The Mystery at Lilac Inn - Carolyn Keene [43]
The three accomplices held a whispered consultation. Before Nancy had time for further analysis, Gil looked at his watch.
“We’ve got to step on it. Simon will be worried.”
“See you there,” Jean said to Nancy slyly. “Try to figure this one out, Miss Private Eye!”
At these words, Frank gave Nancy a shove and dragged her to the river. The man in skin-diving gear was waiting. Nancy struggled to get away, but to no avail.
To her horror, the skin diver forced her into the back seat of the miniature submarine and tied her securely. She had a glimpse of Frank, Gil, and Jean boarding a motorboat hidden in a nearby cove. Then the skin diver shut the transparent hatch and the sub began to descend.
“How am I ever going to escape?” A wave of terror swept over the young sleuth. As the submarine plunged downward, Nancy told herself sternly, “I must keep cool!”
She noticed that the skin diver remained in front with another man, who was piloting the craft. “They’re two more members of the gang,” Nancy thought. “I wonder who Simon is? And what kind of shipment is on the boat Gil mentioned? Are we heading there now?”
The navigator was steering forward, using a simple control stick and automatic pedals. He and the frogman kept their backs turned to Nancy. Were these men enemy agents, or smugglers? Perhaps Emily’s diamonds were part of the mysterious shipment!
Nancy thought about the rocky overhang under which the shark-nosed sub had been hidden. “I suppose Frank was the lookout,” she conjectured. “And Gil probably went to meet him in a canoe from the inn.”
She concluded that the skin diver had probably thrown the spear at her. “Either to get rid of me for good, or scare me away. And it was probably this sub that caused Helen and me to capsize in the canoe.”
It occurred to Nancy that even if she learned the answers to all her questions, it might do her no good. Escape seemed impossible. She realized that none of her friends, her father, or the police would have the slightest idea where she was.
Then a faint hope came to her. Carl Bard had seen her leave the inn! “If only they think to search the river,” Nancy thought worriedly.
Trying to forget her fears, the young sleuth concentrated on the two scheming waitresses: Mary, doubtless a disguise of Gay Moreau, and Jean Holmes who—
“It’s fantastic—but—if Gay can impersonate me, and pose as Mary, why couldn’t she be Jean Holmes?”
Nancy was sure the actress could easily play any role—plus being Gay herself! Gay, beautiful but avaricious; easygoing, flighty Mary, and shy, plain Jean.
Gay, familiar with the inn, had disguised herself as Mary. She could have been the “ghost,” sometimes as a titian blonde, at others wearing a dark wig. As part of the scare operation, she had left, using the excuse of the place being haunted. Then she had come back in another disguise—as Jean Holmes.
Gay, as Mary, could easily have overheard Mrs. Willoughby describing Emily’s twenty diamonds, and also telling Maud the planned date of presentation. Then Mary bought the substitutes. She had slipped into the hidden closet without being seen and committed the theft.
The speculation brought Nancy back to the present. Had Frank and the men on the sub helped with the diamond robbery? Was the cellar in the river shack being used to hide stolen goods to be taken away later in the sub? Would the answer to these questions explain the other mysterious events, including the time bomb and the vibrations at the inn, all done to scare people away from the place?
It seemed to the young sleuth that ages had gone by since her capture. But now the sub slowly ascended to the surface. Nancy heard the navigator say that something was wrong with the mechanism. As he steered toward a small cabin cruiser a few hundred feet away, Nancy saw that they were on an isolated section of the Muskoka River.
The sub stopped alongside the cruiser and the pilot opened the hatch. He untied Nancy from the seat and helped her mount a small ladder to the deck of the cruiser.
Awaiting them were Jean Holmes,