The Mysterious Mannequin Page 6

  At that moment the telephone rang and she excused herself. Bess offered to locate the right magazine. In turning quickly, her arm brushed against a small porcelain bowl on a table. It sailed through the air. Bess, unable to rescue it, closed her eyes as the bowl smashed to bits against the counter.

  “Oh!” she wailed. “I’ll pay for it, of course, but I’ll bet it’ll cost me a mint of money!”

  Nancy and George thought so too. Helen went over and picked up a few of the pieces. She looked at the name of the maker painted on the bottom.

  “You’re lucky, Bess,” she said. “Fortunately this isn’t an expensive piece.” She continued to look and finally found a fragment with the price tag on it. “It’s only five dollars.”

  “Thank goodness,” said Bess. She opened her purse and took out a bill.

  Nancy had gone over to the pile of magazines. She came upon part of an old one. It contained an article about dealers of fine Turkish rugs in the United States. She quickly opened the magazine. Staring at her was a photograph of Farouk’s shopwindow with the lovely mannequin seated in the corner.

  “Just as I remember her,” Nancy told herself. “The eyes are the way I sketched them. Girls, take a look.”

  By this time they had picked up the pieces of the broken bowl and Bess had paid the clerk the five dollars.

  They all stared at the photograph while Nancy thumbed through the article to find the section about Farouk. Unfortunately she did not learn anything new about him, and the names of the magazine, the author, and the photographer had been torn off.

  All the girls except Bess made a few purchases, then said good-by to Miss Lucille and left for River Heights.

  As Nancy, Bess, and George were transferring to Nancy’s car, Helen laughed. “Bess and George, we didn’t succeed, despite our tennis match, in getting Nancy’s mind off the mystery!”

  “But I enjoyed the game immensely,” Nancy insisted.

  “Well, lots of luck in finding the mannequin,” Helen said as she waved good-by.

  When Nancy arrived home she found Ned there, lying on a porch chaise. “Life at summer camp when I was a counselor was never like this insurance work,” he said, getting up. He explained that he had been trying to sell a policy to a couple in River Heights. “They were hard to get but I sold ’em!” He grinned.

  “Good for you,” said Nancy.

  Ned told her he had dropped in to learn if there were any new developments in the mystery. Hannah Gruen invited him to stay to dinner and he had accepted. Mr. Drew drove in right after Nancy and she brought everyone up to date on the latest happenings.

  “After dinner, will you men go with me to call on the people whose names the restaurant owner gave me?”

  Both said they would like to go, then Mr. Drew added, “I have some news of my own. Today I received a cablegram from the chief of police in Istanbul. He had no leads on Farouk Tahmasp.”

  “Just the same he must be there or in the outskirts of the city,” Nancy said.

  At dinner she asked if the others agreed about the note in the wallet being a hoax. Hannah suggested that American manufactured paper might be sold in Istanbul and Ned said the Drews’ burglar could have sent a gift of letter paper to his friend Seli.

  “Possibly,” said Mr. Drew, “but I’m inclined to agree with Nancy. And don’t forget this. The note may not have been the one he showed the girl. But if it was, our burglar must have had a good reason for wanting her to think Farouk is dead or is supposed to be.”

  Mrs. Gruen sighed. “It’s certainly confusing.”

  Ned had been staring into space. Now he said, “None of this explains why the girl ran in the opposite direction to the one the man took nor what all this has to do with the mannequin.”

  As soon as they finished dinner, the housekeeper insisted that the others start their search at once. “I’ll take care of the food and dishes. My finger is all right now.”

  Nancy went to get the telephone book and looked for the name Aga. She jotted down the address. Nancy also found Gursel, but neither Arik nor Aisha Hatun was listed.

  Mr. Drew suggested that since it was such a hot night they take his air-conditioned car and he would drive.

  “Sounds good,” said Ned.

  All three got into the front seat and started off. Presently Nancy said, “I don’t think we should tell these people that Mr. Akurzal gave me their names.” The men agreed.

  Cemal Aga’s apartment was easy to find. As the callers went up the stairs to it they wondered if he would prove to be the burglar.

  Mr. Drew rang the bell and the door was opened by a clean-shaven, dark-eyed young man. He looked surprised but smiled in a friendly way.

  He definitely was not the burglar!

  “You wish to see me?” Aga asked. He spoke with a foreign accent.

  Mr. Drew replied they wished to ask him a few questions. “Are you from Turkey?” he queried.

  “Yes, Istanbul. I left there a year ago.”

  “Did you know a Farouk Tahmasp there?”

  Aga shook his head. Then he said that he had met people by the name of Tahmasp at a seaside resort in Turkey and possibly they were relatives.

  “Do you have their address?” Nancy spoke up.

  Once more the young man shook his head. He was sorry.

  Mr. Drew inquired if Aga knew the three other people they were trying to find and gave their names.

  He replied, “I know few people here. It is unfortunate but I cannot help you.”

  The callers thanked Aga and left.

  Alime Gursel lived a few blocks away. Nancy suggested that they go there next.

  Ned whispered to Nancy and her father, “I think we’re being followed, but every time I turn around the person walks in the other direction. Maybe I’m mistaken.”

  The three went on and once Nancy looked back suddenly to see if anyone were directly behind them. There were so many people on the street it was hard to decide whether anyone might be following them. Finally she and the others reached the car and climbed in.

  Mr. Drew started off, the car windows tightly closed because of the air-conditioning.

  “It’s a relief to get back in here,” Ned remarked. “Hot, très hot is the word for outside.”

  The words were hardly out of his mouth when something came whizzing through the air and smashed against the window alongside Mr. Drew. The glass shattered!

  CHAPTER XI

  Ah-ee-sha

  THE rock crashed through the splintered car window alongside Mr. Drew. It missed the lawyer’s head by inches and fell at Nancy’s feet.

  Mr. Drew stopped the car at once and jumped out, followed by Ned and Nancy. They looked all around for the stone thrower but there was no one in the immediate vicinity.

  The noise soon brought a number of neighbors who demanded to know what had happened.

  “Someone threw a stone at my car,” Mr. Drew explained. “He might have injured me or my daughter or this young man here. If any of you can help find out who he is, I’d appreciate it.”

  The men, women, and children who had gathered looked at one another but said nothing. Were they covering up for the guilty person? Or hadn’t they seen the stone thrower?

  “Will someone, please, call the police?” Nancy’s father asked.

  A man hurried off to a nearby street telephone while curious onlookers peered inside the car to look at the rock.

  Finally one young man remarked, “That stone is big enough to kill a person. I’d say you’re lucky nothing happened to you.”

  A boy said, “Good you had shatterproof glass and the window was shut. Guess you have air-conditioning, sir?”

  Mr. Drew nodded.

  Within minutes a patrol car roared up with two officers in it. They quickly examined the hole in the window and the rock on the floor.

  Finally one of them said, “Do you have any enemies?”

  “No,” Mr. Drew, Nancy, and Ned replied in unison. They thought of the burglar but did not
believe he would deliberately try to harm them.

  The other officer said, “This could have been just malicious mischief. In any case, we’ll try to find out who did it.”

  He locked the police car and the two officers, carrying flashlights, went down a driveway between two shops. They returned in a little while and reported that no one had been hiding in the area at the rear.

  “It’s going to be pretty hard finding the guilty person,” one of the officers admitted. “But maybe someone in the neighborhood will talk.”

  “Hope you have better luck than I did,” Mr. Drew said. He explained that none of the curious onlookers admitted witnessing the attack.

  One of the officers said to Mr. Drew, “Until we track down the culprit, it’ll be dangerous for you folks to stick around this place. Don’t you think you ought to go home?”

  Reluctantly Nancy agreed, but on the way she asked Ned, “Could you stay at our house tonight and come back here with me tomorrow morning?”

  “I guess I can work it out,” Ned replied. “Some people I was trying to sell insurance to told me to come back tomorrow afternoon.”

  “I wish you luck,” said Nancy. “More luck than I seem to have solving this mystery.”

  Mr. Drew patted her shoulder. “Mysteries are usually solved more by hard work than good luck.”

  Ned laughed. “In that case Nancy should have this mystery wound up in short order.”

  At ten o’clock the next morning Mr. Drew took his car to the repair shop to have the broken window replaced. At the same time Ned and Nancy drove off in his convertible to the area of River Heights where the people of Greek and Turkish descent lived.

  “We have only one other address,” Nancy remarked. “Alime Gursel.”

  They found her apartment easily. She was a young married woman with a baby girl about six months old in her arms.

  “She’s not the girl who ran away from the burglar,” Nancy told herself. Aloud she said, “Good morning,” and smiled. “We’re not trying to sell anything. We’re hoping to find a couple of people but don’t have their addresses. They probably live around here and I wondered if perhaps you might know them.”

  “Do come in,” the young woman said. “Isn’t my baby girl sweet?”

  “She’s darling,” Nancy replied.

  “Yes, she’s a nice baby,” Ned agreed.

  Mrs. Gursel motioned for her guests to follow her to the living room and they all seated themselves. Nancy was about to question her, when Mrs. Gursel got up and came toward Ned.

  “You know her daddy is away a great deal. He travels. My poor baby doesn’t have a father to cuddle her. Would you mind holding her a few minutes and giving her a little fatherly love?”

  At the look of fright on Ned’s face Nancy almost went into gales of laughter. Before Ned could refuse, Mrs. Gursel laid the baby in his arms. He held her awkwardly, apparently fearful he would drop her. Finally he set the baby on his knee with both arms around her.

  “Oh, she likes you!” Alime Gursel exclaimed. “Do put her over your shoulder and hug her.”

  By this time Nancy was smiling broadly. Ned looked at her pathetically as if to say, “Please take this creature away.”

  Obediently the Emerson College football star carefully lifted the baby, put her head in his neck, and suddenly his expression changed.

  “She is nice,” he said.

  Nancy, managing to keep a straight face, asked the child’s mother if she knew Tunay Arik or Aisha Hatun.

  Mrs. Gursel repeated the names, then slowly shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I not only do not know them, but I have never heard of either of them. Probably they do not live in this neighborhood.”

  Ned stood up. “Probably not. Nancy, we’d better go,” he said, and quickly handed the baby back to her mother.

  Nancy told Mrs. Gursel she had enjoyed their little visit, and the couple left. When they reached the street, Nancy could contain herself no longer and began to laugh.

  “Oh, Ned, I wish I could have taken a picture of you when Mrs. Gursel handed over her baby.”

  Ned frowned. “It’s a good thing you didn’t. I would have torn it up.”

  Quickly he changed the subject. “Now what do you intend to do? You don’t have a single lead on those two other people.”

  “No, I don’t,” Nancy said ruefully. “But I’m sure they live in this area because of what Mr. Akurzal said in his note. Let’s ask in various shops. At some time or other Tunay Arik and Aisha Hatun must have to buy food.”

  She and Ned visited a supermarket, a laundromat, and a stationery store without learning anything.

  “Maybe,” Ned remarked, “they grow their own food, have washing machines, and make their own paper and pencils.”

  “Very funny,” said Nancy. “Ned, will you be serious!” But she couldn’t keep a straight face.

  “Well, where else?” he asked.

  “I can think of only one other kind of place,” Nancy answered. “A sweetshop.”

  “I saw one down on the next corner,” Ned told her.

  The couple walked to it and went in. Ned bought a box of chocolates and handed it to Nancy.

  “Oh, thank you,” she said, then asked the clerk, “Do you have any customers named Arik and Hatun?”

  As the clerk said no, Nancy and Ned became aware of giggling at the side of the shop. They turned to see two little girls sucking lollipops. On a hunch Nancy asked if they knew either of the people.

  “Sue, you tell her,” said the other girl shyly.

  “Okay, Kathy,” her playmate said. She told Nancy that a family who lived next door to her had a boarder named Arik. “He has a funny first name. We call him Tunafish.”

  The two little girls burst into giggles again.

  Nancy smiled and said, “Sue and Kathy, is it Tunay?”

  “Guess so,” Kathy answered. “We like Tunafish.”

  Nancy asked, “Will you take us there?”

  “Why not?” said Sue.

  The two little girls ran from the shop with Nancy and Ned at their heels. They went around a corner and up to a row of houses.

  Presently they stopped and Kathy pointed. “He lives in there.”

  Nancy and Ned climbed the steps and rang the bell. A woman answered and this time Ned made the inquiry. “Does Tunay Arik live here?”

  “Yes, he does,” the woman replied. “But he’s at work now. Won’t be home till five o’clock. Why did you want him?”

  “We have a message for a man we think is named Tunay Arik,” Nancy spoke up. “What does your boarder look like?”

  When the woman gave a description, Nancy merely said, “He sounds like the right man. We’ll be back to see him later.”

  As she and Ned turned to go down the steps, Nancy whispered to him, “He fits the description of the burglar all right!”

  When they reached the foot of the steps, Sue and Kathy were waiting for them. Giggling again, they began to sing in a kind of nursery rhythm.

  “Tunafish is in lu-uv,

  Tunafish is in lu-uv.

  But Aisha won’t date him.

  No, she’ll never date him.”

  Nancy was intrigued. She clapped and asked the little girls to sing the song again. They obliged and ended up laughing so hard tears came to their eyes.

  Nancy asked, “Do you mean Aisha Hatun?” The girls said they did not know her last name, but a couple of times they had heard Tunafish singing softly in some foreign language. The song always began, “Ah-ee-sha, Ah-ee-sha.”

  “What else did he do?” Nancy inquired.

  Sue and Kathy, who said they were sisters, admitted sneaking into the house next door now and then to listen to the boarders.

  “Sometimes,” said Kathy, “Tunafish would go to the telephone and dial a number. He would say ‘Aisha, I must meet you.’ Then he’d talk in another language. We’d get tired of listening and go home.”

  Ned grinned. “So you never found out where the girl lives?�
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  “No,” Kathy said. “And he was so sad. I guess she wouldn’t date him.”

  The girls said they must be going now and ran up the steps into the next house.

  “We picked up a clue,” Nancy remarked, “but we still have to locate Aisha Hatun. I have a hunch. Let’s try the library. I noticed one not far from here.”

  They walked to it and Nancy found that the woman at the desk was a music teacher whom she knew.

  “Hello, Nancy,” she said. “I guess you’re surprised to see me here. Most of my pupils go away in the summer and I take this part-time job. How come you’re in this neighborhood? Sleuthing?”

  Nancy admitted that she was and introduced Ned to Mrs. Armstrong. She told of her search for Aisha Hatun.

  Mrs. Armstrong pulled out her card file and thumbed through to the H’s.

  “Here it is,” she said. “Miss Aisha Hatun takes out books quite regularly. She must be a great reader. Oh, oh. She has two overdue books.” After a moment’s pause, Mrs. Armstrong continued, “She lives at 26 Dawson Street.”

  Nancy was thrilled to have the address. At last she seemed to be getting somewhere on the mystery.

  Mrs. Armstrong went on, “She lives with a couple named Kosay.”

  Nancy thanked the librarian, said she was glad to see her again, and went off. It was only a few minutes’ walk to 26 Dawson Street.

  The Kosay house was small with attractive bushes and a wild profusion of gay-colored flowers.

  “Pretty garden,” Nancy remarked.

  As she and Ned walked up to the house, he said, “If this is the girl you’re looking for, how will I know it?”

  Nancy answered quickly, “If she’s the one who opens the door, I’ll gently step on your foot. If someone else comes and we have to go inside and you and I are separated when she comes into the room, I’ll smooth my hair back.”

  Nancy’s pulse quickened as she rang the bell. Half a minute later the door was opened by a very attractive young woman with long black hair. Nancy stepped on Ned’s foot.

  CHAPTER XII

  Faker Revealed

  THE girl standing in the doorway was the same one who had torn herself away from the burglar!