The Clue In The Crumbling Wall Part 4

She took them out. There were six, taken years

89.

SUSPICIOUS FIGURES.

before when the dancer was at the height of her career. Several were inscribed with her name and a greeting. The face was a distinctive one. Care- fully Nancy noted the perfect features, the beauti- ful dark eyes, the straight nose and firm chin.

"Julie may have changed a great deal since I last saw her," Mrs. Fenimore remarked. "Ten years have gone by."

"Your sister is lovely," Nancy commented.

"Joan looks a little like her."

"Yes, she does. And certainly my daughter has Julie's vivacious ways. She's quite a little actress.

Maybe someday-"

Mrs. Fenimore looked sadly into s.p.a.ce. Lieu- tenant Masters, fearing the conversation had up- set the woman, said they must leave.

"Please try not to worry," Nancy urged Mrs.

Fenimore who handed her a photograph as they said good-by.

When she and the officer reached their cars, Nancy thanked Lieutenant Masters for her help.

"Call on me any time," the young woman said as she drove off.

Nancy decided to take a walk and think about the case.

As she wandered up the street, children were coming home from school to lunch. She saw Joan playing with an older boy in a vacant lot. They were tossing a ball for a dog to retrieve.

"That boy looks familiar," Nancy thought as she walked over to the children. Suddenly, in a fit of temper, the boy hit the dog with a stick.

"Cut it out!" he shouted. "You're chewing my ball to pieces!"

Joan screamed.

"Stop that!" Nancy ordered. "The dog hasn't hurt your ball. He was only playing."

The boy gazed at her with hard, unfriendly eyes. "Is he your dog?" he asked impudently.

"No."

"Then it's none of your business if I hit him."

Nancy started to reply, but it was not neces- sary. The dog dropped the ball and slunk off.

The boy picked it up. Then, giving Nancy a baleful look, he ran away.

Nancy took Joan by the hand and led her off.

As tactfully as possible she suggested that the child ought to find a girl playmate.

"Teddy Hooper's okay. He's the only one that lives close to me," Joan replied, skipping happily along beside her companion. "I don't like him when he's mean, but most of the time he's a lot of fun. He always thinks up exciting things to do."

"You'd better hurry home to lunch," Nancy said. "I'll go with you. My car's there."

When they reached the house, Joan hugged Nancy, then ran inside. Nancy was sure she had made a firm friend of the little girl.

"I'm not far from Salty's," the young detec- tive said to herself. "I'll drive there and find out if he has seen that man who crashed into our boat."

In a little while she came to the clam digger's home. The sailor was on the sh.o.r.e repairing his rowboat.

"Well, now, me la.s.s, I'm glad to see you," he said. "But I'm afraid I haven't got good news."

"You mean about the boat?"

"I've looked high an' low for that damaged boat," the man said regretfully. "It's not tied up anywhere along here."

"How about Harper's Inlet?" Nancy asked.

Salty admitted he had not been there. "Too busy," he explained. "Maybe I'll go this after- noon. I need a mess o' clams an' there be some up the inlet. You want to come along? I'll show you the Heath factory."

For Nancy the opportunity was too good to pa.s.s up. She was eager to visit the spot.

"Just tell me when to be here," she said.

After settling on three o'clock, she remarked, "I'll bring along one of my friends."

Nancy hurried home for a quick lunch, then telephoned George. Promptly at three o'clock the two girls met Salty at the waterfront.

"I'll put ye to work," the sailor chuckled as he gathered together his fishing and clamming equipment. "Help me load these into the row- boat, will you?"

The old man's muscular arms rippled as he dug the oars into the tranquil waters of the Muskoka River. Presently he and his pa.s.sengers were skimming along at a rapid rate. Behind the craft trailed a long copper wire which gleamed in the sunlight.

"I'm trollin' for my dinner tonight," Salty ex- plained. "There's somethin' yankin' on my line right now, I do believe 1"

He rested the oars and pulled in the line. Fi- nally a four-pound speckled ba.s.s flopped into the boat.

"She's a beauty," he said, grinning.

While the girls kept the craft from drifting downstream. Salty removed the hook from the fish and dropped his catch into a woven basket.

Then he wound up the copper troll line and put it away.

"Fishin's not much good in the inlet," he re- marked. "But we'll find clams."

The upper river was very still. As the boat entered Harper's Inlet some time later, there was no sound except the occasional chirping of a bird.

Nancy hunched low now and then, to avoid the overhanging bushes and watched the coves for a hidden boat. There was none.

"It doesn't look as if we're goin' to find your friend," Salty remarked after he had rowed a quarter of a mile upstream. "We're almost to Heath's b.u.t.ton factory now. I'll anchor here."

The man had located a bed of clams in the shallow water. He asked the girls to balance his fish basket on the gunwale, then waded in to dig the clams from the mud and sand with his rake.

As he tossed them, one by one, he kept singing s.n.a.t.c.hes of familiar sea songs.

"Basket's full," Nancy called several minutes later.

Salty got into the boat and started off again.

As they rounded a bend, the girls saw a large, square building set some distance back from the sh.o.r.e. The banks nearby were littered with dis- carded bits of clamsh.e.l.ls.

"That's the Heath b.u.t.ton factory," Salty said.

"She's sure gone to pieces."

Nancy gazed curiously at the neglected brick structure. Vines which had grown up the build- ing's walls lay thick on the shingle roof and all the windows were broken.

Suddenly Nancy spotted two figures near the factory entrance. As they vanished into the build- ing, Salty pointed to an object hidden near some bushes.

"A boat!" he exclaimed. "And her prow's damaged, too!"

The bow of the boat had been drawn up on the sand. Nancy and George recognized it immedi- ately as the blue-and-white craft that had struck themi "Oh, Salty, please pull in herel" Nancy begged.

As he did, she told him about the men.

"Humph!" Salty grunted. "I'll bet ye a mess o' clams they ain't got no right in there!"

Nancy nodded. "I want to talk to them. Will you stay here near the damaged boat? If the men come out, try to hold them until we get back."

The sailor did not like being left out of the search, but before he could protest, the girls were splashing through knee-deep water to sh.o.r.e.

CHAPTER VI.

A Mysterious Explosion.

Nancy and George had to cross a stretch of low, marshy land in order to reach the old b.u.t.ton factory. Their sneakers, already water-soaked, be- came caked with mud. The girls were grateful for the high wild gra.s.s that screened their approach.

"You know," Nancy said, "those two men looked familiar."

"Who are they?"

"I'm not sure, but one of them was thin and wore a blue cap like the fellow who crashed into our motorboat. The other resembled Daniel Hector, the lawyer."

While still twenty yards from the factory, the girls were startled to hear the sound of hammer- ing. The pounding noise came from inside the building.

"I wonder what those men are doing in there,"

Nancy said, cautiously pulling aside the tall vines.

"Maybe they're workmen who were sent to re- pair the place," George replied.

Nancy offered no comment. It was possible that Daniel Hector had brought another man to the property either to inspect it, or to do some work.

But she seriously doubted this.

As the girls moved closer, the hammering ceased. Though they waited several minutes, it did not resume.

"We may have been seen by the men," Nancy said. "I hope they haven't left."

When George and Nancy had pushed through to the end of the marsh, they saw that the front door to the factory stood wide open. Nancy peered inside. A long corridor opened into several of- fices and led to a large workroom at the rear. No one was in sight.

As the girls started along the hallway, they heard retreating footsteps. They glanced out a dirt-smudged window and noticed two men run- ning in the direction of the river.

"Oh, Nancy," George exclaimed, "they must have heard us!"

"They're going to their boat!" Nancy said ex- citedly.

Already the men were well hidden by the high marsh gra.s.s. The girls ran quickly toward a rear door, with Nancy far in the lead. As they neared it, deafening sounds of an explosion filled the air. The walls of the factory rocked. A huge amount of plaster crashed down between the girls.

"Nancy!" George cried out in panic as she gazed at the high pile of debris that separated them. One whole corridor wall had caved in.

"Nancy must be buried underneath it!" George thought in horror.

The air was thick with white dust. Coughing and choking, George frantically began to pull away boards and chunks of plaster.

In the meantime the two men, who had paused in the tall gra.s.s, were just about to go back to the factory when they heard someone running up the path. Salty, fearful for the girls' safety, was racing toward the building, clam rake over his shoulder.

He pa.s.sed within a few feet of the men, but did not see them.

"Oh dear! Oh dear!" he kept mumbling. "I hope nothin's happened to the la.s.sies!"

He found George still digging feverishly at the pile of debris.

"Salty!" the girl cried. "I can't find Nancy!