The old man shook his head. “Nobody in this here bayou has got anything against Uncle Rufus.” He changed the subject abruptly. “Well, I’ve got to go an’ get another boat. You ladies climb some trees, else some hungry ole alligator may bother you.”
Bess gave a little squeal and instantly started wading toward a swamp oak.
“Where are you going to find a boat?” Nancy asked Uncle Rufus.
The old man said a friend would lend him one. He knew a short cut to the man’s cabin. With a smile Uncle Rufus added that he was used to sloshing through the swamp on foot. “I won’t be gone more’n half an hour,” he said.
“Half an hour?” Bess wailed. “You mean I have to stay up in this tree all that time?”
“I’se afraid you do,” Uncle Rufus replied.
As he was about to start off, Nancy suddenly said, “Listen! I think I hear a boat coming!”
They all remained quiet and presently a canoeist turned a bend just ahead in the narrow part of the stream.
“Alex!” Nancy exclaimed.
The young man looked up. Seeing the girls and Uncle Rufus, he called out, “What in the world is going on?”
Quickly Nancy explained. As Alex came closer he said, “A mat of vines, you say? That’s strange. Apparently it wasn’t here half an hour ago when I went up the stream.”
“Did you see anyone else around?” Nancy asked him.
“No, I didn’t,” Alex answered. Then he added, “Well, all of you climb aboard and I’ll take you home. I suppose you were on your way to see the showboat?”
Nancy confessed that they were. She expressed amazement that Alex had dared paddle up to the
River Princess
alone.
The young man laughed. “Oh, I’m not afraid of ghosts,” he said. “These stories about that showboat being haunted are a lot of nonsense. But just the same, I’m convinced it would be foolhardy to try clearing out the rest of the stream and moving the showboat to the Havers’ estate before Mardi Gras time. In fact, I think it would be silly to move the
River Princess
at any time. She isn’t worth it.”
“You mean the boat’s in bad shape?” Bess asked.
“She sure is. Practically rotting away.”
There was no further conversation on the subject until they neared the dock at Sunnymead. Then Alex remarked, “I’m going to advise Colonel Haver to call off all work and investigation. Nancy, I hope you’ll back me up. Then you won’t have to bother with any mystery and all of us can have a good time together.”
Nancy did not reply. Instead, as the group stepped out of the canoe, she suggested to Uncle Rufus that he come inside the house. “You can bathe and borrow some clothes from Pappy Cole.”
Uncle Rufus laughed. “Thank you kindly, miss, but I’se used to the swamp mud. I got a little bathin’ pond of my own up to the cabin. I’ll just amble along through the water till I git home.”
He had gone only fifty feet when a new idea occurred to Nancy. Running along the shore, she caught up to him. In a low voice she said, “I’d still like to visit the showboat. Would it be possible for you to take the other girls and me some time today?”
“Why, yes, miss,” Uncle Rufus answered. “Could you all come to my cabin when you git fixed up? I’ll be ready an’ I’ll borrow that ka-noo I was tellin’ you about.”
Nancy asked directions and was told how to reach the cabin by car. “We’ll be there in an hour,” she said.
When Nancy returned to the rest of her group, Alex adroitly tried to find out about her conversation with Uncle Rufus. But the young detedective side-stepped his questions.
“What’s next on the program?” Alex inquired, as he and the girls walked toward the Haver mansion.
“A bath and a shampoo!” George announced firmly.
When the girls reached their adjoining bedrooms, Nancy whispered her plan about starting again for the showboat. Bess said that she would be glad to go but wondered how they could keep Alex from accompanying them or finding out where they were going.
“This time we’re not going to tell anybody where we’re going,” Nancy said. “You remember Colonel Haver telling me I’d have free rein in solving this mystery and wouldn’t have to report to anybody. Let’s keep this trip a secret.”
“Why the secrecy, Nancy?” Bess asked. “Surely you don’t suspect anyone in this house of being mixed up in the mystery, do you?”
“I didn’t mean that,” Nancy answered. “If our plan becomes known, we may be interrupted again to go sight-seeing.”
George chuckled. “Also, Bess, you don’t have to be suspicious of people like Alex just because you don’t like them. I suppose he means well, but I can’t stand that man and I know Nancy can’t.”
“Well, I can’t either,” admitted Bess. “But, Nancy, surely you don’t think he put that barrier rope across the river to keep us from seeing the showboat, do you?”
“No. But he’s not very consistent. First, he wanted to join forces with me and solve the mystery—undoubtedly to make a hit with his future father-in-law. Now he says he’s going to advise him to drop the whole proposition and even wants me to back him up!”
George laughed. “Talk about women changing their minds!”
The girls were ready in half an hour and went downstairs. Donna Mae and Alex were playing tennis on a court near the house. Colonel and Mrs. Haver, Nancy learned from Mammy Matilda, had gone to town.
Nancy and her friends left the mansion by a side door and walked to their car. Taking the service road, Nancy avoided the tennis court and drove off. Following Uncle Rufus’s directions, she turned from the main road onto a bayou lane.
In a little while she came to a modest brown wooden shack in a grove of cypress trees. The girls got out and walked toward the building.
“Wait!” Bess cried out. “This can’t be the right house. Do you hear what I do?”
From the cabin came the sounds of doleful chanting and the rise and fall of a wailing voice, evidently praying.
“Sounds like a voodoo session,” George observed.
The girls stood still and listened. Singsong mutterings followed the chanting.
A moment later a small boy came from the cabin and ran toward the girls. “What you all want?” he asked.
“Is this Uncle Rufus’s home?” Nancy inquired.
“Yassum, it is,” the boy replied. “But you cain’t see him now.”
“But we have an appointment with him,” said Nancy.
“Uncle Rufus had a ’mergency case,” the boy said.
“Emergency case?” George asked. “Is Uncle Rufus a doctor?”
“Yassum,” said the little boy. As he ran off, he called back, “Uncle Rufus is a voodoo doctor!”
The girls were amazed.
“I don’t want Uncle Rufus casting any spells on me!” Bess said firmly.
Nancy was thoughtful. Finally she asked, “Do you suppose Uncle Rufus could head a group of voodoo believers who hold secret meetings on the showboat?”
George said it was very likely. “And perhaps they’re deliberately haunting it so the boat won’t be moved!” she suggested.
“We’ll try to find out. But we mustn’t make Uncle Rufus suspicious,” she warned, and her friends nodded.
At that moment Uncle Rufus’s “patient,” an elderly colored woman, came from the cabin. She was singing a hymn. As she passed the girls she smiled at them happily but did not speak.
After the woman was out of hearing distance, Bess remarked, “She acts as if she were in a trance!”
“She sure does,” said George.
Just then Uncle Rufus appeared. As if reading the girls’ thoughts, he explained that when the woman had come to visit him she had been limping. A radiant expression spread over the old man’s face when he added, “Now through prayer she’s cured. We sang an’ we prayed together.”
In unison the girls said, “We’re glad,” but made no other reference to the woman or the subject of voodooism.
For several seconds Uncle Rufus stood looking after his “patient,” then he turned to the girls, “I’se ready to take the trip now.”
CHAPTER IX
The
River Princess
THE CANOE proceeded along the bayou stream in leisurely fashion. Uncle Rufus paddled evenly but slowly. Now and then he would stop along the edge to point out an herb.
“Are some of them spices?” Nancy asked.
Uncle Rufus said a few were, but most of the swamp herbs were used for medicinal purposes.
Now that the old man had started talking about the bayou, he went on and on, telling about its wild life. “Take spiders,” he said. “They represents the devil on this earth. They pi-son folks, an’ snakes do, too. You got to be mighty careful of ’em.”
Uncle Rufus said that on the other hand the turtle represented great patience. “Just like God’s patience with man,” he added, smiling. “And a turtle knows enough not to stick its neck out an’ get into other folks’ business.”
As the girls chuckled, Uncle Rufus suddenly called their attention to a screeching sound. “Know what that is?”
“Oh, it’s a birdcall, isn’t it?” George asked.
Uncle Rufus nodded. “Do you know what kind?”
“A wild duck?” Nancy guessed.
“No,” Uncle Rufus replied, “but somebody’s sure ’nuff tryin’ to imitate one.”
“Is it being used as a signal?” Nancy asked.
“Mebbe so,” Uncle Rufus answered. “But it’s an awful bad imitation. Nobody who knows the bayou would be fooled by that.”
Just then from the opposite direction came another call, exactly the same as the first. The girls exchanged meaningful glances. Who was imitating a wild duck’s cry? Suddenly Uncle Rufus chuckled and said that a couple of city boys must be playing a game in the bayou.
Nancy and her friends, although they did not say so aloud, did not come to the same conclusion. It was possible that persons were signaling with some sinister purpose—perhaps to set another trap for the girls!
Meanwhile, the canoe had already entered the narrow part of the stream. Fifteen minutes later Uncle Rufus sang out:
“The
River Princess
is just ahead!”
He paddled around a bend and the girls found themselves facing a small pond. At the far side of it, against a backdrop of moss-covered oaks, lay the old showboat.
It was about a hundred feet long, twenty-five feet wide, and had two decks. The craft had listed slightly and its lookout tower had been damaged by a falling tree.
Uncle Rufus chuckled. “I—I guess the
River Princess
was plenty proud in her day. Hundreds of gentlefolks used to come to see the shows.”
Bess gave a great, audible sigh. “I don’t blame Colonel Haver for wanting to restore the
River Princess.
She’s the most romantic thing I’ve seen in a long time.”
“And one of the worst wrecks,” George retorted.
Nancy smiled. “I agree, partly, with both of you. But really I don’t think this showboat is beyond repair. Let’s go aboard and look for ourselves.”
At that moment hammering started on the craft. Bess involuntarily gave a shudder and Uncle Rufus looked startled.
Nancy grinned and said quickly, “Don’t worry. Ghosts rarely work in the daytime.” In a louder voice she called, “Anybody home?”
A moment later a tall young man appeared on the lower deck and walked toward the railing. He was fine-featured and had reddish hair.
“That must be Charles Bartolome,” Bess said in a low voice. “I’ve seen his picture.”
“That’s Mr. Bartolome all right,” Uncle Rufus spoke up.
The young man, after his first look of surprise at seeing callers, smiled at the group in the canoe. “Hi!” he called.
Introductions were quickly exchanged. Under her breath, Bess murmured, “How in the world could Donna Mae ever have switched from him to Alex Upgrove?” Nancy and George shared the same feeling but made no comment.
Nancy told Charles Bartolome why she and her friends had come to the showboat and how she hoped to clear up the mystery.
“We want to have the
River Princess
brought to Sunnymead, so that the ball the Havers are planning will be a big success.”
“I, too, would like to see the mystery solved,” said Charles. He did not mention the ball. “Good luck to you all.”
“We’ll probably need your help,” Nancy told him. “As a start, would you mind showing us around the
River Princess?”
“I’d be delighted to,” he replied. “I’ve become very fond of the old gal. But as soon as my job of restoring the showboat is completed, I’m leaving for New York. I’m going to live there permanently and continue my work as an architect.”
The girls were sure they knew the reason for the move. With Donna Mae married to Alex, he would no longer want to live in the New Orleans neighborhood.
Uncle Rufus waited in the canoe while the girls climbed a ladder and went aboard. Charles led them inside to the auditorium. Fastened to the sloping floor were many rows of old-fashioned, cushioned opera chairs. A balcony, ornate in design, ran around three sides of the room, and on the fourth side was a stage. A tattered red-and-gold curtain hung down at the front of it.
Charles remarked cheerfully, “A couple of coats of paint will do wonders for the
River Princess.
Actually the old boat is not in such bad shape. It’s just—” The young man paused.
His listeners waited for him to go on. Finally he said, “It’s just that we can’t find anybody willing to work on her or move her. And the men who were clearing out this part of the stream won’t continue.”
“Is it because they were frightened by something which happened on the boat?”
“Oh, there have been all sorts of rumors,” Charles replied. “One was that the calliope on board actually played. That would be impossible, of course. The old organ has been out of commission for years.”
Charles went on to say that he himself had done some work in starting the restoration of the
River Princess,
but that what he had rebuilt was mysteriously hacked during the night.