The Strange Message in the Parchment

by Carolyn G. Keene

  Nancy memorized the letters and numbers of the license plate. “It’s an out-of-state car! This complicates matters,” she thought. “If those men were from some local welfare association, I’m sure they wouldn’t be driving an out-of-state car.” Then she argued with herself, “But maybe they did it on purpose to avoid identification.”

  Nancy, Junie, and George had reached the road and stood looking after the fleeing car. Bess had followed at a slower pace. She had seen something glistening on the ground and stooped to pick it up. When she reached the girls, she showed them the shiny object.

  “It’s one of the phony badges!” Junie cried out. “What a clue!”

  Nancy examined it and remarked that there was no identification on it. “I think we should take the badge to the police and tell them what happened here.

  One man shouted, “Nancy Dreur, we’ll get you yet!”

  “Besides,” she added, as they started to climb the hillside with Rover, “I noticed that the man who did the talking had a lot of fresh-looking scars on his hand.” She paused. “Here’s another one of my wild hunches: Do you suppose he could have handled the parchment picture with the broken glass in it? He may be a friend of Sid Zikes.”

  Junie declared it was worth investigating. When they reached the top of the hill, Nancy showed the badge to Eezy.

  He became angry and said, “Those men are nothin’ but a couple o’ crooks! I’ve been thinkin’ about what they said. I never heard o’ any welfare committee around here. They weren’t talkin’ sense.”

  Nancy said, “At least we know they’re a couple of fakers. My guess is that these are real badges and the men stole them.”

  At this point Bess heaved a sigh. “Do you realize that George and I have been here less than twenty-four hours, and already we’re in the midst of one of Nancy Drew’s mysteries? And what a mix-up! We were supposed to help figure out some paintings on a parchment. Instead we are learning the secret of a runaway boy: waiting for the woman who painted the parchment to come from Italy, and looking on as Nancy is accused of being a kidnapper!”

  The other girls laughed and George said there was a lot of truth in what Bess had said.

  Nancy added, “And now more excitement. I’m going to introduce you to a real thief! Our next stop will be the jail to interview one Sid Zikes!”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  The First Confession

  ALTHOUGH George was intrigued by the idea of meeting a real thief face to face, Bess demurred. “There’s no telling what he might do to us,” she said. “Besides, he’s probably a horrible person with a long record and I don’t even want to meet him.”

  George looked disgusted. “Don’t be such a sissy, Bess. The man can’t possibly hurt you if he’s in jail.”

  Bess said no more, but when they reached headquarters and were introduced to Officer Browning, she at once changed the subject. Handing him the badge, she asked if it was real or a fake. The officer examined it carefully and even got a magnifying glass.

  “This was a police badge,” he said, “until someone got hold of it and obliterated all the identification. Where did you find it?”

  Nancy told him she had been threatened with “arrest” for kidnapping by two apparently phony county agents. The officer looked grave.

  Bess asked, “Why would they tamper with the badges if they were pretending to have authority to take Nancy away?”

  Officer Browning said he thought the men were trying to fool the girls, not the police. “But fortunately it didn’t work.”

  George asked, “Then we can assume this badge and the other one were stolen from some policemen?”

  “It’s a good guess,” the officer said. “Suppose you leave the badge here. We’ll give it an acid bath and see if we can determine anything about the owner or the phony who was wearing it.”

  Nancy now asked permission to talk with Sid Zikes. Browning said he had been transferred to the county jail until the date of his trial.

  “But I’ll be glad to give you a letter to the warden there, and he’ll let you in.” He looked at the four girls. “Only two visitors are allowed at a time,” he remarked.

  “You can count me out,” Bess said quickly, and George added politely, “And I’ll be glad to stay away too,” although she was disappointed.

  As soon as the note was ready, the four girls rode off. On the way to the county jail, the group became quiet, each girl thinking about some angle of the mystery. Bess’s mind was still on the badge, George was intrigued by Eezy and his influence over the intruders, while Junie kept thinking of young Tony. “How wonderful it would be,” she told herself, “if Mrs. Bolardo should turn out to be his mother! But I mustn’t get my hopes up too high.”

  Nancy was alarmed by Mr. Rocco’s power and his underhanded method of using other people to extract money from farm workers and swearing them to secrecy.

  “He’s a sly, untrustworthy person!” she decided. “The sooner we can prove something against him and have him arrested, the better it will be for the whole community.”

  In a little while the girls reached the county jail and went inside. Almost at once Bess said the atmosphere was too depressing and she would wait outside in the car. She got up and George followed.

  “Don’t run off with the car and leave us here,” Nancy teased.

  “It’s only a ten-mile walk back,” George retorted.

  When Nancy and Junie were admitted to Sid Zikes’ cell, he looked at them but said nothing. They tried to talk to him but he acted very childish. The young man pouted and declared he had done nothing wrong. “I wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for you, Nancy Drew!” he told her bitterly.

  The young detective had decided to talk to the prisoner in a completely different way than she had before. In a gent voice she said, “Sid, I want to tell you that in casc you don’t know it, there’s a big fraud going on in this area. It won’t be long before the whole thing will be known.

  “It would be best for you to admit any connection you have with it and act right now rather than wait. We already know of some thefts you have committed. That’s bad enough, but to be involved in a really big scheme to defraud is something else again.”

  Sid looked at the two girls as if he were going to cry. A moment later he began to shake violently. He grabbed a blanket from his cot and wound it around his body.

  Finally he said, “I’m not ill. I’m not really cold. I’m shaking from fear. If you’ll promise not to tell anyone something I know, which might be part of the fraud you were talking about, I’ll tell you a secret.”

  Nancy and Junie said nothing and apparently Sid Zikes interpreted this as an assent to his request. He went on, “Mr. Rocco has several men working for him—I don’t know their names. Two of them came to me and said they wanted the parchment picture that hung over the fireplace in Mr. Flockhart’s living room.

  “At first I said I wasn’t a thief and wouldn’t go for any burglarizing. They just laughed and told me they already knew my record. If I didn’t do this for them, they would harm me. I guess I’m chicken, but I don’t like to be hurt.”

  Sid went on to say that he had finally agreed to the arrangement. He was to get the picture and take it to the two men at a designated place on the edge of the Rocco farm. He had done this and been paid well for his part in the scheme.

  Nancy asked, “Did you deliver it before or after you ordered the new glass?”

  “After. I couldn’t deliver the picture with the glass broken.”

  Junie asked him, “Have you any idea where the parchment is now?”

  Sid shook his head. “It means nothing to me. The whole point in taking it was that Mr. Flockhart didn’t need the picture, but somebody else did. I can’t see what’s wrong about that.”

  It flashed through Nancy’s mind that here was a person who firmly believed robbing the rich and giving to the poor was perfectly all right. Laws, conscience, and possible harm to an innocent party meant nothing to him!

 
; Nancy looked Sid straight in the eye. He lowered his head but she asked him please to lift it and look at her. She said, “Did it ever occur to you that there’s always somebody poorer than yourself?”

  The prisoner said no. Nancy went on, “What you have just told me proves that you think it is all right to take something from a person who has a little more than you have yourself.” She stared at his right hand. “I see you have on a very good-looking ring.”

  “The police let me keep it. It’s special.”

  “How would you feel if some really poor boy were to steal it from you?” Nancy asked him.

  Sid sat up on the couch. “I’d feel awful. My girl friend gave this to me.”

  Suddenly the young man looked at Nancy with a totally different expression on his long, lean face. “Hey, I see what you mean. You know, Miss Drew, you’ve given me an idea. I think maybe I’ll go straight from now on.”

  Nancy and Junie could have leaped for joy. There was something in the tone of Sid’s voice that made them think he really meant this. Both of them walked over and shook hands with him and said how glad they were that he had come to this decision.

  The prisoner actually smiled. “Hey, thanks an awful lot,” he said. “Maybe staying in jail for a short time won’t be so bad after all.”

  At this moment the jailer came and told the girls their visiting time was up. He let them out of the cell. The two waved to Sid, then walked off.

  As soon as they reached the street, Junie congratulated Nancy. “It was absolutely marvelous the way you handled Sid.”

  The girl detective smiled. “Making a prisoner turn over a new leaf is something I’ve never done before,” she admitted. “I feel good about it myself.”

  When they reached the car and jumped in, Junie immediately told Bess and George what Nancy had accomplished.

  “That’s super!” Bess remarked.

  “A grand job, Nancy,” George commented.

  Just before dinnertime at Triple Creek Farm, the four boys arrived. They looked weary but were exuberant over the day’s achievements.

  Ned said, “Mr. Flockhart gave us until tomorrow evening to do our job, but we accomplished so much today, I’m sure it won’t be necessary to take tomorrow too.”

  From a pocket he pulled out a sheet of paper. “Here is a list of people who secretly gave Mr. Rocco money to start his agricultural society. So far we’ve been told of cash payments for Rocco of fifty to three hundred dollars. We even saw some receipts. When we examined them though, we realized the farmers and a few employees in small businesses never could prove anything from them.”

  Dan added, “Across the top of the sheet was printed Brotherhood of Agriculturists. It listed the amounts correctly, but the signature at the bottom was a scrawl that nobody could decipher.” Nancy wanted to know if the signature was supposed to be Mr. Rocco’s.

  “The victims all thought it was that of his top man,” Ned replied.

  Burt spoke up. “This man Rocco is quite an organizer, I’d say. When we totaled up the amount, it proved to be thousands of dollars.”

  Dave remarked, “If Mr. Flockhart wants us to go ahead, we still have a long list of people to see.”

  Nancy thought their work was astounding and said so. “But how did you get the people to talk?”

  All the boys grinned and Ned said, “Oh, it was easy.” He turned to his fellow workers and said, “Shall we tell our secret?”

  CHAPTER XIX

  A Strange Reunion

  As Ned and the other boys delayed telling the story of obtaining statements from people who had given Sal Rocco’s henchmen money, Nancy urged them to begin.

  “All right,” Ned said. “The boys and I pretended without saying so that we are already members of the association.” He grinned. “We must be pretty convincing because nobody questioned us.”

  Burt took up the story. “We said we were becoming very suspicious of Mr. Rocco because we had heard nothing from him. We learned that nobody else had, either.”

  “In fact,” Dave put in, “by the time we had talked to each one for a while, we felt convinced that most of the people were ready to protest. Each person was reluctant to be the one to organize a march on Rocco’s men.”

  Dan said that a few people had telephoned the Rocco home and had tried to get some information. “The owner either was not there or refused to come to the phone.”

  Nancy asked, “So they didn’t learn anything?”

  Ned shook his head. “The farmers who did talk to one of Rocco’s men were assured that everything was fine and that they would hear about an organization meeting soon.”

  Dan added, “Each of those callers got a lecture on helping unfortunate people, which was the same one they had received when being asked to join the association.”

  Burt remarked, “It’s quite a lingo that Rocco has worked up. At first I was inclined to believe it myself!”

  George asked, “What I’d like to know is, where is Mr. Rocco keeping all the money he had his men collect?”

  “Good question,” Dan replied. “I know the president of the local bank. How about my phoning him to see if Mr. Rocco made a lot of deposits there?”

  The others thought this was a good idea, so Dan called. The answer, however, was disappointing. Mr. Rocco kept an account there from which he drew checks to pay bills and get small amounts of cash, but he had never deposited large amounts. Most of the income was from products sold from his farm.

  Junie heaved a sigh. “Another dead-end clue!”

  The others laughed, then Bess asked Nancy, “Have you any hunches about what Mr. Rocco might have done with the money?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” the young sleuth replied. “It’s possible that he has hidden the cash right on his own farm.”

  “On his own farm?” Bess repeated.

  “Sure, there are a million places he could hide his money—in an old suitcase, atop the loft in a barn—”

  “He could’ve planted it in the cornfield!” the plump girl quipped.

  “Or in the bottom of a well!” her cousin added.

  “Stop teasing Nancy,” Ned said, circling his arm around her shoulder. “She’s trying to solve a mystery and—”

  Nancy smiled warmly at her friend. “I can always count on you for help, though,” she said, causing the boy’s face to redden.

  “Maybe we ought to leave the lovebirds alone, Bess, to figure out this case,” George put in.

  “Now, now,” Nancy replied. “I need everybody’s ideas.”

  Further conversation was interrupted by the ring of the telephone. Junie went to answer it. During her absence the others began asking one another questions on angles of the mystery.

  “What I can’t understand,” said Bess, “is why Mr. Rocco is so mean and cruel to his young nephew.”

  They all decided that this was an important part of the mystery and they hoped it would soon be cleared up.

  Dan said, “I’m sure the authorities will take this boy away and put him in a school or a home where he will be given kindness.”

  At this moment Junie rushed back into the room. “Guess what?” she said. “Mrs. Bolardo has arrived in this country. Right now she is at Mr. Caspari’s house. She wants to come over here at once so she can see her son.”

  “Her son!” the others in the room cried out.

  Junie said the artist had told her that the full story had to wait until Mrs. Bolardo arrived at the Flockhart farm. “He’s going to bring her right over, but it’s a fairly long drive.”

  The girl’s announcement had come like a real bombshell to the listeners. So Tony’s real name was Tony Bolardo ! While waiting for Mr. Caspari to drive in, the group of young people tried to work, but found themselves gathering to discuss the mystery.

  Bess remarked, “It’s getting more exciting by the minute!”

  Finally Mr. Caspari arrived with the woman artist from Italy. She proved to be beautiful and charming. Both Mr. and Mrs. Flockhart had co
me to meet her, and she returned their welcome in perfect English. After the pleasantries were over, her expression changed.

  “My son! Where is he? I want to see him at once! He was stolen from met” she cried out.

  Mrs. Flockhart sat down on the sofa beside her and took the woman’s hand in hers. “Please tell us the whole story from beginning to end,” she requested.

  If she had hoped to calm Mrs. Bolardo, she failed. With each sentence the artist uttered, she became more emotional. “What does my son Tony look like?” she asked.

  Nancy told her that he was a handsome child. “He looks like you and he shows great promise as an artist.”

  “Oh, I am so glad, I am so glad!” Mrs. Bolardo said. “But tell me where he is. I want to see him!”

  Junie told her that they had Tony hidden away and would go to see him in a little while.

  “We took him away from his uncle because the man was mean and cruel to him.”

  “That dreadful man!” Mrs. Bolardo exclaimed. “I will tell you the whole story. My husband and I were very happily married and excited beyond words when little Tony was born. My husband had some business to take care of, so he went off on a steamer. Unfortunately it was in an accident with a sailing vessel, and he was killed.”

  “That’s terrible!” Bess murmured.

  Mrs. Bolardo went on to say that her husband’s brother Salvatore was the executor of her husband’s estate.

  “Sal wanted me to marry him but I refused. In revenge Sal took all the money that was left to me, stole my precious baby, and disappeared. I have searched and searched for them, but until now, never had a lead.”

  Tears began to trickle down Bess’s cheeks. She wiped her eyes with a handkerchief and remarked, “For ten years you never heard about them?”

  Mrs. Bolardo shook her head.

  George mentioned that Tony’s name was not really Tony Rocco, but Tony Bolardo. His mother said that actually his full name was Antonio Rocco Bolardo. The name Rocco was his paternal grandmother’s before she married.