Confessions of a Teen Sleuth (3 page)

"I'm just so bent out of shape about Joe!" I stammered. "It's such a tragedy!"

Frank's eyes twinkled. "Nancy, you're as hard to read as a Turkish mannequin."

I smiled, but my head was spinning. Joe was dead. You live your whole life thinking you're doing the right thing. You marry
your special friend. You move to Chicago. Then something happens and everything goes catawampus. "Jeepers, Frank," I gushed
before I could stop myself, "I think I'm in love with you!"

"What about Nick?"

"Ned."

"Ned."

"I love him too, I guess. He's just so . . . boring."

Frank took me by my shoulders. There was a challenge in his eye. "Nancy," he asked, "do you trust me?"

I shuddered. "With everything I have," I answered.

"Then I'm going to ask you to trust me right now."

Before I could retort, a great silver orb appeared over Frank's left shoulder. Though I had never seen one, I knew it immediately.
A dirigible! And it was landing in the Hardys' backyard!

"We have to leave immediately," Frank ordered. "No time for good-byes. Joe is alive. And he's being held captive in Germany.
We may be the only two people who can get him out of this pickle. Are you up for it?"

Joe? Still alive? Germany? Joe needed me. My country needed me. I stared him squarely in the eye and nodded. "I'm ready."

The dirigible took us to a top secret airfield in Queens. I phoned Ned and told him that I was spending a few extra days with
Cherry Ames and Vicki Barr in Atlantic City. Then we boarded a military airplane and flew across the Atlantic. On the trip,
Frank explained the predicament.

Joe had been sent on an urgent mission. He was on the trail of a nutcracker that had been forged by a Russian jeweler. It
had ended up the property of a fat rich man in Zurich, then was sold to a French movie star, who lost it in a divorce to a
Dominican playboy, who sold it to an anonymous collector, who donated it to the British Museum in London. Then, two months
ago, it had been stolen! Scotland Yard had turned up only one clue at the scene: a tiny brooch in the form of a swastika!

"But what would the Nazis want with a nutcracker?" I asked incredulously.

"That's exactly what we wanted to know," answered Frank. "So we sent Joe behind enemy lines to find out. Last we heard from
him, he had a meeting with an Austrian countess he said might have the answer. That was last week. No one has heard from him
since."

"But you think he's still alive?"

"Absolutely. Joe gets into jams, but he never dies. Of course, we can't let the enemy know that we know that he's been captured."

"So you had the funeral."

"Exactly." For a moment Frank looked uncharacteristically grim. "This is a dangerous mission. And I needed the best in the
business. I've always thought highly of your sleuthing abilities, and when I remembered that you took high school German,
well, I just knew that you were the one." He set his jaw in determination. "The fate of the free world may just rest with
this nutcracker." Frank glanced out the window into the black night over the Atlantic. "You can sky dive, right?"

We stripped off our parachutes and hid them in a barn on a farm just outside of Berlin. We had parachuted just before sunrise
and then settled down to catch a few hours of sleep in the hayloft. Neither of us got much rest.

I awoke first and made Frank a breakfast of fresh eggs on our government issued hot plate. After we had eaten, we changed
into our disguises. Frank wore a Nazi uniform, while I braided my hair and wore the attire of a common German girl. We liberated
two bicycles that were in the barn and rode them casually into town, admiring the rural landscape and whistling a German drinking
song so as not to arouse suspicion.

Frank had the countess's address, so we pedaled there first. It was a tall stone town house surrounded by a large wrought-iron
fence.

"Look!" I whispered. A red banner emblazoned with a swastika flew from one of the house's high windows. The countess was a
Nazi!

Frank nodded grimly and headed through the gate for the front door.

A diminutive man with a flat face answered the door. He was dressed like a servant, but I noticed that his hands were soft
and manicured and his shoes were far more expensive than could be acquired on a servant's salary.

Frank told the man in unaccented German that we had urgent business with the countess. It was imperative to the Fatherland
that we speak with her immediately.

The man examined us and then slowly relented, opening the door wide and ushering us into an elegantly decorated parlor.

"Excuse me," he croaked in a harsh voice. "I will tell the madam that you are here."

In a few minutes he returned with a tall, regal-looking woman in her fifties. She wore a long ivy print silk dress with two
large pockets at the hip and clung to a matted mink stole. Her nails were painted red.

"I am the countess," she declared a bit uneasily. "What is it that you want?"

I noticed that her servant continued to loiter in the room.

"May we talk to you alone, ma'am?" I asked.

The countess glanced nervously at her servant and wrung her hands. "Oh, Hans is always with me," she explained. "I have these
fainting spells and cannot be left alone. He is quite deft at catching me when I fall."

"Perhaps you could sit," I suggested.

The countess slid a sideways look at Hans and then nodded slowly. "Perhaps I could," she concluded, taking a seat on a divan
by the fireplace. She waved her jeweled hand at the servant. Was it shaking? "Hans, you may go."

Hans stood a moment, flustered.

The countess looked at him and spoke again, this time more firmly. "Hans, you may go."

The servant turned and exited the room.

I immediately confronted our hostess. "Countess," I asked, "are you being held against your will?"

In a hushed tone, the countess explained what had happened. She had agreed to tell Joe all she knew about the nutcracker,
but moments after he arrived, the SS had stormed her home, taking Joe captive and keeping her prisoner in her own house!

"We must get out of here," Frank declared. "And fast!"

"You're not going anywhere!" a voice growled. It was Hans the servant, only now he was wearing the black uniform of the SS,
and he had three other officers with him. His gun was pointed at us, and he grinned maliciously. "Miss Nancy Drew and Mr.
Frank Hardy," he drawled. "I've read about you."

"Almost none of that stuff is true," I explained quickly.

"No time for that now," he interrupted.

The three of us were marched upstairs to the attic of the house, where we were bound and gagged!

"You want to be reunited with your brother?" he asked Frank. "Here he is." Hans opened a small door to an attic storage closet,
and Joe, bound and gagged, rolled out onto the floor. "Our plan worked perfectly," Hans laughed. "We knew that if we held
Joe Hardy captive, his more experienced older brother would come to his rescue. And who else would he ask to accompany him
but the attractive teen sleuth, Nancy Drew? Our intelligence has known for years that the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew are the
West's greatest weapon against us. It was our chance to get rid of all of you at once!" Hans picked up a can of gasoline and
began to pour it on the attic floor. "It's funny," he added. "I thought that you would be younger." He lit a match and threw
it.

The room immediately began to fill with smoke and flames. Hans and the other Nazis had left us to a ghoulish fate! What a
turn of events! I wiggled furiously against the ropes that bound my hands and feet but could not loosen them, and I could
see that Frank and Joe and the countess were failing to free themselves as well. The smoke grew thick and I began to cough
and gasp for oxygen. The flames were only a few feet away!

Suddenly, the attic door flew open and a man came running in. He had a blanket and began to douse the flames with it. In several
minutes, the fire had been extinguished. The man then ran to a window and used his elbow to break the glass so the smoke could
clear. As it did, I recognized the mysterious stranger.

It was Ned! My own Ned!

Ned quickly untied us and removed our gags. "I think we're safe for the meantime," he announced. "Burt and Dave have subdued
the Nazis downstairs." Burt Eddelton and Dave Evans had both been friends of Ned's since college.

"But how did you find us?" I asked.

Ned explained that he had run into Cherry Ames in Chicago and quickly realized that he had been duped. He immediately contacted
Bess, who reported seeing what she believed to be a dirigible behind the Hardy house moments before we disappeared from the
funeral gathering. Ned called Burt, who worked at the War Department, and Dave, who was unemployed, and together they put
together the pieces and quickly commandeered passage into Berlin.

"Well, I for one am glad you did!" I exclaimed, beaming.

"But what about the nutcracker?" asked Frank.

Joe chimed in. "The countess was just starting to tell me when the Nazis burst in."

We all turned to the countess. "My great-grandfather was the Russian jeweler who made the nutcracker," she began. "He was
a frustrated mathematician and he developed a code that could not be broken. The nutcracker is hollow. The code is inside."

"And now it's in the hands of the Nazis!" Frank fretted.

The countess smiled. "My grandfather thought that something like this might happen. So he made two nutcrackers. One was sold
to a rich fat man in Zurich. The other was kept in the family." She stood up and walked across the attic and pressed a panel
of wood on the wall. A door sprang open, and the countess removed a parcel wrapped in cloth. She unwrapped it. It was the
nutcracker!

"The Nazis almost burned it right along with us," Joe marveled, shaking his head.

The countess placed the precious nutcraker in my hands. "You take it now," she told me. "Take it, and let us hope that it
does some good in ending this war."

Two weeks later we were all again gathered in the large, comfortable Hardy living room.

"So how did you ever get out of Germany?" Laura Hardy asked, amazed.

"It's a long story," Frank laughed.

Joe Hardy sat between his mother and his wife, Iola, on the floral print sofa. Mrs. Hardy squeezed his hand. "I'm just glad
you're okay," she smiled.

"So what now?" asked Fenton Hardy.

"Well," I responded, "Burt is going back to the War Department. Dave is joining the Merchant Marine. Frank is going back to
Washington, Joe will get his next assignment in a few weeks, I suppose, and Ned and I are going to move back to River Heights."

"River Heights? Really?" Frank asked.

"Ned and I were talking on the sub ride back," I explained, my eyes dancing. "And I think it's time he got out of the meat-inspecting
business. Everyone needs life insurance, especially during wartime, and my father knows people at R.H. Mutual. Besides, River
Heights is a really nice town. And a great place to start a family," I winked.

"Why, Nancy!" Laura Hardy exclaimed.

The men stood to shake Ned's hand, and Frank gave me a courtly peck on the cheek. "Congratulations," he whispered. He put
his face close to ear. "For what it's worth," he told me, "I wish it were mine."

I forced myself to smile graciously. I had spent the last few weeks confused and elated, guilty and jubilant. I had never
imagined myself as a mother, but I wanted this baby more than anything. I loved Frank. But the country needed him, and who
knew how long the war would rage on, or what danger he might face before it was over? Ned could offer me stability in the
form of a brick colonial and a new roadster every year. My own Ned.

I glanced at him now, beaming at me with pride, and then at Frank, who had stepped back into the shadows. I did not know what
the future would bring. But one thing I did know was that Ned would never find out what went on in that hayloft.

IV THE MYSTERIOUS MRS. DREW, 1944

N
ed Junior wailed beside me as I sped to my father's downtown River Heights office, leaving a cloud of dust and gravel
in my wake. When my father, the handsome, world-famous attorney Carson Drew, had phoned and asked me to come by as soon as
possible, I had, in my haste, nearly driven off with Ned Junior on the hood.

I adored Ned Junior. He was like a stolen heirloom and a secret treasure all rolled into one. But sometimes when I looked
at him he reminded me of all that I was missing. I resented him. And this consumed me with guilt. Some mornings, I had difficulty
getting out of bed. Today my symptoms might be diagnosed as postpartum depression. At the time, doctors called it "organ neuroses
related to the uterus."

It always helped to get out of the house, and by the time I finally sat across from my father it was all I could do to contain
my delight. "This better be important, Dad!" I scolded, bouncing the shrieking titian-haired tot on my knee. The truth was
I was thrilled that Dad had called. It had been years since he had asked me to help him out with a mystery! I crossed my fingers
that it might involve the Amish. I so loved a good Amish mystery!

My father folded his hands on his large desk. "Nancy," he declared, "I know you've been blue since Ned Junior was born. You've
taken less interest in household chores and rarely go to Burk's, Taylor's, or even Hidelberg's on shopping sprees.

You haven't recovered a stolen purse or decoded a message in years. I'm worried about you. Mrs. Gruen and I are both worried
about you."

Hannah Gruen, the housekeeper who helped raise me, still worked for my father as a maid and part-time secretary. She made
my father call her Mrs. Gruen, though to the best of anyone's knowledge she had never been married.

My father continued. "We think that your, um, difficulties with motherhood may trace back to your own lack of maternal influences."
He cleared his throat. "I know that I've led to you believe all these years that your mother was dead . . ."

With the instinct of a detective who dared not miss a clue, I begged him to continue.

"Your mother did not die of influenza, or in a fire, nor was she attacked by a collie." (I had always been fearful of collies.)
"Your mother ran off. She was a suffragette."

"Oh!" I cried.

I should take the opportunity to clarify another murky point of Carolyn's making. I was not ten when my mother "died," as
Carolyn first wrote. She later revised my age to three, which was correct, but not before her factual lapse had led to many
embarrassing encounters when strangers would be surprised to learn that I had no memory of the woman they thought had died
when I was an adolescent.

"It was 1913. Your mother had been volunteering with several women's charities. She had worked on behalf of orphans and the
enslaved peoples of the world and against habit-forming tonics. She had campaigned for Woodrow Wilson and raised money for
a ladies' auxiliary hall, and she began to get ideas about voting. She never did forgive me for voting for Taft. She wanted
to join a suffragette march on Washington. It was to take place the day before Woodrow Wilson took office. I forbade her to
participate. She left me the next morning." His eyes filled with tears as he gazed at his folded hands. "I told everyone that
she had died. You have to understand that these were different times, and I had a fledgling law practice to protect."

"She's still alive?" I stammered, still in shock at the surprising news.

"I don't know," he sighed. He took a faded newspaper clipping out of his pocket and laid it before me on his desk. "As you
know, being a world-famous attorney requires extensive business travel. I was in Los Angeles several years ago and came across
this photograph in the Hollywood
Daily Citizen.'"

I glanced down at the photograph. It was a picture of a crowd of mourners lining the street after the famous silent film star
Rudolph Valentino died. I whipped my magnifying glass out of my purse and leaned forward to scan the faces in the photograph
under the glass. My heart jumped. There was my mother. She had bobbed her hair and traded in her corset for a black flapper
dress and opera shoes, but I recognized her immediately from the one small portrait my father still kept in the house. She
was one of a throng of thousands, her face stricken, her eyes very large and sad.

"There she is," I whispered.

My father cleared his throat. "I felt it best to protect you from this. It was so long ago and we have moved on with our lives.
But now I realize that we can't move on as a family until we put the past to rest behind us." He rested a hand on mine and
squeezed. "I'm not alone anymore."

"I know," I told him. "You have me."

He coughed. "No. I, uh, I mean that I've found someone. A lady."

I froze. "Excuse me?"

"You know her. Marty King."

"Your twenty-four-year-old, platinum blond research assistant?" I asked incredulously.

"And recent graduate of nearby Bushwick Law School," my father added.

"She's going to be my stepmother?"

Ned Junior began to cry again. I held him close and rocked him on my lap, feeling his tears seep into my sweater set.

"I need you to find your mother," my father instructed. "For your own sake. And also for mine. I never had her declared legally
dead. If she is alive, I need to get a divorce so that Marty and I can marry. When you were a teenager you would sometimes
help me with my cases, and I always valued your counsel and keen mind. This could be your most challenging mystery to date."
His gaze was pleading. "Will you help me?"

My mother had not died when I was three. There had been no rabid collie. She was out there. Somewhere. I was thirty-four years
old, but for a moment I felt as if I were sixteen again. I could feel the dark cloud of the last several months lift, replaced
by the marvelous sensation of a puzzle waiting to be solved. It was a sensation I had not felt in many years.

"I must find her!" I exclaimed, wiping a tear from my cheek. "I must find my lost mother!"

A deep sigh of relief escaped my father's lips. "If anyone can do it, you can!" he declared. "I have complete faith in you."

My eyes sparkled with anticipation. My very own mother and a new mystery, all rolled up in one. I had always found that missing
mothers made for particularly enjoyable cases. Now who could I get to take care of the baby?

George Fayne answered the door with a gasp of surprise. "Nancy, what are you doing here?"

My tomboyish chum was still working as a riveter down at the Paver Heights docks. She lived in an apartment on Cottage Street
near the warehouses on the wrong side of the tracks. It was an area of town where many young women with short hair and boys'
names lived.

I excitedly told George about my new mystery.

"Hypers!" she exclaimed.

George's roommate appeared in the doorway from the bedroom they shared. Her name was Victoria, but she preferred to be called
"V." A short, brawny girl with some Cherokee blood, V also worked as a riveter. I didn't know much about her except that she
enjoyed motorcycles, arm wrestling, and herbal tea. I had always thought her a bit queer, though an excellent bridge partner.

"Hello, Nancy!" V growled amiably.

I repeated my story to V as she listened in amazement. "So,"

I finished, "will you watch the baby? Will you watch Ned Junior while I embark on this new adventure?"

"What about your husband?" inquired V dubiously.

"He's taking his life insurance exams in Omaha," I explained. George cracked her knuckles thoughtfully and glanced at V. V
nodded. "Okay!" cried George. "We'll do it! When do we start?"

"Right now?" I suggested.

"But Nancy, you don't have the baby with you."

I glanced around the apartment. They were right! "Oh." I smiled, chagrined. "I must have left him in the car. In all the excitement."

I retrieved Ned Junior from the roadster, handed him over to George, and caught the next Federal flight west.

The Federal DC-3 landed at Los Angeles Municipal Airport, and as I descended the staircase onto the tarmac, I was greeted
with a blast of bright desert heat. I made a mental note to quickly change out of my chic fitted wool suit and extremely large
hat. I retrieved my smart blue luggage and headed to the bank of phone booths in the adobe-style terminal. Fretfully, I skimmed
through the Los Angeles city telephone book looking for my mother's name. I did not hold out much hope of finding it so was
not terribly surprised when my search yielded nothing. Undaunted, I searched the listings under R until I came to what I was
looking for: the Rudolph Valentino Fan Club and Remembrance Society. I dropped a nickel in the pay slot with a gloved hand
and dialed.

A fat, cheery female voice answered. She did not recognize my missing mother's name but told me that the group would be having
its monthly meeting the very next night and that I could address the group with my query. Perhaps someone else would remember
a woman fitting my missing mother's description, she suggested brightly. I got an address, thanked the woman, and hung up
just as a ruckus broke out in the terminal.

An elderly gentleman had collapsed!

Other passengers immediately began crowding about the fallen man, asking silly questions and generally getting in the way
as I rushed to his side. Luckily for him, I was able to elbow my way through. He was a dapper little fellow clad in a coffee-colored
suit with patch pockets, a blue silk shirt, and a coffee-colored tie. His gray hair was combed back straight from his forehead,
and his face was ashen. I knelt beside him and felt for a pulse. It was weak.

"Someone find a doctor!" I cried to the throng of onlookers.

"I'm a nurse," exclaimed a voice. "Can I help?"

The crowd parted and I looked up to see a slender, healthy, and well-built young woman with very dark hair that glistened
against the sharp white of her nurse's uniform. I groaned inwardly.
Cherry Ames.

"Hello, Nancy," purred Cherry as she approached me with the famous proud erect posture that made her seem beautifully tall
and slim.

"Cherry," I exclaimed evenly, trying to mask my dismay at the sight of my nemesis. "What are you doing here?"

Cherry shook her dark curls cunningly. "I'm an army nurse," she retorted. "I've just returned from Washington, where I have
been personally attending to a very famous general."

I'll
bet,
I thought.

The man groaned. Cherry regained her nurse's composure and got to work. She ordered a big, sandy-haired woman in the crowd to fetch a glass of water. When the woman returned, Cherry threw the water in the man's face. He sputtered and regained
consciousness. The crowd applauded. "That elderly gentleman is alive because of her!" someone in the crowd shouted. "That nurse is a hero!" Others in the group muttered their agreement.

'I'm a nurse," exclaimed a voice. "Can I help?"

The man sat up groggily. "What happened?" he asked.

"You fainted," Cherry told him authoritatively. "I'm a nurse."

He blinked a couple of times as if to clear his head and then glanced about, embarrassed. "I must have had a few too many
highballs on the flight from Washington. Please don't tell anyone about this," he pleaded, getting to his feet. Then, without
even saying thank you, he picked up his suitcase and darted off into the crowd.

"What a strange elderly gentleman!" observed Cherry.

"Yes," I agreed.

We exited the airport, and I reached into my purse for cab fare, anxious to part ways with Nurse Ames.

"You'll never get a cab!" Cherry scolded. "They always pick up the servicemen first. Why don't you let me give you a ride?"

I stole a look at my black-haired companion. While the notion of spending time with Cherry gave me pause, I thought that carpooling
was the least I could do for the war effort, so I agreed.

Cherry had a canary yellow 1939 Plymouth convertible, which she drove at an alarming speed toward my hotel. She had graduated
from nursing school only the year before and was still very much delighted with her accomplishment. "Nursing is the most rewarding
of all professions for women," she informed me. "And frequently the most romantic and exciting."

"It must take a special kind of person," I commented, imagining a life of making beds and emptying bedpans.

We passed small adobe-style houses and Spanish-style architecture as well as modern sandstone office buildings. Even then
the air hung heavy with haze, and the city seemed to shimmer with heat. I had to squint to see the low hills that squatted
to the north and east.

Cherry yammered happily about her most recent doctor crush and spoke animatedly about the Brown Derby and other city hotspots
that she frequented with her fast nurse friends. She had been stationed in Los Angeles for five months and found it far preferable
to her hometown of Hilton, Illinois.

I suppose I told her about my missing mother in an effort to get a word in edgewise. I immediately wished that I hadn't as
she became convinced that she could be of help.