The Strange Message in the Parchment

by Carolyn G. Keene

  The man stared at his visitors intently. “No,” he said. “It never occurred to me. Did you find something?”

  The two girls glanced at each other. They thought it best not to tell him what they had discovered.

  “Oh, we studied it, but there wasn’t much on the back,” Nancy said lightly.

  Rocco did not inquire just what they had discovered, and the girls were glad. Suddenly the man bombarded them with questions.

  “Why this great interest in the parchment? Do you feel there is something wrong with it? Is your father sorry he bought the painting? Does he expect me to buy it back?”

  Mr. Rocco paused, but only long enough to catch his breath. “You young whippersnappers come barging into my home and hammer me with questions. What’s going on? I think I have a right to know.”

  By this time the man was very excited, and for a short time Nancy felt guilty about upsetting him. Then she thought of several things that had happened and her attitude changed. She said she was sorry if she and Junie had harassed the farm owner. They meant no harm. Their main interest was to learn the background of the parchment. This seemed to satisfy Mr. Rocco for the time being.

  Junie changed the subject and asked Rocco, “Were you ever married?”

  “No!” Rocco said quickly, and did not volunteer any more information. Instead, he stood up as if he were afraid Nancy or Junie might ask more questions he did not want to answer. He indicated that the visit was over.

  The girls walked to the front door, with Rocco following them stiffly. On the way home in the car, Junie said, “I wonder why Mr. Rocco was so unwilling to give us anything but the barest information about either the parchment or himself.”

  Nancy said she thought he was a man with many secrets, which he had no intention of divulging.

  Junie remarked, “I just think he’s an old grouch. How are we going to find out anything about the picture he brought from Italy if he won’t talk?”

  Nancy thought for a few seconds, then replied. “Let’s try to get the information in spite of him! We’ll leave the car on the road and hike across the fields until we meet one of his workmen. Maybe he’ll talk, and we can learn more about Rocco.”

  “His first name is Salvatore, by the way,” Junie said.

  It was several minutes before they saw a man hand hoeing in one of the vegetable fields. The girls went up to him and smiled.

  “Good morning,” Nancy said.

  The man remained silent, though he smiled at her. She wondered if he were deaf, so this time she shouted her “good morning.” Still there was no response and the farmer went on working.

  Junie walked close to the man and shouted at him, “Do you live here and work for Mr. Rocco?”

  The man shrugged. “No speak English,” he finally said.

  Nancy and Junie looked at each other and walked on. Across the field they saw another worker and headed in his direction. They put the same question to him and received the same answer, “No speak English!”

  Junie sighed. “No one around here seems to speak our language. We’re getting nowhere fast.”

  As the girls walked on Nancy suddenly spotted something and pointed. “I see a boy over there. Maybe we’ll have better luck with him.”

  They walked toward the lad, who appeared to be about ten years old. He was handsome with large brown eyes and black curly hair.

  The boy was seated on the ground in the shade of a large branch, and was holding a sketching pad and colored pencils. He was drawing a picture of the landscape spread before him. Against a tree nearby stood a hoe.

  “That’s very good, sonny,” Junie told him, looking closely at the sketch. “What is your name?”

  The little boy smiled but said nothing.

  “Do you speak English?” Nancy asked.

  The boy shook his head. “No English. Italian.”

  Suddenly the young artist jumped up. He hid his sketching pad and pencils under a sweater and grabbed the hoe. He moved off a little distance and began to work furiously. Nancy and Junie looked at him in surprise. Since they made no attempt to move, he pointed in the distance. They followed the direction of his finger. Mr. Rocco was coming toward them at a fast pace!

  “We’d better scoot,” Junie warned. “I doubt that Mr. Rocco would like our being here.”

  Nancy nodded and the girls hurried off in the opposite direction. On the way home, Nancy said, “I believe if young Tony could speak English he might give us some clues.”

  “How do you know the boy’s name is Tony?” Junie asked.

  Nancy grinned. “I saw it on his sweater!”

  “Good observation!” Junie praised. “I didn’t even notice his sweater.”

  As soon as the girls reached the farmhouse, Nancy called her father’s office. He was there and asked how she was progressing with the mystery.

  “Not very well,” she replied. “I need your help.”

  “Sure thing. What can I do for you?”

  “Will you please find out from the Immigration Department all you can about Salvatore Rocco, who came to the United States from Italy about ten years ago?” She told her father all she had learned so far.

  “I see you’ve been busy,” he said. “I’ll check with Immigration and let you know the answer.”

  After the call, the girls went to look at the mysterious parchment again. They puzzled over it for some time before Junie asked Nancy if she had come up with any new theories.

  Nancy’s eyes sparkled. “I have a wild guess!” she said.

  CHAPTER VII

  A Mean Ram

  “I THINK we can assume,” Nancy said to Junie, “that Mr. Salvatore Rocco knows more about the parchment than he is telling. The initial A on it could stand for Anthony, and a common nickname for Anthony is Tony.”

  Junie knit her brows. “Are you trying to say that Tony, the little boy we met on Mr. Rocco’s farm, might be the baby in this parchment picture?”

  Nancy nodded. “I told you it was a wild guess.”

  “It sure is,” Junie agreed, “but I respect your hunches.”

  Mr. Flockhart walked into the room and was told Nancy’s latest theory. He chuckled, but said he was impressed with the idea. “Nancy, please continue with your suppositions. It sounds like an intriguing story, and the first hypothesis that has been made so far in the mystery of the parchment.”

  Junie remarked that the man pictured on the parchment, who had his back to the viewer, could be the boy’s father. “But why wouldn’t he be facing the viewer? Was the artist ashamed of him?”

  “That’s a possible answer,” her father agreed. “On the other hand, maybe the artist just didn’t like the person and turned him around so nobody could recognize him.” He said to Nancy, “Have you any more guesses?”

  “Not yet,” she replied, “but I may have after I learn more about little Tony and Mr. Salvatore Rocco.”

  Mr. Flockhart reminded the girls that it was generally believed in the community that Mr. Rocco was the child’s uncle and that the boy’s parents had died.

  “That gives me an idea,” Nancy said. “The last picture on the parchment portrays the collision of a sailing ship and a steamer. Maybe,” she added, “Tony’s parents were killed in the accident.”

  “Very reasonable assumption,” Mr. Flockhart said. “I wonder if Mr. Rocco legally adopted his nephew.”

  “I guess,” said Junie, “that we’d have to go to Italy to find out.” She teased, “Nancy Drew, detective, Milano is getting closer and closer.”

  Nancy grinned. “Maybe, but I have a hunch I’ll solve the mystery right here at Triple Creek Farm.”

  Junie and her father looked at their guest, then Junie said, “Nancy Drew, you’re holding back one of your hunches, or theories, or wild guesses. Come on, what is it?”

  Nancy nodded. “You’re right. In the first place, I’m not convinced that Mr. Rocco’s story to Mr. Flockhart and to us about buying the painting at an auction is true. I’ve been thinking of poor
Tony. He has so much talent as an artist, and so does the person who made these paintings, whose initials are DB. That person could be a close relative of Tony’s. By the way, what’s his last name?”

  “I don’t know,” Junie’s father replied. “I have always supposed it was Rocco.”

  Mr. Flockhart said he thought the girls should try to find out what DB stood for. “It might be the initials of the artist, or an art school, or a museum, or even a dealer’s initials.”

  “One thing is sure,” Nancy said, “Milano is Milano, Italy, so that’s as good a place to start as any, but I guess we can’t go there.”

  Junie’s father said, “Leaving the mystery for a moment, Nancy, I have a little favor to ask of you. In your spare moments, try your hand at creating an attractive symbol for Triple Creek Farm. I don’t like the one I’ve been using.”

  “I’ll be glad to try,” Nancy replied.

  As soon as he left the room, she went to the hall table, where the telephone was, and picked up several sheets of paper and a pencil. Junie watched intently as Nancy made sketch after sketch. The girls laughed at some of them.

  “This one looks like a three-legged monkey,” Junie remarked. “No offense meant.”

  “And this one like a broken harp with all the strings missing,” Nancy added. “Junie, let’s do something else. By the time we come back, maybe my imagination will return. Right now I’ve run out of ideas for a Triple Creek symbol.”

  “What would you like to do?” Junie asked.

  The girl detective thought they should call on Eezy as soon as Junie finished her chores, with Nancy’s help. “Maybe he’ll be willing to tell us more about those two men who knocked him out, and also what he knows about Mr. Rocco.”

  Junie agreed. After two hours of work with the newborn sheep, the girls changed clothes and were ready to set off for the shepherd’s cabin.

  As before, they drove part of the way, then climbed up the hillside among the sheep. Eezy was there, sitting on a log in front of his little cottage and casting an eye over the hundreds of healthy-looking sheep in his flock.

  “Howdy, girls!” he greeted them. “I had a feelin’ maybe you’d run up here today. Glad to see you.”

  When Nancy said, “I hope we’re not interrupting your work,” the shepherd chuckled and immediately answered. “As it says in the book of Hebrews, ‘Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.’ ” 2

  The two girls smiled at the compliment, then Junie said, “I’m not an angel, but I do like to help people. Nancy does too. That’s why we’re here.”

  “Eezy,” Nancy said, “did the two men who attacked you ever return?”

  “No.”

  She asked him if he was still unwilling to talk about what his attackers wanted him to do for them.

  “I’m afraid I am,” the shepherd replied. “Sorry, but it might get some innocent people into trouble.”

  Nancy now asked Eezy to tell them all he knew about Mr. Rocco. The herdsman repeated the story Mr. Flockhart had told, then added, “I don’t know anythin’ else about the Italian, because he’s a man without a civil tongue.

  “Not one of his workers can speak English, and somebody told me he pushes them very, very hard in the fields. He overworks his men on the produce farm. Besides, he is often cruel. I understand that sometimes he beats that little boy who lives with him. Rocco says he’s his uncle, but I don’t believe him. He sure doesn’t look like the boy or have his disposition.”

  “Mr. Rocco beats the boy? How dreadful!” Nancy remarked. “Don’t the authorities get after him?”

  “Guess not,” Eezy replied. “But there’s a proverb in the Bible that says, ‘The merciful man doeth good to his own soul: but he that is cruel troubleth his own body.”’ 3

  The girls thought about this and decided the proverb was indeed true. They wondered what punishment might come to Rocco for his cruel and unwarranted actions to others.

  At this moment a cute and friendly little lamb came up to the girls and stood patiently waiting for their affection. Both of them leaned down and hugged the young animal.

  “You’re a cutie all right,” said Junie. “I’m going to call you ‘Cheerio.’ ”

  “Oh, I hope it won’t have to be slaughtered,” Nancy said, worried.

  Eezy smiled. “I won’t recommend it, ’cause the little sheep is a real comfort to me. You know it gets mighty lonely up on this hilltop. This little critter comes and sits by my side and listens to all my woes.”

  “That’s something that shouldn’t be changed,” Nancy said. “I suggest you put a sign around Cheerio’s neck saying, ‘Private Property. I belong to Eezy.’ ”

  The shepherd smiled and said he would like that.

  In a few minutes the visitors left and started down the hillside. They had not gone far when Junie called Nancy’s attention to a large ram standing close by, silhouetted against the cloudless skyline.

  “Sometimes he’s mean,” Junie said. “We’ll avoid him.”

  The girls kept walking but their eyes were on the ram. He looked at them balefully, tossed his head into the air, then lowered his horns.

  “He’s going to attack you!” Junie cried out. “Run! Nancy, run! Follow me!”

  Both girls sped off like a couple of deer, but the ram was also quick. Nancy and Junie managed to stay ahead of him until, without warning, a strange dog began barking nearby.

  “Maybe that will frighten the ram away,” Nancy suggested.

  Junie said there was not a chance of that happening. “This ram is not afraid of dogs,” she explained. “One day I saw him toss a big black one high into the air. He almost killed it!”

  Nancy was thinking, “This mustn’t happen to me!” and ran faster.

  She was finally outdistancing the ram when a large sheep, frightened by the strange dog, ran directly in front of Nancy. She tried to leap over the broad-backed, woolly animal, but could not make it. The next moment she fell flat!

  By now the ram had caught up to her. The next moment Nancy felt his curved horns reach speedily under her body.

  Wild thoughts went through the trapped girl’s mind. Would the ram toss her into the air as he had the dog?

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Mystery Boy’s Story

  As the ram got ready to toss Nancy into the air, a desperate thought came to her on how she might save herself. She reached out to grasp the animal’s curved horns, caught one with each hand, and hung on.

  The animal, angered, tried again and again to throw the girl off, but she kept her grip on the horns, and braced herself against his body. Nancy swung crazily from side to side but did not lose her hold, as the animal endeavored desperately to shake her off.

  After one more try, the ram stood still. Was he exhausted or defeated? No matter what the answer was, Nancy regained her balance and stood up, but kept a wary eye on the unfriendly animal.

  Junie came running up. “What a dreadful experience!” she exclaimed. “Oh, Nancy, I’m so sorry.”

  The ram, though mean, knew Junie and made no attempt to attack her. She gave him a resounding slap and sent him galloping off.

  The girls had counted on their luck too soon. The ram had not gone far when he suddenly turned around and made a beeline for the girls, horns lowered. At the same moment a loud commanding voice came to their ears.

  “Eezy is using his giant megaphone!” Junie said. “He’s chastising the ram.”

  The command lasted for a few seconds, then the insistent animal started moving forward again. At once the strains of beautiful music could be heard. Nancy looked at Junie, puzzled.

  “Eezy plays an Irish harp to calm the sheep,” her friend explained. “It has never failed yet to halt fights.”

  This time was no exception. The ram stopped short, sniffed the air, then lay down. All the other sheep on the hillside that were not already resting slowly dropped to the grass.

  “That’s remarkable!” Nancy exclaime
d. “I’d like to go back and thank Eezy. In a way he saved my life.”

  “All right,” Junie agreed. “I’m sure we’ll have no more trouble with that ram. No doubt by this time he knows that you and I and Eezy are friends.”

  When the girls reached the shepherd’s cabin, they found him seated outdoors, strumming his harp. As soon as he finished the number, Nancy complimented him on his playing. “You’re like David in the Bible,” she said.

  The elderly man smiled. “Thank you,” he said. “You know it says in the book of Amos, ‘Chant to the sound of the harp, and invent to themselves instruments of music, like David.’” 4

  The girls nodded and Nancy said, “Your small Irish harp is a good tuneful substitute for David’s lyre.”

  “That’s what I decided,” Eezy replied. “And to tell the truth, I think I can get a lot more music out of it than David did out of his lyre!” He chuckled.

  Nancy thanked him for helping her ward off a second attack by the ram. She begged for an encore of his harp playing. The shepherd obliged, then put down his instrument.

  He picked up his megaphone and called out, “Rest period is over, boys and girls. Stand up and get to work!” He winked at the girls. “The sheep’s only work is to eat grass!”

  Nancy unexpectedly asked Eezy if he had a pad and pencil in the cabin. The shepherd went to get them, and at once Nancy started sketching. In a few minutes she drew three streams with a woolly sheep superimposed over them. Under the sketch Nancy printed TRIPLE CREEK FARM.

  “How do you like that as a trademark?” she asked.

  “It’s great,” Junie replied.

  “Mighty good work,” Eezy added. “And it’s real picturesque.”

  Nancy said she hoped Mr. Flockhart would like it. She folded the paper and put it into her pocket. Then she and Junie said good-by to the shepherd and walked down the hill toward the car.

  As it carried them toward Triple Creek, Nancy asked, “Junie, do you know anyone around here who speaks Italian?”

  Junie said she knew no one in the immediate vicinity, but that her boyfriend, Dan White, was studying Italian at a nearby university. “Why do you ask?”