Mystery of the Glowing Eye Page 7

  “What is it?” Bess asked eagerly. “I certainly would like to be rescued from this creepy place!”

  “The quicker the better,” George added.

  Nancy turned to the boys. “Do you think we could possibly contact the police over the two-way radio set here? We could tell them our suspicions regarding this cabin, and the take-off of the copter.” She looked at Bess and grinned. “If they come by helicopter, they might even give us a ride back to our car.”

  Dave offered to try contacting headquarters.

  CHAPTER XII

  Hidden Notes

  BURT and Dave bent over the sending set, trying to figure out how the various gadgets worked.

  “This is a complicated one,” Dave remarked.

  George, who had had a little coaching along these lines from her father, an electronic engineer, made several valuable suggestions.

  “Where are the call letters?” she asked.

  The young people examined every inch of the set but could find none.

  “I wonder whom the kidnapper was calling? Some pal? Or a member of a Cyclops gang?” George asked.

  The boys said they wished they knew and went on with their examination, hoping desperately to get the set to respond. Finally they hit the right combination and in a moment Burt’s signal was answered.

  He said, “Calling from station without call letters. Who are you?”

  The listener seemed reluctant to reply and asked, “Why don’t you have call letters? Everybody does.”

  “We’re in trouble here. Owner is away. No clue to call letters,” Burt told him.

  The ham radio operator turned out to be answering from a town not far away.

  Burt told him he was calling from a swamp and then said, “There are five of us here. It’s near Arbutus. Will you phone the police department and ask if they’ll come out here? We’ve made an important discovery about a missing person.”

  Nancy stood listening. She began to shake her head to indicate that Burt had told enough. He nodded and put a finger over his lips to indicate he understood.

  “Will you please do this for us?” Burt asked the ham. “I’m Burt Eddleton. I attend Emerson College. You can check there if you like.”

  The man said he would be glad to help and asked, “Where are you?”

  Burt gave him directions from Arbutus, then said, “Over.”

  Nancy and her friends hoped fervently that the ham would not think the message was some kind of a joke and pay no attention to it.

  “There’s nothing we can do but wait,” said Bess with a sigh.

  “In the meantime,” Nancy spoke up, “we can continue searching this place.”

  All but Nancy went outside to look for clues. She felt that if Ned had been outdoors, he would have tried to escape and not bothered, or had time, to leave a clue.

  “More than likely he was kept in one spot, either chained up or threatened with dire punishment if he tried to get away. We know he used this cot,” Nancy thought, gazing at it for a full minute.

  She decided to pull the cot apart to see if anything was hidden inside. First she took off two blankets, shook them vigorously, and looked over every inch of them.

  She found nothing. Next, Nancy picked up the mattress and laid it on the floor. To her amazement, she saw dozens of small note-pad sheets with Ned’s writing on them lying on the springs. Eagerly she picked up one and read the message which looked as if it had been hurriedly scrawled.

  There was a date on the paper. The day Ned was kidnapped!

  The note said, “Cannot understand why I was kidnapped when Cyclops could have stolen what he wants if he had waited a little longer.”

  There were other notes written the following day. One read: “Am being pretty well fed and comfortable, but this madman threatens me with a gun whenever I move.”

  There was a daily series of notes telling of Ned’s treatment, how one ankle was chained to the bed, and his captor’s endeavors to keep him away from the lab even when he let him get a little exercise.

  Nancy came across an entry with no date on it, but the contents were very enlightening. It said that his kidnapper had prepared the robot helicopter for a flight to Nancy Drew’s home.

  Ned had begged to see the copter and the man had finally consented and taken him outside. “When my captor was not looking I slipped a note to Nancy onto the floor.”

  Nancy was elated. “That’s mystery number one cleared up!” she murmured.

  At this point Bess and George came into the cabin to see if Nancy had learned anything. They were astounded at her discovery of the notes.

  “It puzzles me,” Bess said, “why the name Crosson doesn’t appear in any of these notes.”

  George replied that it could mean the kidnapper was not Crosson after all. “And he never told Ned his name.”

  Nancy decided to copy the notes in case the police should come and want them. She had just finished when the girls became aware of a whirring sound in the air. Quickly Nancy stuffed both sets of notes into her pocket. Then she restored the bed to its normal look and went outside.

  A police helicopter was arriving. As soon as it set down, the young people went over to talk to the men. The ham had done what he had promised!

  “Tell us everything that has happened,” one of the officers said, after three men had alighted.

  As quickly as possible, Nancy gave them the highlights of the story and showed them the notes Ned had written, and her copies of them.

  “This looks serious,” the captain remarked. “I’ll take your copies to turn over to the FBI. If we need the originals, I’ll let you know. What’s the registration number of the copter?”

  Nancy replied, “We didn’t see it today. But the one we saw the first time turned out to be a fake.”

  After hearing the story, two of the three officers decided to stay at the cabin in case the suspected kidnapper returned. The pilot told the young people he would take them to their car and to climb aboard.

  In a short time Nancy and her friends were delivered to the automobile. They thanked him and he wished them luck. He warned the young people to be careful in their future sleuthing. “The kidnapper sounds like a bad one.” The pilot flew off and Burt took the wheel of Nancy’s car.

  When they reached the fraternity house, Bess could hardly wait to get under the shower. She had said nothing more about her sudden spill in the swamp, but she felt very itchy.

  The other girls washed and changed too, then joined the boys for dinner. When they finished eating, Burt and Dave said that they had to attend a night lecture.

  “Sorry not to be here to entertain you girls,” Dave said. “But we’ll make up for it some time. Promise.”

  Bess laughed. “I’ve had enough entertainment for one day! See you when you get back from your lecture.”

  She and George went off to talk to some of the other boys. Nancy was torn between her desire to stay with them and a sudden feeling of curiosity about Ned’s notes. There might be some clues in them which she had not noticed!

  In the guest room she sat down and reread the notes, then examined each one through her magnifying glass. But she could detect no hints to Ned’s whereabouts, nor to why he had been kidnapped.

  Nancy sat staring into space. Then on a sudden hunch she closed the door to the hall and turned off all the lights. She almost yelled aloud in surprise. Drawn in the corner of one note in fluorescent ink was an exact duplicate of the mysterious glowing eye she had seen at the Anderson Museum!

  “How strange!” Nancy thought.

  She began to wonder whether Ned had put this on the paper sometime before his kidnapping, or if by some ruse he had been able to use certain materials in the cabin’s lab.

  Then Nancy remembered that one note indicated Ned was not allowed far from his cot. The paper with the glowing eye must have been from a note pad her friend was carrying when he arrived at the isolated cabin.

  “The message on the paper doesn’t light up, so it pr
obably has nothing to do with the glowing eye,” she thought.

  Nancy had just turned all the lights back on when the door opened and George and Bess came in.

  Instantly Nancy said, “I’ll show you something very interesting. Turn off all the lights!”

  When Bess and George saw the glowing eye on the paper, they stared in disbelief. Nancy told them she wondered if Ned had put the glowing eye on the sheet as some sort of clue for her.

  “What I wish I could do right now is figure out where he is at this moment. Oh dear! We came so close to rescuing him.”

  Bess put an arm around Nancy. “Don’t be sad. We’ll track him down yet.”

  George suggested that the kidnapper probably would bring Ned back to the cabin as soon as he thought it was safe.

  “He’ll never guess that two officers are there waiting to capture him and set Ned free,” she said.

  Bess, who had been staring at the glowing eye, asked Nancy if she thought the drawing on the notepaper might indicate something special about his work.

  “Yes. I think Ned has invented something unique and tried it out on this paper,” Nancy replied as she turned on the light. “It may or may not have anything to do with the glowing eye in the museum. When he found it worked, he began to make a bigger and better one. At that point someone decided to get hold of the invention and put it to his own use, maybe even sell the formula.”

  Just then Burt and Dave entered the room. At once George suggested that they close the door and turn off the light.

  The boys laughed. Dave said, “What’s going on?”

  “Wait until you see something amazing Nancy found,” George replied.

  The boys were as astounded at the discovery as the girls had been.

  “It may not be long before we hear something important,” Bess told the boys. “Ned’s kidnapper may go back to that cabin and be captured by the police.”

  Nancy, however, said she had a different idea.

  “What is it, Nancy?” George asked excitedly.

  CHAPTER XIII

  The Escape

  “HERE is my idea,” Nancy said to her waiting friends. “We’re sure Crosson uses the old farmhouse. If he’s the kidnapper, he might have taken Ned there.”

  “It’s a good guess,” George conceded.

  Bess suggested that maybe Crosson would put Ned in the clothes chute. No one would be likely to look for a missing person in that spot.

  “Another good guess,” Dave remarked, smiling at Bess.

  George spoke up. “Then we should rescue Ned at once!”

  “Yes,” Nancy agreed. “And I have another hunch. Crosson may stay there only until early morning. Which of you is game to go with me right now?”

  Everyone in the group was eager to leave immediately. Burt did the driving, which gave Nancy a chance to mull over the many angles to the mystery. The red-haired man had outwitted her and she was determined he would not do it again. She sighed, however. He was very clever and surely would try to outsmart them.

  “Oh, oh!” Burt burst out. “Look ahead! Blockade!”

  By now they were about half a mile from the farmhouse. A wall of piled-up stones stretched across the road. Atop the center of it was a red lantern. Attached below was a large sign which read:DANGER

  BLASTING AHEAD

  There was no way to get around the wall at this point because trees grew rather solidly along the road.

  Bess asked, “What are we going to do?”

  Burt said he would drive around via another road and approach the farmhouse from the opposite direction. It took twenty minutes to do this. When they came within half a mile of the far side of the building, they were confronted with a great pile of brush across the road. The sides had high embankments.

  “Stymied again!” George remarked.

  “What are we going to do?” Bess asked.

  Nancy pointed out the fact that there were no trees along the road in this area. “Let’s walk and approach the house through the field,” she proposed.

  Bess reminded her that it probably would be rough walking. “What’s the matter with the road? That’s smooth!”

  Nancy said it was possible there was some truth in the sign at the stone barrier. The road might be torn up or have unexploded dynamite stored on it. However, she was suspicious that the person who put up the sign and the two barriers had done so to keep visitors away.

  “Why not notify the police and let them take care of everything?” Bess suggested.

  “But Ned may be a prisoner at the farmhouse,” George reminded her. “Well, I’m ready to start. Who’s willing to go along? I promise an adventure!”

  “I’ll wait in the car,” Bess said.

  Dave decided to stay with her. “It’s too dangerous for Bess to be alone here.”

  The others left them, climbed the embankment on the farmhouse side, and walked through the field. It was bright moonlight, so flashlights were not needed. The rutted ground could be spotted easily, so Burt and the girls had no trouble reaching the farmhouse quickly. They had walked as lightly as possible and not said a word.

  The abandoned house was in darkness. As the group skirted a small brook and copse of trees they found themselves approaching the building from the rear.

  Suddenly Nancy stopped short and pointed. The others looked ahead. Clearly outlined in the bright moonlight was a helicopter!

  Burt whispered to Nancy, “Is it the robot copter?”

  “Yes. If Crosson and Ned came in the copter, they must be here!”

  The three young people started to run forward, but before they got very far, the rotors of the copter began to whir, and with a roar the craft lifted from the ground.

  Nancy could not refrain from shouting, “Ned, are you there? Ned, are you aboard?”

  Her friends took up the cry, but there was no answer or signal. Because of the noise, had the person or persons aboard been unable to hear them, or did they not want to answer? Perhaps there was no one in the craft! If so, was the person who had programmed it, on the premises?

  Nancy and the others walked to the house. The front door was unlocked, so they entered. Beaming their flashlights, they searched every room thoroughly, watchful not to be captured themselves should an enemy be lurking in the house.

  Finally, after hunting everywhere, even in the clothes chute, Nancy said, “Ned isn’t a prisoner here, so I believe he was in that copter. How I wish I knew where he was being taken!”

  One thing she was sure of—the helicopter had not been headed for the swamp area, so unless the pilot made a change in direction, he was not going to the cabin. But where was he going?

  “We’d better notify the police,” Burt suggested. “Two of the kidnapper’s hiding places will be covered.”

  “Which means,” George added, “that sooner or later he and Ned are bound to be found.”

  “Unless,” Nancy suggested, “Ned’s red-haired captor has still other hiding places.”

  “We may as well go back to the car,” Burt said. He told Bess and Dave what had happened, then suggested they all return to the fraternity house.

  On the way he stopped in town at police headquarters and Nancy hurried inside to tell her story. The captain on duty promised to send out men not only to wait for the return of Ned and his abductor, but also to scan every inch of the road that had been closed off.

  “If we find it okay, we’ll take down the barriers so the road can be opened again to traffic,” the officer said.

  “From what you tell me,” he went on, “I imagine someone stood over your friend Ned with some kind of a firearm and made him do all the work of building those barriers.”

  Nancy smiled. “I agree. What I’m hoping is that Ned will not be badly mistreated before we find him.”

  She gave the captain her home telephone number and also that of Ned’s fraternity house at Emerson College.

  “If I have any news,” the captain said, “I’ll call you at once.”

  When she an
d her friends reached the campus, Nancy suddenly was reminded of her date with Glenn Munson the following morning for a flight in his helicopter.

  “There’s not much use in going now,” she thought. “We found the wilderness hiding place.”

  The young detective wondered how she could put the flying time to good use by doing some sleuthing. Suddenly an idea came to her.

  “Why don’t I take the copter to River Heights and talk to Dad and Marty King?” she asked herself. “Both of them might have some information for me they wouldn’t want to talk about on the phone.”

  Nancy told the other girls what she had in mind, and early the next morning Burt drove her out to the airfield to meet Glenn. He was already there.

  “I’ve changed my plans,” Nancy told him. “Would you mind flying to River Heights and spending a little time there?”

  The young pilot grinned. “Nothing would suit me better,” he replied.

  Burt drove off and Nancy climbed into the helicopter. In a few minutes she and Glenn were in the air headed for River Heights.

  “Why this sudden change of plans?” he asked her.

  Nancy told him about what she and her friends had found at the wilderness hiding place.

  “Unfortunately the people there took off in a copter just before we reached the place,” she added.

  In a short while Glenn landed his craft at River Heights Airport. Nancy said that she wanted to go home first to see if there were any mail or messages for her.

  “At your command.” The young man grinned as they walked toward a taxi.

  Nancy gave her address and soon they were winding through the residential area of the small city.

  “One more block and we’re there,” she announced as the taxi turned onto a street lined with attractive homes and sycamore trees.

  By the time Nancy alighted from the taxi Hannah Gruen was rushing out the front door. She stopped short in amazement when she saw Nancy and Glenn.

  “I thought for a moment you had come back with Ned!” she exclaimed, glancing in embarrassment at Nancy’s companion.