The Ghost of Blackwood Hall Page 2

  Before the meeting was over Nancy also learned that Ms. Lee was unmarried and worked at the Alpha Medical Laboratory in Harbor City.

  The pretty teenage sleuth mused about the interview as she drove to keep her three o’clock appointment with Professor Martin and Alice Durand. Although the Lee woman seemed very nice, Nancy could not help feeling there was something rather secretive and mysterious about her.

  Sophie’s former address in Grayton proved to be a modest frame house in a wooded area on the outskirts of town, not far from the college. Abel Martin and Alice were waiting in his car as Nancy drove up.

  A sweet-faced woman answered when Abel rang the doorbell. He introduced the woman and her husband as Mr. and Mrs. Bascomb. “Our upstairs apartment is empty again,” she said. “Our last tenant moved out last week, at the end of the spring term, so you’re free to look at it, if you like.”

  The rooms and furnishings were old-fashioned, but looked clean and comfortable. Nancy scanned each room with sharp-eyed interest, wondering if one might still hold Sophie’s scientific secret.

  “Was the apartment ever searched after her things were cleared out?” Nancy asked.

  “Well, not exactly searched,” said Mr. Bascomb, “but the walls were painted, and the carpet and furniture were all cleaned spic and span. I guarantee nothing got left behind. To tell the truth, we didn’t have much to do with Professor Hanks. She kept to herself most of the time.”

  When the three left the house, Abel said to Nancy, “If you’re wondering whether Sophie left any notes about that catalyst among her belongings in my garage, the answer is no. I’ve been all through them.” He added thoughtfully, “She did all her scientific work on campus. At home, after hours, she seemed to put all that out of her mind.”

  Returning to her car, Nancy noticed that it was four o’clock. She stopped in a drugstore to make a long-distance phone call to the Alpha Medical Laboratory and then drove to Harbor City.

  Even though it was past closing time, the lab director had promised to wait for her. He was a tall, spare man wearing rimless pinch-nose glasses. Though willing to be helpful, he was unable to tell Nancy much beyond the fact that Vanessa Lee was employed there as a laboratory technician.

  “How much do you know about Ms. Lee’s background?” Nancy asked.

  “Almost nothing. We employed her on the recommendation of Dr. Norman Craig of New York City. And I must say, we’ve never regretted doing so. She’s an excellent worker—quiet and very dependable.”

  Nancy questioned him further, but learned nothing important. One aspect puzzled her as she drove home to River Heights. From her letters as described by Professor Martin, Vanessa Lee sounded rich and well-traveled. Yet she was now working quietly in a rather humble laboratory job.

  Hannah Gruen had kept a roast beef dinner warm for Nancy. The teenage sleuth had barely finished eating when the phone rang. It was Abel Martin.

  “A thought just occurred to me,” he said. “There’s an old shack in the woods near Sophie’s apartment. She used to go there and write poetry.”

  “Poetry?” Nancy exclaimed in surprise.

  Martin chuckled. “Sounds eccentric, I know, but Sophie had a strange romantic side to her nature that the rest of the faculty knew nothing about. When I told you she did all her scientific work on campus, I guess that’s what reminded me of the shack. So far as I know, it’s never been searched. Would you care to check it out with me?”

  Nancy eagerly accepted, and he promised to pick her up in twenty minutes. Darkness had fallen, and a shimmering gold moon was veiled behind misty clouds as Nancy and Professor Martin walked through the woods toward the old cabin.

  “Who owns it?” Nancy asked.

  “No one. It’s been empty and abandoned ever since I came to Grayton. Sophie used to bring a deck chair and portable lamp out here on summer evenings, to read and write.”

  Suddenly Nancy stopped with a gasp and laid a hand on Abel’s arm. “Look!” she whispered.

  A pale figure had just appeared among the trees a short distance ahead. It was wearing a hooded cape, as Sophie’s ghost was said to do!

  Nancy could feel goose bumps rising on her skin as she recalled the unsigned message at the Faculty Club—“this means someone from the spirit world is hovering near her!”

  The spectre seemed to sense their presence. It turned its head—just long enough for Nancy to glimpse a ghastly white witchlike face!

  The next instant, the pale figure flitted off among the clustering trees.

  “Come on!” Nancy urged. “Let’s go after it!”

  As she started forward, Abel Martin followed, but a few paces further on, he tripped in the tangled underbrush. Instinctively he grabbed Nancy’s arm for support. Both lost their balance and fell!

  Nancy scrambled to her feet and switched on the flashlight she had brought from her car. She played the beam back and forth through the trees but failed to catch any glimpse of the pale, caped figure. The spectre had disappeared!

  Nancy murmured her disappointment. “Never mind,” she said to her companion. “Let’s go look in the cabin.”

  The old shack was dank and empty. Glass was missing from one of the two windows, and the other pane was cracked. Rain had leaked in through a hole in the roof. The only furnishings were a rickety table and rusty stove.

  Suddenly Nancy’s eyes fell on a boxlike object in one corner of the room. It was an old metal milk chest. Lifting the lid, she gave a little cry of excitement. Inside were several papers!

  All but one bore poems in a woman’s handwriting. The last sheet was a typewritten will, signed by Sophie Hanks! Nancy read it hastily and announced, “It says that she leaves everything to her beloved niece, Alice Durand!”

  Abel Martin took the will and glanced at its contents, then looked up with a low whistle. “Quite a break for Alice!”

  “Yes, isn’t it?” Nancy agreed. “Shall I turn this over to my father?”

  The literature professor nodded with a slightly dazed expression. “I guess that would be wisest.”

  When Nancy arrived home, Carson Drew scrutinized the document with keen interest. “It may take a while to determine if this is valid,” he said.

  “Yes. I think it should be examined carefully, so that we can be sure,” Nancy urged.

  Before they could discuss the matter further, Bess Marvin and George Fayne dropped in. The two girls listened wide-eyed as Nancy described the weird figure she and Professor Martin had seen.

  “Hypers!” said George. “That ghost really gets around!”

  “Ooh, I think I may have nightmares tonight!” Bess squeaked nervously.

  The scary episode had given Nancy an idea. “How would you two like to do a little private-eyeing for me tomorrow?” she proposed.

  The cousins excitedly agreed to do so. Nancy asked them to shadow Alice Durand. Then she called the house detective at the Capitol Hotel, who was a friend of the Drews, and asked him to assist the two amateur sleuths in any way possible.

  The next day Nancy drove back to Clermont College and looked up the campus guard who had gone with her to investigate the glimmering light in Professor Hanks’s former laboratory. “We know the door leading into the lab from the corridor was locked,” she said. “Is there any other way into or out of the lab?”

  The guard frowned thoughtfully and pushed back his cap before replying. “Well, actually, yes. There’s a small door in the lab’s storage closet that leads down to a cellar. But it hasn’t been used in years because those stairs are rickety and have no railing, so it’s always kept latched.”

  “Was it latched Monday night?” Nancy asked.

  “You bet!” He nodded firmly. “I put some things away in the closet before locking up that evening, and I noticed then that it was latched.”

  “Could we check again?” she persisted.

  Reluctantly he accompanied her to the Science Building. To his amazement, the closet door in the laboratory was now unlatched!

&n
bsp; “I still say it was locked Monday night,” the guard declared. “No one could’ve gotten in this way!”

  Nancy smiled. “Maybe not. But whoever caused that glimmering light we saw,” she pointed out, “could have gotten out this way.”

  And that person, she reflected privately, must also have been someone who knew the lab well enough to be aware of that closet door!

  Using a public telephone in the Administration Building, Nancy placed a call to Dr. Norman Craig in New York. His answering service informed her, after Nancy identified herself and stressed the urgency of her call, that Dr. Craig was out of town but might be reached at the marina in Harbor City.

  The girl detective was soon on her way there. Much to her disappointment, on arriving at the marina, Nancy learned that Dr. Craig was out on the bay in his cabin cruiser but was expected back that afternoon.

  Nancy lunched on a hamburger and milkshake at the marina diner. Then she waited patiently for the physician to return. It was past three o’clock when his cruiser finally nosed into its slip. Luckily he recognized Nancy’s name at once and willingly answered her questions.

  She explained that she was investigating the campus ghost mystery at Clermont College and was checking into the background of Vanessa Lee. “Her employer says you recommended her,” Nancy concluded. “Do you mind telling me how that happened?”

  “Not at all,” Dr. Craig replied. “I rescued Ms. Lee at sea, following a boating accident. She was the only survivor of the yacht Esmeralda, which foundered during a storm.”

  He then went on to relate that his cabin cruiser had picked up Vanessa from one of the yacht’s lifeboats. The shock of her ordeal had caused a complete loss of memory, and she was hospitalized for months.

  “At first,” the doctor went on, “she kept mumbling the words Brahma cattle. That plus her accent later on, when she was able to speak more clearly, suggested that she might have come from Texas or the cattle-raising region of the Southwest.”

  “Couldn’t you have found out who she was from the yacht’s owner or his family?” Nancy asked.

  Dr. Craig shook his head. “No, they all went down with the Esmeralda, and there was no passenger list available. But gradually part of her memory returned, and she was able to tell us who she was.”

  The yacht, he added, had reportedly been bound on a round-the-world cruise. Presumably all Vanessa’s clothes and belongings were aboard. Since she was thus left without any resources, he had recommended her for a job at the Alpha Medical Laboratory.

  At dinner that evening, Nancy told her father about Vanessa Lee’s harrowing experience, and how Dr. Norman Craig had rescued her and helped her begin a new life.

  Carson Drew nodded. “I’m not surprised. Dr. Craig is famous for his many acts of kindness.”

  “Do you know him, Dad?”

  “Only by reputation. He’s one of the most skilled plastic surgeons in the East.”

  “Plastic surgeon?” Nancy echoed, her eyes widening.

  “Yes, why? Is that important?”

  “I’m not sure . . . It may be.” After musing quietly for a few minutes, Nancy telephoned the doctor’s residence in New York. She and the surgeon talked for many minutes.

  She was just hanging up when Bess arrived to report on her day’s activities as a private eye. The information she related was as exciting to Nancy as it was to her plump, blond friend. Bess ended by saying that Alice Durand had gone to visit Professor Martin, and that George was keeping watch on his house.

  “Wonderful!” Nancy exclaimed. “Let’s go and check with her right now!”

  “Well ... all right.” With a piteous glance, Bess added, “But couldn’t I have just a quick bite to eat first? Honestly, Nancy, I’m starving!”

  Nancy giggled. “Okay, but only three hundred calories!”

  The two girls were soon driving toward Grayton in Nancy’s car. They found slim, dark-haired George Fayne lurking in a shadowy clump of shrubbery across from Abel Martin’s house.

  “Is Alice still over there?” Nancy queried.

  “She is unless she sneaked out the back door.”

  “Great. Then here’s what I’m going to do.” Nancy spoke quickly. She handed George some sandwiches and other goodies that Hannah Gruen had packed while Bess was eating. “Here’s something to munch on in the meantime.”

  George hugged her friend and greedily opened the paper bag. “You’re a life-saver!”

  Leaving the two cousins, Nancy crossed the street alone and rang the bell. Abel Martin came to the door. He seemed embarrassed to discover that his caller was Nancy Drew. “I ... er, I’m rather busy this evening,” he mumbled.

  “That’s all right. I won’t stay long,” Nancy said with a bright smile, edging her way inside.

  Alice Durand was seated in the living room. She was obviously no more pleased than her host at Nancy Drew’s unexpected arrival. “Since you’re here,” she said sourly, “you can tell me how long it’ll take to validate that will you found last night.”

  “Probably several days,” Nancy said. “Dad has turned it over to the court. It will have to be examined by experts on questionable documents.”

  Alice and Martin exchanged quick frowning glances. Then Nancy asked casually if she could use his typewriter for a few minutes, saying she wished to leave a brief report of her investigation at the college office, but had neglected to write it out before leaving River Heights.

  “Help yourself,” Abel Martin said curtly. He jerked a thumb toward his study and workroom at the right of the vestibule. Nancy had already glimpsed his desk and typewriter there.

  “May I borrow a piece of paper too, please?”

  “Be my guest.”

  After typing for several moments, Nancy emerged to rejoin the couple in the living room.

  “Don’t let us keep you, if you have to get over to the college,” Alice said with an acid smile.

  Nancy smiled back apologetically. “I hope you’ll forgive me, but I’m afraid I fibbed a bit.”

  “Fibbed? What about?” Martin demanded.

  “Using your typewriter. For one thing, I wondered if you’d object. I also wanted a sample from your machine to compare with the typing of that will.”

  “What!” Professor Martin glared at Nancy, and Alice sprang from her chair. “Are you accusing us of faking that will?”

  “Not yet,” said Nancy. “But I must warn you you’re both under suspicion. The chambermaid who straightened up your room this morning, Miss Durand, found a gray hooded cape there, and a white-faced Halloween witch’s mask.”

  Martin and Alice burst into loud, angry protests. But Nancy was no longer listening. Through the window, she had just seen a light glimmering on the second floor of the darkened Science Building, a block away on the college campus!

  “Please excuse my hasty exit,” Nancy interrupted the two. “I have to get over to the college— immediately!”

  As Martin and Alice stared in amazement, she dashed out of the house and across the street to her two friends. “Come on!” she cried to Bess and George. “I think the campus ghost is back!”

  Piling into the car, they sped toward the college, picking up the guard at the gate. Nancy parked near the Science Building, and they hurried inside.

  As they ran upstairs to the second floor, they heard a loud explosion! In the laboratory they found Vanessa Lee lying on the floor unconscious, her face smudged, but otherwise apparently unhurt. Over her dress she had on a ripped gray cape!

  The room was lit only by the flame of a Bunsen burner. On the workbench lay the shattered remains of some chemical apparatus that had evidently blown up during an experiment. Luckily, judging by the marks on the ceiling, most of the force of the blast seemed to have been directed upward.

  As the guard switched on the overhead fluorescent lights, the three girls anxiously revived the victim. The pleasant-faced woman looked around with a dazed expression as she regained consciousness. The girls helped her into a comfortable armed
desk chair at one end of the laboratory.

  “What on earth are all you people doing here?” she murmured.

  “I’ll explain in a moment,” Nancy said. “But, first, are you sure you’re all right, Professor Hanks?”

  “Quite all right, thank you.”

  Bess, George, and the guard stared in open-mouthed amazement. “Wh-Wh-What do you mean ’Professor Hanks’?” the guard stuttered. “She’s dead!”

  “A temporary ghost maybe,” Nancy responded with a smile, “but definitely not dead!”

  She explained that on the night of the accident, Sophie had fallen into the creek and been swept out to the bay. “Several craft were wrecked in the storm that night,” she added, “and I suspect that’s how Professor Hanks happened to wind up in one of the Esmeralda’s lifeboats.”

  Sophie-alias-Vanessa was listening intently, her fingers pressed to her temples, and now she nodded. “Yes, it’s all coming back to me. I was struggling desperately to stay afloat, clinging to some debris. Then I saw this empty lifeboat and managed to pull myself aboard.”

  Nancy went on, “Her face had been badly cut during the car crash. That, plus the terrible disappointment she suffered at the science convention, and the shock of almost drowning, caused her to lose her memory. Dr. Craig, who rescued her in his cruiser, not only treated her cuts—he also repaired the facial injuries she had received in a childhood accident. But even though her natural attractive looks were restored, she still hadn’t really regained her memory,”

  Vanessa Lee, Nancy conjectured, was just a figment of Sophie’s imagination—the kind of person she desperately longed to be. “Besides composing poetry, she also made up those letters to herself. As Vanessa, she also spoke with the accent she had had long ago as a happy little girl in Texas.”

  Sophie Hanks confirmed Nancy’s guess. Deeply troubled by her loss of memory, from time to time she would undergo emotional blackouts. On such occasions, she would return to Clermont College—like a sleepwalker or a person in a trance—struggling to recall her past and wearing the same kind of cape she used to wear when teaching there. Her keys, which had still been in her pocket when she was rescued at sea, enabled her to open any locked doors.