The Clue of the Black Keys Read online

  Anderson shook his head. “That would still be unwise. Two girls alone!”

  “Fran has a cousin, Jack Walker, who lives in Miami,” Nancy explained eagerly. “He has a boat, and knows the bay. He could act as guide and protector.”

  Dr. Anderson smiled. “That’s different,” he said. “I’ll talk to Miss Oakes’s cousin when we get to Miami, and if he seems the proper sort, I think we can arrange things.”

  After that, the professor yawned a few times and began to doze. Even Nancy, excited as she was, at last went to sleep. When she awakened, the other students were excitedly scanning the view far below them. Nancy left her place by the professor and walked back to take the vacant seat beside Fran Oakes.

  “Pines and lakes and palm trees,” Fran said. “We must be over Florida.”

  Nancy told her new friend that Dr. Anderson might allow them to go exploring together on a field trip of their own.

  “Do you think Jack Walker would take us in his motorboat?” she asked.

  “He’d love to!” Fran declared.

  After a hearty lunch on the plane, the travelers landed in Miami. The Southern Skies Guest House, where Nancy and five other girls were to stay, proved to be a very attractive place. Its palmstudded yard sloped to the edge of a pleasant inland waterway.

  “Jack can bring his motorboat right to our door, Nancy,” Fran Oakes cried happily.

  Mrs. Young, the guest-house owner, showed Nancy and her friends to two double rooms, then told them to make themselves comfortable. The girls thanked her, unpacked, then went for a swim.

  That evening the student group assembled in the dining room of a hotel up the street. Professor Anderson outlined some local points of interest, then gave the students their assignments for the following days.

  Nancy was awakened the next morning by Fran, who told her that Jack Walker was coming to the hotel at eight o’clock. They took quick showers and dressed.

  Jack proved to be a good-looking man in his early thirties, serious-minded and athletic. Dr. Anderson seemed to take a liking to him.

  “Miss Oakes and Miss Drew want to arrange their own field trip,” he said. “If you can give them some time, I’ll grant permission.”

  “I’ll take the job—my boat’s in A-1 shape.” Jack grinned.

  They skimmed over the blue water for two hours. Nancy tried to map out in her mind the complicated waterways of the area, but admitted defeat. At last they returned to the dock.

  “I wish we could do our research on water skis.” Fran sighed.

  Jack wanted to know what the research was. “It had better be interesting,” he teased.

  “Nancy is treasure hunting,” Fran explained. “She’s looking for an island called Black Key. Know where it is?”

  “Never heard of it. But I know the right man to tell her. His name is Two Line Parker.”

  “What a funny name!” Fran giggled.

  Jack took them to see the bearded old fisherman, who lived in a tiny white cottage on the waterfront. His eyes twinkling, he told them how he had received his curious nickname.

  “I kin manage two lines at once,” he boasted, “just as easy as most folks handle one. Tell you ’bout the time I got me two big fish, one on the left side o’ the boat, one on the right side. They was tuggin’ so hard, I thought they’d pull me clean apart.”

  “Did you bring both fish in?” Nancy asked.

  “Sure did,” said Two Line. “I just tied those two lines together and let the fish fight it out. When they got tired, I pulled ’em in easy.”

  The old fisherman laughed uproariously and winked at Jack. Then he asked what he could do for them.

  “This young lady,” said Jack, indicating Nancy, “is looking for treasure on the Florida Keys. Have you any ideas, Two Line?”

  The old man became thoughtful. “I don’t rightly know where to lay my hands on any at the present. But a heap o’ treasure has been buried time and agin on the Keys.”

  “What kind of treasure?” Fran asked.

  “Smugglers’ stuff. The Keys used to be a great place for smugglers. And then there was the pirates. They’d make raids on the cargo ships that passed this way.”

  “Didn’t our Navy try to capture the pirates?”

  Two Line Parker chuckled. “Sure, but for a long time they couldn’t catch ‘em. Those pirates was smart. They used shallow boats so they could sneak into the narrow channels of the Keys. They’d hole up there, after they’d made a raid. The big ships couldn’t follow ’em. They’d have grounded if they had.”

  Jack asked who finally got rid of the pirates.

  “Commodore Parker, back in 1824. He built a fleet o’ barges and some light-draft schooners. Went after them pirates and cleaned ’em out in no time.”

  “And that was the last of the pirates?” Fran asked.

  Two Line Parker smiled wryly. “I wouldn’t say that. Ever hear of the Florida reef wreckers?”

  The girls shook their heads.

  “I used to know a couple of ‘em myself. Wrecking captains, they was called. Here ’em talk, you’d think they was kind and honest. They’d keep boats ready. When there was a wreck, they’d sail out and rescue the folks on the doomed ship.”

  “What was wrong with that?” Jack wanted to know.

  Two Line Parker snorted. “It wasn’t just the folks they wanted to save, Jack. It was the cargo. Why, there was plenty of wreckers in the old days, what would lure ships onto the reefs at night with false signals. Wreck ’em on purpose, for the cargo.”

  “How horrible!” Nancy cried indignantly.

  “So you see, all sorts of things have happened on the Keys. Treasure hid and treasure stolen, I reckon. Any special Key you were thinkin’ of, young lady?”

  “Do you know of a Black Key?”

  Two Line Parker scratched his head. “Never heard tell of that one. I could name you hundreds. But Black Key—”

  Then suddenly the old fisherman remembered something. “I tell you what, though. There’s that Key where the Black Falcon was sunk, back in the eighties, in a hurricane. I never heard a name for it, but Black Key’d be a good name on account of the Black Falcon.”

  Nancy was very excited now. This might be the place for which she was searching!

  “But if I were you, young lady, I’d—” Two Line paused, shaking his head.

  “You’d what?” Nancy prompted him.

  “I’d stay away from there—I’d stay as far away as I could get!”

  CHAPTER XVI

  A Burned Letter

  INSTEAD of being frightened by the fisherman’s warning, Nancy found her curiosity aroused about the island. She asked Two Line Parker why he had advised her to stay away from it.

  “Stories they tell,” he answered. “The place is haunted, some folks think. Take that ship, the Black Falcon, the night she sank. I’ve heard Indians talk about it. They say a fire rose up out of her even when she was under water. And after that it rained frogs.”

  “Frogs?” echoed Jack Walker, and Nancy wondered if the old man’s mind were not wandering.

  “You don’t believe me,” Two Line said. “Well, it ain’t just me that says so. It’s writ down, sure enough, in a book.”

  “Who wrote it down?” Nancy asked suspiciously.

  Two Line nodded his head wisely. “Old sailor down here. Dead now. Lived on the Keys for years, just writin’ everything down. Stories the Indians told mostly. He knew their language like his own, and Spanish, too.”

  The old man’s final sentence caught Nancy’s attention.

  “Who was he? What was his name?” she queried.

  “Evans, they called him. Never knew his first name. He went everywheres listenin’ to stories and writin’ ’em down.”

  “Had he been a sea captain?” Nancy asked excitedly.

  “I don’t rightly know. Never talked about himself. When I knowed him, he’d lived around here for years.”

  “And he kept a diary?”

  “Maybe that�
�s what it was. He made drawin‘s, too. He’d fool hours away, adrawin’ and ascriblin’. But he’d never show that book of his to nobody.”

  The old man babbled on about Indians, pirates, and shipwrecks, but Nancy kept thinking about Evans, and the “book” he kept. It could very well be the diary Mrs. Wangell had in her possession!

  “What happened to the diary?” she asked.

  Two Line had no idea.

  “Would you please show us, on a map, where the Black Falcon was sunk?” Nancy requested.

  Jack Walker had a map of Florida in his pocket. He unfolded it and handed the flattened sheet to the fisherman.

  Two Line Parker squinted at the shoreline, and pushed a calloused forefinger over a scattering of small Keys.

  “About here. There’s a Key nearby, I seem to remember, that’s called Storm Island.”

  Nancy marked the spot on the map with her pencil, and decided to ask Dr. Anderson to accompany her there the following day.

  But the professor had other plans for Saturday. He told Nancy that he had chartered a bus for a visit to a Seminole Indian reservation. Fran and Nancy, he insisted, were to join the other students on the trip.

  Though she was reluctant to spend the time this way, especially since the next day was Sunday and Dr. Anderson had ordered a day of rest, Nancy found the trip a fascinating one.

  Sunday evening, while eating supper with her friends in a tearoom, Nancy decided to make a start on her detective work. She took a notebook from her purse and found the address Wilfred Porterly had given to Sergeant Malloy at the River Heights airport.

  Fran Oakes groaned. “Watch out, girls. Nancy has a plan. I can see it hatching.”

  Nancy laughed. “How would you three like to go on a manhunt with me?”

  “With bloodhounds?” Grace James grinned.

  “No. Just with our own wits.”

  “Whom are we going to hunt?” Marilyn asked.

  “A man named Wilfred Porterly and his wife Irene,” Nancy replied. “Not respectable, I warn you.”

  “Let’s go!” said Fran. “It’s a better game than just sitting around at Mrs. Young’s.”

  In high spirits, the girls left the tearoom and hailed a bus which carried them north on Biscayne Boulevard. A few minutes later they got off and after a short walk reached a neat, Spanish-style bungalow.

  The four girls walked up the steps and Nancy rang the doorbell. They heard footsteps inside, and the door was opened by a woman with a mop in her hand. She looked surprised to see her four callers.

  “Good evening. Are you Mrs. Wilfred Porterly?” Nancy asked, eying the mop.

  The woman smiled. “Mercy, no. I guess you’re looking for the former tenant.”

  Nancy showed her disappointment. “Did the Porterlys move out recently?”

  “Two weeks ago yesterday.”

  The woman set down her mop. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m busy cleaning. I have to clean day and night, they left the place so dirty. I guess they moved out in a hurry.”

  She took a slip from her apron pocket. “I found this on a nail in the kitchen. I guess it’s their forwarding address.”

  Nancy read the notation: “Porterly, c/o General Delivery, Florida City.”

  “I suppose you don’t know the Porterlys personally?” she asked.

  The woman threw up her hands and made a face. Then she looked embarrassed. “I hope you’re not friends?”

  “Not exactly,” said Nancy. “We came on business.”

  She and the other girls said good night and walked back toward the boulevard.

  “Florida City,” said Grace. “That’s too far away for tonight.”

  “Any other criminals we can hunt? In Miami that is,” Fran teased.

  “Perhaps,” said Nancy. “If I can find his address.”

  While the other girls waited, Nancy stopped at a drugstore telephone booth and looked for the names Juarez Tino and Conway King in the Miami directory. They were not listed. When she called Information, the operator said that neither person had a telephone.

  “The missing persons,” Nancy told her friends, “will have to stay missing until tomorrow. Let’s go back to Mrs. Young’s and get some sleep.”

  Next day Dr. Anderson promised Nancy that he would accompany her and Fran on their trip to find Black Key. But he could not start, he said, until after lunch.

  “Would it be all right if Fran and I spent the morning in Florida City?” Nancy asked. “It’s only a few miles from here and we could rent a car.”

  The professor gave permission, and shortly before ten she and Fran were speeding through the picturesque area south of Miami.

  Parking their hired car along the palm-lined main street of Florida City, Nancy and Fran went in search of the post office. But no help was to be gained from that quarter.

  “Sorry,” said the clerk. “We can’t give you any information.”

  “I might have guessed,” Nancy told her friend. “We’ll just have to do our detective work the hard way.”

  Someone, somewhere, Nancy hoped, would have seen or heard of the Porterlys. She asked a policeman, but he shook his head.

  She tried a drugstore, a gas station, and a sandwich shop, but none of the personnel had heard of the Porterlys. After that, she visited a market and a candy-and-stationery store, again to no avail.

  “I don’t see how you can be so persistent,” Fran said. “I’d have given up ages ago.”

  Nancy chuckled. “That’s the fun of being a detective. You look and look and keep on looking. And suddenly, when you least expect it, you find a clue.”

  They next inquired at a small souvenir shop selling Florida shells and curios of various kinds. Nancy repeated her usual question.

  “I’m trying to locate a man and his wife who, I understand, are staying in Florida City. Their last name is Porterly.”

  As had happened so many times, the proprietor shook his head. But a young boy who was sweeping the shop spoke up politely.

  “I think I can help you, miss. I delivered a package to a Mrs. Porterly just last week. She was staying at the Sunland Tourist Home.”

  He gave directions for reaching the house. The two girls hurried to their car and drove away quickly.

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Nancy said triumphantly.

  But her triumph was short-lived. They found the tourist home boarded up and deserted. Nailed over the Sunland sign was a neat card which read: Closed Temporarily. Will reopen December 15.

  “What do we do now? Go back to Miami?” Fran asked gloomily.

  “Not yet,” Nancy replied. “Let’s look around.”

  She went to the porch and peered into the mailbox. It was empty. Then she and Fran walked toward the back yard.

  In the middle of the driveway stood a wire incinerator. Evidently it had been in use recently, for it smelled faintly of smoke. Upon investigation Nancy found that a pile of letters had been burned. Some of the envelopes had not been entirely consumed by the flames.

  “It won’t hurt to look,” Nancy told Fran. “Here—hold my shoulder bag, please.”

  She turned the incinerator on end and upset the contents in the driveway. Then she singled out the letters which had partially escaped the fire. Seating herself on the back steps, she began to examine them.

  Most of the scraps proved valueless. But one envelope excited her interest. It read:

  “Mr. W. Port—” The rest of the address was seared.

  Nancy looked inside the crumbling folds of paper. Only a scrap of the letter had survived. But its contents startled her.

  Drew girl and

  the trail. Cover you

  Will meet you at B

  the fifteenth.

  Nancy’s heart thumped wildly. Drew girl! Were the Porterlys and their friends plotting some new evil against her?

  “The fifteenth is day after tomorrow!” Nancy cried. “Oh, Fran, if only more of that letter hadn’t burned, we’d know where Porterly and someone else—prob
ably Juarez Tino—are going to meet. And why!”

  Nancy put the scraps of paper in her purse, and the girls returned home.

  “Nancy, it all sounds as if you were in dreadful danger,” Fran said worriedly as they went to lunch.

  “I admit I must be very careful. But if a lot of us stick together, no harm can come to me,” the young detective assured her. Fran perked up. By two o’clock they were out on the bay in Jack’s boat with Dr. Anderson.

  On the way to the spot where so many years before the Black Falcon had sunk, Jack pointed out various sights to the girls.

  “Over there is what’s called a sea garden,” he was saying. “It’s very pretty. Grasses, coral, ferns, starfish, and conch shells.”

  The roar of a speedboat, passing a few yards at their left, almost drowned out his words. Nancy looked up curiously—and her back stiffened.

  In that brief moment, as the boat rushed by she had glimpsed the dark, sinister face of someone she knew. Nancy caught Dr. Anderson’s arm.

  “That man in the boat!” she cried, pointing excitedly. “He’s Juarez Tinol”

  CHAPTER XVII

  The Elusive Island

  As THE speedboat passed, Juarez Tino turned to look back. Had he recognized Nancy?

  “Follow that boat!” Dr. Anderson ordered.

  Jack opened the throttle and his boat leaped ahead, its prow out of the water.

  “Glad to speed. But why?” he asked. “Is that man ahead someone you know?”

  “We think so,” Nancy answered. “Keep him in sight if you can.”

  An idea suddenly came to her. The note in the incinerator had said “Will meet you at B—” Was Juarez heading for Black Key?

  They raced after his speedboat, following its zigzag course. Then Juarez disappeared behind a palm-fringed islet. When the others rounded it, he was not in sight. They cruised in the vicinity for a while, searching for him, but he had vanished.

  “We’d better not waste any more time,” Nancy said. “I think Juarez went straight on to the Black Key. Let’s look on the map for Storm Island.”

  After studying it, Jack headed the motorboat west, but could not find the Key which Two Line had vaguely pointed out on the chart. After an hour he changed his course. “You’d have to be a wizard to know this place thoroughly. Shorelines keep changing. New Keys building up.”