The Secret in the Old Attic

by Carolyn G. Keene

  “Have any of you seen Mr. March?” Nancy asked quickly.

  The others gazed at her, perplexed.

  “Isn’t he in bed?” Effie asked.

  Nancy told them of Bushy Trott’s sinister words. Like a shot George dashed down the stairs of the old attic on her way to the garden. Bess and Effie followed.

  Nancy started after them, but Ned held her back. “Are you really all right?” he asked in deep concern.

  “Yes, Ned.” She smiled at him. “I was pretty scared for a while, I admit, but I’m okay now. Really.”

  “Boy, you sure gave me a scare!” Ned said.

  Together they went downstairs quickly and outdoors.

  “By the old servants’ quarters,” Nancy called to the girls.

  She led the way as Ned held the flashlight. Under a lilac bush they found the crumpled form of Mr. March. Effie let out a frightened moan.

  “Is he—is he—?”

  Ned pulled the still figure from beneath the bush. Nancy felt the elderly man’s pulse.

  “He’s alive,” she said. “But the shock may prove to be too much for him.”

  They carried Mr. March into the house. Under their kindly ministrations, he quickly regained consciousness. Nancy had warned the others not to tell him what had happened in the secret room. Presently he went upstairs to rest.

  “I have to go to River Heights right away,” said Nancy. “Effie, I can’t explain now, but you’ll be all right here alone. That shadowy figure will never come back.”

  “Thank goodness!” said the maid. “You and your friends go right along, and I’ll take good care of Mr. March.”

  “Where are you going?” George asked.

  “To Mr. Dight. I know he has the address of Bushy Trott!”

  Explanations were in order on both sides. Nancy suggested they tell their stories while riding along. When they went outside, the young people saw a car turn into the driveway of Pleasant Hedges. The man at the wheel proved to be Mr. Drew.

  “What luck!” Nancy cried out. “Oh, Dad, I’m so glad to see you,” she said hurriedly as he stopped at the door. “Can you go to Mr. Dight’s house with us right away?”

  “Sure can,” he replied. “But what’s up? More clues?”

  “It was Bushy Trott who was stealing Fipp March’s music! And he got away with the rest of it tonight! We must find out his address from Lawrence Dight and then notify the police!”

  “Hop into my car, everybody!” Carson Drew called out.

  Nancy gave her father and her friends the story of her evening’s adventure in detail. At Nancy’s recital of her experience being tied up in the dark with a black widow spider, Mr. Drew was shocked.

  “You shouldn’t take such chances,” he told his daughter. “Bravery is one thing, but dealing with a man like Trott—”

  Nancy said, “How could I have guessed there was a trap door under the piano-desk? Anyway, it’s fortunate that my friends rescued me,” she added cheerfully.

  “It was just luck that we did,” Ned explained. “Tonight when I came to River Heights, even though it was getting late, I wanted to see you. Mrs. Gruen told me where you were, and I got Bess and George to show me the way out here.”

  By this time Mr. Drew had reached River Heights. Bess thought that she and George ought to go home, and were driven to their respective houses.

  “If you and your father have a job to do,” said Ned, “perhaps I should go too.”

  “Oh please stay!” Nancy urged.

  Mr. Drew added, “I believe we’ll need an extra man before the night’s over! One with good strong muscles!”

  CHAPTER XX

  Plotter Nabbed

  WHEN Mr. Drew drove up to the Dight home, it was in darkness. Nevertheless he pounded on the front door. Finally Mr. Dight came to let them in.

  “What’s the meaning of this call in the middle of the night?” he demanded angrily.

  The lawyer did not waste words. He stated that he wanted to prefer charges against Riggin Trott and demanded the man’s address.

  “I don’t even know the fellow,” Lawrence Dight blustered. “What do you mean by coming here and waking me up with such a stupid question?”

  “Maybe you know him as Bushy Trott,” Mr. Drew suggested. “We have proof that he stole a silk-making process from his former employer Mr. Booker. You’re using that same formula in your own plant.”

  “Nonsense!”

  “There is no denying it,” Mr. Drew declared. “My daughter obtained samples of fluid from two different vats in your laboratory. Tests prove them to be the same content as the Booker mixtures.”

  Nancy spoke up. “Your employee Trott tonight tried to kill me by tying me up and leaving a black widow spider loose to poison me!”

  The information seemed to stun Mr. Dight.

  “I knew nothing of that,” he insisted in a frightened voice. “We have poisonous spiders at our plant but—”

  “There are also other charges against Bushy Trott. Will you give me his address?”

  Mr. Dight was shaking. “Yes, I will. I assure you I didn’t knowingly use the Booker silk-making process. Nor did I suspect that Trott was trying to make trouble for your daughter. I’m glad nothing happened to her.”

  Lawrence Dight went quickly to a desk and wrote down Trott’s home address.

  “To tell the truth, I thought for a time Nancy Drew was trying to steal our plant formula,” he told the callers. “We purchased the new silk-making process from Trott recently at a high price.”

  Mr. Dight sighed and did not speak for several seconds.

  Finally he went on, “I’ve kept the silk-making process at the factory a secret, because I was afraid all the workmen in the place might leave if they knew there were poisonous spiders around.”

  “The secret you guard so carefully already belongs to my client Mr. Booker,” replied Carson Drew. “The only difference is that your man uses poisonous spiders. From what happened tonight, I judge he has a mania for the deadly things.”

  Mr. Dight looked incredulous. “You mean to say Bushy Trott sold me a process which he neither owned nor controlled?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Then I’ve been tricked!” shouted the factory owner. “I’ll telephone the police immediately and have the man arrested.”

  Within ten minutes a patrol car was speeding to the Trott home. Mr. Drew, Nancy, and Ned followed in the lawyer’s automobile. They arrived in time to see Trott being led from the house by two policemen. He turned deathly white when he saw Nancy.

  “You!” he cried unbelievingly. “How? Where did you come from?”

  “Is this the man?” one of the officers asked her, seeking a positive identification.

  “Yes,” she replied. “I believe his right name is Riggin Trott.”

  The following day Nancy and her father asked the police if they might speak to the prisoner. Police supplied the information that Trott was an ex-convict. Though he was a clever chemist, after prison he had worked as a chauffeur for Horace Dight, the cousin of Diane’s father.

  “Well, that explains a number of things!” cried Nancy.

  Trott talked willingly. Nancy asked, “You sold Philip March’s music manuscripts to Horace Dight, didn’t you?”

  Trott nodded. He said that Dight, always strug gling to compose a song which would sell, was hard-pressed financially. One day Trott had slyly suggested to his employer that he knew where salable songs might be obtained.

  “I didn’t tell him where, though.”

  As it developed, Trott had known Fipp March in the army, and made it a point to win his confidence, planning to rob the March mansion eventually.

  “But he didn’t tell me exactly where he had hidden the music,” the prisoner went on.

  After Trott got out of the service, he soon landed in jail. By the time he reached the March mansion a few years later the place seemed hardly worth looting. When he took employment with Horace Dight, Trott remembered that Fipp had often playe
d his numerous unpublished compositions. The thief was determined to search for them. One day when the family was out of town Trott had explored the main attic. He had discovered the crude door covered by the heavy wardrobe and had investigated the second room. He had found a song which Fipp had left on the piano-desk. He had sold it to Horace Dight, who had asked for more immediately.

  “Next I looked for a stairway from the second attic,” Trott said. “Fipp had talked a lot about his childhood in the old house. Once when he was playing in the servants’ section he discovered a door which didn’t look like a door. It opened onto a narrow stairway leading up toward the section of attic above the servants’ quarters. I found the hole in the floor and went down. Later I put the piano-desk over it.”

  Trott said that after his discovery he had secretly entered the March house by this means. He had terrified Effie, and his footsteps had echoed weirdly through the old mansion. In vain the man had searched for the missing music. To his surprise the drawer below the piano keys had opened, revealing two songs. It was then that Trott had dropped the telltale note that Nancy had found.

  He turned the musical compositions over to Horace Dight, who had them published under the names of Ben Banks and Harry Hall. The songs quickly became popular. Bushy Trott determined to find all of Fipp’s creations.

  Trott was convinced that the music must be hidden somewhere in the piano-desk. As he continued to search, he became alarmed, thinking that he might be caught, because Nancy and her friends came with increasing frequency to the attic.

  Cunningly Trott decided to frighten everyone away. He bored a hole through the secret door back of the wardrobe and also through the wardrobe itself. Then he released a deadly black widow spider from its bottle. It had later crawled through the tiny opening and bitten Effie.

  “I was desperate,” Trott said.

  Nancy asked, “What about Horace Dight?”

  Nancy learned that he was so pleased by the success of the stolen songs that he urged Trott to find other compositions for him. The publisher had never suspected anything illegal and first found out that his client was not the composer when he talked with Nancy at the March mansion.

  “The men had words,” Trott revealed, “and there were threats on both sides. But finally Mr. Jenner agreed to keep the matter a secret, since he was making money on the musical hits.”

  Horace Dight, now in Trott’s clutches, aided the man in various other crimes. He sent him to his gullible cousin, Lawrence Dight, and planned to profit handsomely from the sale of the stolen silk-making process.

  Due to the astuteness of Nancy and her father, both Horace Dight and Riggin Trott would now be out of circulation for some time. Diane’s father, who knew nothing of his cousin’s criminal activities, had agreed to pay royalties to Mr. Booker for the use of his formula. The two men were also considering a company merger which would be equitable to both.

  One day as Nancy was discussing the forthcoming dance at Emerson College with Bess and George, a parcel arrived for her from the Booker factory.

  “Would you like to see what I’m going to wear to the Emerson dance?” she asked Bess and George, her eyes sparkling. “Come up to my room and we’ll open this.”

  The three girls went upstairs. From the box Nancy brought out a pale-yellow evening dress, soft and beautiful in texture.

  “Oh!” Bess cried. “I never saw anything lovelier. Where did you get it?”

  “Mr. Booker sent it to me. He’s a client of Dad’s.” Nancy wished she might tell her friends more, but she had promised the manufacturer she would not divulge his secret.

  “I’ll bet you helped your dad on a case,” George said wisely, “and this is your reward.”

  “You’re right,” Nancy admitted.

  Bess chuckled. “Ask your father if he has a mystery for me to solve with the same reward!”

  The girls laughed, then Nancy said, “Anyway, the next mystery I have I’ll share with you.”

  True to her word, Bess and George were invited to join Nancy in solving another perplexing case, The Clue in the Crumbling Wall.

  A couple of days later Mr. Drew said to his daughter, “You’ve made two firm friends. I just stopped in to call on Mr. March and Susan. Mr. Jenner has agreed to compensate them for Fipp’s stolen songs, and my friend Hank Hawkins is going to publish all the other compositions. The Marches are delighted and you should hear all the wonderful things they had to say about you!”

  “I’m glad to have helped them.” Nancy smiled modestly. “And it was exciting to hunt for clues in the spooky old attic.”

  “Nevertheless it took courage,” her father replied. “If you hadn’t had it, you never would have discovered the attic’s secrets.”