Nancy's Mysterious Letter Read online

  Nancy struggled to free herself, but within seconds she blacked out.

  CHAPTER XX

  Shattered Bells

  “I WONDER what could be keeping Nancy?” said Bess nervously when her friend did not reappear. “Our plane leaves in ten minutes.”

  “We’d better hunt for her,” George suggested. “Maybe she’s waiting for us at the gate.”

  Nancy was not at the gate, nor was she in any of the telephone booths.

  “She has the tickets, so I’m sure she wouldn’t go without us,” Bess remarked. “Let’s look in the powder room.”

  The cousins hurried to it. At first they did not see Nancy, but when Bess peered into the nursery, she gasped. Her friend was lying under a crib, covered with a blanket!

  “What’s the matter with her? Bess asked, frightened.

  “I think she’s been drugged,” George said grimly.

  The girls uncovered Nancy and shook her. She did not respond. Quickly they rolled the crib aside and put Nancy on a couch. Bess rushed to get a towel, held it under the cold water, and put it on Nancy’s forehead. George chafed her wrists and gently slapped her cheeks. Finally Nancy opened her eyes.

  “What happened to you?” Bess asked.

  Nancy blinked and took several deep breaths, but did not answer.

  “Maybe we’d better call a doctor and forget the trip,” said Bess.

  Her statement seemed to rouse Nancy to consciousness. “No, no,” she said weakly. “Help me up and I’ll be all right.”

  The girls did not question her further. They knew, without being told, that once more Edgar Nixon had tried to intervene in Nancy’s plans and keep her from following him. They were more convinced of this than ever when they found her handbag intact.

  Supporting Nancy, the two girls managed to walk her to the plane and onto it. By the time she reached her seat, the dazed girl declared she felt better, and whispered to her friends what had happened.

  “We guessed as much,” George replied. “Now just take it easy until we reach New York.”

  Nancy dozed during most of the trip, but by the time they set down at the airport, she declared she was all right.

  “This is really proving to be a dangerous mission,” the young sleuth said. “Are you both sure you want to carry on?”

  “Of course we do,” said George. “But I have a suggestion for you.”

  George felt that it might be wise for Nancy to try disguising herself.

  Bess suggested, “You have on a reversible coat. You can turn it inside out, and tie a scarf over your hair and wear sunglasses.”

  “All right. I’ll do it,” Nancy replied.

  As soon as the three girls got into a taxi to transfer them from LaGuardia Airport to Kennedy Airport, Nancy took off her coat, turned it inside out, and put it back on. The paisley pattern scarf which she had been carrying in a pocket was tied around her head, so only her face showed. Just before stepping from the cab in front of the airline building, she put on her sunglasses.

  George said, “I never finished telling you my idea. Nancy, pretend you’ve never met Bess and me. You run ahead and do your sleuthing. We’ll follow at a discreet distance.”

  Nancy said she would go to the ticket counter, while the other girls watched the passport desk for Edgar Nixon and Nancy Smith Drew.

  “Okay, and if one of us finds out something, we’ll raise our handbag in the air as a signal.”

  By this time Nancy was feeling her normal self and went at once to the airline counter. “Have Mr. Nixon and Miss Drew checked in yet?” she asked.

  The clerk consulted his list. “No.”

  Nancy took a seat nearby where she could watch the arriving travelers. Several who were making the flight to London came to the counter but none was either Edgar Nixon or Nancy Smith Drew.

  She was beginning to feel discouraged, when a couple hurried toward the long bench where she was seated. The man told the young woman to sit down and he hurried off to the counter.

  “He certainly looks like Edgar Nixon,” Nancy thought excitedly.

  As she continued to stare at him, she caught a glimpse of a cuff link. It was red with a black star in the center. Instantly Nancy recalled what Mr. Whittier, the River Heights jeweler, had told her—that the man who had purchased a lovely pin for Nancy Drew had bought red cuff links like these for himself!

  “I’m sure he’s Edgar Nixon!” Nancy decided, and nonchalantly raised her handbag into the air to alert Bess and George.

  She now turned her eyes toward the young woman. Was she the English heiress? Was she married?

  Nancy’s heart began to beat faster as the woman started to take off her gloves. She wore no wedding ring!

  Taking a chance that she had spotted the person for whom she had been searching, Nancy moved over and sat down beside her.

  “Pardon me, but aren’t you Miss Nancy Smith Drew?” she asked.

  The young woman jumped in surprise. “Yes, I am. Do I know you?” she asked.

  “No, but first of all let me tell you that my name is also Nancy Drew. I must talk to you quickly. Did you ever receive a letter from England telling you that you have inherited a small fortune?”

  “Why, no!” the amazed young woman exclaimed. “How did you know about this?”

  “Because the letter came to me by mistake and I have been trying for weeks to find you.”

  “Do you have the letter with you?”

  Nancy shook her head. “It was stolen. Miss Drew, it’s a long story, but before I tell you everything, I must know this. Is the man with you Edgar Nixon?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not married to him?”

  “No, not yet. He wanted to marry me right away and take me to England for a honeymoon, but I told him we would have to wait until we get to London. Even though I have no near relatives, I thought it would seem more like home to marry there.”

  Nancy took hold of one of Miss Drew’s hands and looked straight into her eyes. “I’m dreadfully sorry to have to tell you this. You must not marry Edgar Nixon. He’s wanted by the police for robbery and using the mails to defraud victims in a phony Lonely Hearts Club.”

  The actress gasped “I don’t believe it!”

  Nancy glanced up toward Bess and George. Both were holding up their handbags and looking toward the counter. Two men had approached Edgar Nixon.

  “Look over there, Miss Drew,” Nancy said. “Those are plainclothesmen arresting Edgar Nixon.”

  All the color drained from the actress’s face, but she got up when Nancy did and walked with her to the counter.

  They were just in time to hear one of the policemen say, “You’re under arrest!”

  As Edgar Nixon loudly protested, Nancy stepped forward.

  “I’m Nancy Drew from River Heights,” she introduced herself. Bess and George came up and confirmed the statement. Nancy went on, “I also accuse this man. He tried to harm me so that I could not frustrate his plans.”

  The other plainclothesman said that he had arranged for the use of an office in the airport so that they might talk in private. The two policemen marched Edgar Nixon toward it and the others followed. Miss Nancy Smith Drew, trembling, clung to Nancy.

  “I know this is dreadful for you,” the young detective told her, “but as soon as the shock is over, you will be grateful that you were saved from a very unhappy marriage.”

  During the conference that followed, all of Edgar Nixon’s unsavory schemes were brought out. He admitted having had two men to help him and a girl who had become a friend through his Lonely Hearts Club.

  “Why did you steal the letters from your brother’s mailbag?” Nancy asked him.

  A sneer came over the prisoner’s face. He gave a little laugh as he answered. “Tell your father his Mrs. Quigley is a gabby client. She joined my Lonely Hearts Club. The old gal sent me letters five pages long and told me all her business. So I knew exactly when the money was being mailed to Mr. Drew, and—well, I figured I need
ed it more than she did.

  “I was hiding and waiting for a chance to take the letter from Ira, when you stopped in your car and told him you’d give him cocoa at your house. That was my chance.”

  Edgar said that getting the Nancy Smith Drew letter was pure accident, but he had instantly planned to benefit by it. One of his club members had sent him an Emerson newspaper. In it was an item that the actress was coaching a play at the college. When he read Mr. Bates-Jones’s letter, Edgar had hurried to Emerson to make her acquaintance and a couple of days later asked her to marry him.

  All this time, Nixon had not looked at his fiancée who was on the verge of tears. He made no apologies to her, and when questioned by Nancy, he said he had intended to keep the knowledge of her inheritance from Miss Drew until after they were married.

  “Do you have the thousand dollars with you that you took from your brother?” Nancy asked the prisoner suddenly.

  Taken off guard, Edgar Nixon whipped out his wallet and threw it at the girl. “Take this to the old miser,” he shouted hysterically. “He never did treat me like a brother.”

  Nancy looked in the wallet. Besides the money, there were two plane tickets to London.

  As Edgar was led away, Nancy Smith Drew burst into tears. “What a fool I’ve been!” she sobbed. “First I walked out on those fine boys in the Drama Club because of Edgar. But I did peek in at their show before taking the things in my locker. And I never said good-by properly to Mrs. Roderick.

  “Edgar kept urging me to hurry with my packing and wouldn’t let me write a thank-you note. But while he was carrying my bags down, I managed to scribble a few verses that had a message in them. Edgar didn’t know what they meant.”

  “Nancy figured them out,” Bess said proudly.

  Miss Drew turned her tear-stained face toward Nancy. “You’ve been so wonderful. But,” she added sadly, “there’ll be no wedding bells for me and I had counted on my marriage so much. Oh dear, I don’t know what to do!”

  As Nancy thought of an appropriate answer, she suddenly realized that this mystery which she had enjoyed so much was coming to a close. The young detective always felt a vacuum in her life when this happened. But the feeling was not to last long. In a short time she would be working on another case, Sign of the Twisted Candles.

  Nancy put an arm around the actress. “I’ll tell you what you should do, Miss Drew,” she said, smiling. “Take one of these plane tickets and go to England tonight!”

  “Oh, do you think I should?”

  Bess and George backed Nancy up in urging the actress to go. “You can have a wonderful time,” Bess said, “and forget all your troubles.”

  Finally Nancy Smith Drew said, “You dear girls, I can never thank you enough.” Then she began to quote from Shakespeare:“ ‘But love is blind, and lovers

  cannot see

  The pretty follies that themselves

  commit.’ ”