The Crooked Banister Read online

  Nancy inserted the key into the front-door lock and Ned pushed it open. Without stepping inside, Nancy reached around to turn on the switch of the hall light. No one was in sight, and the robot did not appear.

  Hearing a slight sound in back of the group, Burt looked over his shoulder. The next instant he yelled, “Look! A man is running away from here!”

  The others turned in time to see a tall figure in a raincoat and hat pulled low. He reached the moat and started across the sapling bridge.

  “That must be Rawley!” George cried out.

  A fearful thought came to Bess. “He may ruin our bridge and we’ll never get away from here!”

  All the young people rushed toward the saplings, ready to hold them down, should the man try to remove them. The fellow looked back once, but did not pause. He reached the other side of the moat and plunged into the woods.

  “After him!” Ned ordered. “You girls stay here. Come on, boys! We must catch that man!”

  CHAPTER VIII

  Vanished!

  THE three girls kept an alert watch, ready to ward off any attack by a lurking enemy.

  Meanwhile, Ned, Burt, and Dave crashed through the woods. They could hear the fugitive not far ahead, but despite the brilliant moonlight, they could not see him.

  Suddenly the man stopped. Was he hiding, or lying in wait for the boys?

  “One thing is sure,” Ned remarked. “That fellow knows this area better than we do.” The boys stood still and listened intently. Now there was not a sound.

  “I guess we’ll have to give up,” Burt replied. A second later he exclaimed, “Listen!”

  Not far below they could hear a motor start up.

  “There’s your answer,” Dave said. “That guy had a car parked down there and we lost him.”

  Disappointed, the three climbed the hill and reported to the girls.

  “Never mind,” said Bess. “No telling what he might have done to you. Even in the moonlight this place seems creepy. I kept imagining eyes looking at me from the windows in the zigzag house.”

  Dave laughed. “Let’s go in and see who belongs to the eyes.”

  Ned looked into the moat. “The fire’s out. Probably oil was poured on the water and set ablaze. It didn’t last long.”

  Nancy suggested that two of the group should guard the sapling bridge, while the others went inside to investigate the premises. George and Burt agreed to remain outside.

  The four other young people stepped into the entrance hall. Ned remarked that he was sure the staircase had been built in this strange design for some special reason.

  “By the way, how old is the house?”

  Nancy said Mrs. Carrier had told her it had been put up about ten years ago.

  “Before that time, Rawley resided in the old family homestead with his parents. When they passed away, Mrs. Carrier, a widow, went to live there. It was then that Rawley decided to build his own place. I understand he’s a bachelor.”

  “Let’s examine the staircase very carefully,” Ned suggested.

  He and the others tested every step. Dave declared that each one sounded different from the rest. “Listen!”

  He went to the top and stomped on each stair as he descended.

  Nancy’s eyes grew wide. “Why, they’re the tones of the scale!” she exclaimed.

  Dave grinned. He tried tapping on various treads at intervals.

  Bess laughed. “You’re playing ‘Three Blind Mice.’ ”

  “Right,” Dave answered. “Now I’ll do ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’ ”

  Ned began to click each spindle to see if they too produced various sounds. But they showed no variation. Next the two railings were tapped all the way to the bottom but did not indicate any difference in sound.

  “Do you suppose,” Bess asked, “that maybe we’ll come across a sheet of music with a special tune which will reveal the secret of the staircase?”

  Everyone thought it was a good possibility and decided to start a search. Nancy and Ned went into the living room. They looked inside books and table drawers and under various pieces of statuary.

  Finally Ned remarked, “Those musical steps are probably just another freakish idea of Rawley’s.”

  The couple walked into the hall. Nancy pointed to the Oriental hand-embroidered picture.

  “It occurred to me,” she remarked, “that this wall hanging might contain the answer to the mystery.”

  Ned gazed at the embroidered piece in fascination.

  “It’s pretty sadistic,” he said. “A lot of ugly, coiled-up serpents all eating something poisonous!”

  “I don’t know much about poisons,” Nancy admitted. “Are you familiar with them?”

  Ned said that in one of his courses he had learned about many of them.

  “This plant,” he said, pointing, “is the poisonous hemlock. And this one the serpent is chewing is Jimson weed—fatal to cattle who eat it.”

  Nancy said, “One thing that puzzles me is this object at the bottom of the picture. It looks like an arrow.”

  “It is an arrow,” Ned agreed. “In South America, some tribes make a concoction of poisonous juices into a paste and put it on the tip of an arrow. It’s called curare. When the arrow is shot into the body of a person or an animal, the poison is quickly absorbed and causes death in a short time.”

  “What’s this beautiful snake called—the one the fiery serpent is devouring?” Nancy asked.

  “Krait,” Ned replied. “It’s found in Southeast Asia and is extremely poisonous.”

  Nancy pointed to a small snake. “That’s a water moccasin, isn’t it?” she asked. “I’ve seen them in Florida.”

  Ned nodded. “And this thing you see dangling from the next serpent’s mouth I guess you recognize as a black widow spider.”

  “What we have to do now,” said Nancy, “is figure out the meaning of all this. Do you suppose—?”

  Her question was cut short by loud yells of distress from Bess and Dave in the kitchen. Nancy and Ned rushed through the swinging door. To their amazement the couple was not there! Standing in the middle of the floor was the robot, its usual vacant stare giving no clue to what had happened.

  “How did you get out?” Nancy asked the mechanical man.

  She rushed to the closet in which he had been locked. Though the key was still in the door, the door itself was not locked. Nancy yanked it open. There was nothing inside but the assortment of kitchen necessities which had been there earlier.

  “Where could Bess and Dave have gone?”

  Both she and Ned called their friends’ names. There was no answer. They searched the other first-floor rooms but saw no sign of the couple.

  Ned frowned. “They couldn’t be playing a joke on us, could they?”

  Nancy said she doubted this. “I wonder if they took the robot out of that closet and if he could have had anything to do with their disappearance.”

  “How could he?” Ned asked.

  Nancy said she did not know but was going to investigate. “The first thing we should do is put the robot back in the closet, lock it, and for safety hide the key.”

  Ned pushed the mechanical man inside. After locking the door, Nancy hid the key under a statuette in the living room.

  “Unless there’s a seeing eye around here,” she remarked, “no one will find that key easily.”

  “Do you think,” Ned asked, “the man who ran away from here might have taken the robot out?”

  Nancy nodded. “Furthermore, I believe he inserted a tape. When Bess and Dave came into the kitchen, the sound of their voices activated the robot. But what could he have done to them?”

  Nancy and Ned stood still, surveying the entire room.

  “I don’t see a thing,” Ned said finally. “Let’s go outdoors. Maybe Bess and Dave ran into the yard.”

  He and Nancy hurried to the front door and called to George and Burt. “Have you seen Bess and Dave?” Nancy queried.

  The answers were no. “D
id they come outside?” Burt asked.

  “I don’t know,” Nancy replied. “They’ve disappeared.”

  “What!” George exclaimed in alarm.

  Burt said he would circle the house and see if he could find the missing couple. In a few minutes he returned, shaking his head.

  “Then they must be inside,” Ned declared. “Come on, Nancy. We’ve got to find them.”

  George and Burt wanted to help, but the bridge had to be guarded. The whole group did not want to be marooned on this side of the moat!

  Nancy was convinced that whatever had happened to their missing friends had taken place in the kitchen. She and Ned went directly there. Presently Nancy snapped her fingers.

  “See something?” Ned asked.

  “Yes,” Nancy replied.

  She pointed to the floor. It was covered with linoleum in a pattern of large black and white squares. Nancy got down on hands and knees, took her flashlight from a pocket, and beamed it on the various blocks.

  Carefully she went over the surface. Ned used his light too. Near the center of the floor Nancy spotted a section where the tiles definitely were not cemented together. She tried to pull one up. It stuck tightly to the floor.

  “Ned,” she said, running the beam of her flashlight around an area about four feet square, “I believe there’s a trap door underneath herel Bess and Dave went through it!”

  CHAPTER IX

  A Puzzling Discovery

  “A TRAP door!” Ned repeated. “But we’ve been walking all over this place and it didn’t open.”

  “Right,” Nancy agreed. “And there isn’t any sign of a way to move it.”

  “Do you think that Bess and Dave fell through, then the door snapped shut?” Ned asked.

  “Yes,” Nancy replied.

  “Perhaps there’s a spring hidden somewhere in this kitchen,” Ned suggested. “Suppose we see if it’s in the cupboards?”

  Nancy was thinking hard and did not answer. Finally she said, “I believe Old Robby is programmed to open and close the trap door when it is stepped on. But maybe so long as anybody is down below, he can’t pull the trick again.”

  “And the trap door can’t be pushed up from the underside?” Ned asked.

  “Evidently not. Unless,” Nancy added fearfully, “Bess and Dave fell into such a deep hole, or onto rocks—”

  Ned guessed her thought, and his face became very sober. “You think they could be lying down there injured?”

  Nancy nodded. “I’m worried, Ned, terribly worried. This was probably all part of Rawley’s plan.”

  “Well, one thing is sure,” he answered. “We must get the trap door open. And how are we going to do that if the robot won’t work?”

  Nancy said they might have to break a section of the floor. “But first I want to try something.”

  “What?” Ned queried.

  Nancy said, “Perhaps the tape came to the end. If we turn it back and start over again, the program may repeat itself.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Ned remarked. “But from what you’ve told me about this sneaky mechanical man, I think we’d better be on the watch for an attack.”

  Nancy went for the key and unlocked the closet. Ned rolled the robot out and stood him in the exact location where he and Nancy had found him.

  They took off his head. The tape had already rewound itself and turned off the main switch. Nancy reset it and instantly the whirring sound began. She and Ned were careful to stay away from the trap-door area. But they wondered if, without their weight on it, that section of the floor would open.

  As they stood watching, the two heard a faint click, then a sound as if machinery were working down below. But the door did not move.

  “It’s just waiting for someone to step on it!” Nancy stated.

  She and Ned reached down and pushed with all their might, but carefully avoided stepping on the suspected section. Their efforts were finally rewarded. A trap door opened downward.

  “You were right, Nancy,” said Ned. He dropped to his knees and called into the dark area below, “Bess! Dave!” There was no answer.

  Fearing that the trap door might close again, Nancy disconnected the tape. The whirring sound stopped immediately.

  Nancy got down on her knees and shone her flashlight into the depths below. The hole was about six feet deep and had an earthen floor.

  She and Ned gave sighs of relief. It was unlikely that Bess and Dave could have been injured by falling through the trap door!

  “So far so good,” Nancy murmured. “But where did they go?”

  The beam of her flashlight revealed an opening to what looked like a tunnel.

  “I’ll go down,” said Ned. “You’d better stay here until I see what’s there.”

  “Oh, I hope you find Bess and Dave and they’ll be all right!” she replied anxiously.

  The front-door knocker pounded loudly. Nancy said she would answer. George stood there.

  “What’s going on?” she asked worriedly. “Did you find Bess and Dave?”

  “No,” Nancy replied, “but we just uncovered a possible clue to where they went. I’ll show it to you.”

  She led the way into the kitchen and George stared in amazement at the open trap door. Nancy explained that the robot had unfastened it.

  “George, I’d like to go down and search with Ned. Will you stay here and guard this tricky door? I’m sure it can’t close by itself because I’ve disconnected the tape. But just the same I’d hate to be trapped underground.”

  “I’ll do anything to help find Bess and Dave,” George replied. “I’d like to go down there myself, but I’ll do as you say and wait up here.”

  Nancy gripped the edge of the opening and then dropped lightly to the ground below.

  “Ned!” she called loudly. Her voice echoed in the tunnel. But presently she received a mumbled reply from him.

  “Here I am!”

  Nancy hurried along the vaulted corridor, which was made of stone and earth. There were no openings on either side. The corridor turned sharply to the left.

  Just ahead she saw Ned. He was tugging at a heavy door. Nancy hastened toward him.

  “You found something?” she called out.

  “I think so,” he replied hopefully. “This door must lead somewhere. I pounded on it several times, thinking if Bess and Dave were on the other side, they would pound back. But there wasn’t any response.”

  As Nancy ran forward, her foot kicked a hard object. She stopped and shone her flashlight on it.

  “Oh!” she murmured. “It can’t be!”

  She leaned down and picked up the object. It was the missing end of the railing and newel to the banister which disappeared so mysteriously into the wall of the entrance hall!

  “Ned!” Nancy cried out. “Look at this!”

  He hurried back and stared at the piece of wood.

  “Do you know what this means?” Nancy asked excitedly.

  “No. What?”

  “At one time,” she replied, “that railing and newel must have gone all the way to the bottom of the stairs.”

  In the thrill of her discovery, Nancy had momentarily forgotten her reason for being in the tunnel.

  “Ned!” Nancy cried out. “Look at this!”

  She said quickly, “Solving the mystery of the crooked banister will have to wait. I’ll give you a hand with that big door, Ned. I wonder what we’ll find.”

  “Bess and Dave, I hope.”

  They laid their flashlights on the ground, and both tugged as hard as they could at the stout handle. The door began to give a little.

  “Pull harder!” Ned urged.

  The next moment the door opened with a rush, sending Nancy and Ned over backward onto the ground!

  CHAPTER X

  Tom Sleepy Deer

  NANCY and Ned picked themselves up. Straight ahead was a stairway that led upward into darkness.

  “Bess! Dave!” Nancy shouted. They did not answer.

  “Let�
��s go up,” Nancy suggested.

  Ned beamed his flashlight and went first. Nancy followed. At the top of the stairway they saw another heavy door. Both yanked hard but it would not open.

  “Bess! Dave!” Ned called loudly.

  This time there was a response. A muffled voice replied, “We’re here! Locked in! Let us out!”

  “Bess!” Nancy shouted in relief. “Is Dave there too?”

  “Yes, I am. Look for a hidden button near the door latch.”

  Nancy and Ned beamed their flashlights on the area and searched. At first they could detect nothing, then Nancy said, “This thing that looks like a knot in the wood may be it.”

  Ned pressed it hard and the door opened.

  Bess literally fell into Nancy’s arms. “Oh, I was so frightened! Dave and I began to think we would never get out of here.”

  The couple’s prison was the round turret encased with unbreakable glass windows, which did not open.

  “We tried every way to signal somebody,” Dave said. “Bess had a flashlight and we used that but apparently nobody noticed it. Finally the battery went dead.”

  The four friends descended the stairway, each one asking questions about the trap door.

  Bess replied first. “That robot was in the kitchen when we went in. Dave was curious about Robby, so we walked directly toward him. Suddenly he began to make that spooky whirring sound and the next thing we knew the floor under our feet opened and down we went.”

  Dave took up the story. “Then the trap door shut. I found a box to stand on and tried my best to get the old thing open. But that was hopeless. I pounded on the door but it has some kind of covering that deadens sound. It was impossible to make you hear us.”

  Bess said, “We decided to investigate the tunnel. Dave and I thought maybe there was an opening to the outdoors at the far end of it. But all we found were the steps leading upward.”

  Dave told Nancy and Ned that both the lower door to the stairway and the one at the top had swung shut behind the couple.

  Bess shuddered. “Maybe we weren’t Rawley Banister’s first prisoners! It gives me goosebumps to think about it.”