The medium smiled at her. “You’re a sweet, understanding young lady. As a result, you have many friends. A tall, dark good-looking college man is very dear to you. In the future you will be asked to make a decision involving this friend.
“You’re a happy person by nature but always longing for a mystery to solve. Usually you are trying to help someone, but my advice to you is to be very careful in the future. So far you have had good luck, but this may run out at any moment.”
Madame Tarantella stopped speaking. Suddenly she got up from her chair, came around the table, and faced the young sleuth. She moved her head in a swaying motion, her eyes rolling in strange fashion. Nancy was a bit frightened. She rose, thinking she had better leave.
Before she could move, the medium stiffened and clutched Nancy by her shoulders in an iron grip. She looked straight at Nancy, her eyes glowing like coals of fire.
In an awesome stage whisper, she said, “You can help me right now. In fact, you must do it and without hesitation!”
“What do you mean?” Nancy asked.
“That you are in my power and must help me!”
“You are in my power and must help me!” the medium whispered
Nancy’s one thought was to get away from this woman but she was unable to do so. Madame Tarantella put both arms around her shoulders and closed them like a vise!
CHAPTER VII
The Mysterious Box
IN the séance room Bess and George began to worry about Nancy.
“I think we’d better go inside and see how Nancy is making out,” said Bess.
George agreed and the two girls walked into the back room. They were horrified by what they saw. Madame Tarantella, her eyes gleaming, held Nancy in a viselike grip.
“Stop that!” George exclaimed, and Bess added, “Let her go at once!”
Although Nancy seemed to be calm, the cousins had a distinct feeling that their friend had had a rather bad fright. She smiled at the girls as the medium released her.
“Thanks,” Nancy murmured.
The woman shook her head and shoulders as if coming out of a trance and said, “Forgive me. I just had a frightening premonition.”
“About me?” Nancy asked.
“No, no. It had to do entirely with me. I could see a man coming to attack me. I felt as if he were going to kill me.”
“How dreadful!” Bess said.
George spoke up. “Why would he want to do that?”
The medium blinked her eyes rapidly as if trying to shut out the awful sight. “He wanted me to give him certain papers of a highly secret nature.”
“You don’t have to do it,” George remarked.
“Oh, you don’t know this man,” Madame Tarantella said. She turned to Nancy. “You are always ready and willing to help people. Now I implore your help. You must take the papers with you and keep them for me.”
Nancy was startled by the suggestion. She had no intention of acceding to the request but her instincts told her that she might have stumbled upon a clue to the mystery of the woman and her strange life.
“My father is a lawyer,” she said finally. “I will ask him if it will be all right.” In her heart she was sure he would not allow it.
“I can’t wait that long,” Madame Tarantella replied. “You must take them tonight.”
George interrupted. “Why don’t you put the papers in a safe-deposit box?”
The woman did not answer. Instead she rolled her eyes around again. Bess was beginning to quiver with fear. She was about to urge that they all leave, when the medium suddenly looked perfectly normal, smiled sweetly, and said to Bess:
“You’re very pretty. Do you have a problem?”
Bess did not reply. She said to Nancy and George, “Let’s get out of here!”
“Don’t be in a hurry, my dear,” Madame Tarantella said. “When I have premonitions, I sometimes act strangely, people tell me. I assure you I would not do you any harm.”
The medium looked at a clock on the wall. “It will soon be time for the séance to begin. I must have a few minutes in which to get myself ready and composed. Please wait in the large room. There will be some interesting messages relayed tonight that I will receive from the spirits.”
“How much do I owe you?” Nancy asked the medium.
The woman smiled. “I have no fee. My clients pay me in proportion to the help they feel they have received. In this case I am asking your help, so there will be no charge.”
The three girls filed out and at once Bess urged that they leave the hut. “While the going is good,” she added. “I want no part of this strange, fake setup.”
“The other women will soon be here and you’ll be perfectly safe,” Nancy said soothingly.
“But this place gives me the shivers,” Bess argued.
George chuckled. “A little shiver now and then won’t hurt you.”
When their friends arrived, the three girls went to sit with them. In a whisper Bess told them what had happened to Nancy and how peculiar Madame Tarantella was.
Helen grinned. “It sounds as if this might be good fun.”
Bab whispered, “I hope no spirit comes down and vanishes in a swirling cloud with one of us!”
Other women and girls came in and the room was soon filled. Presently the lights were dimmed and a hush came over the place.
Madame Tarantella swept through the doorway from the rear room and ascended a little platform. She was wearing a flowing robe made of glittering material and a long-haired black wig. On her head was an iridescent crown and she carried a wand which had a tiny light on the end.
George whispered to Nancy with a soft giggle, “She looks like a cross between Cinderella and a witch!”
Reaching the center of the platform, Madame Tarantella waved the wand in a semicircle several times. Then slowly she began to speak in a deep monotone.
“Gracious spirit of those who have gone before,” she said, “bring us messages for the assembled group.”
Tiny flickering lights began to glow above her head. Within seconds a high-pitched feminine voice spoke as if coming from a great distance. It murmured, “My daughter is sitting among you. I —want to tell you, Martha, to be—more careful —with your money.”
As the so-called spirit voice stopped speaking, Madame Tarantella raised her wand high, looked out over the audience, and asked, “Is Martha here?”
A sob came from somewhere in the audience and a woman cried out, “Oh yes! Oh yes! My mother! She was always warning me to take better care of my money!”
Bess grabbed Nancy’s hand. “I don’t like this. I’m afraid of it. Let’s go. Please.”
Before the girls could make a move, Madame Tarantella began to speak again. Waving her wand toward the audience, she said, “There is a frightened, doubting girl here. Her name is Bess. O spirit world, can you send her a reassuring message?”
Bess sat petrified. Did the woman mean her?
Nancy and George were amazed and remained motionless, listening intently for what was about to come from the spirit world.
Presently a man’s deep voice said in a harsh whisper, “I was once in charge of the marriage license bureau in your town. Bess Marvin, I have a message for you from the spirit world. Soon you will be going to the license bureau to prepare for your own wedding.”
Bess buried her face in her hands. Then she leaned toward Nancy and began to cry.
She whispered, “It can’t be true! Dave has to finish college first!”
Nancy put an arm around the distraught girl. At the same time George murmured, “Perhaps we’d better go.”
This time Nancy agreed. Just as the girls were about to get up, there was a deep reverberating roll of thunder.
Bess, even more worried now, said, “Oh, I don’t want to go out in a thunderstorm! I don’t like thunder and lightning!”
“Don’t you remember?” Nancy whispered. “This may be part of the séance. It doesn’t necessarily mean a rainstorm.”
Holding Nancy’s arm, Bess got up and left the hut with her chums. There was no rain, but a storm was brewing. The girls walked quickly toward their car.
Not far away was a small park with a steel flag-pole. Without warning a bolt of lightning came from the sky. It hit the pole and raced to the ground.
“Oh!” George cried a moment later.
She had been knocked to the ground by a shock wave from the discharge. Nancy and Bess felt the tingle of electricity passing through their bodies.
“Are you hurt?” Nancy asked George quickly.
Her friend stood up and declared, “I’m all in one piece, but I don’t want any more shocks like that. I’ll have more respect for lightning after this.”
The girls walked on to the car. When Nancy tried to open the door on the driver’s side, she looked puzzled.
“I didn’t lock this door,” she said. “Did either of you?”
“No,” the cousins replied.
The door on the opposite side was also locked and Nancy wondered who had done it. George suggested that possibly some teen-ager going past had done it for a joke.
“Maybe,” Nancy replied, and unlocked the doors.
It was warm inside. Bess took off her sweater and tossed it onto the rear seat.
“Why do you suppose the spirit voice said I’d be going to the marriage license bureau soon?” she asked.
George grinned. “Well, you’re going sooner or later, aren’t you? That old fake spook was just guessing about when.”
Bess blushed. “Yes, but he sort of shook me up.”
When they reached the motel, she turned around and reached over to retrieve the sweater.
“Nancy,” she said, “what’s this cardboard box on the floor?”
“I don’t know,” Nancy answered. “I didn’t put it there.”
The girls stepped out of the car and Nancy picked up the box. “It’s pretty heavy,” she said. “I wonder what’s in it.”
Suddenly a frightening idea came to Bess. “Nancy, put it down! Don’t open it! There might be a bomb inside!”
CHAPTER VIII
Rare. Medium. Well Done.
GINGERLY Nancy set the mysterious box in the driveway of the motel. She eyed it meditatively.
Finally she said, “I don’t believe there’s a bomb inside. If it was intended for us, it would have gone off by this time or be ticking.”
Bess urged Nancy not to open the box. She said, “Maybe when you lift the lid, the thing will go off.”
By this time George’s curiosity was getting the better of her. “I’d like to know what’s in the box,” she said.
Nancy looked around for something with which to pry it open.
George spotted a long-handled garden tool propped against the garage. “That rake’s just what we need.”
She got the rake and handed it to Nancy. Then, keeping at what she considered a safe distance, Nancy gently pried up the lid. It fell to one side.
The three girls burst into laughter. The box was full of papers!
“What a mean joke!” said Bess.
Nancy and the cousins walked over and looked more closely. There seemed to be an assortment of letters and documents inside. On top lay a hand-printed request:
NANCY DREW, I BEG OF YOU, KEEP THESE PAPERS SAFE UNTIL I COME FOR THEM.
There was no signature, but Nancy told Bess and George she was sure these were the papers which Madame Tarantella had begged her to take along.
George snorted. “She certainly was determined that you’d get them. What are you going to do now?”
“Call my father and ask his advice.”
Unfortunately there was no answer when she dialed her home.
“I’ll call Dad in the morning,” she said.
Meanwhile, Bess and George had been discussing how and when the box had been put in the car.
“It must have been during the time we were in the séance room before Madame Tarantella came in,” George surmised. “She was probably the one who locked the car doors so no one could steal the papers.”
While Nancy and the cousins prepared for bed, they talked about the strange turn of events and why Nancy had been chosen by the medium to keep the papers for her.
“There’s something sinister in back of the whole thing,” Bess declared. “I certainly hope, Nancy, that you won’t have another thing to do with that woman, even if the ghost hunters don’t solve this particular mystery.”
Before breakfast the next morning Nancy again telephoned her father. This time he was at home.
After hearing the story, he said, “Have nothing to do with those papers! Take them right back to that Madame Tarantella.”
“All right, Dad. I just wanted to be sure that was what I should do with them, rather than keep them as evidence against this woman if she’s doing something illegal.”
The lawyer reminded Nancy that the papers were private property. “Even though the medium asked you to keep them, she didn’t suggest that you read them.”
“All right, Dad, I’ll take them back.”
At breakfast Nancy told the full story of the evening’s happenings to Ned, Burt, and Dave. But she did not reveal the prophecy about Bess. “Would you all like to drive down to the medium’s hut with me?”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Dave answered. “I’d like to see this strange creature.” He grinned. “Maybe she can tell me something about my future.”
At this Bess turned scarlet and Dave asked worriedly, “Did I say something I shouldn’t have?”
Nancy and George could not refrain from laughing. George said, “Let Bess tell you what Madame Tarantella said about her immediate future.”
“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” Bess replied indignantly, “and if you girls dare say a word—”
“Oh, come on,” Dave coaxed, but the three girls remained silent.
Nancy and George wondered whether Dave would somehow make Bess tell him what the prophecy had been.
A little while later the three couples drove into Vernonville and went directly to the medium’s hut. There was no answer to their persistent knocking.
“Do you suppose she isn’t at home, or just won’t let us in?” George asked.
Nancy shrugged and suggested that they do a little shopping and come back later. Just then a young woman came out of an apartment house across the street.
She called over to them, “Are you looking for Madame Tarantella?”
“Yes, we are,” Nancy replied.
The woman smiled. “I guess she won’t be telling any more fortunes here.”
“Why?” George asked.
The neighbor said that about two o’clock that morning a car and a truck had driven up to the hut. Boxes, suitcases, and all sorts of paraphernalia were packed into the two vehicles.
“Then Madame Tarantella drove off in the car with two men.”
“Maybe she was kidnapped!” Bess exclaimed. “The medium told our friend Nancy last night that she was afraid some man was going to harm her and rob her.”
The neighbor looked alarmed. “If that’s the case, I hope the police won’t ask me for a description of those people in the car, because I don’t want to become involved. Anyway, I couldn’t see the men well enough.”
“Did you notice anything about them?” Nancy queried.
“Well, one was tall and slender and had bushy hair. The other man was shorter.”
The ghost hunters looked at one another. Could the tall, slender, bushy-haired one be Wilbur Prizer?
The neighbor went on to say, “I’m glad Madame Tarantella’s gone.”
“Why?” Ned put in.
“Because too many funny-looking characters were always coming out of and going into that place.”
“You mean dishonest-looking people?” Nancy asked.
“Well, I can’t exactly say that, but I wouldn’t want any of them calling on me. Sorry I couldn’t help you more. I’ve got to go now.” She hurried down the street.
The girls drove back to the motel and again Nancy telephoned to her father.
“I certainly don’t want you involved in this,” he told his daughter. “I know a lawyer in Vernonville named Kittredge. I’ll get in touch with him and see if he would be willing to keep the box in his safe and to ask the police to hunt for the vanished medium. She may have been kidnapped.”
Mr. Drew advised Nancy to stay in her room and wait for a phone call. About half an hour later she received a message from Mr. Kittredge, saying he would be over in a little while.
“Please wait for me,” he requested. “I’ll come to your room and pick up the papers. From what your father told me, it probably would be best if you did not appear on the street again with them.”
Nancy promised to stay right there. She suggested to Bess and George that they need not wait. She would join them later.
“We’ll get the others and go down to the pool,” George said. “The water looks so inviting.”
The girls had been gone only a short time when there was a knock on the door. Nancy opened it.
“Hi, Helen,” she said.
“You alone?” Helen asked, stepping inside.
“Yes, I’m waiting for a friend of Dad’s.”
As Helen moved past a table on which Nancy had set the box of papers, she accidentally knocked it to the floor. The contents scattered in every direction.
“I’m sorry!” Helen said. “I’ll help you pick them up.”
As Nancy began to return the papers to the box, she noticed that one was a drawing which showed a section of a property development. She went on gathering up the papers.
“Oh!” she exclaimed.
“What’s the matter?” Helen asked.
“Here’s a letter to Madame Tarantella signed Wilbur Prizer!”
Helen was amazed. “Do you think there’s some connection between the two?”
“I’m beginning to think so more and more,” Nancy replied.
As she went on picking up the papers, Nancy presently came across a telegram. The sender’s name and address had been cut off. It was addressed to Madame Tarantella and said:
RARE. MEDIUM. WELL DONE.
“What in the world does that mean?” Helen asked.
Nancy smiled. “All I can do is guess. Of course it’s a take-off on words applied to cooked meat. I think it’s a code. Perhaps medium means Madame Tarantella and she did some rare bit of work and was being told she had done it well.”
“Clever deduction,” Helen remarked.
Many thoughts and conjectures were racing through Nancy’s mind as the last of the papers were placed in the box. She set it back on the table, which was near the door.
She and Helen continued to talk as Nancy moved over to the bureau and looked in the mirror to see if her hair needed recombing. The next moment she froze.
Reflected in the glass was a man’s hand and arm reaching around the corner of the partially opened door to the hall. He was about to grab the box!
CHAPTER IX
Motel Apparition
WITH a mighty leap Nancy was across the room. She grabbed the hand of the unseen man. There was a loud yell in the hallway and the hand was wrenched away.
“Helen, lock yourself in!” Nancy cried out and dashed to the hall.
A tall, slender man wearing a straw hat pulled low on his head was bounding toward an outside door. Nancy sped after him.
The door opened directly into the garden where the pool was. As the would-be thief ran across the garden, the sunbathers looked up in puzzlement. They were even more puzzled to see Nancy chasing the man.
“Stop him!” Nancy yelled to Ned and the other boys.
Immediately they stood up and sped after the fleeing figure. The man was very agile and easily vaulted a low cement wall at the far end of the garden. His pursuers were over it in a jiffy.
As Nancy leaned against the wall to catch her breath, Bess and George and the other ghost hunters hurried up to her.
“Who was he? What did he do?” George asked.
Nancy told them what had happened.
At once Bess cried out, “How awful!”
The girls waited a long time before the boys returned. Unfortunately they were not escorting any prisoner.
“He got away,” Ned reported. “Some sprinter!”
“I’ll say,” Burt added. “He was the fastest thing on two legs I’ve seen in a long while.”
“Where did the man go?” Nancy asked.
“He ran off through some woods behind a house and disappeared. When we reached the other side of the woods, we found a road. He probably went off in a car.”
Nancy asked whether the boys had had a good enough look at the man to identify him.
The boys shook their heads, but Ned said, “I think I saw bushy hair sticking out from under his hat.”
“Prizer!” George exclaimed.
Nancy told the boys about the attempted theft and said she had left Helen locked in.
“I’d better get back,” she said,
As Nancy neared her door, she saw a man standing in the hall. He was somewhat heavy-set and was a stranger to her.
From inside the room she heard Helen call out, “I won’t let you in until Nancy Drew comes back!”
“Well, she’d better hurry,” the caller replied. “I’m a busy man.”
Nancy walked up to him and introduced herself. “And you are?”
“Mr. Kittredge. Your father asked me to come here for a box of papers.”
“Yes, Mr. Kittredge. We’ve had a little trouble. That’s why my friend won’t let anyone into the room.”
Nancy called to Helen to unlock the door. When it was open, she introduced Helen and the lawyer.
“You had some trouble?” he said, following Nancy into the room. “Then I assume you will want some identification from me.”
Nancy laughed. “You saved me the embarrassment of asking you.”
As Mr. Kittredge showed his driver’s license and a couple of credit cards, Nancy told him about the man who had tried to steal the box of papers.
“He got away, but my friends and I think he’s a man named Wilbur Prizer.”
Helen apologized to Mr. Kittredge for keeping him in the hall.
“I don’t blame you for being careful,” he said, smiling.
She turned to Nancy, “I found a small, white shell. It must have fallen out of Madame Tarantella’s box.”
The shell was the shape of a pyramid and was about five inches high.
Mr. Kittredge took it and said, “This is very interesting. Its nickname is the Fraud Shell. The right name is Epitonium scalare.”
The lawyer explained that the shell was a rather rare type found in deep water off the coast of China.
“Many years ago it was in great demand but very difficult to find. Even at that time it sold for two hundred and eighty dollars.
“The Chinese saw a good way of making money. They figured out a way of imitating these shells in rice flour paste.”
“And did they get away with it?” Helen asked.
“They did for a long time,” Mr. Kittredge answered. “But finally a collector who had purchased one tried to wash the shell in water.”
Nancy smiled. “And it dissolved?”
“Exactly. The shells are more plentiful nowadays because deep-sea divers go down for them. I’ve heard that the old frauds are more expensive than the real shells!”
Nancy examined the shell, but found no markings of any kind on it. She returned the Epitonium scalare to the box.
“I’ll wrap this package so it won’t be recognized by anybody who may be lurking around,” Nancy told the lawyer.
She found a large paper laundry bag in the closet of the room. The box was slipped into the bag, then Mr. Kittredge left.
Nancy and Helen discussed the latest development in the mystery for a few minutes, then Nancy said, “I think I’ll put on my bathing suit and go for a swim.”
“I will, too,” Helen said. “Jim will be looking for me.”
At that moment there was a knock on the door. Nancy opened it. Helen gave a cry of surprise.
A ghostlike figure stood in the hall, one arm raised menacingly.
The ghostlike figure raised an arm menacingly
Instantly Helen jumped in front of Nancy and slammed and locked the door. “Another spooky thing! What’s going to happen to us next?”
Nancy did not comment. She stared at the door, trying to figure out what the apparition was.
Helen spoke up, “How silly of me to be afraid of that thing! What kind of ghost hunter am I?”
Nancy opened the door. The apparition was disintegrating!
“Oh, what is it?” Helen asked.
Nancy closed the door again. “I believe it’s some form of odorless gas,” she said. “It might be poisonous. I think I’d better phone the manager of possible danger to people coming into the hall.”
It took Nancy a few minutes to convince him this was not a hoax and would be to the best interest of everyone staying at the motel to keep all the guests out of the corridor until the air could clear thoroughly.
“You’ve convinced me, Miss Drew,” he said. “Of course I still can’t understand why anyone would do such a crazy thing or try to play such a mean joke on you. But I’ll do as you suggest.”
Nancy got ready for her swim as she and Helen waited for the hall to clear.
“I have a hunch,” Nancy said, “that it was Wilbur Prizer who rigged the gas ghost. As you recall, he has considerable technical knowledge.”
“But, Nancy,” said Helen, “do you think Wilbur Prizer would dare come back here so soon after being chased away?”
“I think he still wanted to get the box of letters. Of course he couldn’t know that Mr. Kittredge was coming and that he took the papers. Prizer probably had somebody who works with him rig up that phantom.”
Helen smiled. “The ghost-maker expected us to run away in fright, not slam the door in the apparition’s face.”
Nancy nodded. “Then he was going to come into the room and steal the box.”
Both girls giggled as they thought of how they had outwitted their enemy by remaining in the room. Nancy pointed out, however, that all of this did not explain why Prizer wanted to get the papers away from Madame Tarantella, or how he knew Nancy had them.
“It’s too much of a muddle for me,” Helen remarked. She opened the door. “I don’t see any trace of the apparition. I’ll hold my breath and race to my room to put on my swimsuit.”
After she had gone, Nancy’s telephone rang. “Hello?” she said.
A woman’s deep voice said, “Is this Nancy Drew?”
“Yes.”
“Nancy Drew,” the caller went on, “I have an important message for you from the spirit world.”
CHAPTER X
The Trap
“WHO is this?” Nancy asked the caller. She knew the voice was not that of Madame Tarantella, unless she was disguising it.
The woman did not answer and for a moment Nancy thought she had hung up. But Nancy had heard no click on the wire.
“Who is this?” she asked again.
The reply came, “I am a medium. The spirit of your Grandfather Drew has sent an important message for you through me.”
Nancy frowned but did not comment. She was wishing she was not alone and that there was time before the caller finished speaking to have someone run to another telephone and try to have the call traced.
When Nancy made no comment, the woman said, “Did you understand me? I have a message for you from the spirit world. Direct from your Grandfather Drew.”
“I heard you,” Nancy replied.
“Don’t you want to hear what it is?” the caller asked impatiently. “I assure you it is of great importance.”
“Why would my grandfather communicate through you?” Nancy asked.
“My dear,” said the woman in placating tones, “if you understood how mediums receive messages from people they never have heard of, you would understand this.”
Again Nancy kept silent, a troubled look on her face. Helen entered the room and came close to her.
“Who is it?” she whispered.
Before Nancy could answer, the caller said, “The message is: You are to leave the box Madame Tarantella gave you under the stone bridge which is just one mile north of Vernonville on Route 23. Leave it there at exactly two o’clock this afternoon and then drive away. Do not tarry at the spot. Go at once.”
Nancy said, “What will happen if I don’t bring it?”
There was a slight show of anger in the medium’s voice as she answered, “Your Grandfather Drew said if you disobey him, he will punish you.” The woman hung up.
Nancy explained the call to her friend.
Helen was alarmed. “Nancy, she threatened you! I had no idea mediums could be so dangerous. Of course you can’t leave the box. Mr. Kittredge has it. What are you going to do?”
Nancy said she could always find a substitute box. But Helen argued that when the person who received it discovered the hoax, he or she would retaliate and harm Nancy.
“I’ll have to take that chance, Helen. But to be sure I’m doing the right thing, I’ll phone Mr. Kittredge and tell him what I have in mind.”
The lawyer was a bit worried at the turn of events and warned Nancy that she must be very careful.
“I think your idea of leaving a substitute box is a good one. Be sure to make it the same weight as the box of papers and take a man with you to the spot. Then as soon as you have hidden the box under the bridge, please, both of you drive off.”
Mr. Kittredge added that he would ask the police to have a couple of plainclothesmen stationed nearby to grab whoever came for the box.