The Mysterious Image Page 5

  As she spoke, Marcy Keech rose from her chair and stepped over to the small table where she had placed her hat and shoulder bag. Reaching into her bag, she pulled out a metal can. “If you didn’t want to use a weapon that might cause serious injury, what would be the quickest way to render a kidnap victim helpless?” she asked.

  With a triumphant smirk, by way of an answer to her own question, she displayed the label on the metal container to Nancy.

  Her find was a spray can of ether!

  9. Smear Tactic

  Nancy’s eyes widened in surprise as she stood up for a closer look at the spray can that Marcy Keech was holding out toward her. Bess and Pamela Kane also rose and gathered around the other two, as the young detective considered this unexpected new item of evidence.

  “Ether!” Nancy murmured. She had seen the same sort of product before at gas stations and auto-supply stores. It was intended to help stalled motorists start their cars at cold temperatures by spraying the vapor directly into their carburetors.

  But ether was also an anesthetic that could, indeed, render a person unconscious!

  Well, well! Things were beginning to look

  more serious, Nancy reflected. This could certainly mean that Clare Grant had been kidnapped!

  “You see, Nancy?” Pamela burst out in a voice that was almost a wail. “Maybe now you can understand why I’m so upset! . . . Oh, I knew it right from the first! Something terrible’s happened to Clare!”

  . “Nonsense,” Bess said, trying to take a calmer, more sensible view. “This can by itself doesn’t prove anything.”

  Nancy, for her part, was busy thinking. How could she and Detective Hoyt have missed seeing so obvious a clue yesterday morning? They had taken time to look in the shrubbery and tall grass under Clare’s window before starting off toward the woods. She was almost positive the can hadn’t been there then.

  “What are you going to do with it?” Nancy asked the sharp-nosed reporter evenly.

  “What am I going to do with it?” Marcy echoed with a mocking sneer. “Turn it over to the police, that’s what!”

  “Then wouldn’t it have been wiser not to touch it and spoil any fingerprints that were on it?” Nancy suggested in a quiet voice.

  Bess turned a smiling face to the journalism student. “That does make sense, doesn’t it?”

  Marcy Keech flushed a deep, angry red. Then she turned abruptly and flounced off toward the nearest chair, the one Bess had been sitting in. As she sat down with a thump, there was a rustle of paper.

  A frown of suspicion spread over her face. Springing up, she turned to look at the chair seat. There, nestled in its wrapper, lay a gooey piece of chocolate candy bar—now squashed flat! With an outraged gasp, she craned her neck around and tugged at the skirt of her dress in order to examine the results of her mishap. The material was visibly stained with chocolate.

  Furiously she turned toward Bess. “Really! I believe you did that on purpose!” she interrupted the blonde girl’s apologies.

  “Oh, no!” Bess exclaimed in sympathetic dismay. “I’m so sorry. You see, I was looking through my purse for a piece of tissue, and then when you showed us the spray can, I jumped up to see it, and the candy must have fallen out of my purse onto the chair.”

  She broke off helplessly as Marcy interrupted. “May I use your powder room?” she asked Pamela Kane curtly and rushed out of the living room.

  Bess quickly removed the offending chocolate bar from the chair and was very relieved that none had stuck to the upholstery. She muttered to Nancy, “I would have felt bad if it had stained the chair.” Nancy smiled quietly in agreement. Then, after assuring Pamela that she would continue her investigation and do everything possible to find Clare Grant, the teenage sleuth got up to leave with Bess.

  “Oh, I do hope you find her soon!” Pamela fretted anxiously. “I’m so afraid she’s fallen into the hands of criminals, just like Marcy Keech says. That’s what I told the police right from the first!”

  “Believe me, they’re doing all they can,” Nancy said. “In the meantime, it would help if you’d try and remember anything at all that Clare said on the phone that might clue us in as to whom or what she was afraid of.”

  “I’ll try my best,” Pamela promised.

  Nancy was silent and thoughtful as she and Bess drove down the tree-lined road toward River Heights. Why, she wondered, was Pamela Kane so insistent that her friend had been kidnapped? Was it possible that she knew something more about the mystery than she was willing to let on? Perhaps it would be a good idea to learn more about Clare Grant’s visitor from California!

  As they entered the streets of town, Bess said, “Nancy, I’m meeting George at Bonnington’s department store. Why don’t you come along, and we’ll all shop and have lunch there?”

  “I wish I could, Bess, but I think I’d better try to make some progress on the case I’m working on with Dad.”

  “Well, okay. I’ll call you tomorrow then.” After letting Bess out in the downtown section of River Heights, Nancy drove home. As soon as she had parked and hurried into the house, she went to the hall telephone and dialed her father’s office. His secretary put her through immediately.

  “Dad, I’m sorry to bother you, but I need a little help.”

  “You name it, honey,” Carson Drew replied. “It’s about the Clare Grant case. I have a funny feeling that her friend, Pamela Kane, may know more than she’s telling. Could you have your regular firm of private investigators do a little digging into her background? I mean very discreetly, of course, so she won’t find out and get any more upset than she already is.”

  “Certainly, I can have the agency run a check on her. Just a moment while I get my pen. You say her name is Pamela Kane, eh? What can you tell me about her?”

  “Not much, I’m afraid. She flew in yesterday morning from Los Angeles where she lives. I gather she and Clare Grant became friendly out there while Clare was working in the movies, and they shared an apartment for a while.” “Do you know her address?”

  “Gee, no, I don’t,” Nancy replied. “In fact, I don’t even know what airline she flew East on.” “Well, no matter. That shouldn’t be too hard to find out. But a description of Pamela Kane might help.”

  “Oh, of course. She’s about as tall as I am, in her twenties, with long blonde hair . . . and she wears pearl-rimmed pixie glasses. She’s an actress, too—or a would-be actress, anyhow.” “Good. Do you remember what she was wearing yesterday when you first saw her?” “Yes, a blue-and-white patterned shirtwaist dress with short sleeves and a belt. Her luggage was sitting in the front hall when I arrived, with her jacket and hat on top of it, so I can describe those, too. Her suitcase was light blue, and she had a navy blue jacket and white hat.”

  “Excellent detail,” Mr. Drew commented. “That should give the agency operatives plenty to go on. They’ll probably start at the airport and backtrack from there.”

  “Thanks a lot, Dad,” Nancy said.

  “Care to come down here for lunch with me?”

  “Oh, I’d love to! But I thought I’d just have a quick bite here and go to New York this afternoon. I want to visit those ad agencies Dallas Curry mentioned and see if I can pick up any useful information.”

  “I see. Well, be careful, dear. Just remember, Manhattan’s not the safest place in the world these days.”

  “I’ll be careful, Dad,” Nancy promised and signed off with a kiss.

  After a check of shuttle flight schedules and a hasty lunch with Hannah, she set off for the airport in her sleek blue sports car. Two hours later, Nancy was walking down Madison Avenue in the very heart of the midtown skyscraper district. Her first stop was to be the Darby & Wallace advertising agency. This was the one that had produced the original Statue of Liberty fashion ad.

  As she went up in the elevator to their fourteenth-floor offices, Nancy was thinking about what questions she would ask.

  In the firm’s nicely furnished waiting room, she
explained to the receptionist why she had come and asked to speak to the head of the agency. After a short wait in the nearest burgundy leather chair, she was told that he was too busy to see her without an appointment, but that the executive vice-president, Mr. Knapp, who dealt with the firm’s legal affairs, would be glad to talk to her.

  Knapp greeted her in friendly fashion when she was ushered into his office and invited her to sit down. “I’ve heard about you and your talent for solving mysteries, Miss Drew, and it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m not sure how much of a mystery there is about our unfortunate problem with Dallas Curry, but we’re certainly willing to do whatever we can to clear it up.”

  He added that he had already phoned the two agency staffers who had been most closely concerned with the Statue of Liberty ad to join them in his office.

  “Thank you,” said Nancy. “If they can shed any light on how the duplication happened, I’ll certainly appreciate it.”

  The firm’s chief copywriter, Roscoe Leff, arrived first. He was a plump man in his thirties with thinning hair. Though stylishly dressed, he was in his shirtsleeves with his collar open at the neck and his tie loosened, which gave him a busy air, as if he could spare her only a few minutes from his crowded schedule.

  “Can you tell me exactly how the ad was created, Mr. Leff?” Nancy asked.

  “Sure, no problem. The account executive told us in a general way what the client was looking for, so the following afternoon about a half dozen of us got together for a brainstorming session—you know, just firing ideas back and forth.”

  Roscoe Leff paused and shrugged. “As it turned out, I came up with the idea for this Statue of Liberty layout pretty fast, and everyone went for it right away. I had an artist rough it out, and our staff photographer shot it the very next day.”

  As he finished speaking, he glanced toward the door. “Here’s the photographer now—Rick Hyatt. I imagine he can tell you anything more you want to know.”

  A lanky young man with bleached blond hair had just walked into the office. Nancy stared at him for a moment, too surprised to speak.

  Rick Hyatt was the cameraman who had snapped her picture in River Heights the day before, and then fled in his yellow convertible!

  10. A Frustrating Afternoon

  “So you’re a professional cameraman, Mr. Hyatt,” Nancy challenged him with a slight edge to her voice. “Am I to assume those pictures you were taking yesterday were also for this agency?”

  Both Mr. Knapp and Roscoe Leff looked startled at Nancy’s remark. Knapp knit his brows in a puzzled frown. “You two know each other?” he queried, glancing from the girl detective to the lanky photographer, and back to Nancy.

  “Let’s just say we had a brief encounter yesterday,” she replied. “He snapped my picture outside my father’s office. Before that, he was at a restaurant where Dad and I lunched with Dallas Curry. My father, you see, is acting as Mr. Curry’s legal counsel. Since Mr. Hyatt behaved quite furtively and drove off in a hurry when I spotted him, I rather imagine he must have been photographing all three of us at the restaurant.”

  “What’s this all about, Hyatt?” Mr. Knapp demanded sharply.

  The photographer shuffled his feet and scowled down at the carpet. “What Miss Drew says is true enough—I was photographing them. But I had Monday off, remember, a three-day weekend. So I was doing it on my own time.”

  “Why?”

  The tall, blond young man hesitated sullenly, then shrugged. “As soon as Curry’s case comes to trial, he’ll be big news.”

  “That’s no reason to hound the man,” Knapp retorted with a frown of disapproval. “He may or may not be guilty of copying other people’s work. I’m willing to suspend judgment on that. If he is guilty, he may have acted under some emotional strain that we know nothing about. The fact remains that Dallas Curry is still one of America’s greatest photographers—nothing can alter that!”

  Roscoe Leff nodded, though he seemed less concerned than the agency vice-president about Rick Hyatt’s surreptitious picture- snapping. “He’s right, Rick. Dallas Curry made his reputation the hard way, and it’s not up to us to tear it down. If he’s guilty of stealing ideas or layouts, the court will punish him—that’s out of our hands now.”

  “Curry’s reputation has been blown way out of proportion!” Hyatt sneered. “He lucked out with a few sensational news shots, and everyone started calling him an artist with a camera. But the truth is, he’s just a photographic hack—and now that he’s run out of ideas, he’s proved it by swiping those magazine layouts!”

  At first, Rick Hyatt’s face had reddened with embarrassment when Nancy recognized him. She was sure she detected a note of jealousy in his snide remarks about Dallas Curry.

  “You can tell your father and Curry, too, that I intend to photograph every aspect of this legal mess he’s got himself into,” Hyatt said to Nancy. “As a matter of fact, I’ve already got an order from the National Scanner for a complete picture story on his case when it comes to trial.” The National Scanner, as Nancy well knew, was a photo magazine more devoted to covering scandals than to telling the truth.

  “Then it’s obvious I’ll be wasting my time if I expect any impartial information from you, Mr. Hyatt,” she said coolly. After thanking the other two for their help, she rose and walked out of the office.

  As she closed the door behind her, she could hear Knapp begin taking the young photographer harshly to task, both for his discourteous attitude toward Nancy and for his moonlighting assignment.

  Nancy went next to the Stratton Agency, which was located only two blocks away. This was the advertising firm that had created the original Knights of the Round Table ad for a furniture manufacturer.

  After her introduction to an account executive named Ted Yates, she was directed to John Stratton, the president of the agency. He was perfectly willing to talk to her and received her in his office after only a short wait. “I see no reason to be unpleasant about this, Miss Drew,” he told the teenage sleuth, “but the matter is out of our hands now. As you may have heard, we’ve filed a charge of ethical misconduct against the firm that handled Curry’s layout for pirating our ad.”

  “You’re convinced that it was a case of pirating?” Nancy inquired politely.

  “Absolutely! No question about it,” Mr. Stratton firmly stated.

  “But Mr. Curry would have to have seen your ad somehow in order to copy it,” Nancy pointed out. “How do you think he got hold of it before it was published?”

  “We already know the answer to that question,” Mr. Stratton replied. “Our agency suffered a break-in just about that time. Our security man discovered that a door lock had been jimmied the morning after it happened. And later, our production department discovered that a copy of the layout was missing.”

  “So once Dallas Curry’s version of the same layout was published, you decided he was the thief?”

  Stratton looked slightly uncomfortable at Nancy’s blunt use of the word “thief,” but he threw up his hands in a helpless, shrugging gesture. “Well, more likely he hired someone to commit the actual break-in, I suppose. It boils down to the same thing. What else are we to think?”

  “But why on earth would a famous photographer of Dallas Curry’s reputation do such a thing?” Nancy argued.

  “Your guess is as good as mine, Miss Drew. Perhaps the Advertising Council will come up with an answer when it finishes investigating the ethical misconduct charge we’ve filed.” Marc Joplin, Incorporated—the last of the three agencies involved in the strange series of duplicated ad layouts—was located on East 42nd Street within sight of Grand Central Station. This was the firm that was suing Dallas Curry for copying its cosmetic flower-face ad.

  A youthful, husky-looking man with curly chestnut hair came out to the waiting room to speak to Nancy. He introduced himself as Oliver Snell, the firm’s art director. His manner was coldly polite.

  “I’ve no wish to be rude, Miss Drew,” he said, “but we kn
ow that your father is Dallas Curry’s attorney. So I hardly think it would be wise to discuss our lawsuit with you.”

  “I see.” Nancy was silent a moment, choosing her next words with care. “Can you at least tell me the background circumstances of your client’s ad and who created it?”

  “I did ... at least the idea was mine, and I sketched out the layout before it was photographed. In fact, I imagine I’ll be the principal witness at Curry’s trial—which is why the receptionist called me when you told her why you were here. But I think that will also explain,” Snell ended, “why I had better not talk to you any further.”

  “I quite understand,” Nancy said and nodded as they exchanged a brief parting handclasp.

  “Sorry I bothered you, Mr. Snell, and thank you for your time.”

  Feeling frustrated and somewhat depressed, she flew back to River Heights, arriving home just in time to join Carson Drew and Hannah Gruen at the dinner table.

  “Well, how did you do in New York, dear?” her father inquired as she drew up a chair and spread her napkin on her lap.

  Nancy sighed. “Not too well, I’m afraid, Dad.” She filled him in on her visits to the three advertising agencies and added, “The trouble is I can’t even think of any explanation myself, other than out-and-out copying . . . which makes it pretty hard to think of any useful questions to ask.”

  Mr. Drew nodded grimly. “Yes, I know exactly what you mean. I find myself up against the same problem.”

  “You know, Dad,” Nancy went on thoughtfully as she ladled out some of Hannah’s delicious roast-beef gravy over her mashed potatoes, “I believe I’ll tell Dallas Curry personally about my experiences today at those agencies. It might just start some fresh train of thought in his mind that would help him come up with a useful new lead.”

  “Good idea. It certainly can’t do any harm.”