The Haunted Showboat Read online

  “Oh, no!” Donna Mae protested. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

  George laughed. “I’ve seen so much, I’m sure I won’t be able to remember it all.”

  Nevertheless, Alex went on for several miles more, with Donna Mae pointing out the high concrete levees in some places and farm land running right down to the river in others. Again Nancy asked Alex to turn around.

  “Okay,” he agreed, making a wide sweep in the river and coming about at five hundred yards from the far shore. Suddenly the motor began to sputter and the next moment it stopped.

  “Goodness, what’s the matter?” Donna Mae asked.

  Alex gave a great sigh. “We’re out of gas!”

  Nancy was angry. Why hadn’t Alex checked the tank before they left? Aloud she merely said, “There must be an emergency can on board.”

  All the young people searched. They opened every locker, but there was no extra fuel in any of them.

  “Well, this is a fine mess!” George exclaimed in disgust.

  The three River Heights girls looked at one another, the same thought in all their minds. Had Alex and Donna Mae planned this on purpose to keep them from going to the Bartolome home to dinner?

  “If they are guilty, I’m not going to let them get the better of me,” Nancy determined silently. Aloud she cried out, “Help! Help!”

  Bess and George yelled also. Alex and Donna Mae sat still, smiling amusedly. When no one appeared in answer to the girls’ call, George looked at Alex and demanded:

  “Well, aren’t you going to do something?”

  “What can I do?” the young man replied, shrugging. “We’ll get back sooner or later. The stream will carry us down slowly and we’ll meet someone who will give us gas.”

  Such a delay was not to Nancy’s liking. She decided to do something at once. “I’m going for help,” she announced.

  Standing up, she kicked off her shoes and then unfastened the skirt of her three-piece ensemble. Before the others could object, she dived overboard, and began swimming with strong strokes for shore.

  “She’s crazy!” Alex exclaimed. “She may never make shore. And if she does, there’s probably not a house for miles around.”

  Bess was almost persuaded to his viewpoint. But George said confidently, “Nancy will make it all right.”

  Nancy did swim the five hundred yards easily. She crawled up the low levee, then disappeared from view. The others waited anxiously.

  Presently they heard the hum of a motor starting up, and from around a bend in the river came a small motorboat. In it were Nancy and a middle-aged farmer. On a seat stood a five-gallon can of gas.

  With little ado, the fuel was poured into the tank of the rented craft and Alex paid the man. Nancy thanked the farmer for all his trouble and climbed back into the launch. Alex started the motor and headed for New Orleans.

  “Oh, Nancy, you’re wonderful!” Donna Mae said. “Simply wonderful! I’d never have had the nerve to do that.”

  Bess and George looked at their chum admiringly, adding their praise also. Alex, however, kept silent.

  Nancy herself merely laughed. “I must be a sight,” she declared. “Bess, lend me a dean handkerchief, will you?”

  With it, Nancy tried to wipe the muddy water from her face, neck, and arms, but with little success. The wind soon dried her hair and clothes.

  After she had put on her skirt and shoes, Nancy noticed that the launch was going very slowly. She urged Alex to speed up. He made no comment, but did give the craft more power.

  As soon as they reached the dock, Nancy, Bess, and George hopped out. “Thank you so much for a grand trip,” Nancy said. “Now we must hurry. If you don’t mind, we’ll grab a taxi back to the parking lot. Then we’ll hurry on home.”

  By the time the girls reached Sunnymcad, it was already six-thirty. Only half an hour before dinner at the Bartolomes’!

  “Bess,” said Nancy, “will you please call Charles’s mother and explain why we’ll be a little late. I’ll dash right upstairs and wash the Mississippi mud out of my hair. And, George, will you get some clothes we can wear on our bayou trip tonight and hide them in the trunk of the car?”

  A few minutes later Bess came to Nancy’s room. She reported that Mrs. Bartolome had graciously said she would postpone the dinner hour to eight o’clock. George said the sports clothes and shoes were in the car.

  By seven-thirty the girls were ready to leave. As they walked into the hall, Donna Mae, looking very attractive in a peach-colored organdy, came from her room.

  “Have a wonderful time, girls,” she said. “I should warn you, though, that Mrs. Bartolome goes to bed early. You’ll be back here by ten.”

  George flushed with anger. She said icily, “We’ll be here when we get here!”

  Donna Mae looked as if she had been stung. To ease the tension, Nancy said quickly, “Do have a nice time at your dinner party.”

  The three girls hurried from the house and went to Nancy’s car. Bess got in front with Nancy, while George seated herself in the rear. As they drove off, Bess said severely to her cousin:

  “Why in the world did you talk like that to Donna Mae? Do you want to spoil everything for us? If the situation around here gets much worse, Aunt Stella and the Colonel may ask us to leave.”

  “I’m sorry,” said George, “but Donna Mae makes me positively ill when she gets on her high horse!”

  “She certainly has changed,” Bess admitted. “I’ll bet Alex is putting her up to a lot of these things.”

  Nancy was very quiet. So many unexplained things had occurred that now she was alert for trouble at any moment.

  “Cat got your tongue, Nancy?” George spoke up.

  The girl detective laughed. “No,” she replied, “but I have a feeling that we should be extra-cautious tonight.” Then Nancy added, “I’ve been thinking over what you girls said about Donna Mae. She did seem very different today, especially when we were on the launch. Up to now I hadn’t thought that she was interested in anything but herself. Actually, she’s a very intelligent girl.”

  At that moment the girls reached the long, tree-lined driveway of Oleander Manor, the Bartolome estate.

  Nancy began to breathe more easily. She relaxed and leaned back in her seat.

  “Isn’t this an attractive—?”

  She never finished the sentence. From among the low branches of the tree she was just passing a stone hurtled toward her!

  CHAPTER XIV

  Ghost on Board

  FLYING through the open car window, the large stone grazed the side of Nancy’s head. It continued to the back seat, narrowly missing George, who ducked just in time to avoid injury. The rock landed with a thud against the rear cushion.

  “Oh!” Bess screamed.

  Nancy quickly braked the car to a stop. As the girls looked back, they saw a man running away from the tree and down the driveway.

  “We must catch him!” George urged, as Nancy began to back up.

  The lean stranger, realizing that he was being pursued, dashed across the lawn to some bushes and disappeared.

  As Nancy opened the door to step out, Bess held her back. “Don’t you dare go after him! He’ll probably throw another stone.”

  The young detective paused, then closed the door. Bess went on, “What a dreadful thing for him to do! Why, Nancy, you or George might have been killed, if that stone had hit you!”

  “I’m afraid you’re right,” Nancy agreed. “Well, we’d better report it to the police right away.”

  As she started the car again, the girls saw Charles hurrying down the driveway toward them. He reached the car, opened the door, and jumped in beside Bess.

  “Hello, everybody!” he said. “I heard you coming. How is everything?”

  “Terrible,” said George flatly, and told him what had happened.

  The young man was aghast. “You girls sure you’re all right?” he asked solicitously.

  After they assured him they were, he wen
t on, “You know, since I’ve been working on the showboat, I’ve had a couple of narrow escapes of my own. Once when I was in my car somebody shot at a tire. And—well, maybe I shouldn’t tell you what happened today, or you may not want to go tonight.”

  “Oh, please do,” Nancy begged.

  Charles said that a sniper had shot at him this morning when he was on his way to the River Princess. “His bullet just missed me!”

  “How wicked!” Bess burst out. “Oh, I hope he won’t be around tonight!”

  Secretly she was hoping that Nancy might cancel the trip, but the young detective seemed more determined than ever to go to the River Princess and solve the mystery.

  “My mother mustn’t know about any of these attacks,” Charles warned the girls. “So please don’t say anything.”

  Nancy nodded and decided not to call the police about the stone thrower.

  “You girls will be glad to know that I’ve provided some extra protection for you tonight. Two friends of mine, Frank Morse and Jack Memory, are coming to dinner and will go on the trip with us.”

  “Good!” Bess said quickly. “There’s safety in numbers, especially when they’re men! I feel a lot better now!” The others laughed as they proceeded to the house.

  Mrs. Bartolome, a very attractive and charming woman of fifty, greeted them cordially. She and Charles took the visitors for a short stroll in their beautiful garden, edged with boxwood. In the bright moonlight they could see roses, delphinium and lilies, surrounded by azalea and oleander bushes, blooming in profusion.

  “If I lived here,” said Bess, breathing in deeply, “I’d never want to leave the place. It’s a divine garden.”

  Mrs. Bartolome smiled, pleased by the girl’s enthusiasm. “We do love it,” she said.

  A few minutes later two personable young men arrived and were introduced to the visitors: Frank Morse, slim and well-built, had blond curly hair; Jack Memory was tall and dark, with flashing mischievous brown eyes.

  The dinner party proved to be a gala one. The food, which included stuffed pheasant, was delicious and the conversation humorous and sparkling.

  At the end of the meal Charles announced the plan for going on the trip into the bayou.

  “In order to keep our trip secret,” he said, “I suggest that we stroll into the garden in pairs, then join at the rear of the garden. There’s a little-used road in back of the largest rose garden and the car is hidden there.”

  When Nancy told Mrs. Bartolome that the girls would like to change from their dinner frocks and shoes to sports attire, their hostess led them upstairs. After showing them to a guest room, Mrs. Bartolome smiled and said, “I wish you luck in your sleuthing tonight. For Charles’s sake, I’d like to see the mystery solved.”

  “I hope to learn a lot tonight,” Nancy replied.

  Quickly the girls slipped into the shirts and jeans they had brought, then joined the boys in the living room. There was a marked change in the young men’s attire also. They, too, were dressed for the trip into the bayou!

  As the six friends went outdoors, one of the boys commented on the brilliant full moon.

  “This is fortunate,” Nancy thought. “It will make traveling through that swamp easier than in total darkness.” She also recalled that voodoo worshipers often held meetings when the moon was full.

  Following Charles’s plan, the couples separated, Nancy and Charles walking together, Bess with Frank, and George with Jack. Five minutes later they all met back of the rose garden, jumped into the car, and started off.

  “So far, so good,” Charles remarked, looking in his rear-view mirror. “There’s no sign of anyone following us.”

  Two miles from the house they came to the bayou and he parked. Three canoes were hidden among the trees and bushes that overhung the water. The couples stepped in.

  Bess remarked to Frank, “It’s a good thing there’s moonlight or you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.”

  “S-sh!” Nancy called across from her canoe. “We’d better keep very quiet.”

  The rest of the trip was made in silence. As they neared the area where the showboat was, the young people became aware of the steady beat of a tom-tom. Bess shivered a little, but Nancy, her heart pounding with excitement, sat up straighter.

  A few minutes later they could distinctly hear music coming from the calliope! To herself Nancy said, “But Charles told me the old organ could not possibly be played!”

  Soon the three canoes reached the pond where the River Princess lay. In the moonlight, with shadows playing on her, the old craft looked unreal and spooky indeed. The music stopped at the end of a dismal tune.

  Then, as if the organist had left his bench, a ghostly figure suddenly walked from the interior of the boat onto the deck. It was sheathed from head to toe in white and glided up and down as though it were floating rather than walking.

  Bess clutched the sides of the canoe in which she was riding. A terrified gasp escaped her lips. As if annoyed by the sound the ghost flitted inside the old showboat.

  “Shall we follow it?” Charles whispered to Nancy.

  Before she could decide, a new kind of sound came from the River Princess—hymn chanting!

  “A voodoo meeting must be going on!” Charles said in a low voice.

  There was not a light on the boat and no other signs of activity. Did the strange rites take place in complete darkness with the audience sitting motionless?

  Nancy leaned forward and said to her companion, “I’d like to go aboard.”

  Charles whispered that he thought it would be best not to go across the pond in the canoe.

  A ghostly figure suddenly emerged from

  “There is a stretch of moss sod on our left leading up to the boat. Suppose we find it and walk to the River Princess.”

  The three canoes came together and the directions were given to the others. Then they silently paddled through the shadows to the mossy walk and the girls stepped out. As their feet touched the sod, the chanting on the showboat suddenly ceased.

  the interior of the boat onto the deck

  In the lee of a giant cypress, the girls hesitated. There was complete silence for fully ten seconds, then they became aware of the splash of oars.

  “Someone’s leaving the showboat,” George remarked.

  “Listen!” Nancy commanded. A few moments later she said, “No one’s leaving by canoe. Someone is coming!”

  The young people waited tensely. From another entrance into the pond glided a rowboat. Two figures were in it.

  To the young people’s complete astonishment the couple were dressed in Colonial attire. The man at the oars was elderly. The woman, about the same age, wore a dark-colored velvet dress and a bonnet.

  The watchers were too astounded to comment. The “Colonial gentleman” pulled up to the River Princess. Then he stood up and helped the woman ascend the ladder to the deck!

  CHAPTER XV

  A Weird Scene

  COMPLETELY mystified, Nancy and her companions watched the scene at the old showboat in awe. Why were the elderly woman and the man with her in Colonial costumes? Was she perhaps coming for some secret herbs sold at the voodoo meeting on board? And, for some reason, was the eighteenth-century attire required?

  The three girls huddled together. Bess whispered that chills were going up and down her spine. “Maybe Uncle Rufus is here and is going to give the woman a treatment,” she murmured.

  “I wish I knew,” Nancy replied. “Let’s see what she does next.”

  The woman reached the top of the ladder and nimbly stepped over the rail. At once she walked to the entrance where theater patrons would enter if coming to see a show.

  Taking a position near the doorway, the costumed, elderly woman stopped and turned toward the spot where a gangplank had once been placed. She smiled gaily, then began nodding and shaking hands as if with imaginary passengers.

  “Poor thing,” said Bess. “She must have lost her mind.”

&nb
sp; “It looks that way,” Nancy agreed.

  For nearly ten minutes the little pantomime continued. Then the woman’s companion called up from the rowboat:

  “Everyone’s aboard, Louvina dear. The show will start soon. You’ve seen it so many times, honey. Suppose you come for a boat ride with me while it’s going on.”

  The woman hesitated a few seconds and peered into the dark interior of the showboat theater.

  “But there might be something new tonight,” she protested.

  “Oh, I think not. You’d better come now, dear. I want to show you how lovely the wild orchids near here are in the moonlight.”

  Finally Louvina, though obviously reluctant, came to the ladder. The elderly man assisted her in climbing down and getting into the boat.

  As he started to row away, George whispered to Nancy, “Let’s go ask him what’s going on! He can probably solve the whole mystery in one minute.”

  “Wait!” Nancy said in a low voice. “I think the woman is in a trance. It might be disastrous to awaken her. I’d rather follow the two of them and find out what I can from the man later when he’s alone.”

  “I guess you’re right,” George agreed.

  Despite his age, the elderly man was a swift rower and the boat was soon out of sight.

  The girls stepped back into their canoes and in whispered tones talked the matter over with their escorts.

  “Somebody should stay here and watch the River Princess,” Nancy declared. “Are any of you willing to go aboard?”

  Frank and Jack were eager to, but insisted that Bess and George remain outside in the canoes.

  “No point in you girls taking any unnecessary chances,” Frank said, and Bess gave him a grateful look.

  In the end it was decided that only Nancy and Charles would follow the mysterious couple.

  Charles paddled swiftly in pursuit. Soon only about a hundred yards separated the two crafts.

  “Do you want me to overtake them?” Charles asked Nancy in a low voice.