The Message in the Haunted Mansion Read online

  “I am?” Hannah looked perplexed.

  “Yes,” Nancy said. “Tell me: What do you find at the end of the rainbow?”

  “Why, a pot of gold,” Hannah answered.

  “Right,” Nancy said. “You’ve solved the mystery, Hannah!”

  16

  Yerba Buena Gold

  “Lizzie’s gold is buried in the mansion,” Nancy whispered to George. “Just like in the song, it’s at the end of the rainbow—a rainbow cast by the stained glass where the phoenix on the Chinese mantel once rose.”

  George gasped. “Nan, that’s brilliant! Let’s go find it.”

  “Find what?” Bess demanded, as she strolled over.

  Nancy glanced at her watch. It was one-thirty. “No time to explain,” she said quickly. “Bess, you and Hannah go back to the antiques booth. Try to keep Louis from leaving. And if he does leave, call me at the mansion. Call me at once!”

  Outside, Nancy and George flagged a taxi that was just letting someone out. As it pulled up to them, Nancy frowned. It was a green-and-white car—a Bay City Cab. But luckily, Charlie wasn’t driving it.

  Nancy gave the driver the address of the mansion, asking him to hurry. Before she could stop him, he picked up his radio transmitter and told his location and destination to his dispatcher. She winced. In his cab, Charlie would hear the radio message and know that a cab was heading from the Winter Festival to the mansion on California Street. He might figure out that someone was onto him!

  When the cab pulled up in front of the mansion, Nancy quickly paid the driver, and she and George jumped out. Barging through the front door, Nancy saw the rainbow on the blank wall. She placed her hand on the wall at the end of the rainbow. “The phoenix in the Chinese mantel used to sit right here, over the fireplace,” she explained.

  “But where is the gold?” George asked.

  “The phoenix is supposed to rise from its own ashes,” Nancy said.

  “In the old fireplace!” George said excitedly.

  “We need a tool to pry up the boards.” Nancy snapped her fingers. “Charlie’s tool kit.” Holding her full skirt before her, Nancy ran to the saloon and returned with the tool kit. Using a chisel, she began prying up the floorboards.

  Suddenly Nancy heard footsteps on the outside steps. Her heart jumped into her throat, and she whirled around.

  Tim stuck his head in the front door. “I saw you run into the house,” he said. “What’s up?”

  “A treasure hunt,” George replied.

  In a far corner under the boards, Nancy’s groping hands touched something soft. She gave a tug and out came a canvas bag tied with rope. Her hands trembled excitedly as she untied the cord and held the bag upside down. Gold coins poured out.

  Nancy picked up a coin. “Eighteen seventy-eight.”

  “The loot from the Christmas Day robbery,” George said, clearly awed. “Christmas gold!”

  At that moment the telephone in the office rang. Nancy leapt up and ran over to answer it.

  “Nancy, it’s Hannah,” she heard the housekeeper’s familiar voice. “Louis left the festival in a taxi ten minutes ago. I had to wait for a phone to call you.”

  Nancy’s heart began racing again. Louis would be there any minute! “Thank you, Hannah.” Nancy hung up the receiver and hurried back to the entry hall. “Louis is coming! Pack up the gold,” she said to George and Tim. “And fast—we don’t have much time. I’ll call Lieutenant Chin.”

  Just then Nancy saw a shadow sneaking past the glass door at the rear of the entry hall. The door burst open. Charlie loomed in the doorway. He must have come in through the kitchen, Nancy realized.

  Then the front door burst open, too. Louis stood there, a small silver gun in his hand. He no longer looked charming and polite. His eyes had hardened into a cold stare, and the corners of his mouth were pulled down.

  “Run, Tim!” Nancy yelled. Tim sprinted past Charlie, ducking under his arms.

  “Go after him!” Louis shouted. Charlie spun around and ran limping out after Tim.

  Louis stared at the gold, his eyes gleaming, but he kept his gun pointed toward the girls. Nancy backed against the wall.

  Charlie returned. “The kid got away.”

  Nancy silently breathed a sigh of relief. If Tim remembered what she’d said a moment earlier about calling Lieutenant Chin, she felt sure he would call the police. If she could just keep Louis talking until the police arrived! But she also needed a weapon, just in case. She began to fidget with the tiny bonnet perched on her head. If she could find the hatpin …

  George saw Nancy’s movements and understood at once. Still kneeling, George reached slowly for her hat on the floor beside her. George’s fingers searched among the plumes and then stopped. George had found her hatpin now.

  “So you were the other bidder on the mansion,” Nancy said calmly to Louis, hiding the hatpin in the palm of her hand.

  He sniffed and shrugged. “I was out of the country purchasing antiques when the mansion came up for sale,” he said. “I’d been waiting for it for a couple of years. When I returned, I made an offer much higher than the asking price. But then Rose and Abby matched it.”

  “How did you figure out about the gold?” Nancy asked, playing for time.

  Louis let loose a short, barking laugh. “A woman came to my store to sell a brooch—the emerald brooch your friend Bess admired so much. When I inquired about the brooch’s history, the woman said her grandmother, Nellie Beecham, had been willed the brooch by Lizzie Applegate. She said her grandmother had told her stories of Lizzie’s hidden treasure. I was already familiar with Lizzie’s history. I was sure the treasure was here.”

  “So after Rose and Abby bought the house, you started creating the accidents,” Nancy said.

  “Yes,” he replied. “With Chalie’s help. In fact, it was Charlie who let me know you were here just now. He heard your driver on the cab radio and swung by the pavilion to let me know.”

  Nancy turned to Charlie’s. “It was you who cut the cords on the window so it would crash. You left the tap running that caused the flood. And you filed down the chandelier chain.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said gruffly, his face reddening. Nancy thought he seemed embarrassed.

  “But why did you leave the file on the refrigerator?” George asked Charlie.

  Charlie shrugged. “I took the chandelier to the kitchen to clean it—to wash the globes and crystal pendants. That’s where I filed the chain. I’d just finished when Abby barged in and wanted to help. Since my tool kit was out in the entry, I just put the file on the refrigerator real quick, so she wouldn’t see it. When I came back to the refrigerator for it the next day, it was gone.”

  Nancy nodded. Tim had taken the file that night to cut the cake. “You almost ran us down in the Presidio,” she said to Charlie. “Why?”

  “I asked Charlie to,” Louis answered for Charlie. “When I dropped off the roses, I saw you two jogging toward the Presidio. I figured you needed to be discouraged somehow from your little detective efforts.”

  “You left the threatening note on the pillow,” Nancy said to Louis.

  “Yes,” Louis said with a chilling smile. “The gardenia fragrance was a nice touch, don’t you think? I hoped you would suspect Abby, since she has some gardenia perfume. I gave it to her myself.”

  “You cut the brake lines?” Nancy asked Louis.

  Louis shook his head. “I had Charlie do that. I told him where you’d be. I had Cassandra make the phony call about Hannah.”

  “Cassandra?” Nancy asked. Had she helped with the sabotage too? Was that why she was so upset earlier when Nancy stopped by Louis’s store?

  “The day of the fire,” George put in, “how did you get into the mansion?”

  “I used Charlie’s keys,” Louis said. “I wanted to look at the historical documents while everyone else was out. But then I saw the ashes in the fireplace, and I remembered Rose’s letters. So I started the fire.” Louis began to look around.
Nancy knew he was getting restless. When would the police get here?

  “The fire turned out to be unnecessary,” Louis went on. “Lizzie’s papers told me nothing. How did you find the gold?” he said with a sneer.

  Nancy kept silent. She wouldn’t give Louis the satisfaction of knowing that the clue was in the song.

  Now Louis became angry. “Tie them up!” he ordered Charlie.

  “I’ll get some rope,” Charlie said, going to the back hall.

  Nancy watched Charlie leave. With one man gone, she knew this was their chance. She lunged at Louis, using her hatpin to strike at his gun hand. With a quick leap, George stabbed Louis in the cheek with her hatpin, drawing blood.

  “Ahhhhhhh!” he screamed, dropping the gun.

  The girls tore across the hall in a rush of silk and taffeta. Louis was blocking the front door, and Charlie was in the back hall. The only way to go was down the saloon stairs. As they ducked that way, Nancy paused just long enough to pull the latch on the inside of the glass door. Nancy and George raced down the stairs into the dark saloon.

  “The trapdoor,” Nancy told George. “Take off your petticoat. You won’t make it through the tunnel with that on.” She heard a crashing noise above as Louis and Charlie began to batter at the locked door to the stairs.

  Having hurriedly shed their huge petticoats, the girls crawled through the narrow tunnel to Tim’s secret room. Safe for the moment, they turned and looked through the two-way mirror. They saw Louis and Charlie frantically search the saloon. Louis picked up Nancy’s empty petticoat and gestured angrily. Then the men returned upstairs.

  “Go up the ladder into the pantry,” Nancy whispered. “But be totally quiet, okay?”

  Nancy and George climbed to the pantry. Nancy spotted a fire extinguisher on the pantry wall. She pulled its pin and gave it to George. Then they grabbed another fire extinguisher from the back hallway.

  Sirens sounded in the distance. “Let’s get out of here,” the girls heard Charlie say in the entry hall. “That blond kid must’ve called the police!”

  “Do you have all the gold?” Louis said.

  Now! Charging into the entry hall, the girls swung the fire extinguishers before them, spraying the men. Just then Nancy saw the front door open.

  “Police!”

  “I’ll wait in Yerba Buena town,”

  in a house high above the sea.”

  Nancy, Bess, George, Mary, Tim, Rose, Hannah, and Emily all gathered around the piano down in the saloon, singing while Abby played. At the end of the song, they clapped and cheered.

  “Thank you, girls, for everything,” Rose said. “You saved the mansion. You saved my dream.”

  “Hannah provided the most important clue,” Nancy said. Hannah beamed.

  “Lizzie’s papers were found in the red duffel bag,” Nancy reported. “I’m sorry about your letters, Rose. I’m afraid they’re lost forever.”

  Rose smiled sadly. “I’ve accepted that now. And Louis’s betrayal.” With a plucky spirit, she lifted her chin. “Abby, I’d like to donate Lizzie’s papers to the public library.”

  “Of course, Rose,” Abby said.

  “What will happen to Louis and Charlie?” Bess asked.

  “I just spoke to Lieutenant Chin,” Nancy answered. “Both men are in custody. The police will go easy on Charlie. Apparently, Cassandra once stole a valuable silver pendant from Louis’s shop, and Louis used that to blackmail her and Charlie into helping him.”

  “We thought you were behind the accidents, Abby,” George confessed.

  “You were so mysterious,” Bess said.

  “I’m sorry,” Abby said. “I needed to keep my magic tricks a secret to see if they would really work on an audience.”

  “I believed Lizzie’s ghost was here,” Bess murmured. “We saw her so many times. The blur in the photograph. The spirit at the séance. The figure in the mirror—but that was really you, Tim.”

  Rose turned toward the boy, who stood with his dog cradled in his arms. “Tim, now that Charlie’s gone, we could use some extra help,” she said. “We can’t pay much, but you could live here at the mansion. Will you stay?”

  “Will I?” Tim’s blue eyes opened wide. “That’s great! Thank you!” Tim hugged his dog to his chest. “Can Tramp stay, too?”

  “Tramp, too,” Rose said.

  “As long as he doesn’t chase Alfreida,” Abby added with a teasing voice.

  “Who gets the gold now?” asked Bess.

  “The courts will decide who the bandit’s treasure belongs to,” Rose answered. “But the California Express Company people told me they will honor their old reward for finding it—three thousand dollars. This whole story has been great publicity for them.”

  “We can use the reward money to help renovate the mansion,” Abby declared. “The Golden Gardenia will bloom again!” She struck a chord on the piano.

  “Let’s take a photograph,” Bess said. “Everybody stand in front of the bar.” Bess bustled around, posing everybody. “Perfect. Smile!” Bess snapped the picture.

  A minute later Bess pulled back the film. Once again they saw a ghostly apparition in the background. “Lizzie?” Bess wondered. “What do you think, Emily?” She showed her the photograph.

  Emily shook her head. “I have no idea what caused this, Bess. It really doesn’t look like a reflection of light, I must say.”

  Just then the saloon lights flickered and the scent of gardenia seemed to waft through the air. Nancy shivered in spite of herself. She glanced over at Abby.

  “Don’t look at me,” Abby said. “No tricks tonight.”

  “I told you guys,” Bess insisted. “Lizzie’s ghost is here.”

  Nancy smiled and shrugged. “It is weird, Bess,” she admitted. “But I guess some mysteries are better left unsolved.”

  “And if a brilliant detective like Nancy Drew says that”—Rose laughed—“you know that it’s true!”