The Greek Symbol Mystery Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1 - Mystery Plus Mystery

  Chapter 2 - Stolen Note

  Chapter 3 - Unwanted Mask

  Chapter 4 - The Intruder

  Chapter 5 - In the Ditch

  Chapter 6 - Hunting a Suspect

  Chapter 7 - Burglar Attempt

  Chapter 8 - Valuable Outburst

  Chapter 9 - The Strange Statue

  Chapter 10 - Surprise Visitors

  Chapter 11 - Clue on the Dock

  Chapter 12 - The Banded Freighter

  Chapter 13 - Boat Chase

  Chapter 14 - The Vanished Lawyer

  Chapter 15 - Corfu Snafu

  Chapter 16 - A Capture

  Chapter 17 - Nikos Deposits

  Chapter 18 - Barrel Trap

  Chapter 19 - Mosaic Lead

  Chapter 20 - Smugglers’ Arrest

  NANCY has two mysteries to solve, and the answers lie in the beautiful and exotic country of Greece. Money intended to help a needy village family disappears, and the New York agency responsible for the money closes suddenly. Nancy is asked to fly to Greece to investigate.

  When she is told that a large inheritance from a Greek tycoon, meant for her friend, Helen Nicholas, was stolen, she agrees to find the culprit. Bess and George join her on this dangerous mission.

  A poisonous snake in a basket of apples and a strange symbol stamped on a rare Byzantine mask are the clues. They lead Nancy and her friends to a ring of art smugglers and to the secret of the Greek symbol.

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  Copyright © 1981 by Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved. Published in 2005 by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. NANCY DREW MYSTERY STORIES® is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. S.A.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-07761-0

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  1

  Mystery Plus Mystery

  “Nancy, do you think you could help solve a mystery for me while you’re in Greece?” asked Mrs. Thompson, a friend and neighbor of the Drews. A tinge of sadness crept into the woman’s hazel eyes.

  “Oh, I’d love to,” the titian-haired eighteen-year-old replied. “What’s it about?”

  Nancy’s father, Carson Drew, a well-known River Heights attorney, had just given her an intriguing assignment to follow up in Athens. Now the young detective would have two mysteries to solve!

  “I’ll explain,” said Jeannette Thompson, seeing the excitement in Nancy’s face. “I’ve been sending money to the Papadapoulos family for about a year, but the last few payments disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?” Nancy repeated. “Were they stolen?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t send the money directly to Greece. There was an agency in New York—the Photini Agency—which transferred my donations. The main office is in Athens, and I assume that Mr. Georgiou, the New York manager, forwarded the money to Athens. Then it went to the family.”

  “You say that some of the money disappeared,” Nancy went on. “Do you mean the family never received it?”

  “That’s right,” Mrs. Thompson replied. “I used to get very sweet thank-you notes from the mother, but they stopped coming. Then, last week, I heard from her again. Mrs. Papadapoulos said she was writing because she had not heard from me in so long! Apparently, she contacted the Photini Agency in Athens about the missing payments. They told her that probably I had lost interest. Can you imagine such a thing?”

  Nancy shook her head in bewilderment. “No, I can’t,” she said. “What about the New York office?”

  “It closed suddenly.”

  Mrs. Thompson explained that she had tried to telephone Mr. Georgiou several times but there was never any answer. “I finally asked the police to investigate, and that’s how I found out the office had closed. According to the post office, all mail was to be sent to Mr. Georgiou in care of the Athens address.”

  “What’s his first name?” Nancy asked.

  “Dimith.”

  “Did he endorse your checks?”

  “Yes, with the name of the Photini Agency stamped underneath,” the woman said. “I can show you one.”

  Mrs. Thompson disappeared into her bedroom and soon returned with a small metal box. It contained numerous cancelled checks. She leafed through them quickly.

  “Here you are,” she said, handing one to the young detective.

  Nancy stared at the signature on the back. It was bold and distinctive. Obviously it belonged to a person of confidence.

  “Did you ever meet Mr. Georgiou?” Nancy asked.

  “No. All the arrangements were made through the mail. I had seen an ad to sponsor needy children in Greece and that’s how it all started. There are three children in the Papadapoulos family, but my donations were primarily intended to help send Maria to school.”

  Nancy’s mind was racing. Had Dimitri Georgiou kept the money for himself? How many other poor Greek families had he robbed? Or had someone else taken the money? But who?

  Nancy squeezed Mrs. Thompson’s hand. “We’ll do all we can,” the girl detective assured her.

  “We?” the woman asked.

  “My friends Bess and George are going with me,” Nancy explained.

  Bess Marvin and George Fayne were cousins and Nancy’s closest friends. They often helped her solve mysteries, even those in distant countries.

  “Well, my dear, is there anything else I ought to tell you?” Mrs. Thompson asked.

  “I’d like to make a copy of Dimitri Georgiou’s signature,” Nancy said. She pulled a small notepad and a felt-tip pen from her handbag, then carefully imitated the handwriting. “Clue number one,” she said, slipping the pad and pen back into her bag.

  When Nancy reached home that afternoon, she immediately called Bess and George to report her visit with Mrs. Thompson. “So,” she concluded, “between looking for Helen Nicholas’s cousin, her missing inheritance, and Mrs. Thompson’s money, we’ll have plenty to do in Athens!”

  “I’ll say,” George replied. “I can’t wait!”

  Hannah Gruen, the Drews’ housekeeper who had helped rear Nancy since she was three years old, when her mother had passed away, overheard the conversation. “Your trip sounds like trouble to me,” she said, frowning.

  “Oh, Hannah,” Nancy said, chucking the woman’s chin affectionately. “You worry so.”

  When the young detective and her friends boarded the plane for New York the next day, she grinned. “Last night Hannah dreamed that we’d be greeted at Athens airport by gorgons—monsters with snakes for hair!”

  Plump Bess Marvin ran a hand through her blond waves and shivered. “Thanks for telling me. I’m nervous about flying as it is. ”

  George laughed. “Didn’t you say Hannah was having a permanent today, Nancy? I bet that’s what inspired the nightmare!”

  As the three girls settled into their seats, George yawned. “How long do we have to wait in New York between flights?” she asked Nancy.

  “Three hours.”

  “In that time,” Bess said, “we could take a sightseeing tour of the whole city. ”

  “That’s just what I had in mind,” Nancy said.

  The cousins looked at h
er in surprise. “Are you serious?” George asked.

  Nancy nodded. “Here’s the address of the Photini Agency in Astoria. We might pick up a clue.”

  “Out there? We’ll miss our plane!” Bess objected.

  “No, we won’t.”

  “Didn’t you know that every New York taxi has wings?” George chuckled.

  “Just so long as ours has four good tires,” Bess replied.

  The flight to New York took little more than an hour. Within twenty minutes after landing, the trio had flagged down a cab. It looped onto a service road that fed into a busy highway.

  “That’s the building over there,” the taxi driver said, taking the exit for Astoria.

  Bess gaped at a line of people holding signs and marching up and down the block.

  “Who’s on strike?” George asked.

  “The tenants,” their driver replied as they pulled close.

  Nancy took some money from her wallet and handed it to the man. “We’ll get out here. Thanks. ”

  “Not me,” Bess said. “I’m going back to the airport. ”

  As George nudged her cousin out the door, Nancy caught sight of the storefront that bore the name PHOTINI. A peppery-haired man was sweeping out the empty store.

  “Let’s talk to him,” Nancy suggested.

  But as they started to slip through the picket line, brusque voices shouted at them. “Hey, where do you think you’re going?” one cried out. “Yeah, that’s what I want to know!” yelled the other.

  George stared into a pair of angry eyes. “We’re only trying to—” she began apologetically.

  The man behind them snapped like a firecracker. “Say, who are you anyway?” he asked George. “You look like Mr. Sully’s daughter!”

  “That’s her, all right,” another man added in an accusing tone. “You tell your father we’re going to see that all his buildings are condemned by the city!”

  “She’s not—” Nancy interrupted, but was cut off as the crowd pressed closer to the girls. She grabbed George by one arm while Bess hung onto the other.

  “We’re cousins,” she murmured. “Her name is Fayne and mine is—”

  Her words trailed off as the men barked back. “Go home, Miss Sully. We’re the new landlords here!”

  The men laughed harshly, forcing the girls to step off the curb into the street.

  “Those men aren’t going to let us within two feet of that agency,” George declared.

  “I knew we should’ve stayed at the airport,” Bess put in as the cleaning man retreated into the store.

  “Let’s go,” Nancy said in disappointment. She waved to an oncoming taxi. “I hope our batting average improves when we get to Athens.”

  The girls were still discussing the side trip when they boarded their plane, an Olympic Airways jet. While Bess went ahead to find their seats, Nancy stopped to talk with the copilot. He was young and had dark hair that spun in waves across his forehead.

  “I flew a small plane once,” Nancy told him. “I can’t imagine sitting behind controls like these.”

  “Well, as long as we aren’t in motion yet, ” the copilot replied, ducking into the front compartment, “be my guest.”

  “Oh, are you sure it’s all right?”

  “Just don’t touch anything. Okay?”

  She nodded and slipped into the comfortable bucket seat next to him. “This is fantastic!” Nancy exclaimed, leaning toward the bank of knobs and gauges.

  Suddenly a man’s voice bellowed at the pair from behind them. “What is this? Some joke? You let a girl try to fly this plane? Are you crazy?”

  The copilot tried to explain but could not get a word in as the angry passenger kept complaining. Finally, Nancy stood up and stared calmly at the burly man. His face was the shade of a pale tomato.

  “If you’re going to fly this plane,” he yelled, “I’ll see to it we never leave the ground!”

  “You have nothing to worry about,” Nancy replied. “I’m only a passenger like yourself.”

  “Then what are you doing in the pilot’s seat?” the man demanded.

  Nancy explained. She had just finished when one of the flight attendants approached the group. “Please be seated, Mr. Isakos,” she said to the man and handed him a Greek newspaper.

  Instead of thanking her, he merely shrugged. “Girls should be kept in their place—certainly nowhere near the controls of an airplane!”

  George, who had heard part of the conversation, was angry at the man’s presumptuous tone. “In case you didn’t know,” she said as he walked down the aisle, “Amelia Earhart was an ace pilot and so is Nancy Drew!”

  Isakos did not answer her. He slid into a seat not far from the girls.

  Nancy frowned. “We’ll probably have to listen to his complaints all the way to Athens!”

  She purposely averted her eyes from his as she moved toward her seat. Halfway there she noticed a piece of paper on the floor. She glimpsed the name PHOTINI printed boldly in the upper lefthand corner, and picked it up.

  “What’s that?” Bess asked as Nancy slid into her seat next to George and fastened her seat belt.

  “I don’t know,” Nancy said.

  The three young detectives stared curiously at her discovery. It was the torn letterhead of the Greek agency that was under suspicion! Beneath the printed address was a most mysterious-looking doodle:

  2

  Stolen Note

  Instantly Nancy pulled a small magnifying glass from her handbag and trained it over the unusual doodle. “It looks like the Greek letter phi,” she said.

  “But what are those curlicues at each end?” Bess whispered.

  “Maybe that means the doodler is going in circles!” George replied, grinning.

  “Or it could mean something important,” Nancy said. She strained her neck to look out the window as the plane taxied into the lineup ready for take-off. The runway shimmered in the heat.

  “Do you think it’ll be this hot in Greece?” Bess asked.

  “Hotter,” George teased. “I’ve heard it gets to at least 120 degrees in the shade—”

  “Of an olive tree,” Nancy added absently.

  Paying small attention to the light banter between her friends, she stared at the note again. Suddenly, she realized there was some faded, almost invisible handwriting on the Photini letterhead.

  “Look at this!” she exclaimed, handing the piece of paper and her magnifying glass to George.

  “Let me see it, too,” Bess said.

  “In a minute,” her cousin replied. She held the glass over the words Nancy had indicated. “All I can make out is Záppeion and Maïou.”

  “Záppeion,” Nancy repeated. “Isn’t that the place in Athens that has a huge military exhibit?”

  Her listeners shrugged. “I don’t know about that,” George said, “but I think Maïou means the month of May in Greek.”

  Bess was able to detect one or two more words in the message, and together they reconstructed the sentence: rendezvous stó Záppeion tís íkosi pénde Maïou. Nancy filled in the letters with her pen as the plane’s engines began to roar and the flight attendants returned to their stations for take-off. Once the plane was in the air, Nancy summoned one of them.

  “Will you please translate this for me?” she asked, indicating the message in Greek.

  The young woman wrinkled her forehead for a second, then answered. “It says ‘meeting at Záppeion on the 25th of May.’ That was a month ago.”

  “Where exactly is Záppeion?” Nancy inquired.

  “It’s not far from my apartment—behind the King’s Garden in the heart of Athens. If you haven’t been there, you ought to go. ”

  “I’m sure we will,” Bess said. “What other sightseeing do you recommend?”

  “Oh, there is so much—the National Archeological Museum or the Benaki, for instance. And you must see Plaka, the old section of Athens. Also, monastiraki, the flea market.”

  “Isn’t that the place Helen
Nicholas told us about?” Bess whispered to Nancy.

  “Yes, she said it’s within walking distance of our hotel. ”

  When the flight attendant excused herself, Nancy pulled out the notepad with Dimitri Georgiou’s signature. She compared it with the message on the letterhead. The formation of the letters was the same!

  “So I guess we can conclude Dimitri wrote this,” George said, “and met someone at Záppeion on May 25th. But who and why, and was the meeting relevant to our case?”

  “The point is,” Nancy said, drawing two sets of crisscrossed lines on the back of the letterhead, “whoever he wrote this to is probably on this plane. ”

  “But we don’t want him to know we’re looking for Mr. Georgiou, do we?” Bess declared. She formed an X in a corner box of the tic-tac-toe pattern she had just drawn.

  “If you mean we shouldn’t ask someone to claim the letterhead,” Nancy went on, “I agree.”

  She and Bess played a few games of tic-tac-toe. Then dinner was served. There was a generous portion of moussaka on each tray, along with fresh green salad garnished with feta cheese and small black olives.

  “I love eggplant,” Bess said, savoring her last forkful.

  After the meal, the girls slipped on headphones to listen to music and later to the sound track of the in-flight movie. To their delight, it had been filmed in Athens. Nancy paid less attention to the story than to the twisting alleyways the girls would investigate tomorrow!

  When it was over, the lights in the plane remained dim. Restless passengers got up to stretch while others, including the young detectives, asked for pillows and blankets.

  “Good night,” George yawned presently.

  “ ’Night,” Bess said.

  Nancy wedged her handbag next to her, then closed her eyes, sinking soon into a deep sleep. It was only an hour or so later that she awoke as she felt her handbag being shoved against her. Groggily she glanced into the aisle. She saw no one there.

  It must’ve been my imagination, she concluded, and drifted off again.

  Sunlight flooded the plane a few hours later as it droned across southern Europe. It was three A.M. in New York but nine o’clock there.