The Secret of the Wooden Lady

by Carolyn G. Keene

  “Wait, Captain Easterly!” Nancy begged. “That man may have dropped something that will identify him. By morning it might be gone.”

  “You’re right. I wouldn’t have thought of such a thing,” the skipper said.

  “Stop!” the captain roared

  Already Nancy was hurrying toward the spot where the intruder had come aboard. She beamed her flashlight around the planking all the way to the rail. A moment later she stooped down, picked something up, and cried out:

  “He did leave a clue! Captain Easterly, it’s a good one! He dropped a book of matches!”

  The skipper came running up. “A book of matches?”

  Nancy grabbed his arm. “Captain, look! It’s an ad for the Owl Restaurant in River Heights!”

  “You mean where you live?” the captain asked, astounded.

  “Yes. And that means—”

  Nancy paused a moment as more evidence presented itself. Upon opening the matchbook, she had seen something scribbled in pencil.

  “What does it say?” the captain demanded, looking over her shoulder. “My eyes aren’t that good.”

  “M-a-r-v-i-n.” Nancy spelled out the crudely printed name, which was followed by Bess’s address. Without doubt the matchbook belonged to the man who had stolen the Marvin jewelry. The person whom they had chased off the clipper was Fay, The Crow! Captain Easterly had been correct in his hunch. Their caller was a desperate character!

  It took Captain Easterly a few minutes to follow Nancy’s reasoning. When he did, he became very much concerned.

  “What was this unsavory character doing on my ship?” he stormed. “I don’t understand.”

  Nancy agreed it was puzzling. “I’m sure now that Flip Fay and Red Quint are working together. Grizzle Face notified him where we are.”

  “But what are they working at, that’s what I want to know.” The captain pounded the rail. “What is on this ship that robbers and kidnappers go creeping through her like a lot of devilish ghosts!”

  Nancy gave him a puzzled smile. “I don’t know, Captain, but I’m going to find out what it is and where it is before somebody steals it!”

  “Fine, fine,” he agreed. “But let’s not worry any more about it tonight,” he added, calming down. “That crook won’t be back in a hurry. He knows we’re waiting for him. Go to bed, Nancy, and be sure to lock your cabin door. We’ll have a conference over the breakfast pancakes.”

  Nancy went below and slid quietly into her bunk without waking the other girls. She lay there a long time thinking about the many baffling things that had happened on the Bonny Scot since the first day when she and her father had come aboard to meet Captain Easterly.

  She wondered whether Flip Fay and Grizzle Face had known each other before Fay came to Boston. Perhaps they had been to sea together and had learned something that had led them to the clipper. Could it be that Fay was the “mate” that Grizzle Face had referred to on the dunes? And what about the man who had drugged and kidnapped the captain—was he Fred Lane? What had become of him?

  Nancy always came back to the original question—what was the true name of the Bonny Scot? It seemed impossible to get anywhere with the puzzle until they knew that. Undoubtedly Quint, Fay, and Lane called the ship something else.

  They had heard some tale about the clipper’s past which had led them to believe a treasure was concealed on it. What was the treasure? Something very small, Nancy decided, or it would have been found long ago. Something small and priceless, something ...

  Nancy awakened to the delicious odor of frying bacon, floating in from the galley. The bunks were empty. It must be late, she thought, jumping up.

  Nancy quickly dressed and joined the captain and the girls, who were already at breakfast in the officer’s quarters. Bess and George were talkative, but Captain Easterly was silently thoughtful. He set down his cup of coffee onto the saucer with a little click of finality.

  “Girls,” he announced with effort, “you can’t stay here any longer. None of you must remain another day on the Bonny Scot!”

  “What!” The three girls stared at him in amazement.

  “It isn’t safe. Flip Fay was on board last night.” The skipper frowned. “And Nancy was up on deck chasing him.”

  “Nancy, you weren’t?” Bess shuddered.

  “Hypers! Why didn’t you call me?” George demanded.

  Nancy said she would have, if she had guessed what was going to happen. She told them about the matchbook, and about her thoughts of the night before.

  “We must find out if the original name of this clipper was the Dream of Melissa,” she said earnestly. “Captain Easterly, wouldn’t a ship’s name be marked on furniture and things?”

  He gave her a shrewd smile. “You’re trying to distract me. The question before the council is, When do you girls leave?”

  Bess protested vigorously, “We’re not going, Captain. We can’t leave you here all alone with these vicious characters sneaking around.”

  “That goes for me, too,” George said stoutly.

  “So you see, Captain,” Nancy concluded, “you may as well forget about dropping your crew over the side and take up the matter of the true name of the Bonny Scot.”

  Captain Easterly rubbed his face with a big red hand and looked from one to the other. “I surrender. You may stay, but I’m going to arrange for a guard to watch this ship tonight. Now about the name being on furniture—how long do you think seagoing furniture lasts? The clipper’s been scudding around this world a good many years, and I would guess that most of her original fittings have been replaced.”

  “Perhaps something remains,” said Nancy.

  George rose to make more pancakes and went into the galley. She was gone an unusually long time.

  “George, what’s keeping you?” Bess called.

  A moment later her cousin cried out excitedly, “Come here, everybody! I’ve found it!”

  CHAPTER XIV

  A Strange Warning

  NANCY and Bess dashed into the galley, followed by Captain Easterly.

  George was on her hands and knees, her head under a crude wooden bench nailed to the floor. In her hand was a spoon which had fallen under the bench.

  “Poke your head down here and look at thisl” she exclaimed.

  Nancy dropped to the floor. On the underside of the bench she saw carved letters that made her gasp.

  “Captain,” she cried, “it says Dr. of Mel. The Bonny Scot is the Dream of Melissa!”

  “What? Let me see!” Captain Easterly got down on his knees. “You’re right!”

  “The snuffbox fits in, too,” Nancy reasoned, “because the master of the Dream of Melissa was Captain Perry Rogers.”

  “And the carving on the snuffbox must be a copy of the figurehead of Captain Rogers’ ship!” George exulted.

  Bess sighed thoughtfully. “That woman looked like somebody sweet and dreamy who might be named Melissa.”

  Nancy was too excited to eat any more breakfast. She said the next thing to do was look for further clues to check the carving in the galley.

  “We’ll investigate every piece of furniture on the ship,” she told Captain Easterly.

  “Let’s begin here,” George suggested, turning a chair upside down.

  They went over the ship’s furniture carefully but found no lettering. Then they took the cabins, one by one. George climbed into the upper bunks and looked at the woodwork, and Nancy turned her flashlight into old wardrobes and cupboards.

  After an hour of strenuous work they had found nothing. Captain Easterly, weary and perspiring, called a halt.

  As Bess dropped into a deck chair, her face streaked with dust, and her hair hanging in damp strings, she groaned, “I give up.”

  Even George looked discouraged, but Nancy was eager to continue the search.

  “The crew’s sleeping quarters are next,” she said. “They must have had a lot of time on their hands in the forecastle,” Nancy reflected. “Lying in their bunks t
hinking of nothing in particular, the men might have carved things on the timbers of the hull.”

  George, her interest rekindled, started for the companionway. “Let’s have a look,” she said.

  Bess closed her eyes and leaned back. “You can tell me about it,” she said.

  They left her on deck and went below with the captain. The forecastle had a musty smell, but it was cool.

  Nancy and George turned their flashlights on the seasoned old timbers. “Just look at the things cut into the wood!” George exclaimed.

  There were initials and names, hearts and anchors, and the roughly carved outlines of a woman’s face.

  “Here it is!” Nancy cried out. “Dream of Melissa-all spelled out.” She held her light on the spot and Captain Easterly stared.

  “It’s as plain as the nose on your face,” he said eagerly. “So this old clipper really is the Dream of Melissa!”

  Nancy smiled at the skipper. “Now it won’t be hard to clear up the title.”

  Captain Easterly looked thoughtful. “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll find out somebody other than Mr. Farnsworth owns the clipper, and won’t sell it to me.” The man heaved a great sigh. “I’d sure hate to lose her at this point. I’ve grown mighty fond of the Bonny Scot.”

  Nancy felt that she should get in touch with her father at once, and said she would go ashore to telephone him, as well as notify the police that Flip Fay had been aboard.

  “Maybe Dad came across the name Dream of Melissa in his search,” she added.

  Bess and George went with her. Mr. Drew was just leaving his River Heights office to go to court, but he waited to hear his daughter’s astounding report.

  “Fine work, my dear,” he said. “Yes, I came upon a record of the Dream of Melissa but not her captain’s name. Hold on. I’ll see if I have any notes on her.” The lawyer left the telephone a few minutes. When he came back, he said, “The Dream of Melissa is listed as a lost clipper belonging to the Eastern Shore Shipping Company. I’ll get in touch with them at once and wire you what they say.”

  When Nancy hung up, she repeated the conversation to Bess and George. After calling State Police headquarters to report on The Crow, the girls bought some fresh vegetables, fruit, and a steak. Returning to the clipper, they found Captain Easterly dozing in his chair on deck. He opened one eye.

  “Anything new?” he asked. “Did you get your father, Nancy?”

  Upon hearing that the ship originally had belonged to the Eastern Shore Shipping Company, the elderly man became glum. He was sure they soon would put him off the clipper.

  “Dad will fix things up,” Nancy told him encouragingly. “Don’t worry.”

  She watched eagerly for someone to deliver a telegram. About two o’clock the captain pointed over the port rail. A rowboat was approaching the clipper. At the oars was a boy in faded blue overalls. The three girls leaned on the rail, and as he came close, Nancy called:

  “Ahoy there!”

  “Miss Nancy Drew here?” the boy asked.

  “I’m Nancy Drew.”

  The youngster rested on the oars. “I’ve got a telegram and a package for you,” he said.

  Nancy dropped a line over the side, and the boy tied the box to it, with the telegram under the string, and watched her haul it up. Then he started to row away.

  “Wait!” Nancy called, seeing no sender’s name on the package. “Who sent the box?”

  “I dunno,” the boy answered with a shrug. He rowed quickly back toward shore.

  The captain, who had now come to the rail, looked curiously at the parcel. “You must have an admirer, Nancy,” he teased.

  Nancy smiled. “Dad must have ordered a surprise,” she said, turning the box over. “He’s always—Oh, my goodness!”

  On the bottom of the box, crudely drawn in heavy black pencil, were a skull and crossbones!

  “Be careful,” Captain Easterly said quickly. “This doesn’t look like a friendly gift.”

  Suddenly they heard a faint sound of movement inside the pasteboard.

  Bess drew back. “Nancy,” she whispered, “it’s something alive. Look at the little air holes in the end.”

  Nancy borrowed the captain’s knife and gingerly cut the string. As she opened the box, Bess screamed.

  A green lizard lifted its head and flicked its tiny tongue.

  “Don’t touch that thing!” Captain Easterly shouted. “It means death!”

  CHAPTER XV

  Hidden Treasure

  CAPTAIN Easterly seized the box, clapped the lid on, and threw it overboard. Breathing hard, he watched it toss about a few seconds, then start to sink. He turned to the astonished girls, a sheepish expression on his face.

  “I suppose you’ll think I’m a superstitious old man when you learn why I did that. We men of the sea pick up some strange stories. There’s one in the Far East that if a certain kind of lizard crawls toward a man he’s doomed to die.”

  “Oh, how dreadful!” Bess quavered. “Nancy, we’d better leave right away!”

  “Don’t be silly,” George scolded her cousin. “Why, that poor little lizard was as harmless as a mouse. Anyway, this isn’t the Far East.”

  “Maybe the telegram will explain who sent it,” said Nancy, ripping open the envelope.

  Nancy read aloud the message which proved to be from her father and had no connection with the package. Mr. Drew had had a long telephone conversation with Mr. Ogden of the Eastern Shore Shipping Company. Mr. Ogden had been amazed to learn their long-lost clipper, the Dream of Melissa, had turned up. He was coming from Maryland in a few days to find out about it. He would be very appreciative if Captain Easterly remained in charge and Nancy and her friends stayed with him.

  “That settles it, Bess,” George spoke up when Nancy read the instructions. “We’re staying. You know what I’m going to do? Hunt up that boy who brought the lizard and make him tell me who gave him the job of delivering it.”

  “I’ll bet it was either Flip Fay or old Grizzle Face,” Bess asserted.

  Captain Easterly had walked off a distance. He stood looking southward. Nancy knew he felt sad about the turn of events. She guessed that he was afraid of legal difficulties in connection with buying the clipper, and that the company would put a price on it which he could not afford to pay.

  “I’m sure Dad will come back on this case as soon as he can, and work things out,” Nancy told him.

  To get the captain’s mind off his worry, George added, “Why don’t we get to work on your cabin, Captain, and repair some of that damage?”

  “You girls are a tonic for an old fellow,” he said, smiling. “I’ll do the work myself, and you girls solve the mysteries.”

  Nancy’s eyes danced with excitement. “I’m going to Provincetown. The Dream of Melissa sailed from there on her last known voyage, you recall.”

  The captain looked at her quizzically. “Think you can find somebody who’s heard of her?”

  “I’m going to try.”

  Bess remained aboard. As Nancy and George set off in the rowboat, Bess called, “Be careful, won’t you?”

  They promised. In town the girls separated. Nancy caught a bus for Provincetown.

  As she rode along the beautiful coast in the bright summer afternoon, Nancy’s brain was in a whirl of deductions about the Dream of Melissa. Someone in Provincetown must have been waiting for Captain Rogers to return. A sweetheart, a wife? Perhaps he had children. Would any of their descendants remember the story?

  When she stepped from the bus, Nancy gasped in delight at the quaint old town. No wonder so many artists came here to paint the weathered houses, the flower gardens, the little shops, the old fishing boats tied up at the wharves.

  Nancy did not know where to begin asking questions. Perhaps if she wandered along the water’s edge she would meet someone who looked as though he might know a few answers.

  The first person she came to was a white-haired man in a blue smock, seated on a canvas stool. He was sketching t
he outlines of a dilapidated shed. She watched him a moment.

  “Do you paint, young lady?” he asked as he looked up, smiling.

  “Not very well,” Nancy confessed.

  From that small beginning they entered into a conversation. The painter, John Singleton, told Nancy that he had been coming to Provincetown every summer for many, many years.

  “Then you must know something of the town’s history,” Nancy said. “Did you ever hear of a clipper ship called the Dream of Melissa ? Or of Captain Perry Rogers?”

  The artist frowned, as if he were trying to remember something. “Seems to me old Mrs. Mathilda Smythe has a story about a Captain Rogers—or was it Roberts? Beats me. Why don’t you go talk to Mrs. Smythe, anyway?”

  “I will,” Nancy said earnestly, and asked where she could find her.

  The artist gave the address of the elderly widow and told Nancy to mention his name. Nancy found the gray-shingled cottage and knocked on the door. In a moment a fragile old lady of eighty opened it. Nancy introduced herself, and explained why she had come.

  “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Smythe said cordially. “Please come in.”

  Nancy followed her into the spotless parlor, and told her briefly about the Dream of Melissa and Captain Rogers.

  “Captain Perry Rogers!” Mrs. Smythe exclaimed. “My mother nearly married him.”

  “Really?” Nancy was excited. “Please tell me the story, Mrs. Smythe.”

  The old woman sat forward in her rocking chair and cradled her hands in her lap.

  “Captain Rogers fell in love with my mother, Mathilda Witherspoon,” Mrs. Smythe said slowly. “She was only sixteen. Captain Rogers was a good bit older, and her family opposed the marriage. But Mother and the captain were very much in love. They planned to marry secretly as soon as he returned from the voyage to India.”

  “But he never came back?” Nancy asked. Mrs. Smythe shook her head sadly. “My mother never heard from him again. She waited and waited, hoping some news would come. At last she married Father. And a fine man he was too, mind you.”