The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes Page 5

  Mr. Drew paid the check and the foursome left hurriedly. They went back to the hotel and up to their rooms. At the girls’ door Nancy’s father said, “Be ready to leave for Edinburgh early in the morning. I’ve engaged the driver we had yesterday—Donald Clark. The hotel will prepare a lunch for us to take along.”

  Before leaving next morning, Nancy went to the desk and asked if Mr. Dewar were still registered.

  “No, he checked out very early this morning.” As Nancy joined the others in the taxi she thought, “I have a strong hunch Mr. Dewar’s path and mine will cross again.”

  Donald was his same cheery self, and asked if his passengers had any errands in town before they set off for Edinburgh.

  Nancy spoke up. “If we have time, I’d like to go to a bagpipe factory and see how the instruments are made.” She chuckled. “Perhaps if I find out, I can learn to play better!”

  Mr. Drew said there was plenty of time, so Donald took them into the heart of Glasgow’s business district, where the factory was located. It manufactured not only bagpipes but the proper costumes for men to wear while marching and playing. The visitors were astounded to learn that every tartan used by any Scottish clan could be purchased here.

  “Girls rarely play bagpipes,” said the factory guide who was taking them around. “Instead, they get all decked out in their blouses and plaid skirts to do our native dances.”

  “Where could I purchase a girl’s outfit?” Nancy asked. The man gave her the name of a shop in the city. Nancy turned to her father. “I’d love to have a Douglas tartan,” she said.

  Mr. Drew grinned. “We’ll get you a costume right after we leave here.”

  The guide led the visitors from room to room. He showed them the sheepskin bag which the piper filled with air to be used as needed while he was playing. The bag was covered with cloth made of the player’s tartan.

  Next, the group was shown the various wooden parts of the bagpipes. The chanter, which produced the tune, had a reed at the top. At the lower end was a rubber valve, which closed when necessary to prevent air escaping from the bag.

  Besides the chanter there were three pipes for accompaniment. They were called drones. Two of these were tenor and one bass.

  The guide explained, “All the pipes are made of hard African blackwood. The ivory that trims the pipes comes from India, and the canes for the reeds that go into the pipes are from Spain. All the parts are screwed together.”

  The splitting of the pale-yellow reeds proved to be the most interesting part of the tour for Nancy. She learned that the cane was very carefully split partway down to give just the proper sound.

  A little later Nancy’s group thanked the guide for his informative talk. As they left the factory, Bess remarked, “It’s all too complicated for me. I’ll stick to the piano!”

  Donald drove to the shop where Nancy was to purchase her Douglas tartan outfit. She tried it on and was pleased. “I’d like to wear it, but I’d certainly attract attention,” Nancy said to the girls. She had not seen a single Scottish girl wearing tartans. Nancy mentioned this to Donald when she returned to the car.

  “Up in the Highlands,” he said, “ye will see the lassies in them. Don’t ye be afraid to wear yours there.”

  As they rode along, he suggested that they visit Stirling Castle. “’Tis a bit out o’ the way, but I think ye’ll feel well rewarded.”

  The girls and Mr. Drew said they would like to go. When they approached the castle, George exclaimed, “What a fabulous place!” A cluster of impressive stone buildings stood on a high hill.

  Two guards in colorful kilts were stationed at either side of the entrance. Just inside, a guide was waiting to escort the party. He led the way up a steep cobblestone driveway to a plaza around which were grouped the various buildings.

  “That smallest one used to be a mint,” the guide pointed out. “Silver from nearby hills was made into coin of the realm. Some people say that was the origin of sterling silver!”

  The visitors were fascinated by the elaborately furnished kings’ rooms, and the smaller apartment used by the famous Mary, Queen of Scots, before her imprisonment in England. But the guide told so many stories of loyal subjects, mixed with the gory details of intrigues and double-crossing deals of history, that the girls’ heads were swimming.

  Names which caught Nancy’s attention, however, were those of the great heroes of the country—William Wallace and Robert Bruce. “Scots, Wha Hae was composed in their honor!” she recalled.

  As the visitors went outside, Bess sighed.

  “Poor Mary, Queen of Scots! In prison for about twenty years! And then executed!”

  The guide led the group across the courtyard to a stone stairway leading downward. “Would you like to see the dungeon below?” he asked.

  “We may as well,” Mr. Drew replied.

  “You won’t need me,” said the guide. “I’ll wait here.”

  The four tourists descended, and immediately felt the damp chill of the underground prison. When they reached the far end, Bess shivered. “This is a horrible place! I can’t bear to think of the poor people who were thrown in here, when they hadn’t done anything wrong except to disagree with their ruler. Let’s go!”

  She turned and almost ran back outside. George and Mr. Drew followed. The guide chuckled. “A wee spooky, isn’t it?” Then he asked, “Where is the young lady detective? She is the one on the magazine cover?”

  The others suddenly realized that Nancy was not with them. “I’ll go get her,” Mr. Drew offered. “She has probably found something unusual.”

  He returned in a few minutes, a worried expression on his face. “Nancy isn’t down there!”

  “What!” the guide exclaimed. “She must be! She hasn’t come out!”

  In panic, Mr. Drew, Bess, and George hastened down the steps to make a search for the missing girl. What had happened to Nancy?

  CHAPTER VIII

  A Confession

  BY this time the guide, too, had become worried. As Bess, George, and Mr. Drew reached the foot of the dungeon steps, he called down, “Wait! I’ll come along. I must tell you something. Another sightseer went into the dungeon right after you did. He was mumbling something that sounded like ‘I’ll get her!’ Maybe—maybe he meant Miss Drew, and has put her in the suffocation chamber!”

  “What!” the three exclaimed in horror.

  The guide explained there was a small recess in the wall of the first chamber they had entered, where prisoners of old had been suffocated in seven minutes by a huge stone being placed across the opening. The stone was still there on the floor.

  He and the visitors raced pell-mell into the dungeon and went straight to the suffocation recess. The great stone lay on the ground. Nancy was not inside!

  Mr. Drew heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness!” he said. “Somehow Nancy must have gone out without any of us noticing.”

  As the group hurried back up the steps, the guide admitted he had been gone for a few minutes from the place at which he had posted himself to await their return. To their intense relief, they saw Nancy approaching them from the main entrance of the castle. The guide went off.

  “Nancy, you scared us silly!” cried Bess. “Where have you been?”

  The young sleuth quickly explained. “When you all were at the far end of the dungeon, I went back partway to look at something. Just then I saw a man come down the steps and walk toward me. He was that autograph snatcher in River Heights—the man named Pete!”

  “Are you sure?” George asked unbelievingly.

  “I’m positive!” Nancy answered. “As soon as he saw me, he turned and ran like mad. I tore after him but couldn’t catch him. Right outside the entrance gate he jumped into a car that looked like the one that nearly hit us on the way to Loch Lomond. It sped off, but I’m sure the driver was the person we know as Mr. Dewar.”

  “So those two are in league!” said George. “That proves they’re up to no good, and somehow you Drews ar
e involved.”

  All this time, Bess had been staring wide-eyed at Nancy. Finally she told of the mumbling the guide had heard, and added gloomily, “I’ll bet that man Pete would’ve pushed you into that seven-minute suffocation chamber when you weren’t looking!”

  George laughed scornfully. “Ridiculous! With all of us around! Nancy, why do you think he dared come into the dungeon and risk being seen?”

  “My hunch is, George, that he was sent to eavesdrop on our conversation and any plans we may have. He was taken by surprise when he saw me looking directly at him.”

  Mr. Drew remarked that their enemies must be watching every move. “I guess your suspicions about Mr. Dewar are confirmed,” the lawyer said to Nancy. “He must have overheard you girls talking in your hotel room, so he checked out ahead of us and followed Donald’s car. From now on I guess you three had better talk in whispers!”

  Mr. Drew asked Nancy if she had caught the license number of the fleeing car.

  “Yes, I did,” she said. “A guard at the castle entrance let me telephone the police. They checked, and told me it was a rented car and that after what had happened the men probably would abandon it very soon.”

  George was angry. “It seems to me that every time we get near a solution—poof! It goes up in smoke!”

  “Why didn’t the guards stop Pete at the entrance gate?” Bess asked Nancy.

  Nancy shrugged her shoulders. “I guess it all happened too fast.”

  The group walked to Donald’s car and climbed in. They said nothing to him about the recent episode, and soon they were relaxing and enjoying his delightful talk. Presently he stopped in a pleasant spot by a shaded brook, called a burn.

  “What a perfect picnic place!” Bess said.

  Later, while they were eating, Donald asked, “Do ye know about the old town in Scotland where everybody had the same last name?”

  “You’re kidding!” said Bess.

  “Nae, and that I am not,” Donald replied. “The name was MacKenzie, but the people there all called one another by nicknames. Some of them were pretty daft. Once a fellow came down from the church steeple on ropes, so they called him ‘The Flyer.’ The chemist was nicknamed ‘Shake the Bottle’ and the barber—well, he got the name ‘Soapy’!”

  Everyone laughed, and George remarked facetiously, “I suppose the town carpenter was called ‘Nails.’ ”

  “We call him a joiner,” said Donald. He chuckled. “If he dinna’ join things right and hit his thumb, we’d call him stupid!”

  The picnic ended and the debris was put back into the lunch box to be disposed of later. The sightseers resumed their journey. As they went through the town of Falkirk somewhat later, Donald turned east toward the Firth of Forth.

  George said, “In our country, I suppose we would call this a bay,” and Mr. Drew nodded.

  When they reached Bo’ness, Donald drew up before a large brown stone plaque wedged into the hillside. On it was a long inscription in Latin.

  “This was one of the Roman walls,” said the Scotsman. “It originally ran for thirty miles from here to the River Clyde. The wall was twelve feet high, and a deep trench was built on the enemy’s side to keep soldiers from climbing over the wall.”

  Nancy was endeavoring to make out the somewhat faint letters in the inscription, and managed to learn that the wall had been built during the reign of the Roman Emperor, Antoninus Pius.

  “Oh, dear!” Bess gave a sigh. “It seems to me that all day long I’ve been learning about wars, bloodshed, and horrible punishments.”

  Donald looked at her understandingly. “Perhaps we should go. I promise not to tell another story about cruelty today.”

  Bess smiled. “Thanks!”

  When they were seated in the car once more and heading toward Edinburgh, Donald asked, “Did ye ever hear about the naval commander who was ordered to anchor his ship at the Forth Bridge?”

  The others shook their heads and Donald went on, “Actually, the Forth Bridge runs from outside of Edinburgh across the Firth. Well, this captain kept goin’ and goin’ and finally radioed back: ‘Where is the fourth bridge? I can only find one!’ ”

  “Good story!” said Nancy as everyone chuckled.

  In a few minutes Donald said, “Schoolboys in Scotland are given a riddle. ‘How many inches in the Forth?’

  “They guess varying depths of water but are finally told, ‘There are only seven.’ Of course they all say no big ships could travel in seven inches of water. Then the person who is teasing them will say, ‘But an inch, laddie, is an island!’ ”

  “Oooh!” cried Bess. “Donald, how could you?”

  Their driver grinned, then stopped talking, since traffic was becoming heavy. By the time they reached Edinburgh the evening rush hour was at its height. The streets were crowded with pedestrians and vehicles.

  The American visitors admired the fine buildings and the extremely clean streets. “Isn’t this a lovely city!” Nancy murmured.

  Donald drove up the broad main avenue, with its attractive shops on one side and lovely park on the other. On a hill beyond stood the imposing castle. Presently the group reached the hotel where they were to stay. Like the one in Glasgow, it was next to the huge railroad station.

  The four travelers were genuinely sorry to say good-by to Donald. “Thank you for a wonderful trip,” said Nancy. The others expressed their appreciation also.

  “‘Twas a pleasure driving ye.” Donald grinned. “I wish ye all luck and happiness.”

  With that, he waved and drove off. Mr. Drew and the girls entered the hotel. In a lounge off the lobby, tea was being served. “Just what I need after that long ride,” Bess declared, eyeing the luscious-looking pastries contained in a multiple-tiered cart. She walked into the room.

  The other girls followed, while Mr. Drew registered for them all and sent the baggage to their rooms. They spent the next half hour eating the various dainty cakes and sipping the delicious tea.

  When they had finished, George said, “Mr. Drew, there’ll be only three of us at dinner tonight.” When he inquired why, the girl’s eyes twinkled and she answered, “Bess has had hers!”

  “That’s what you think!” her cousin retorted. “Two hours from now I’ll be ready for seven courses!”

  Nancy giggled. “They may serve only four!”

  A little later they all went upstairs to the girls’ room. As Nancy unlocked the door, the telephone was ringing. When she answered, the operator said, “Miss Drew? ... I have an overseas call for you. One moment, please.”

  In a few seconds a young man’s voice came over the wire and Nancy almost shrieked, “Ned!”

  Bess and George grinned and nodded their heads knowingly. After an exchange of excited greetings, Ned said to Nancy, “Detective Nickerson is calling to report to Detective Drew. I have some news for you. I got hold of the Graphic reporter who wrote the story that went with your picture. He finally broke down and said he had learned of your plans from a man named Pete. I did some sleuthing and found out that Pete’s full name is Paul Petrie!”

  “Oh, marvelous!” exclaimed Nancy. “Who is this Mr. Petrie?”

  “He lives in town. Petrie has never been in trouble with the police, but I learned that he isn’t very well regarded. Had a few near brushes with the law when some of his checks bounced.”

  “Ned, that’s clever detecting!” Nancy exclaimed.

  “Wait until you hear what else I have to tell you. It’s really big news! Nancy, I tracked down the person who wrote that warning note about the bomb!”

  CHAPTER IX

  Being Shadowed

  As Nancy listened eagerly, Ned told her how he had located the writer of the warning note. “I studied your tracing of the writing. First, like you, I was sure a woman had written the words. You may remember Professor Webster at Emerson. Along with teaching archaeology, he’s a handwriting expert. He and I have had many discussions about how the formation of letters is an indication of one’s character.”


  “You mean,” said Nancy, “a bold, vertical handwriting usually belongs to a literary person and jerky, slanted-to-the-right letters are a sign of nervousness?”

  “Exactly. After studying the note you received, I figured it had been written by a somewhat shy, motherly person, probably elderly. From the type of paper used, I deduced she lived in a middle-income area of town and might shop locally. So I hounded the markets and kept my eyes open.”

  “And you found her that way?” Nancy asked.

  Ned chuckled. “Sure did.” He had taken a young cousin of his along to the various stores. “We stayed near the check-out counter,” Ned went on. “Whenever an elderly woman came up to the cashier, we’d start talking about bombs and watch her reaction. Finally, in one supermarket, we saw a woman tremble violently, and asked her point-blank about the note. She admitted putting it in your mailbox.”

  “You’re simply a genius!” Nancy exclaimed. “Go on!”

  “This woman, Mrs. Morrison, runs a small rooming house. There are several within the block and many strangers come and go. But one day Mrs. Morrison was just about to close a window which opens onto an alleyway, when she heard two men talking below. One said he had had orders from Mr. Drew to use a bomb on the girl detective and her father.”

  “What else did she hear?” Nancy asked excitedly.

  “That was about all, except the words ‘He’s a lawyer.’ Mrs. Morrison looked out, but by this time the men had gone. She couldn’t make up her mind whether they were serious or not. She was tempted to call the police, but decided against it.”

  “What did Mrs. Morrison do?”

  “She casually inquired of the cashier in the supermarket if she knew of any girl detectives in town. When she heard there was one by the name of Nancy Drew, whose father was a lawyer, Mrs. Morrison became more puzzled than ever, and wondered if some family feud was being carried on between Drew and Drew.

  “Finally,” Ned went on, “Mrs. Morrison decided to write the warning note anonymously. She put it in your mailbox, rang the bell, and hurried away.”