Mr. Drew and the girls let go of the bookcase, which once more began to revolve. They heaved sighs of relief.
“You had a narrow escape!” Bess said sympathetically. “Your whole hand might have been ripped off!”
“Yes, I know,” said Nancy. “Thank you all for helping me. I think I’ll go and run cold water over my wrist and hand.” She went into the kitchen.
Circulation was soon restored and she returned to the living room. By this time Mrs. Carrier had come inside. She was listening to Bess’s graphic description of what had happened.
“This place is just too dangerous for you girls to work in,” she said dismally.
Nancy tried to cheer up the woman. “We’re going to solve this whole mystery soon, I’m sure of it. Please don’t worry.”
She noticed that the bookcase had swung around to the portrait side. Her father had jammed a wedge into one side so the mechanism could not work.
“I think we should examine each of these pictures,” he said. “One or more of them may contain a clue.”
He lifted down five of the portraits and handed one to each person in the room. There was complete quiet for a few minutes as they all scanned the pictures carefully.
Suddenly Mrs. Carrier cried out, “This face! There’s money under the black paint!”
She started chipping off the black coating with her fingernails. The others crowded around to watch.
Two minutes later Mrs. Carrier pulled her hand away from the portrait, grabbed her fingers, and cried out in pain!
CHAPTER XV
Nancy’s Stratagem
AT Mrs. Carrier’s outcry, Mr. Drew’s face took on a look of alarm. “Nancy,” he said, “do you have your magnifying glass with you?”
“Yes, I do,” she replied and went for her handbag.
Mr. Drew examined the paint which Mrs. Carrier had been scraping with her fingernails.
“I need a knife,” he said, and Nancy hurried to the kitchen to get one.
Her father chipped off more of the paint, then exclaimed, “The face on this portrait is covered with steel nails that are holding down a thousand-dollar bill.”
Suddenly Mrs. Carrier said, “I believe they’re more than plain steel nails. See how my hand is swelling.”
The others looked at her in alarm. Bess cried out, “I’ll bet there’s poison on them!”
“I believe you’re right,” said Mr. Drew. “I think I’d better take Mrs. Carrier to a doctor at once.”
“The hospital is closer,” the woman said. She was beginning to scratch herself with her uninjured hand. “I itch all over,” she complained.
Mr. Drew said that either the paint was poisonous or the steel nails fastened to the portrait had been brushed with poison. “Come, we’ll leave right now,” he told Mrs. Carrier. “You girls be very careful while I’m gone. I’ll return as soon as I can.”
As Nancy took a sixth portrait from the wall, Bess said worriedly, “Nancy, don’t you dare touch that!”
The young detective smiled. “I’m certainly not going to touch it with my bare hands,” she said. “But I think these scrapings of paint and these steel nails should be analyzed by a chemist. He’ll be able to tell what kind of poison they contain.”
George said she was not afraid to work with Nancy. She procured another knife from the kitchen and also two paper bags. Bess sheepishly followed and returned with a knife and a bag.
The girls worked for a long time in silence. Each one was very careful not to let the paint touch her skin. The shavings were dropped into the bags.
Finally George spoke up. “How are we going to remove the nails without touching them?”
“I saw a tool drawer in the kitchen,” Nancy said. “Maybe I can find a pair of pliers.”
She soon returned with the tool. One by one Nancy pulled the nails from the picture on which Mrs. Carrier had been working. Most of the black paint had been scraped from the portrait and the girls could distinguish the face beneath.
“Ugh!” Bess exclaimed. “Mrs. Carrier thought all the Banisters were handsome. I guess she forgot this one.”
George pointed out that the man had very fine features, but admitted he had a stern, cruel expression.
Bess commented, “I don’t blame Rawley Banister for not liking him. He gives me the creeps.”
Nancy laughed. “Well, Bess, you won’t have to worry about meeting him. I judge from the man’s clothes that he lived a long time ago.”
“He makes me nervous,” Bess insisted. She picked up the portrait and hung it face inward on the wall.
Just then there was loud, persistent rapping of the front-door knocker. “I guess Dad is back,” Nancy remarked, and went into the hall.
It occurred to her that this kind of summons did not seem like her father but rather that of an impatient caller.
“I’d better see first who’s there before I let anyone in.”
Previously she had noticed a peephole in the front door. A person inside the house could look out but no one could peer in. She put one eye to the hole.
Standing outside was a huge man. His face was red and he was pacing back and forth nervously. Not bothering to use the knocker, he banged hard on the door with his fists.
“I don’t think I should let him in,” Nancy told herself, surmising that he could be unfriendly.
Perhaps the stranger had been watching the place. After he had seen Mr. Drew leave, the man might have concluded he could handle the three girls alone.
“There’s no telling what he may be up to,” Nancy thought.
She decided to try strategy. Imitating the recorded voice which had greeted her and Mr. Drew on their first visit, she said loud and clear:
“Mr. Banister is not at home. Come back some other time.” A couple of seconds later she repeated the message.
Once more she looked through the peephole. The huge man at the door grew even redder in the face and waved his fist.
“Okay,” he yelled, “but I’ll get him yet! Rawley Banister can’t swindle me and not pay for it!”
After delivering his threat, the man walked away. Taking long steps, he strode across the bridge angrily and headed for a parked car.
Nancy smiled. Her ruse had worked! She returned to the other girls and told them what had happened.
Bess said, “I’m glad you didn’t let him in! He sounds like trouble!”
“He sure does!” George agreed. “I wonder who he is.”
Nancy shrugged. “Apparently another one of Rawley’s victims. He was big enough and mad enough to give the swindler a good beating.”
The girls continued their work of uncovering the portrait faces without their fingers touching the surface. Several pictures had thousand-dollar bills secreted under the paint.
“I can’t see,” said Bess, “why anybody would bother to hide money and then put poison on it. He wouldn’t be able to use it.”
Nancy suggested that the bills could be washed. Bess and George commented that this was just one more idiosyncrasy of the man who had built the fantastic house. Finally the girls became weary of their task and gave up. They had collected sufficient samples for a chemical analysis.
The front-door knocker sounded again, but less noisily. This time the caller was Mr. Drew. With him was Thomas Banister who seemed very upset over what had taken place.
“This is astounding,” he remarked, after greeting the girls. “I can’t imagine what ailed my brother. He’s a sick man, no doubt about it.”
Nancy asked how Mrs. Carrier was. Mr. Drew replied, “She’ll be all right, but the doctor said that she had come to the hospital just in the nick of time.”
“How dreadful!” Bess exclaimed.
Mr. Drew was told about the paint samples. “Good,” he said. “The doctor will want to have these scrapings analyzed. Why don’t you girls bring them to him before lunch and see how Mrs. Carrier is feeling?”
Nancy agreed and suggested that perhaps they should release the wedge from the bookcase and let it revolve into place.
Her father nodded. “And we’ll return the books to the shelves.”
While this was being done, Bess came across a volume entitled
Poisonous Plants, Insects and Snakes.
She sat down and began to turn the pages. She hoped that one would be marked, giving a clue to the poison on the portraits! She looked carefully at each page. Finally near the end of the book, she came across the drawing of a cobra.
“Look, everybody!” Bess called out. “Here’s a snake exactly like the one in the wall hanging!”
The others hurried to her side and gazed at the deadly snake.
“Here it states,” she went on, “that the venom of the cobra can kill a victim within an hour! Do you suppose the poison on the portraits is from a cobra?”
“Let’s look at that serpent picture in the hall,” Nancy suggested.
She and the others rushed from the living room and gazed up at the wall hanging which hung directly above the end of the cut-off crooked banister.
Had the searchers stumbled upon a clue?
CHAPTER XVI
Double Suspects
To avoid possible contamination from the Oriental wall hanging, Nancy and her friends used paper towels to lift it down. Gingerly they turned it over.
“I don’t see anything suspicious,” George remarked.
Nancy took out her magnifying glass and went over every inch of both sides of the serpent picture. “Neither do I,” she said finally. “But I wonder if we should take off the back. What do you think, Dad?”
“I think we should leave the piece as it is,” he replied. “It would be wiser to solve this mystery in some safer way.”
Mr. Drew added that he must return to River Heights directly after lunch. He glanced at his watch. “We’ll have to go now.”
Nancy locked the front door and pocketed the key. Les Morton the guard was just returning and apologized for being away longer than he had expected. He helped Nancy and the others carry the saplings back to the woods. Then the group climbed into Mr. Drew’s car.
On the way to the hospital Thomas Banister expressed concern that there was still no definite clue to his brother’s whereabouts. “The police have an alarm out in every state.”
Mr. Drew spoke up. “And as Nancy told you, all ports in the Carribbean Islands have been alerted, but neither Rawley nor his cruiser have been seen in that area.”
“I’m greatly worried about Rawley,” Thomas Banister said. “He’s such a daredevil there’s no telling what he may try. This uncertainty is maddening. I wish my brother would return and face the music.”
The others did not comment and in a short time arrived at the hospital. They learned that Mrs. Carrier had gone home, so Thomas drove off in his car to see his sister.
Nancy left the poisonous paint flakes with the chemist. The three girls and Mr. Drew returned to the motel. After lunch he announced that he must leave.
“Good luck!” he said to the girls, then grinned. “By the time I talk with you again you’ll have the mystery solved, I’m sure.”
After Mr. Drew had left for River Heights, Nancy suggested that she and the girls go to Mrs. Carrier’s home and see how she was. They found her feeling better but rather weak.
“The doctor said I had a narrow escape,” she told them.
“Is there any report from the lab about the poison?” Nancy queried.
Mrs. Carrier said she had not heard. Then she added, “I just can’t understand Rawley. Why did he do such weird things? And I’ve been thinking about something else, too. I doubt that we’ll find enough money and valuables in the house to pay all his debts.”
Nancy told her about the other thousand-dollar bills the girls had discovered.
“Really?” the woman said. “I still have a strong hunch that Rawley didn’t intend to return. He probably took everything he could carry, but didn’t have time to clean off those bills.”
Bess spoke up. “Couldn’t Rawley’s house be sold to pay his debts?”
“I doubt it,” Mrs. Carrier answered. “Who would want to buy such a crazy-looking building?”
The girls did not reply because their answer would have been, “Nobody.”
Seeing that Mrs. Carrier was tired, the girls said good-by to her and drove back to the motel.
“What shall we do now?” George asked.
Nancy replied, “I’d certainly like to find the skeleton’s bracelet.”
Bess asked, “Do you suppose Rawley himself wants it and doesn’t dare go near his own house to get it?”
“I doubt that,” Nancy replied. “If so, he would have stated in the note exactly where the bracelet is. I have a strong hunch another person wrote that message. But who?”
When the girls walked into the motel lobby, they noticed a letter in their mailbox. The clerk handed it to Nancy. She stared at it, puzzled.
“Where’s the letter from?” Bess asked.
“Leupp, Arizona. The same place where your letter from Sleepy Deer was mailed.”
“Hurry up and open it,” George urged.
Nancy slit the envelope and took out a single sheet of paper. Typed on it was:
Find the Silver Armor Mask
The three girls stared at the unsigned message and Bess said, “I’ll bet whoever wrote the note about the skeleton’s bracelet sent this one too. It’s in the same type.”
George nodded. “And it could be Clyde Mead.”
“How in the world did you figure that out?” Bess asked.
“It’s easy,” George answered. “Mead is involved with the Indian children and he has probably gone out there. He knows Nancy and I don’t approve of him and he’s playing these strange tricks on us. I think we should forget both anonymous messages.”
Bess turned to Nancy. “Do you agree?”
Nancy took a few seconds to think before answering, then said, “To go even further, I now suspect that there may be some connection between Rawley Banister and Clyde Mead.”
“What!” the cousins cried, and Bess asked, “Do you think Rawley is out in Leupp?”
“He could be,” Nancy replied, “but more likely he’s on his fast cruiser. Clyde Mead probably is working this Indian racket alone.”