078 The Phantom Of Venice Read online

  The words came tumbling out, as if a dam had suddenly broken. Once having started, Don went on talking, pouring out his heart. “I think I fell for you the first moment I saw you getting off the boat, Nancy, even before we exchanged a word. You bowled me over completely! If I acted gruff and uptight, well, now you know why. I couldn’t handle it, not when I already have a fiancee back in Ohio! Coral and I met in college, and we’ve been going steady ever since. It was love at first sight that time, too, for both of us. Only now I’ve started dreaming about you!”

  Nancy listened in a swirl of conflicting emotions—some pleasant, some not so pleasant. Her heart sang when Don said he loved her. She wanted to respond that she loved him, too. But he was somebody else’s guy, not hers. He belonged to a girl named Coral, back in Ohio, who expected to marry him . . . and where did that leave a girl from River Heights, named Nancy Drew?

  She wasn’t quite sure when or how it happened, but suddenly she became aware that she and Don were holding hands in the darkness, and she was telling him all about Ned Nickerson.

  “I’m glad you told me, Nancy,” Don was saying. “Now I don’t feel like such a two-timing, two-faced heel. The same thing happens to lots of people, I suppose . . . even to you, in a way. . . . The only thing is, what are we going to do about it, Nancy?”

  He had an arm around her now, and her head was on his shoulder.

  “We don’t have to make a crisis out of it,” she responded softly. “And there’s nothing to feel guilty about, either—not if we’re honest with ourselves, and . . . and with each other.” Nancy reached up and touched his cheek. “There’s lots of time to decide. Sooner or later our feelings will sort themselves out, and when they do, then we’ll know if what we feel is really love, and who’s the most important person in our lives!”

  Don was holding her tight now, and her arms were around his neck and their lips were meeting in a kiss that was warm and loving and exciting and, oh so tender! It seemed to Nancy that she’d never, ever before felt about anyone the way she felt about Don Madison at that moment—

  They broke apart suddenly as a key turned in the lock of the building’s front door—!

  16

  Night of the Omelet

  Don sprang to his feet and pulled Nancy up with him. He looked around swiftly for a place to hide. “Back here, love—!”

  He was pointing to a space behind the sofa, shielded by a row of chemical drums. They barely had time to duck down in it when the door opened.

  A man came in—husky, dark-haired, thirtyish, in a stained, rumpled suit. Enough moonlight came in from the summer night outside to reveal his face—haggard and unshaven, with a week’s growth of beard.

  It was Pietro Rinaldi! His captors had taken the bait! Nancy felt Don squeeze her hand excitedly.

  Pietro left the door open while his eyes became accustomed to the inner darkness. He strode toward the closet for a flashlight. Seconds later, he headed swiftly toward the storeroom where the Falcone glassware was on display. He moved with the tense, single-minded air of a man gripped by a terrible urgency.

  Don and Nancy rose from their hiding place and tiptoed after him. He flicked a wall switch, and the storeroom suddenly lit up. Then he began groping and searching among the glass paperweights.

  Evidently the one he was looking for wasn’t there. His searching became more frantic and desperate. He began muttering aloud, and within moments the mutters became loud explosive curses. Don shot a baffled look at Nancy. She responded by putting a finger to her lips.

  They backed quickly into the shadows as Pietro suddenly whirled around and rushed back to the office. They saw him snatch up the handset of a desk phone and start to dial. Moments later, someone must have answered at the other end of the line. Pietro cut loose with angry, frustrated outbursts in Italian, uttered at mile-a-minute speed.

  “I don’t believe this!” Don gasped in Nancy’s ear. “He’s talking to Domenic, the butler at the palazzo! It sounds as though th—”

  He broke off as Nancy’s fingers dug into his arm. Pietro had left the front door slightly ajar—and now it was being pushed open wider. Three people were coming in!

  Like fleeting shadows, they moved swiftly toward the doorway of the plant office. One was a woman; one of the two men held a gun.

  At the crucial moment, somebody’s foot scuffed a piece of glass and sent it tinkling across the floor. Pietro slammed the phone back in its cradle and whirled to face the doorway.

  “Don’t try anything foolish!” warned the gunman. Neither his accent nor his words were Italian.

  By the light from the office, Nancy could see the faces of the three intruders. The other man was Rubini, the Falcone glassworks manager.

  The woman was Katrina van Holst!

  “You know what we are after, Pietro, so let us not waste time!” she said crisply. “Give it to us, or you will never leave here alive!”

  “It’s gone!” Pietro snarled back. “Don’t ask me where! Some thieving rat snatched it while your thugs were holding me prisoner! Maybe your stooge Rubini took it! Why don’t you ask him?!”

  As the furious exchange went on, Don Madison suddenly moved forward on tiptoe. The attention of Katrina and her two companions was concentrated totally on the man in the office, and their angry voices covered any sound of footsteps.

  Suddenly Don lunged toward the gunman’s back! One arm clamped around the man’s neck in a choking grip. His other hand grabbed the intruder’s wrist.

  Instantly a violent struggle erupted! Pietro rushed at Rubini and staggered him with a fist to the mouth. Nancy grabbed Katrina’s long blond hair from behind and tugged with both hands till the Dutch woman screamed.

  The gunman dropped his weapon as Don twisted his wrist. A moment later Don sent him flying through the air with a martial-arts body throw. He slammed against the wall and landed on the floor in a stunned heap.

  Meanwhile, Don had snatched up the gun and taken charge of the situation. “Hold it—everybody! You three—Katrina, Rubini, you there on the floor—line up with your backs to the wall, and keep your hands in plain sight. Pietro, old pal—I think it’s time you did some talking.”

  “May I say something?” said Nancy.

  Don threw her a quizzical grin. “Why not? It was your game plan that brought all these characters out of the woodwork and into the open. Go right ahead.”

  “Is this what you were looking for, Mr. Rinaldi?” she said and plucked the rainbow glass paperweight out of her shoulder bag.

  The expression on Pietro’s face was the only answer needed. “Do you know what you are holding there?” he replied in a taut voice that was husky with emotion.

  “Drop your gun, Madison!” a voice suddenly broke in. “And if you value your life, do not look around!”

  Nancy didn’t have to. She knew it was Gianni Spinelli. He must have followed Katrina and her two companions, while they in turn were trailing Pietro.

  “Is he bluffing, Pietro?” Don gritted.

  The master glassblower shook his head. “No—unfortunately. Better do as he says.”

  Don let the gun fall to the floor.

  “Kick it this way, grullo!” Gianni ordered. Turning to Nancy, he added, “And you, cara, hand me your pretty little glass egg!”

  “Okay, if you insist,” said Nancy—and threw the paperweight in his face!

  Her move caught Gianni completely unprepared. He jerked his head and flung up an arm to block the glass missile.

  Don was on him like a tiger, staggering him with a right cross and kicking the gun out of his hand in a single lightning one-two combination!

  The rainbow paperweight lay on the floor, cracked in two. Something was protruding from one of the broken pieces.

  • • •

  Much later that night, Nancy, Don, and Pietro faced Carson Drew, Tara Egan and the Marchese del Falcone in the drawing room of the palace.

  Pietro had just finished telling his story. Five years ago in Morocco, he and Ro
lf Egan had been approached by an I.D.B., or illegal diamond buyer, named Hans Aacht. Over drinks in a Moorish cafe, he described how the world’s diamond business was tightly controlled by a single cartel, whose tough security force kept watch over all diamond mining on the African continent. But Aacht was sure he could build up a steady trade in precious stones from native prospectors—if Rolf and Pietro would grubstake him with a few thousand dollars.

  For a long time, the scheme yielded little profit. Then one day Aacht showed up in Venice with a huge raw diamond worth half a million dollars. His scheme had finally paid off with a tremendous jackpot!

  Unfortunately he had also run afoul of a deadly gang called the Diamante Network, which had close ties with the Mafia and considered international diamond smuggling its private domain. They wanted Aacht’s life or his huge gemstone.

  Aacht had slipped the diamond to Rolf, who in turn passed it to Pietro. Rolf disappeared into a Venetian canal. Pietro also disappeared, supposedly into the hands of professional kidnapers, but actually into the clutches of the Diamante Network, bossed by a beautiful but ruthless woman named Katrina van Holst.

  “What about the police?” Tara asked Pietro. “Won’t they be after you and Hans Aacht for taking the diamond out of Africa?”

  Pietro shook his head. “No, because we’ve committed no crime. It’s only the diamond cartel and their security force who try to stop outsiders from trading with native prospectors, as Hans did.”

  He explained that Hans had feared the Diamante gang might seize Tara and use her as a hostage to force Pietro into surrendering the diamond. But Nancy’s clever scheme had forced their hand and tricked them into revealing themselves.

  They had, at first, hired Gianni as a spy to help them find Rolf, but out of greed he had tried to grab the diamond for himself.

  The apron clue, which Gianni had passed on to the gang, had aroused Katrina’s interest in the Faberge egg, so she had helped her gangster gunhand enter the palace disguised as a masquerade party guest. He was the one who had turned out the lights and filched the egg, which, much to her disgust, had proved to contain only counterfeit gems.

  “An amazing feat of detection, my dear Nancy!” beamed Francesco del Falcone.

  “Now, if only you could find some trace of my father!” Tara added wistfully.

  “You’ve already done that yourself, Tara,” Nancy responded lightly.

  “Done what?”

  “Found a trace of your father. Don’t you recall those wet footprints you noticed on our bedroom carpet?”

  Tara’s eyes became huge. “Oh, Nancy! You’re not really implying they could’ve been made by Daddy’s ghost?”

  “Why not pinch him and find out?”

  “Pinch him?!” Tara stared in puzzlement at the teenage sleuth.

  “Sure,” said Nancy. “There’s a cellar dungeon where the Marchese’s ancestor hid out that has very wet floors, so the tracks could even have been made by a real flesh-and-blood human. In fact, here comes one right now you might try pinching!”

  A tall, bearded blond man had just walked into the room. Tara sprang up with a glad cry, and the two hugged each other so tightly that it seemed as though they were trying to make sure they would never be parted again.

  “I tried to let you know I was alive, dear,” Rolf Egan told his daughter, “first by slipping that shell into Nancy’s suitcase, and then by playing ghost.”

  “I—I don’t understand,” said Tara in happy bewilderment. “You mean you’ve been hiding out here at the palazzo all the time?”

  “Yes—ever since I disappeared. Pietro knew about the palace dungeon, so he sneaked me in there one night with Domenic’s help. Domenic’s known him all his life, you see. We figured I could hide out there till the Diamante gang got off our backs.”

  Rolf Egan went on to explain that the first time he tried to see Tara at night, she had screamed before he had a chance to take off his false face, leaving him no choice but to flee. The second time he played ghost, he had tried to calm her by whispering her name, but the effect on Tara was still so terrifying that she again screamed in fear.

  The ghostly legend of the Marchese’s ancestor had first given Nancy the idea that there might be a secret hiding place at the palazzo. The shell and the ghost calling Tara by name had, together, strengthened Nancy’s hunch that Rolf Egan might still be alive and hiding out in the palace.

  When he and Tara finally let go of each other, Rolf Egan walked over to clasp Nancy Drew’s hand gratefully. She showed him the broken paperweight. A huge raw diamond was sticking out of one of the halves.

  “It’s a shame such a beautiful work of art has to be ruined just to extract the gemstone. But as somebody once remarked, To make an omelet, you have to break an egg!”

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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