossing the threshold. At the sound, Mother Mathilda turned and nodded for them to walk in.

“We’re staying with Mrs. Chantrey,” Nancy explained, smiling. “She suggested we come here.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve heard of you.” The lady went on stirring. “Look around.”

Nancy and her friends became aware of a faint but familiar odor. Nancy asked what it was.

“I have been making perfumed candles,” Mother Mathilda replied, “but they are a failure. The entire lot is ruined! Not in thirty years have I had such a loss.”

“Are they bayberry candles?” Bess asked, since the color of the liquid was green.

“Oh, no, my bayberry candles are the only ones which turned out well this week.”

The candlemaker pointed to a rack of fragrant tapers, explaining they had been made by cooking berries, skimming off the wax, refining it, and pouring it onto strings suspended from nails.

“Isn’t that a rather unusual way of making candles?” Nancy asked. “I thought they were always made in molds, or else the wicks were dipped into hot wax.”

“You’re right. But years ago my family perfected the method of pouring the liquid onto the wick. When one layer hardens, we put on another coat. But I was the one who added the perfume,” she announced proudly. “And never in the thirty years that I’ve been making scented candles have I had a failure until now.”

Mother Mathilda explained that after she added a newly purchased perfume to her “batter,” it neither held well to the wick, nor produced the desired fragrance.

Nancy noticed three large empty bottles on a shelf above the kettle. They bore the Mon Coeur trademark!

“Did you use the perfume from these bottles?” she asked.

“Yes. I bought them from a woman who claimed her products were superior to any other on the market. But why am I burdening you with my troubles! You came to buy candles, or to see how they are made.”

“We do want to buy some of the bayberry variety,” Nancy replied. “What really brought us here, though, is to ask you about that woman who sold you the perfume.”

Mother Mathilda looked surprised. Then she said, “There is little to tell. The woman, a foreigner, came here and gave me samples of a lovely oil. It seemed exactly what I needed for my candles, so later I bought a large supply. But the perfume was inferior to the oil.”

“What a shame!” George murmured. “That woman has sold worthless perfume all along the coast.”

“Have you any idea where she is?” Nancy asked Mother Mathilda.

“No. I asked several of my neighbors, but no one knows.”

“It won’t be easy to trace her, I’m afraid,” Nancy said, worried. “Once she cheats a person, she’s wise enough not to return.”

“It must have been only Madame’s perfume that was of poor quality,” the woman went on. “Mon Coeur products are of the best.”

Nancy stared at her curiously. “Have you used them before?”

“No, but Monsieur who sold me stock in the company showed me testimonials signed by a dozen moving picture stars praising their products.”

This statement stunned the three girls.

“You also bought Mon Coeur stock?” Nancy asked.

“Monsieur Pappier, president of the company, sold them to me himself. Oh, he’s a fine, elegant gentleman!”

“Can you describe him?” Nancy asked.

“Monsieur is a stout man with plump apple-red cheeks. He wore a velvet jacket with braid. His voice sounded husky as if he had a sore throat.”

“My father may know the man. The description fits a certain Harry Tyrox, wanted in New York for a similar sale of Mon Coeur stock.”

“You think he is a fraud?”

“I am afraid he is, Mother Mathilda. Did anyone else in the neighborhood buy stock?”

“Oh, my yes! Maude Pullet, who lives a couple miles down the road. And Sara Belle Flossenger, the seamstress, took forty shares. Also the tailor, Sam Metts. They all bought stock the same day I did.”

“What a day for Monsieur Pappier!” Nancy commented grimly. “I’m sorry to tell you that the stock he sold has no value.”

“Oh, it can’t be true! There must be some mistake! Almost all my life savings were given to that man!” The woman sank into a chair.

As Mother Mathilda wept softly, Nancy attempted to comfort her by saying Mr. Drew was trying to trace the swindlers.

“Nancy is working on the case, too,” Bess spoke up. “I’m sure those awful men will be caught.”

After some time the girls succeeded in cheering the woman a little. They bought several dozen candles, and changed the subject of conversation.

“Who used to live in the cottage on the top of Bald Head Cliff?” Nancy asked the candlemaker.

“I guess you mean the Maguire place.”

“Did they leave suddenly for some reason?” Nancy pursued the subject.

The question seemed to surprise Mother Mathilda. “Why, not unless you’d call going to their heavenly reward suddenlike,” she commented. “Grandpa Maguire and his wife died. But so far as I know, the son and his wife are still there.”

“The place is deserted.”

“Then the report they moved away must be true,” Mother Mathilda remarked.

“Did you know the Maguires well?”

“Very well. Grandpa was quite a character!” The elderly woman chuckled. “He had a flowing white beard that reached to his chest. And how he did like to spin yarns! He was a lookout years ago.”

“Lookout?” Nancy questioned.

“Grandpa Maguire had a powerful telescope,” Mother Mathilda explained, “and he’d sit on his porch, watching the sea for returning fishermen. Whenever he’d spy one, he’d scramble across those rocks nimble as a goat, and drive his horse to town to tell the women. Then they’d come down to the sea to meet their menfolks.”

“What became of the telescope?” Nancy asked, recalling the man who had gazed at them through one the first time she and her friends had gone to the cave.

“I don’t know,” the candlemaker replied.

Nancy was wondering whether the man on the cliff might have been using the Maguire telescope. She had not noticed it lying anywhere in the cottage.

As they rode home, Nancy discussed her idea with the girls. George thought the man with the telescope might have been Amos Hendrick.

“A. H. is a strange fellow,” Bess declared. “I’ll bet he knows the secret of that cottage.”

“I agree,” said George. “When he saw Nancy and me climb the cliff and head toward the deserted cottage he went away in the boat. Perhaps he thought that would distract us from our investigation. He might have been afraid we’d discover something he didn’t want known.”

“But he may have an enemy, too,” Bess stated. “Who else would have stolen the paper he dropped in the tearoom?”

Nancy had to admit there was something to her friends’ theories. She was determined to question Amos Hendrick about why he had abandoned the girls at the cave.

The elderly man, however, seemed to have vanished from Candleton. For the next hour the girls made exhaustive inquiries. No one had seen him. Finally the three friends gave up and went to the Salsandee Shop for lunch. Mrs. Chantrey, learning they were there, asked if the girls would go on an errand for her.

“I’ve just had a phone call from Maplecrest Farm,” she said. “They were to bring me a crate of berries, but their truck has broken down. Will you pick it up for me?”

Nancy said they would be glad to drive there. She and her friends headed for Maplecrest Farm, about two miles out of town on the shore opposite the cliffs. As she sped along Nancy passed a parked car. No one was in it, but down by the water, a hundred yards away, two men stood talking. They were looking toward the water. Nancy recognized A. H. and told the other girls.

“Whom was he talking to?” Nancy wondered.

The man’s companion looked familiar. It was not until Nancy drove into the farm lane a few minutes later that she suddenly thought she recognized the second man.

“He’s the one I saw talking to Madame!” she declared.

“Really?” George exclaimed.

“I’m going to find out!” Nancy declared.

“How about the berries?” Bess asked.

“I’ll get them first.

Nancy quickly accomplished the errand, then turned the car and raced out the lane to the highway.

CHAPTER XIII

The Runaway

WHEN Nancy reached the spot where she had seen the two men talking, no one was there and the car was gone.

“Look, Nancy!” exclaimed George, pointing toward a boat chugging slowly away from shore. “There’s A. H.! He’s going toward Candleton!”

“Let’s try to catch him!” said Nancy. She accelerated and they sped along the road to the Salsandee Shop. The girls left the crate of berries at the kitchen door and hurried off again.

“Now where are we going?” Bess asked.

“I’ve a hunch that A. H. may have rented that boat from one of the fishermen,” Nancy replied. “Let’s go over to the wharves and find out.”

Nancy made inquiries and learned that her hunch had been right. Mr. Hendrick had rented a dory only an hour before.

“What a surprise he’s going to get when he sees us!” George laughed.

When A. H. reached the wharf, the girls expected him to try avoiding them, but the elderly man greeted them with a smile and said:

“Well, I’m glad to see you. That saves me a trip. I was going to call on you and offer my apologies, but I’ve been out of town. Just came back last night.”

“We did expect to hear from you and learn why you took our boat and left us stranded on the cliff,” Nancy told him.

Amos Hendrick hung his head. “I’m right sorry about that,” he said. “The truth is, I suddenly remembered I had an appointment. I couldn’t wait for you girls any longer.”

“Was it with the same man you saw today?” Nancy shot at him.

The bell collector looked surprised and asked how she knew that. Nancy explained.

“Yes, he was the same man,” A. H. answered. “The other time Mr. James didn’t show up.” A. H. leaned forward and whispered confidentially, “He has a bell I might buy.”

“Oh!” Nancy exclaimed. Then she asked, “What does the man look like?”

“Oh, kind of red-faced. Has a stocky build and dark hair. Why?”

Nancy evaded the question. “I might want to talk to him myself sometime about bells,” she answered casually.

Inwardly she was very excited. The description of Mr. James definitely fitted the person with whom Madame had been talking! Was he Harry Tyrox alias Monsieur Pappier?

Mr. Hendrick started to move off, but Nancy was not through questioning him. She wanted to know about another matter also. She asked him when he had last driven to the cliff above Bald Head Cave.

“Cliff?” the man repeated. “I’ve never been up on those rocks. Nothing there worth going for that I know of.”

“We thought we saw you up there looking through a telescope,” said Bess.

“Not me. I don’t own a telescope. Well, I must go now.” He smiled. “Hope you’ve forgiven me For running off with the boat.”

After he had left, Nancy mentioned her disappointment about the talk with Amos Hendrick. Either the man was hiding facts for reasons of his own, or else he was the victim of a hoax.

“Well, now what?” George queried.

“Let’s call on the people who bought Mon Coeur stock from Monsieur Pappier.”