Mystery of the Glowing Eye - Carolyn Keene [21]
“I wonder if the man who sketched this really was Crosson,” Nancy mused. “Maybe he’ll return for his notebook,” the young detective thought. “I can notify the police to come here and pick him up, if he returns, but I needn’t wait for them. The Nickersons are probably already wondering where I am.”
Nancy stood deep in thought for a few moments, then she took the pencil attached to the notebook and quickly began to erase the figures. One by one she moved the numbers around so that if they were a code, it certainly was scrambled now! She closed the notebook and laid it back on the ground.
As she did this, another idea came to her. Suppose the spy was the same person who had come to her house and either released or flown the robot copter! If she found the same type of soil on the rungs of the ladder as she had on the copter’s tires, it could be a clue. The young detective realized that two days or more had elapsed since the robot copter had taken off from a swampy, wooded area. During that lapse of time mud on shoes could have been scuffed off.
“Or the man might have been wearing different footwear today,” she thought.
“I’ll take a look, however, to be sure,” Nancy decided. “Anyway, since I don’t have a key to the house, I’ll have to climb the ladder to get back inside and lock all the windows.”
Slowly she mounted the rungs, examining each one thoroughly as she went. Every few seconds she would turn around to be sure the red-haired man had not returned and was about to pull her down with the ladder.
She reached the top safely and stared at the last rung. Evidently the stranger had balanced himself on his arches while he was sketching, and left sizable chunks of mud on the wood.
“It’s that same mud with the little bits of wood in it!” she said to herself.
Nancy quickly stepped into Ned’s bedroom and closed and locked the window. She now made sure that the other window in his room was fastened, then checked all the windows in the whole house.
She went back to Ned’s bedroom, turned the blackboard over, and tested herself on the eye-shaped set of numbers. She was glad she had remembered everything correctly. Nancy now erased the whole design and put the blackboard in the closet.
Just then the telephone rang and Nancy went to answer it. The caller was Bess.
“Where are you?” she asked. “We’re all getting worried about you.”
“Don’t worry any longer,” Nancy replied. “I’ll be over in a few minutes. There’s been a little excitement here, but everything is all right now. Bye. See you.”
Before leaving, Nancy stood in the living room and reflected on whether or not she had done everything she should.
“The ladder!” she thought. “I mustn’t leave that in place. I wonder where the man got it.”
The young detective decided to put it in the Nickersons’ basement. This accomplished, she called the police and suggested that they keep a watch on the house and nab the owner of the notebook if he returned.
Then Nancy climbed into her car and headed for the restaurant. During the drive her thoughts were on the mud she had seen across the top rung of the ladder.
“I must locate that mucky, swampy place. If Glenn Munson can take me on another flight, perhaps I can find it.”
Nancy finally arrived at Flannery’s restaurant, where the rest of her group was waiting to have dinner.
She sat down and then said, “I’m dreadfully sorry to be so late.”
George spoke up. “Don’t keep us in suspense. Tell us what held you up.”
As Nancy related what had happened at the house, the others grew more and more astonished.
At the end of her recital, Bess asked, “What did you do with the notebook after you changed the numbers?”
“I left it where I found it and notified the police.”
While they were eating, Nancy mentioned her plan of calling Glenn Munson and trying to find the swamp area where Ned might be a prisoner.
Mr. Nickerson had a suggestion. “I’m sure that the Emerson College library must have an excellent collection of books on the geology of this region. Perhaps you can find one that describes mud similar