Mystery of the Glowing Eye - Carolyn Keene [20]
“They’re still in Ned’s room,” Mrs. Nickerson replied. “As soon as you freshen up, I’ll meet you in there and show them to you.”
Within five minutes Nancy was looking at the drawings, figures, and exposition in the various science papers Ned had written.
“They are very technical,” she remarked to Mrs. Nickerson. “I’m sure, though, that they are not for a computer.”
Ned’s mother watched Nancy work for a while, then excused herself.
“Before you go,” said Nancy, “tell me, have you a large blackboard?”
Mrs. Nickerson said there was one in Ned’s closet. “And I think there’s chalk in the desk. Why do you want the board, dear?”
Nancy said she had become fascinated by a set of numbers arranged in a pattern on one of the papers. “From a distance they seemed to be the outline of an eye. I want to copy them.”
She said she wondered if Ned had discovered the formula for a cold light glowing eye. “The numbers may be a code—a code that Zapp Crosson wanted desperately to get!”
“I know how interested you are in working on the case,” Ned’s mother said. “But we must eat. I didn’t feel like cooking, so I arranged for all of us to have dinner at Flannery’s restaurant. Do you mind if we go ahead, Nancy, so that we won’t lose our reservation?”
“Please do,” Nancy replied. “What I want to work on shouldn’t take long. I’ll meet you all there as soon as I can.”
Mrs. Nickerson nodded, left the room, and went downstairs. A short time later Nancy heard the group drive off in the Nickerson car.
She went to the closet and brought out the blackboard which opened up and stood on four legs.
Turning, Nancy caught sight of a man.
With her back to the open window, Nancy began to chalk down the numbers from the sheet on the desk. She decided it would be wiser to memorize them rather than write them on anything to take with her. This way they could not fall into dishonest hands in case the copy was stolen or lost. It did not take her long to sketch the eye-shaped code.
As Nancy stood memorizing the numbers and their position in the eye, she suddenly had a creepy feeling that she was being watched. Turning toward the window Nancy caught sight of a man’s head. He had bright red hair!
His face was nearly hidden by his hands which held a sketching pad and pencil. He was copying the numbers that were on the blackboard!
In a flash Nancy laid the blackboard face down on the floor and dashed to the window. The spy had vanished. When she looked down the side of the house, he was just reaching the last rung of a ladder. The man raced for the street.
Nancy ran down the stairs and out the door. She looked for a license plate on the spy’s disappearing car. It had none!
“He won’t get far before a traffic policeman stops him!” she said to herself. “I’ll follow his car.”
Quickly Nancy closed the front door of the house and sprinted to her car, parked on the street. She pulled a key from a hiding place and sped after the fleeing red-haired man. The young detective had seen him turn a corner and went that way.
A wild thought came to her. If the man was not stopped by the police, he might lead her to Ned! But by the time she reached the next corner the spy had disappeared. There was no one around for Nancy to ask where he might have gone and in a few minutes she gave up the chase.
Nancy decided she should return to the house. Ned’s bedroom window was open and a ladder stood under it. Anyone could enter. Upon reaching the house, Nancy jumped from the car and hurried toward the ladder. Her attention was drawn to a large notebook lying near the bottom rung of the ladder. Could it have been dropped by the man who had started to sketch Ned’s code? she wondered.
Nancy walked over and picked up the notebook. Excitedly she opened it.
CHAPTER X
Treacherous Swamp
THE notebook which the stranger had lost was blank except for a single page. On this he had started to copy the numbers from the blackboard. Most of them were there and they had