Mystery of the Glowing Eye (6 page)

He remarked, “These very faint old ones and the newly made group are the same.”

“Does that mean,” Nancy asked, “that the person responsible for the theft is well acquainted with this lab?”

The officer was inclined to think so. “I’ll see if the college has the fingerprints of everyone using this laboratory.”

Professor Titus spoke up. “That has never been required,” he said. “I am afraid you’ll have to look elsewhere for identification.”

Nancy was sorry to hear this. She wanted to mention Crosson’s name because in her own mind she felt sure that he had burglarized the lab. But on the other hand, why would he rob the place when he could work there? She decided to say nothing yet to the police.

“Perhaps Crosson has gone away for good,” the young detective said to herself.

She asked Professor Titus if it would be all right for her to look around.

“Yes, indeed,” he said.

The three girls walked about slowly, examining the long worktables, some with sinks, others with electric outlets. Against one wall were computers of various sizes. The electronic equipment seemed complicated.

“This place is like a maze,” she thought.

Idly Nancy wandered over to a metal file cabinet which stood by itself on one side of the room. “I think I’ll just peek inside. Maybe I can pick up some information to help solve this case.”

She pulled open the top drawer and found it filled with books. They were of a technical and specialized nature and Nancy doubted that they would lend a clue.

“I’ll look at them later,” she decided, closing the drawer.

Next she drew out the large second drawer. Before Nancy had a chance to find out what it contained, there was a sudden explosion inside the drawer. It tore the file cabinet apart.

The force knocked Nancy against the opposite wall, but fortunately she was not hit by any of the flying debris. The others in the room rushed over to see if she was all right.

“Nancy!” Bess cried out.

“I’m okay,” the stunned girl answered shakily. “I must have triggered off a bomb.”

As George glanced toward the wreck, she yelled, “Fire! The papers are on fire!”

Professor Titus had rushed to a nearby extinguisher and told the others to get another from the outer office. The flaming papers crackled and sent up greenish smoke. The two extinguishers failed to douse the flames.

“Notify the fire department!” Professor Titus shouted, and George dashed to the office phone to put in the call.

The odor from the burning contents of the cabinet became intolerable. Everyone was forced to leave and the door was closed. Professor Titus suddenly recalled that there was a manual sprinkler system in the ceiling of the lab. He turned two metal wheels on the wall, then opened the lab door a crack and peered in. Water was streaming down. By the time the firemen arrived, the blaze had been extinguished.

“I guess our equipment isn’t needed,” said one of the men with a smile, “but we’ll investigate the cause of the fire.”

Professor Titus looked a little sheepish. “I only remembered about the overhead sprinkler system after we called you,” he said. “What I think we do need here is an inspection by the police bomb squad.” He told about the explosion in the file cabinet, and the fire captain in charge telephoned at once to the head of the bomb squad.

Nancy remarked to the other girls, “If there was anything important in the file, it’s no good to us now.”

George replied, “I guess that’s the way the burglar planned it.”

Nancy turned to Professor Titus. “Please tell me all you know about Zapp Crosson.”

“Actually I know very little,” he replied. “Why? Do you—?” When the young detective did not offer to explain her interest in the graduate student, Professor Titus went on, “The young man was secretive and uncommunicative. Several times I tried to engage him in conversation, but all he ever told me was that his parents were foreign and he had had part of his education in Europe.”

Nancy said she understood that Crosson worked next to Ned in the lab.

“Yes,” Professor Titus said, “and he often assisted Ned, mostly when no regular classes were being held in the lab or when no other students were working there on experiments.”

At once Nancy thought, “Here’s a clue!” She wondered if Ned was doing original experiments. Was Crosson helping him or only being an inquisitive bystander?

At that moment two fully equipped representatives from the police bomb squad arrived. They entered the soaking wet lab and checked every inch of its walls and floor to be sure that no other bombs had been planted.

By this time the rank odor which had accompanied the fire had vanished up the ventilator and the fire captain declared the room was now safe to enter.

“I’d like to take a look around the place again,” Nancy told the professor.

“Go ahead,” he said. He introduced her to the bomb squad men and said she was an amateur detective. “But her methods seem very professional,” he added with a smile.

“Then we would be glad for any help you can give us,” one member of the squad said. “I’m Jake Reilly.”

Nancy grinned. “Thank you for the compliment,” she said. “I’m sure I can’t tell you well-trained men anything you wouldn’t be able to find out yourselves.”

Professor Titus spoke up quickly. With a grin he said, “The police have not yet found our students Ned Nickerson and Zapp Crosson. Miss Drew, on the other hand, has uncovered several leads.”

The men were very much interested. “Can you tell us about any of them?” Reilly asked the young detective.

Nancy took a deep breath before answering. “I’m afraid Professor Titus is exaggerating about my discoveries. I became involved in the case because of a strangely worded message I received in a robot copter. Actually it was a warning to me to beware of Cyclops.”

“Cyclops?” Reilly repeated. “What is that?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Nancy revealed.

She changed the subject so that she would not be questioned any further. “I’d like to continue what I was doing before the explosion, if it’s all right.”

“Go ahead,” Reilly replied.

Nancy walked off, scanning the littered floor. Suddenly in one corner she noticed a giant-sized glass eye. Her heart pounding with excitement, she hurried toward it. The object might be a link to the intriguing eye at the Anderson Museum! Although this eye was not glowing, she asked Reilly if it had been tested for radioactivity.

“It has none,” he reported.

Nancy picked up the glass eye. Upon close inspection she discovered that the glass was a lid over a painted eye. She lifted the lid and studied the eye. Was it hiding something beneath? A small computer perhaps? She gazed at it a long time, then closed the lid.

“Professor Titus, do you know anything about this?” Nancy asked.

“Never saw it before.”

“How about the glowing eye at the Anderson Museum?” the young detective queried.

“I don’t know anything about it.”

Nancy thought this was strange since she had been told the eye belonged to Emerson’s science department, and students from there were in charge of it.

Suddenly the eye began to quiver in Nancy’s hand. The catch had become unfastened. Before she could close it, a voice from inside the gadget said, “Don’t touch me! I am the deadly Cyclops!”

The young detective quickly closed the lid and laid the eye back on the floor. The voice stopped speaking.

“Let me see it,” Reilly said in bewilderment.

Nancy handed it to him and in a few seconds the message was repeated. Reilly closed the lid and the voice stopped.

“This will bear closer investigation,” he said. “I’ll take it along. I don’t quite trust the mechanism inside. Possibly it could trigger another explosion—if the person handling it does not obey. Girls, you’d better leave the lab at once to avoid any further danger! Hurry!”

THE three girls returned to the fraternity house. It was nearly lunchtime and Burt and Dave had come in.

“Well, how did the three detectives make out this morning?” Burt asked. “Did you uncover Cyclops?”

“No, but we heard from him,” George replied with a mysterious air.

“What!” Dave exclaimed.

Little by little the events of the morning in the lab were unfolded. Burt and Dave stared in astonishment.

“A bomb explosion!” Burt gasped. “You’re lucky you weren’t injured. So you think maybe Crosson was hiding something that he didn’t want anybody to see. What could it have been?”

Nancy said, “Plans and perhaps drawings for some experiment on which he was working.” Suddenly she stopped speaking and stared into space.

Then she went on, “I suspect that Crosson was trying to learn something from Ned, which I’m sure he wouldn’t reveal, so Crosson either stole it or was trying to. That file cabinet may even have contained some of Ned’s work that Crosson didn’t know about. It would be a shame if it’s ruined.”

The conversation was interrupted by a student who said there was a telephone call for Nancy Drew. She went off to answer it and found that an agent from the FBI was on the line.

“The police asked the Bureau to keep you advised of any new developments concerning Ned Nickerson,” the man said. “I regret that so far we have no trace of either him or Zapp Crosson.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Nancy replied. “My friends and I haven’t had any luck either, but we’re continuing our search.”

The agent said that two FBI men were coming to investigate Ned’s college room. “We’ll be there in about two hours. Will you try to meet us at the fraternity house?”

Nancy said she would be glad to and was looking forward to the men’s report.

In the meantime she and her friends had lunch. Burt and Dave had to leave directly afterward to attend more lectures.

“Will it be all right for Bess and George and me to go to Ned’s room to watch the FBI men work?” Nancy asked the boys.

Burt
grinned. “If the agents have no objection, I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t watch. But be sure you ask for identification when the men arrive. We don’t want any impostors going through Ned’s personal belongings.”

Nancy nodded, then smiled. “Maybe by tonight we’ll have another surprise for you.”

The boys went off. Soon two men came to the house and asked for Nancy. After they had shown identification, she led them upstairs. George and Bess followed.

A sudden wave of panic came over Nancy. Would Ned ever return to this room?

“He absolutely must,”
she said to herself.

The FBI
agents were very thorough. They searched every inch of the room. Finally one of the men began to open the desk drawers. He called the girls’ attention to the fact that there was nothing in them.

“That’s unusual for a college student,” he remarked.

George spoke up. “Maybe Ned removed the papers.”

“But why?” Bess asked.

The agent looked up at Nancy. “Perhaps Miss Drew has an answer.”

“I can make a guess,” Nancy replied. “Did you know that there had been a burglary in one of the labs? A great deal of equipment was taken. Isn’t it possible the same burglar came here to steal some science papers that belonged to Ned?”

“Very good reasoning,” the agent said. Then he picked up a small paper which had lain upside down in the drawer. “This is the only thing in here, but it looks interesting,” he added, turning it right side up. He handled it carefully so as not to smudge any fingerprints that might be on it.

The others peered over his shoulder. Someone had drawn a sketch of an oversized eve. Under it were the letters

Everyone stared at the paper and Bess murmured, “That awful eye again!”

The agent turned to his companion. “Do you know what this says?”

“Yes,” the other man replied. “It’s Greek. I studied Greek at school. These letters spell the word Cyclops.”

Hearing this, Bess gave another little cry. “That’s the second time today we’ve come across Cyclops,” she told the agents.

Nancy informed the men that Ned Nickerson had not studied Greek so she was inclined to think that someone else had made the drawing.

Everyone started conjecturing about who had left it. The burglar? Another student? A professor? Nancy, however, was convinced that Crosson had given it to Ned or placed it in his room as a warning.

No one had any answers to the questions and the FBI agents admitted there was nothing else in the room to supply a clue. “We’ll take this paper along,” one of them said, “and have the fingerprints on it analyzed.”

The group went downstairs and in a few minutes the agents said good-by. They promised to communicate with Nancy if anything of importance came of their tests.

The three girls returned to the guest room and sat down to talk. “It seems to me,” said Bess, “that things are getting to be more of a mess instead of being straightened out.”