Authors: Carolyn Keene

Tags: #Mardi Gras, #Women Detectives, #Detective and Mystery Stories, #Girls & Women, #Showboats, #Carnival, #Mystery & Detective, #Juvenile Fiction, #Adventure and Adventurers, #Detectives, #Mysteries & Detective Stories, #Fiction, #Haunted Places - Louisiana - New Orleans, #River Boats, #Women Sleuths, #Adventure Stories, #New Orleans (La.), #Drew; Nancy (Fictitious Character), #Haunted Places, #Mystery and Detective Stories

The Haunted Showboat (11 page)

BOOK: The Haunted Showboat

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The young detective paused, then closed the door. Bess went on, “What a dreadful thing for him to do! Why, Nancy, you or George might have been killed, if that stone had hit you!”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” Nancy agreed. “Well, we’d better report it to the police right away.”

As she started the car again, the girls saw Charles hurrying down the driveway toward them. He reached the car, opened the door, and jumped in beside Bess.

“Hello, everybody!” he said. “I heard you coming. How is everything?”

“Terrible,” said George flatly, and told him what had happened.

The young man was aghast. “You girls sure you’re all right?” he asked solicitously.

After they assured him they were, he went on, “You know, since I’ve been working on the showboat, I’ve had a couple of narrow escapes of my own. Once when I was in my car somebody shot at a tire. And—well, maybe I shouldn’t tell you what happened today, or you may not want to go tonight.”

“Oh, please do,” Nancy begged.

Charles said that a sniper had shot at him this morning when he was on his way to the
River Princess.
“His bullet just missed me!”

“How wicked!” Bess burst out. “Oh, I hope he won’t be around tonight!”

Secretly she was hoping that Nancy might cancel the trip, but the young detective seemed more determined than ever to go to the
River Princess
and solve the mystery.

“My mother mustn’t know about any of these attacks,” Charles warned the girls. “So please don’t say anything.”

Nancy nodded and decided not to call the police about the stone thrower.

“You girls will be glad to know that I’ve provided some extra protection for you tonight. Two friends of mine, Frank Morse and Jack Memory, are coming to dinner and will go on the trip with us.”

“Good!” Bess said quickly. “There’s safety in numbers, especially when they’re men! I feel a lot better now!” The others laughed as they proceeded to the house.

Mrs. Bartolome, a very attractive and charming woman of fifty, greeted them cordially. She and Charles took the visitors for a short stroll in their beautiful garden, edged with boxwood. In the bright moonlight they could see roses, delphinium and lilies, surrounded by azalea and oleander bushes, blooming in profusion.

“If I lived here,” said Bess, breathing in deeply, “I’d never want to leave the place. It’s a divine garden.”

Mrs. Bartolome smiled, pleased by the girl’s enthusiasm. “We do love it,” she said.

A few minutes later two personable young men arrived and were introduced to the visitors: Frank Morse, slim and well-built, had blond curly hair; Jack Memory was tall and dark, with flashing mischievous brown eyes.

The dinner party proved to be a gala one. The food, which included stuffed pheasant, was delicious and the conversation humorous and sparkling.

At the end of the meal Charles announced the plan for going on the trip into the bayou.

“In order to keep our trip secret,” he said, “I suggest that we stroll into the garden in pairs, then join at the rear of the garden. There’s a little-used road in back of the largest rose garden and the car is hidden there.”

When Nancy told Mrs. Bartolome that the girls would like to change from their dinner frocks and shoes to sports attire, their hostess led them upstairs. After showing them to a guest room, Mrs. Bartolome smiled and said, “I wish you luck in your sleuthing tonight. For Charles’s sake, I’d like to see the mystery solved.”

“I hope to learn a lot tonight,” Nancy replied.

Quickly the girls slipped into the shirts and jeans they had brought, then joined the boys in the living room. There was a marked change in the young men’s attire also. They, too, were dressed for the trip into the bayou!

As the six friends went outdoors, one of the boys commented on the brilliant full moon.

“This is fortunate,” Nancy thought. “It will make traveling through that swamp easier than in total darkness.” She also recalled that voodoo worshipers often held meetings when the moon was full.

Following Charles’s plan, the couples separated, Nancy and Charles walking together, Bess with Frank, and George with Jack. Five minutes later they all met back of the rose garden, jumped into the car, and started off.

“So far, so good,” Charles remarked, looking in his rear-view mirror. “There’s no sign of anyone following us.”

Two miles from the house they came to the bayou and he parked. Three canoes were hidden among the trees and bushes that overhung the water. The couples stepped in.

Bess remarked to Frank, “It’s a good thing there’s moonlight or you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.”

“S-sh!” Nancy called across from her canoe. “We’d better keep very quiet.”

The rest of the trip was made in silence. As they neared the area where the showboat was, the young people became aware of the steady beat of a tom-tom. Bess shivered a little, but Nancy, her heart pounding with excitement, sat up straighter.

A few minutes later they could distinctly hear music coming from the calliope! To herself Nancy said, “But Charles told me the old organ could not possibly be played!”

Soon the three canoes reached the pond where the
River Princess
lay. In the moonlight, with shadows playing on her, the old craft looked unreal and spooky indeed. The music stopped at the end of a dismal tune.

Then, as if the organist had left his bench, a ghostly figure suddenly walked from the interior of the boat onto the deck. It was sheathed from head to toe in white and glided up and down as though it were floating rather than walking.

Bess clutched the sides of the canoe in which she was riding. A terrified gasp escaped her lips. As if annoyed by the sound the ghost flitted inside the old showboat.

“Shall we follow it?” Charles whispered to Nancy.

Before she could decide, a new kind of sound came from the River
Princess
—hymn chanting!

“A voodoo meeting must be going on!” Charles said in a low voice.

There was not a light on the boat and no other signs of activity. Did the strange rites take place in complete darkness with the audience sitting motionless?

Nancy leaned forward and said to her companion, “I’d like to go aboard.”

Charles whispered that he thought it would be best not to go across the pond in the canoe.

A ghostly figure suddenly emerged from

“There is a stretch of moss sod on our left leading up to the boat. Suppose we find it and walk to the
River Princess.”

The three canoes came together and the directions were given to the others. Then they silently paddled through the shadows to the mossy walk and the girls stepped out. As their feet touched the sod, the chanting on the showboat suddenly ceased.

the interior of the boat onto the deck

In the lee of a giant cypress, the girls hesitated. There was complete silence for fully ten seconds, then they became aware of the splash of oars.

“Someone’s leaving the showboat,” George remarked.

“Listen!” Nancy commanded. A few moments later she said, “No one’s leaving by canoe. Someone is coming!”

The young people waited tensely. From another entrance into the pond glided a rowboat. Two figures were in it.

To the young people’s complete astonishment the couple were dressed in Colonial attire. The man at the oars was elderly. The woman, about the same age, wore a dark-colored velvet dress and a bonnet.

The watchers were too astounded to comment. The “Colonial gentleman” pulled up to the
River Princess.
Then he stood up and helped the woman ascend the ladder to the deck!

CHAPTER XV

A Weird Scene

COMPLETELY mystified, Nancy and her companions watched the scene at the old showboat in awe. Why were the elderly woman and the man with her in Colonial costumes? Was she perhaps coming for some secret herbs sold at the voodoo meeting on board? And, for some reason, was the eighteenth-century attire required?

The three girls huddled together. Bess whispered that chills were going up and down her spine. “Maybe Uncle Rufus is here and is going to give the woman a treatment,” she murmured.

“I wish I knew,” Nancy replied. “Let’s see what she does next.”

The woman reached the top of the ladder and nimbly stepped over the rail. At once she walked to the entrance where theater patrons would enter if coming to see a show.

Taking a position near the doorway, the costumed, elderly woman stopped and turned toward the spot where a gangplank had once been placed. She smiled gaily, then began nodding and shaking hands as if with imaginary passengers.

“Poor thing,” said Bess. “She must have lost her mind.”

“It looks that way,” Nancy agreed.

For nearly ten minutes the little pantomime continued. Then the woman’s companion called up from the rowboat:

“Everyone’s aboard, Louvina dear. The show will start soon. You’ve seen it so many times, honey. Suppose you come for a boat ride with me while it’s going on.”

The woman hesitated a few seconds and peered into the dark interior of the showboat theater.

“But there might be something new tonight,” she protested.

“Oh, I think not. You’d better come now, dear. I want to show you how lovely the wild orchids near here are in the moonlight.”

Finally Louvina, though obviously reluctant, came to the ladder. The elderly man assisted her in climbing down and getting into the boat.

As he started to row away, George whispered to Nancy, “Let’s go ask him what’s going on! He can probably solve the whole mystery in one minute.”

“Wait!” Nancy said in a low voice. “I think the woman is in a trance. It might be disastrous to awaken her. I’d rather follow the two of them and find out what I can from the man later when he’s alone.”

“I guess you’re right,” George agreed.

Despite his age, the elderly man was a swift rower and the boat was soon out of sight.

The girls stepped back into their canoes and in whispered tones talked the matter over with their escorts.

“Somebody should stay here and watch the
River Princess,”
Nancy declared. “Are any of you willing to go aboard?”

Frank and Jack were eager to, but insisted that Bess and George remain outside in the canoes.

“No point in you girls taking any unnecessary chances,” Frank said, and Bess gave him a grateful look.

In the end it was decided that only Nancy and Charles would follow the mysterious couple.

Charles paddled swiftly in pursuit. Soon only about a hundred yards separated the two crafts.

“Do you want me to overtake them?” Charles asked Nancy in a low voice.

“No,” she replied quietly. “Just keep them in sight. I’d like to find out where they’re going. It may have something to do with the mystery.”

The stream was so overgrown with weeds that it was difficult to find a dear passageway. But apparently the man in Colonial costume knew his way perfectly. Nancy concluded that he must be a native of the area.

“I wonder who he and Louvina are,” Nancy asked herself. “The woman may have been an actress and—oh, ouch!”

The tangled growth pulled at Nancy’s hair and whipped her face as Charles wound his way in and out among the lush vegetation. Once they lost the elderly couple completely. But finally the canoe emerged from the tangled mass into an open stream.

“Do you see the couple?” Nancy asked, turning around to look at him.

“No—yes, I do. They’re over on the right and way ahead.”

Fortunately, the moon went under a cloud at this moment. Nancy said she wished they might slip up unobserved and perhaps hear the couple’s plans.

“I’ll try to get closer,” Charles said. In the dim light he almost overtook the strange pair and after that followed more cautiously.

BOOK: The Haunted Showboat

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