Confessions of a Teen Sleuth Page 3

  I hurried up to Frank, glancing at my wristwatch, "Goodness!" I exclaimed. "Frank, if we don't leave at once, we'll miss the seance!"

  Cherry tossed her head, sending her dark brown curls cascading off her glowing cheeks. "Honestly, Nancy," she exclaimed, "if you weren't a friend of Frank's, I'd cut you up for stew and feed you to my worst enemy."

  "Nice uniform," I retorted, glancing down at her crackling white nurse's apron.

  "At least I change uniforms sometimes," Cherry countered. "You're wearing the same exact skirt you had on when we met." She looked me up and down. "And it's looking a little tight around the hips."

  "Girls," Frank intervened. He put his hand on the small of my back and led me away to the back porch, leaving Cherry glaring behind us.

  "What's got into you?" he asked. His breath felt hot on my face.

  "I'm just so bent out of shape about Joe!" I stammered. "It's such a tragedy!"

  Frank's eyes twinkled. "Nancy, you're as hard to read as a Turkish mannequin."

  I smiled, but my head was spinning. Joe was dead. You live your whole life thinking you're doing the right thing. You marry your special friend. You move to Chicago. Then something happens and everything goes catawampus. "Jeepers, Frank," I gushed before I could stop myself, "I think I'm in love with you!"

  "What about Nick?"

  "Ned."

  "Ned."

  "I love him too, I guess. He's just so . . . boring."

  Frank took me by my shoulders. There was a challenge in his eye. "Nancy," he asked, "do you trust me?"

  I shuddered. "With everything I have," I answered.

  "Then I'm going to ask you to trust me right now."

  Before I could retort, a great silver orb appeared over Frank's left shoulder. Though I had never seen one, I knew it immediately. A dirigible! And it was landing in the Hardys' backyard!

  "We have to leave immediately," Frank ordered. "No time for good-byes. Joe is alive. And he's being held captive in Germany. We may be the only two people who can get him out of this pickle. Are you up for it?"

  Joe? Still alive? Germany? Joe needed me. My country needed me. I stared him squarely in the eye and nodded. "I'm ready."

  The dirigible took us to a top secret airfield in Queens. I phoned Ned and told him that I was spending a few extra days with Cherry Ames and Vicki Barr in Atlantic City. Then we boarded a military airplane and flew across the Atlantic. On the trip, Frank explained the predicament.

  Joe had been sent on an urgent mission. He was on the trail of a nutcracker that had been forged by a Russian jeweler. It had ended up the property of a fat rich man in Zurich, then was sold to a French movie star, who lost it in a divorce to a Dominican playboy, who sold it to an anonymous collector, who donated it to the British Museum in London. Then, two months ago, it had been stolen! Scotland Yard had turned up only one clue at the scene: a tiny brooch in the form of a swastika!

  "But what would the Nazis want with a nutcracker?" I asked incredulously.

  "That's exactly what we wanted to know," answered Frank. "So we sent Joe behind enemy lines to find out. Last we heard from him, he had a meeting with an Austrian countess he said might have the answer. That was last week. No one has heard from him since."

  "But you think he's still alive?"

  "Absolutely. Joe gets into jams, but he never dies. Of course, we can't let the enemy know that we know that he's been captured."

  "So you had the funeral."

  "Exactly." For a moment Frank looked uncharacteristically grim. "This is a dangerous mission. And I needed the best in the business. I've always thought highly of your sleuthing abilities, and when I remembered that you took high school German, well, I just knew that you were the one." He set his jaw in determination. "The fate of the free world may just rest with this nutcracker." Frank glanced out the window into the black night over the Atlantic. "You can sky dive, right?"

  We stripped off our parachutes and hid them in a barn on a farm just outside of Berlin. We had parachuted just before sunrise and then settled down to catch a few hours of sleep in the hayloft. Neither of us got much rest.

  I awoke first and made Frank a breakfast of fresh eggs on our government issued hot plate. After we had eaten, we changed into our disguises. Frank wore a Nazi uniform, while I braided my hair and wore the attire of a common German girl. We liberated two bicycles that were in the barn and rode them casually into town, admiring the rural landscape and whistling a German drinking song so as not to arouse suspicion.

  Frank had the countess's address, so we pedaled there first. It was a tall stone town house surrounded by a large wrought-iron fence.

  "Look!" I whispered. A red banner emblazoned with a swastika flew from one of the house's high windows. The countess was a Nazi!

  Frank nodded grimly and headed through the gate for the front door.

  A diminutive man with a flat face answered the door. He was dressed like a servant, but I noticed that his hands were soft and manicured and his shoes were far more expensive than could be acquired on a servant's salary.

  Frank told the man in unaccented German that we had urgent business with the countess. It was imperative to the Fatherland that we speak with her immediately.

  The man examined us and then slowly relented, opening the door wide and ushering us into an elegantly decorated parlor.

  "Excuse me," he croaked in a harsh voice. "I will tell the madam that you are here."

  In a few minutes he returned with a tall, regal-looking woman in her fifties. She wore a long ivy print silk dress with two large pockets at the hip and clung to a matted mink stole. Her nails were painted red.

  "I am the countess," she declared a bit uneasily. "What is it that you want?"

  I noticed that her servant continued to loiter in the room.

  "May we talk to you alone, ma'am?" I asked.

  The countess glanced nervously at her servant and wrung her hands. "Oh, Hans is always with me," she explained. "I have these fainting spells and cannot be left alone. He is quite deft at catching me when I fall."

  "Perhaps you could sit," I suggested.

  The countess slid a sideways look at Hans and then nodded slowly. "Perhaps I could," she concluded, taking a seat on a divan by the fireplace. She waved her jeweled hand at the servant. Was it shaking? "Hans, you may go."

  Hans stood a moment, flustered.

  The countess looked at him and spoke again, this time more firmly. "Hans, you may go."

  The servant turned and exited the room.

  I immediately confronted our hostess. "Countess," I asked, "are you being held against your will?"

  In a hushed tone, the countess explained what had happened. She had agreed to tell Joe all she knew about the nutcracker, but moments after he arrived, the SS had stormed her home, taking Joe captive and keeping her prisoner in her own house!

  "We must get out of here," Frank declared. "And fast!"

  "You're not going anywhere!" a voice growled. It was Hans the servant, only now he was wearing the black uniform of the SS, and he had three other officers with him. His gun was pointed at us, and he grinned maliciously. "Miss Nancy Drew and Mr. Frank Hardy," he drawled. "I've read about you."

  "Almost none of that stuff is true," I explained quickly.

  "No time for that now," he interrupted.

  The three of us were marched upstairs to the attic of the house, where we were bound and gagged!

  "You want to be reunited with your brother?" he asked Frank. "Here he is." Hans opened a small door to an attic storage closet, and Joe, bound and gagged, rolled out onto the floor. "Our plan worked perfectly," Hans laughed. "We knew that if we held Joe Hardy captive, his more experienced older brother would come to his rescue. And who else would he ask to accompany him but the attractive teen sleuth, Nancy Drew? Our intelligence has known for years that the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew are the West's greatest weapon against us. It was our chance to get rid of all of you at once!" Hans picked up a can of gasoline and
began to pour it on the attic floor. "It's funny," he added. "I thought that you would be younger." He lit a match and threw it.

  The room immediately began to fill with smoke and flames. Hans and the other Nazis had left us to a ghoulish fate! What a turn of events! I wiggled furiously against the ropes that bound my hands and feet but could not loosen them, and I could see that Frank and Joe and the countess were failing to free themselves as well. The smoke grew thick and I began to cough and gasp for oxygen. The flames were only a few feet away!

  Suddenly, the attic door flew open and a man came running in. He had a blanket and began to douse the flames with it. In several minutes, the fire had been extinguished. The man then ran to a window and used his elbow to break the glass so the smoke could clear. As it did, I recognized the mysterious stranger.

  It was Ned! My own Ned!

  Ned quickly untied us and removed our gags. "I think we're safe for the meantime," he announced. "Burt and Dave have subdued the Nazis downstairs." Burt Eddelton and Dave Evans had both been friends of Ned's since college.

  "But how did you find us?" I asked.

  Ned explained that he had run into Cherry Ames in Chicago and quickly realized that he had been duped. He immediately contacted Bess, who reported seeing what she believed to be a dirigible behind the Hardy house moments before we disappeared from the funeral gathering. Ned called Burt, who worked at the War Department, and Dave, who was unemployed, and together they put together the pieces and quickly commandeered passage into Berlin.

  "Well, I for one am glad you did!" I exclaimed, beaming.

  "But what about the nutcracker?" asked Frank.

  Joe chimed in. "The countess was just starting to tell me when the Nazis burst in."

  We all turned to the countess. "My great-grandfather was the Russian jeweler who made the nutcracker," she began. "He was a frustrated mathematician and he developed a code that could not be broken. The nutcracker is hollow. The code is inside."

  "And now it's in the hands of the Nazis!" Frank fretted.

  The countess smiled. "My grandfather thought that something like this might happen. So he made two nutcrackers. One was sold to a rich fat man in Zurich. The other was kept in the family." She stood up and walked across the attic and pressed a panel of wood on the wall. A door sprang open, and the countess removed a parcel wrapped in cloth. She unwrapped it. It was the nutcracker!

  "The Nazis almost burned it right along with us," Joe marveled, shaking his head.

  The countess placed the precious nutcraker in my hands. "You take it now," she told me. "Take it, and let us hope that it does some good in ending this war."

  Two weeks later we were all again gathered in the large, comfortable Hardy living room.

  "So how did you ever get out of Germany?" Laura Hardy asked, amazed.

  "It's a long story," Frank laughed.

  Joe Hardy sat between his mother and his wife, Iola, on the floral print sofa. Mrs. Hardy squeezed his hand. "I'm just glad you're okay," she smiled.

  "So what now?" asked Fenton Hardy.

  "Well," I responded, "Burt is going back to the War Department. Dave is joining the Merchant Marine. Frank is going back to Washington, Joe will get his next assignment in a few weeks, I suppose, and Ned and I are going to move back to River Heights."

  "River Heights? Really?" Frank asked.

  "Ned and I were talking on the sub ride back," I explained, my eyes dancing. "And I think it's time he got out of the meat-inspecting business. Everyone needs life insurance, especially during wartime, and my father knows people at R.H. Mutual. Besides, River Heights is a really nice town. And a great place to start a family," I winked.

  "Why, Nancy!" Laura Hardy exclaimed.

  The men stood to shake Ned's hand, and Frank gave me a courtly peck on the cheek. "Congratulations," he whispered. He put his face close to ear. "For what it's worth," he told me, "I wish it were mine."

  I forced myself to smile graciously. I had spent the last few weeks confused and elated, guilty and jubilant. I had never imagined myself as a mother, but I wanted this baby more than anything. I loved Frank. But the country needed him, and who knew how long the war would rage on, or what danger he might face before it was over? Ned could offer me stability in the form of a brick colonial and a new roadster every year. My own Ned.

  I glanced at him now, beaming at me with pride, and then at Frank, who had stepped back into the shadows. I did not know what the future would bring. But one thing I did know was that Ned would never find out what went on in that hayloft.

  IV THE MYSTERIOUS MRS. DREW, 1944

  Ned Junior wailed beside me as I sped to my father's downtown River Heights office, leaving a cloud of dust and gravel in my wake. When my father, the handsome, world-famous attorney Carson Drew, had phoned and asked me to come by as soon as possible, I had, in my haste, nearly driven off with Ned Junior on the hood.

  I adored Ned Junior. He was like a stolen heirloom and a secret treasure all rolled into one. But sometimes when I looked at him he reminded me of all that I was missing. I resented him. And this consumed me with guilt. Some mornings, I had difficulty getting out of bed. Today my symptoms might be diagnosed as postpartum depression. At the time, doctors called it "organ neuroses related to the uterus."

  It always helped to get out of the house, and by the time I finally sat across from my father it was all I could do to contain my delight. "This better be important, Dad!" I scolded, bouncing the shrieking titian-haired tot on my knee. The truth was I was thrilled that Dad had called. It had been years since he had asked me to help him out with a mystery! I crossed my fingers that it might involve the Amish. I so loved a good Amish mystery!

  My father folded his hands on his large desk. "Nancy," he declared, "I know you've been blue since Ned Junior was born. You've taken less interest in household chores and rarely go to Burk's, Taylor's, or even Hidelberg's on shopping sprees.

  You haven't recovered a stolen purse or decoded a message in years. I'm worried about you. Mrs. Gruen and I are both worried about you."

  Hannah Gruen, the housekeeper who helped raise me, still worked for my father as a maid and part-time secretary. She made my father call her Mrs. Gruen, though to the best of anyone's knowledge she had never been married.

  My father continued. "We think that your, um, difficulties with motherhood may trace back to your own lack of maternal influences." He cleared his throat. "I know that I've led to you believe all these years that your mother was dead . . ."

  With the instinct of a detective who dared not miss a clue, I begged him to continue.

  "Your mother did not die of influenza, or in a fire, nor was she attacked by a collie." (I had always been fearful of collies.) "Your mother ran off. She was a suffragette."

  "Oh!" I cried.

  I should take the opportunity to clarify another murky point of Carolyn's making. I was not ten when my mother "died," as Carolyn first wrote. She later revised my age to three, which was correct, but not before her factual lapse had led to many embarrassing encounters when strangers would be surprised to learn that I had no memory of the woman they thought had died when I was an adolescent.

  "It was 1913. Your mother had been volunteering with several women's charities. She had worked on behalf of orphans and the enslaved peoples of the world and against habit-forming tonics. She had campaigned for Woodrow Wilson and raised money for a ladies' auxiliary hall, and she began to get ideas about voting. She never did forgive me for voting for Taft. She wanted to join a suffragette march on Washington. It was to take place the day before Woodrow Wilson took office. I forbade her to participate. She left me the next morning." His eyes filled with tears as he gazed at his folded hands. "I told everyone that she had died. You have to understand that these were different times, and I had a fledgling law practice to protect."

  "She's still alive?" I stammered, still in shock at the surprising news.

  "I don't know," he sighed. He took a faded newspaper clipping out of
his pocket and laid it before me on his desk. "As you know, being a world-famous attorney requires extensive business travel. I was in Los Angeles several years ago and came across this photograph in the Hollywood Daily Citizen.'"

  I glanced down at the photograph. It was a picture of a crowd of mourners lining the street after the famous silent film star Rudolph Valentino died. I whipped my magnifying glass out of my purse and leaned forward to scan the faces in the photograph under the glass. My heart jumped. There was my mother. She had bobbed her hair and traded in her corset for a black flapper dress and opera shoes, but I recognized her immediately from the one small portrait my father still kept in the house. She was one of a throng of thousands, her face stricken, her eyes very large and sad.

  "There she is," I whispered.

  My father cleared his throat. "I felt it best to protect you from this. It was so long ago and we have moved on with our lives. But now I realize that we can't move on as a family until we put the past to rest behind us." He rested a hand on mine and squeezed. "I'm not alone anymore."

  "I know," I told him. "You have me."

  He coughed. "No. I, uh, I mean that I've found someone. A lady."

  I froze. "Excuse me?"

  "You know her. Marty King."

  "Your twenty-four-year-old, platinum blond research as­sistant?" I asked incredulously.

  "And recent graduate of nearby Bushwick Law School," my father added.

  "She's going to be my stepmother?"

  Ned Junior began to cry again. I held him close and rocked him on my lap, feeling his tears seep into my sweater set.

  "I need you to find your mother," my father instructed. "For your own sake. And also for mine. I never had her declared legally dead. If she is alive, I need to get a divorce so that Marty and I can marry. When you were a teenager you would sometimes help me with my cases, and I always valued your counsel and keen mind. This could be your most challenging mystery to date." His gaze was pleading. "Will you help me?"