Presently Mr. Warfield said that the next morning he would take the visitors to the lower part of the former fortress and show them the various sections. “The storerooms and kitchen are still used today,” he explained. “But the dungeons are locked up.”
“I’m glad of that,” Bab said.
George chuckled. “Are the keys left in the doors to make it easy for the ghosts to get out?”
Mr. Warfield laughed. “I don’t know the reason, but you’re right about the keys being left in the locks on the outside of the doors. They’re huge old-fashioned turnkeys. Perhaps the owner of this inn thinks they’re an interesting tourist attraction. You’ll see it all in the morning.”
The ghost hunters were intrigued by the promise of such a venture. Nancy determined to make a thorough search of the place.
“Tonight I’ll sit out on the terrace and watch for ghosts,” she said to herself.
The supper hour did not end until nine o’clock and everyone declared he had overeaten. “Let’s walk up and down the porch fifty times,” Ned proposed.
The ghost hunters giggled as they found themselves passing and repassing one another when they came to each end. Finally all of them went out to the stone parapet in front of the inn.
Some of the group sat in chairs, others on the ground, while still others, including Nancy, seated themselves on the wall near the edge. There was a lively exchange of banter followed by speculations about the mystery.
About an hour later they were startled to hear a whistling sound overhead. Looking up, the ghost hunters were amazed to see a bursting display of fireworks.
Almost immediately this was followed by a barrage of flaming rockets which came directly toward the watchers. Before Nancy could move, one of the rockets hit her arm and she cried out in pain.
CHAPTER XVII
Phantom Prisoners
AT Nancy’s outcry everyone jumped up. They were horrified to see a mean-looking burn on her arm.
“The rocket hit you?” Ned asked.
“Yes.”
Nancy was already moving toward the door into the lobby. Bess, George, and Ned were at her heels.
“I wonder if there’s a doctor staying here,” George said. She hurried to ask the desk clerk.
“A doctor is a guest. I’ll call him downstairs from his room,” the clerk said.
After examining Nancy’s arm, the physician said, “This is a nasty burn, but you’re lucky it isn’t any deeper. There will be no permanent scar. Please come to my room and I’ll treat it.”
Nancy and her friends were relieved to hear this. Bess and George went with her and waited while the doctor gave first aid to soothe the pain.
“How did you get burned?” the physician asked. “I heard whistling noises and a slight boom out front. My room’s in the rear.”
“The noises were fireworks,” George replied. “But besides that, several flaming rockets came whizzing our way. It’s certainly a miracle no one else was hit.”
Bess was angry. “Nobody should have been hit. The whole thing’s outrageous.”
Nancy thanked the doctor and the girls left. She turned to the cousins and asked, “Where did Ned go?”
George said he had joined the other boys to search for the person who had launched the rockets. As soon as the girls reached the first floor, Nancy insisted upon going outside again to see what the boys had found out.
“Don’t you think you should go to bed?” Bess asked her.
“Not yet,” Nancy answered. “We came here to solve a mystery.” She smiled wanly. “I wouldn’t want to be left out of it.”
By the time they reached the stone parapet, the men in the ghost hunters’ group were returning. They had nothing to report.
“We searched pretty thoroughly,” said Jim. “Not a clue to anyone hiding, either. Nancy, how are you feeling?”
“All right,” she said. “I’m wondering if perhaps there’s a clearing somewhere in the woods where a machine was set up to launch the fireworks and the rockets.”
“We’ll look further,” Bill offered. “Those rockets didn’t come from the direction of the road, so we know they weren’t launched from a truck.”
It was decided that Nancy’s group would investigate the dungeons the following morning, while the other ghost hunters searched outdoors for evidence of the mischief-maker.
Everyone was up early and the hunt started directly after breakfast. Mr. Warfield was busy, so Nancy and her friends took flashlights and went alone.
The former prison for captured soldiers was large. There was a long corridor, lined with one dungeon after another, all with stone floors.
“What an awful way to treat prisoners!” Bess exclaimed. “There’s not a window in the place and no lights. Do you suppose those poor men weren’t allowed to read or write?”
Ned said probably not. “I guess all they could do was talk to one another.”
George remarked, “I wonder if any of them ever escaped.”
“Probably,” Burt answered. “Sometimes prisoners dig tunnels in order to escape. But up here I guess you’d have to go through solid rock to make a passage. That would take forever by hand.”
“And the men wouldn’t have had any tools.”
The ghost hunters came to a dungeon which was larger than the others and they surmised that several prisoners, perhaps as many as twenty, had been kept in it.
“I think I’ll take a look inside,” Dave remarked and unlocked the door.
He and Bess walked around the cell, beaming their flashlights. Bess was particularly intrigued by the fact that two of the walls were of natural stone. The third was man-made and the barred front had been riveted into the stonework.
While Bess’s back was turned to the corridor, a mischievous twinkle came into Dave’s eyes. He tiptoed across the room, went outside, and silently closed and locked the door. Quickly he scooted down the corridor and joined the rest of the group.
A few seconds later Bess said, “We’d better go now, Dave, and catch up to the others.”
When there was no response she turned and was amazed to find that Dave was not in sight. Quickly Bess went to the door. To her chagrin it would not open!
For several seconds Bess was furious. She vowed all sorts of things to punish Dave for the prank. Then the anger went out of her face and she smiled.
“The best lesson I can give him is to play it cool,” she said to herself.
Bess decided that to while away the time until the others came back, she would do some more investigating. The only piece of furniture was a solid block of wood, probably used as a bench. She looked to see if there were a lid but found none.
“Maybe something is hidden under it,” Bess told herself.
It was with great difficulty that she was able to move the bench. In the stone floor where it had stood was a large square piece of wood.
“I wonder what this is for. Maybe there’s a well under here,” Bess thought.
She tried to pry up the piece of wood with her fingers, but it was either stuck or too heavy. She could not budge it.
Bess smiled. “My jailer’s going to get a big surprise that I found something he missed.”
At that moment her friends returned. Dave stayed in the background, wondering what punishment Bess had in store for him.
To his astonishment she said, “Dave Evans, you did the ghost hunters a great favor. Unlock the door and I’ll show you something exciting.”
They all entered the cell and stared at the wood square in the floor.
“I’ll bet it leads to a secret subterranean passage,” George said.
“In any case, let’s lift it out if we can,” Nancy suggested.
They all crowded around as the three boys tried to raise the wooden piece. Presently it gave a little. They pried harder. Suddenly the wood came loose. Then boom! There was an explosion from underneath.
It knocked the ghost hunters off their feet. They lay sprawled on the floor, all of them in a state of shock.
The explosion knocked the ghost hunters off their feet
Nancy was the first to regain her senses and realized she had sustained a few bruises and her burned arm hurt.
Concerned about the others, she asked if they had suffered any injuries. Fortunately no one had been harmed by the explosion, although all expected that some black-and-blue marks would show up later.
“I don’t want any more frights like that,” George declared.
As they all stood up and gazed below, the ghost hunters wondered when the explosive device had been rigged and why. There was no question but that it had been a homemade bomb, but luckily it had not caused much damage.
Ned shone his light below. There were steps cut out of the solid rock. He descended them and announced that he was in a short tunnel.
“There’s a wooden door at the end of it. I wonder if this was used as a secret entrance and exit,” he said.
Nancy wanted to investigate but the others objected. “You’ve been banged up enough,” George declared. “We’ll come back later.”
Reluctantly Nancy agreed. “But make it soon so we can find out where that door leads. I believe this was an escape route.”
“You mean prisoners dug this?” Bess asked.
“Perhaps. Or it might have been put here when the fortress was built. In time of attack, the officers and guards could get away.”
“Yes,” Ned said. “Probably a few clever prisoners found out about this tunnel and managed to get away. In order not to be shot if they were seen, they draped themselves in some kind of white garment or piece of cloth so that they looked like phantoms.”
“Pretty neat trick.” Dave chuckled. “And now somebody who knows the story has been reenacting it for the benefit of guests at the inn.”
“And planted the bomb to keep people out,” Burt put in.
For the time being, the block of wood was put into place and the heavy bench placed over it. When Nancy reached the lobby, she told Mr. Hesse, the owner of the inn, what had happened. He was amazed and at a loss to explain the bomb.
“In fact, I knew nothing about the wooden block and the tunnel. I’ll notify the police. While they’re on the way, let’s go down there.”
When they reached the special dungeon, Mr. Hesse was astounded when he saw the opening to the secret tunnel.
“I’ll go down first,” he said. “You’ve already had two accidents. I try not to be superstitious, but it does seem as if things come in threes. Please be careful.”
Along the walls of the short passageway the searchers found a row of seashells. They were very beautiful. The ghost hunters wondered if by any chance they belonged to Madame Tarantella. Nancy picked up several of them but could not find any initials or other evidence to show who the owner was.
Nancy noticed that the shells were all highly polished and had very little dust on them. She concluded that they had been hidden there fairly recently. “It’s probably a stolen collection,” the young sleuth thought.
After a struggle the boys managed to open the wooden door at the end of the tunnel. It led into the hillside but at such an angle that it could hardly be detected from above or below.
“But at least one person knows it’s here,” Nancy thought. “And we may find out he’s Wilbur Prizer!”
The door was closed and the investigators went back upstairs. The other ghost hunters had just returned. Unfortunately they had learned little.
“In a small clearing in the woods, we found a burnt-out fireworks display and some rocket shells, but that’s all,” Don Hackett reported.
When Rita heard Ned’s theory about the escaping soldiers playing ghost, she looked disappointed. “You and Nancy always manage to take the supernatural out of everything,” she complained.
“What do you mean?” Bill asked. “Everything in this world is supernatural.”
CHAPTER XVIII
Warning to Nancy
“DID I hear you right?” Rita spoke up. “Bill, you said, ‘Everything in the world is supernatural.’ ”
“That’s right,” he answered. Everyone listened attentively as he went on, “Think of the millions of things around you—a clamshell for instance. Only God can make a clam,” he said, paraphrasing Joyce Kilmer.
His audience nodded and Bill went on, “You probably think of clams as being plentiful and common. There are many varieties that aren’t seen often. Take the man-eating clam as an example.”
“Man-eating clam!” Bess exclaimed. “Where do you find that?”
“On the Great Barrier Reef. When you go shelling there, you’d better wear a heavy pair of high sneakers because the Tridacna gigas may give you a bad bruise.”
Bill said that this man-eating clam grew to be three to four feet across. “Its scalloped opening is dotted with dozens of glowing eyes and it sometimes weighs as much as five hundred pounds!”
“Wow!” Don exclaimed. “That’s not for me.”
Helen asked how the clam could eat a man.
Bill smiled. “Personally I don’t believe it does, because the clam is slow at closing and one would have plenty of time to get out of its way.”
He grinned. “It’s said that the Tridacna gigas can carry a pearl as large as a golf ball. If a person were foolish enough to try to drag it out, then he might have an arm clamped between the two halves of the shell.”
Helen pretended to shiver and said, “I’ll look at that creature in a museum, not a reef.”
When the police officers arrived, Mr. Hesse greeted them in the lobby and introduced Nancy and her friends.
Nancy asked Captain Watson, “Have you any news of Steve Rover?”
“No,” he replied. “Not a trace of his abductor, either. But it’s possible Steve went off with that man in the car quite willingly. The Middleburg police told us the boy was always looking for adventure and perhaps he figured this was a way of finding it, free of charge.”
Nancy did not think so. She was greatly concerned about the boy and was afraid he was in the hands of criminals.
“There’s some more news in this case,” the captain went on. “Night before last Madame Tarantella’s hut in Vernonville was burned down.”
“On purpose?” Nancy asked.
“We don’t know,” the officer said. “But this part of the story will particularly interest you ghost hunters. Neighbors declared that they saw the medium’s ghost floating out in the smoke.”
Rita caught her breath. “Oh dear! That means Madame Tarantella is dead.”
George smiled. “Or wants people to think she is. The whole thing is probably a hoax.”
The officers looked at her amused. Then Watson said, “I’m glad you don’t believe such nonsense.”
After checking the scene of the explosion in the basement, the officers left, taking the collection of shells with them. Captain Watson said they would find out if it had been reported stolen.
The ghost hunters continued to discuss the news about the medium. Bab said, “I don’t see the point of burning the hut.”
Jim chuckled. “Maybe that strange woman is trying to make a comeback. She’ll pretend she has been visiting the spirit world and can now bring more fabulous messages than ever in her séances.” He grinned. “Messages that are out of this world.”
When the laughter died down, they discussed what the next step in their ghost hunting should be.
“We seem to have been stymied at every turn,” Ned remarked, “although we’ve practically pin-pointed who the ghost makers are.”
Rita declared she was not convinced of this. “I believe in spirits! Don’t forget there are many ghostly happenings in this world that haven’t been explained.”
“Granted,” her husband agreed. It seemed to Nancy and her friends that this was the way Rod invariably closed off debates on the supernatural.
Nancy changed the subject. “Do you all realize that trouble has been arranged for us in various places before we arrive? Let’s see if we can get to the next place first and set a trap.”
“You mean,” Ned spoke up, “we should circulate a rumor that we’re staying here but sneak over to the skull-and-shell collector’s house?”
“Yes.”
Jim asked, “Surely you aren’t suggesting that all the ghost hunters sneak out of here in the middle of the night and storm Mr. Cranshaw’s place?”
Nancy chuckled and Dave said with a grin, “I can just see a headline. ‘Ghost hunters become storm troopers.’ ”
After further discussion it was decided that only Nancy, Ned, Helen, and Jim would make the trip to the Cranshaw home. They would wait until just after dark and be driven there inside the panel truck which belonged to the inn.
Meanwhile, the other ghost hunters would assemble on the stone parapet. They would watch for any signs of fireworks or rockets or other kinds of tricks.
“To make it look as if none of us is missing,” George proposed, “how would it be if we start some games? They’ll be the kind that require us to move around a lot, making it hard to count noses.”
“Good idea,” said Nancy. “And, Bess, you do plenty of laughing and talking. Keep the party gay and busy, so it seems as if there are a lot of us.”
Bess agreed, declaring she liked her part in the evening’s work. “But, Nancy—and the rest of you who are going—please be careful. We’ve had enough scares to last a lifetime.”
The four adventurers laughed and Ned said, “Jim and I will dc our best to keep Nancy and Helen safe.”
When Nancy spoke to Mr. Hesse about using the truck, he consented but said there was no one to drive it.
“Perhaps Mr. Warfield would,” she suggested.
“If so, I’ll be glad to let him take it.”
Mr. Warfield said he would be delighted to participate in the adventure.
At nine o’clock the covered truck was backed up close to the delivery entrance of the inn. Quickly the four young people jumped into the rear of it and locked the door. Mr. Warfield turned around and started down the driveway.
They had barely reached the main road when a car came whizzing along. With screeching brakes it turned into the driveway of the inn and disappeared up the hill.
“I wonder who that was,” Nancy said.
Jim replied, “Whoever’s driving that car ought to have his license taken away. He’s crazy.”
The two couples settled down for the five-mile drive to the Cranshaw estate.
“It strikes me as rather gruesome,” Helen spoke up, “for anyone to collect skulls. Shells are all right, but dead people’s bones—ugh!”
Nancy said she was rather curious to meet Mr. Cranshaw. “He certainly is eccentric.”
Meanwhile, the young man driving the speeding car had arrived at the front door of the inn. He jumped out hurriedly and handed the desk clerk a special-delivery letter for Nancy. It bore the postmark of a nearby town. The boy left immediately.
Feeling that the letter must be important, and knowing that Nancy had left the hotel, the clerk went to find George. He found her on the parapet.
“Maybe you’d better read this letter,” he suggested.
George consulted her friends and all felt it probably would be wise to open the letter. The games, the chatter, and the laughter had stopped. Everyone waited for George to read the message.
She scanned it quickly and gasped.
Bess asked, “What does it say? Bad news?”
George said solemnly, “The message is, ‘Stay off the highway if you value your life!’ ”
“Oh!” Bess cried out. “Nancy is in danger again! What can we do?”
George tried to take a sensible view of the matter. “Since this message didn’t come until after Nancy had gone, the sender doesn’t know she isn’t here. I believe it’s just a warning to keep her from pursuing the mystery.”
The other ghost hunters were inclined to agree with her. In any case it was too late to overtake Nancy.
Finally Rita spoke up. “There’s one thing we can try. Let’s all concentrate very hard and hope to get a thought wave across to Nancy.”
Although no one said anything, each of them said a silent prayer for the safety of Nancy and her companions. Bess thought, “If there were only some way to stop them!”
At that very moment Nancy had a feeling they were being followed. Looking out of the peephole in the rear of the truck, she saw a car a short distance behind. It was keeping pace with them. Nancy mentioned this to Ned, then stepped forward to speak to Mr. Warfield.
“There’s a car not far behind us. Do you think we’re being followed?”
“I saw it before. I admit I’m a little worried about that possibility,” he said.
“Why don’t we find out by playing the cat-and-mouse game with it?” Ned suggested.
“Good idea,” Mr. Warfield replied. He stepped on the accelerator. The other vehicle did the same.
“Oh, oh!” Jim said. “Looks like trouble.”
Suddenly, with a new burst of speed, the oncoming car shot forward and started catching up to the truck.
Nancy’s heart beat faster. Who could it be? The Prizers?
Rounding a sharp bend in the road, Mr. Warfield announced, “I see a farmhouse on a side road up ahead. I’ll turn in there.”
A few seconds later he pulled into the empty driveway and put out the lights. The trailing car shot past them. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
“Well,” said Helen, “either the driver didn’t see us come in here or else he wasn’t chasing us after all.”
The words were hardly out of her mouth when they saw the car begin to back up. It quickly reached the farmhouse driveway and pulled in behind them!
CHAPTER XIX
The Weird Room
THE hidden passengers in the truck waited anxiously to see what was going to happen. To their amazement they heard Mr. Warfield call an affable greeting.
“What are you doing here, Officer?” he asked.
“Oh, hello, Mr. Warfield,” said a man’s voice. “I might ask you the same thing.”
Then he went on, “Police headquarters was notified about a stolen truck that was headed in this direction. When you raced along so fast and then turned in here as if you were trying to hide, we thought sure we’d located the thief.”
Mr. Warfield laughed. “I was hiding all right.”
“But why?” another officer queried.
“I have four young people inside the truck who didn’t want their identity known.”
The first officer said, “Suppose you tell us what it’s all about.”
Mr. Warfield called, “Come on out, everybody!”
Ned unlocked the door, swung it open, and the two couples jumped down. Mr. Warfield introduced them to Officers Canfield and Sumter, whom he knew from town. The men asked for an explanation of the young people’s trip.
“You tell them, Nancy,” urged Helen. She said to the officers, “Nancy Drew is an amateur detective. A group of us formed a ghost hunters’ club and invited her and her special friends to come along.”
In as few words as possible Nancy told of their adventures of the past several days. “We ghost hunters are suspicious that all the mysterious happenings are the work of a group of swindlers trying to defraud people in one way or another.”
“So you’re the folks who have been giving clues to the police?” Officer Canfield said with a smile. “The authorities in every town are looking for a couple named Wilbur and Beatrice Prizer, a Madame Tarantella, and also a kidnapped boy named Steve Rover. We haven’t found out a thing about any of them.”
Mr. Warfield chuckled. “You men and the rest of the police had better get on the job pretty quick or this case is going to be solved by these ghost hunters.”
The officers smiled and the one named Sumter said, “More power to you. Well, we’ll be on our way after that stolen truck.” The two men left.
The four young people hid once more in the truck, and Mr. Warfield drove off. Nancy had arranged ahead of time for him to stop some distance from Mr. Cranshaw’s home. He was to drive on alone, while the ghost hunters vanished among the trees.
“Come back for us in two hours, please,” Nancy requested as they hopped out.
“I’ll do that.”
He had not gone far when a voice behind him said, “You will not be back here in two hours!”
Startled, Mr. Warfield realized that a young man wearing a mask had hidden in the truck after Nancy and the others had left. He climbed to the front and seated himself alongside the driver. He was holding something under a bandanna that looked ominously like a weapon.
As soon as Mr. Warfield collected his wits, he asked, “Who are you?”
“Don’t ask questions,” the young man replied. “Just keep driving, and whenever I tell you to make a turn, do so. You’d better not cry for help or you’ll get hurt!”
While this little drama had been going on, Nancy, Ned, and the Archers were getting closer to the Cranshaw house, which stood far back from the road. Only a few lights were on.
“Let’s walk all the way around the house before we ring the bell,” Nancy suggested.
“You and Ned go,” Jim suggested. “Helen and I will stay near the driveway in case anyone comes in.”
The windows of the old mansion were close enough to the ground so that Nancy and Ned could peer into the house easily. Nothing looked unusual until they came to a large window on the south side. Then both caught their breath in amazement. The place was filled with lighted human skulls!
“Weird!” Ned muttered. “And see what’s on the wall above the fireplace!”
In the center hung a large sting ray which looked like a devil’s face. Its glowing eyes flickered on and off. Stretched along the mantel on both sides of a starfish were skulls.
As the couple stood there, mesmerized by the sight, they could hear a low voice. The words were indistinguishable. They could see no one in the room but wondered if someone might be talking softly over a telephone which they could not see.
“I’d like to go into that room,” Nancy whispered. “Let’s walk around to the front now and ring the bell.”
Nancy and Ned returned to where Helen and Jim were waiting. Together they walked up the front-porch steps. Ned turned the big old-fashioned handle of the bell. It rang loudly, reverberating throughout the house.
Several minutes went by before they heard footsteps. Then a tall, slender, sour-faced man in a butler’s uniform opened the door. A puzzled frown crossed his face and he looked over their heads at the driveway.
Seeing no car, he said, “How did you folks get here?”
The callers smiled and Nancy said, “We were out strolling. We’re staying close by and heard that Mr. Cranshaw has a wonderful collection of skulls and shells. Do you think he’d let us see them?”
“I’m Jeffers,” the man replied. “I’ll go ask the old gentleman if it’s all right.” The butler closed the door.
“Nice reception,” Jim remarked with a chuckle.
Ned laughed. “I don’t blame him. These days one can’t be too careful whom he lets in. Why, we could be a bunch of thieves!”
A moment later the door opened again. Jeffers said, “Mr. Cranshaw will want to know who you are. What are your names?”
Ned told him. Once more the door was closed and the butler went off.
This time he was gone a long while and the two couples were beginning to think they would surely be turned away. But in about ten minutes Jeffers returned. This time he seemed to be in a better mood and opened the door with a smile.
“Come in,” he said. “Unfortunately Mr. Cranshaw isn’t feeling well, but he said it would be all right for you to look at his collection. You’ll find this place is more like a city museum than a house way out in the country.”
He led them into the weird room Nancy and Ned had seen from outside. At close hand, it was even more fantastic, although the sting ray had stopped blinking.
One wall was lined with locked glass cabinets, containing beautiful shells. Each had a card with the generic name and popular name, and a legend.
Nancy was particularly intrigued by one called the Xenophora. The sign said that this little snail was unable to protect itself and therefore collected other shells to wear on its back for protection.
It attached them by means of a gluey substance from its mantle. On a sandy beach or in the water the strange-looking shell was not appealing to other sea creatures’ appetites.
“Funny-looking thing!” she thought, and smiled. “He’s the original shell collector!”
Helen was interested in a shell called Conus Gloria-mario. The sign said that there were only twenty-five specimens of this cone-shaped shell known to be in existence. One which had sold for twelve thousand dollars was now worth twenty-five thousand.
“Listen to this!” Helen said. “Several of the Cone family have a poisonous sting more lethal than the bite of a poisonous snake. I had no idea that innocent-looking shells could harbor dangerous snails.”
The two girls walked over to the boys who were reading the card below the starfish. It said starfish come in many sizes and colors. This one from the Pacific, near the Fiji Islands, was called the blue starfish and measured twenty inches across.
“Starfish have many pointed rays, ranging from five to forty,” they read. “They have an amazing ability to restore one of the rays if it is damaged or broken off. Also, a five-ray starfish may break into five separate rays and as long as it has a portion of the center of the body it may regenerate. In this way each ray can become a whole new starfish.”