Perfect Plot (13 page)

She got to her feet and examined her space more carefully. Aside from the cage, there was nothing in the room except a wooden folding chair. On the wall next to the door, just out of reach, were two electrical switches, one black and one bright red. The lock on the cage door was almost certainly pickproof.

Looking down, she saw that her shoulder bag was lying on the floor of the cage. That must have been what was digging into her back. She opened it, hoping to find something she could use to escape. There was only her heavy rubber flashlight and George's tape recorder.

Nancy's heart caught in her throat as a key scraped at the lock of the door. Whatever he planned to do with her, Nancy was determined to leave evidence behind. She thumbed the tiny volume wheel of the recorder to the maximum setting and pressed the red Record button. A second later, the door swung open.

“George!” Nancy called. A feeling of dread welled inside her as George stumbled forward,
nearly falling. Patrick was right behind her, holding her arm in a hammerlock.

“Nancy? What—” George broke off as Patrick shoved the outer door closed with his foot and unlocked the cage. He pushed George inside.

“Welcome, ladies,” he said, mocking them.

“What's going on?” George demanded. “Why did you bring us here? Unlock that door, Patrick!”

“Oh, I'm afraid I can't do that,” he replied. “I'm not here at all, you see. Famed teen detective Nancy Drew and her faithful sidekick George Fayne went exploring the secret passages of Mystery Mansion on their own. They'd been warned that there were hidden dangers, but the daring sleuths didn't pay any attention. It's a sad story, but maybe it will keep others from making the same fatal mistake.”

George ignored him as she spoke to Nancy. “Are you all right?”

Nancy nodded. George went on in a rush, “We were playing tennis, and the balls were dead, so he went up to his room to get a can of new ones. He was gone a long time, and when he came back, he said that you found something I had to come see right away. He took me down a hidden ladder in the summerhouse, into a tunnel. We walked for a while, then he suddenly twisted my arm, opened a door, and shoved me in here. What's going on?”

“He killed Maxine,” Nancy replied. “When he found me in his room, he must have known I figured it out. He choked me until I passed out, then brought me down here. I guess he was afraid that you knew what I did, too.”

“Please go on,” Patrick said, sitting down on the folding chair and tilting it up on its back legs.

Anything to stall for time, Nancy thought. Aloud she said, “We made one big mistake. We thought that Maxine was killed to keep her from telling what she knew about the theft of the figurines.” Nancy pitched her voice in the direction of the concealed tape recorder in her purse on the floor. “But what she discovered was a much more deadly secret. She found out that Patrick had murdered his uncle, and that Dorothea's last book,
The Crooked Heart,
was a detailed account of how he did it.”

Patrick sprang to his feet. The chair teetered and fell over sideways. “How do you know that?” he demanded angrily. “I burned the only copy of that book!”

“I won't tell you how I know,” Nancy said coolly. “And I won't tell you who else knows.”

“You just signed your own death warrant,” Patrick growled.

“So Patrick used Erika's scarf to frame her?” George asked, thinking out loud.

“I had to frame someone,” Patrick said. “On Friday night Maxine told me about Aunt Dotty's
book and strongly suggested that I leave the country. She made it clear that if I stayed, she'd make life hard for me.”

So
that
was the conversation they'd heard through the vent, Nancy now knew.

“I had to silence her,” Patrick continued, “but it had to be some way that couldn't be traced back to me. I didn't have enough time to hot-wire her shower.”

“Is that how you murdered your uncle?” Nancy asked. “By electrocuting him in the shower?”

“Of course,” Patrick replied. “It looked exactly like a heart attack. I still don't understand how Aunt Dotty caught on.”

“It's just the sort of device a mystery writer like her would think of—the undetectable murder weapon,” Nancy said.

“What about Maxine?” George insisted.

Patrick gave a self-satisfied smile. “I was lucky. There I was, jogging around the grounds, to give myself an alibi, and I ran straight into Erika. Everything in her bag went flying. And what do you suppose was in there?”

“The only copy of your aunt's book,” said Nancy.

“Exactly. Well, I understood at once. Maxine would never have lent the manuscript to Erika, which meant Erika must have gone to Maxine's room and taken it. Her scarf had fallen out of her bag, too, and I tucked it under my jacket. Then I
ducked into the passages, made my way to Maxine's room, and—”

He raised his two fists to throat level and pulled them apart sharply.

Nancy's stomach lurched. She'd faced dangerous criminals in the past, but she couldn't help being affected by Patrick's chilling, deadly tone.

“Then you must have gone to Erika's room, taken the manuscript, and destroyed it?” she asked. She had to keep him talking until she could figure a way out of there!

“Exactly,” Patrick said proudly. “I didn't even stop to read it. It's a pity, in a way. I mean, how many people have been the main character of a book by a famous author?”

“Try Jack the Ripper,” George said, shaking her head in disgust.

Patrick's nostrils widened with rage. He took a quick step toward the cage door, then seemed to think better of it. “There's no point in dragging this out,” he said, his voice still calm. “Nobody's going to rescue you. Nobody even knows this room is here. The police will have to search a long time before they discover your tragic fate.”

He broke into a laugh that jarred Nancy.

“That was you in the tunnel last night, wasn't it?” she demanded. “You followed me from the party to the summerhouse and down into the passages. Why?”

Patrick shrugged his shoulders. “Call it curiosity.
I couldn't resist the chance to put a little scare into you. I enjoyed that.”

“I bet you love pulling the wings off flies, too,” George said. “I'm glad your aunt realized the kind of monster you are, in time to change her will.”

For a brief moment Patrick's mask slipped again, showing the blind rage behind it.

“Oh, that!” he scoffed. “It's only money. And anyway, I'm working on a few ideas for recovering my rightful share. I wish you could be around to see how clever I am, but that's really not possible, I'm afraid.”

Patrick took a step backward, toward the door of the little room. “From what I hear, you two have been in some tight spots together,” he said. “But I guarantee that this one will be your last.”

Laughing still, he reached over and flipped the red switch. From somewhere came a low hum, followed by a screeching metallic noise.

“Nancy!” George cried, grabbing her shoulder. “The side of the cage—it's moving this way! It's going to crush us!”

“ 'Bye, girls,” Patrick said from the doorway. “Have a nice day!”

Even after the door slammed shut, they could hear his laughter echoing in the passage.

N
ANCY AND
G
EORGE
could only stare at the slowly approaching wall of steel bars.

“This is just like what happened to Amelia at the end of
The Deadly Chamber!”
George said, her fear obvious in the shakiness of her voice.

“How did Amelia escape?” Nancy asked. “Maybe it'll work for us, too.”

George shook her head. “Roderick Moore, the dashing highwayman who was reformed by his love for her, came to her rescue. I don't think we can count on anything like that.”

“Come on, we've got to try to stop it,” Nancy said. She planted her feet firmly, grabbed two bars of the moving wall, and shoved with all her strength. Next to her, George did the same.

It took only a few seconds to realize they were
wasting their energy. The wall had already moved over a foot toward them, leaving only about eight feet of cage for the girls.

“We've got to do something!” George said urgently. “What if we pushed something down into the track the wall is riding in? What's in your shoulder bag?”

Nancy quickly retrieved it from the floor. “Your cassette player and the flashlight from our room,” she replied.

“Could we wedge the flashlight between the bars somehow?”

“Great idea!” Nancy exclaimed. She thrust the flashlight into the gap between two bars on the long side of the cage, just an inch from the moving wall. She held it in place until the steel frame of the moving wall met it. Then she stepped back, holding her breath.

A moment later the wall rolled right over the flashlight, crushing it. With a clatter, the flashlight fell to the floor.

“Nancy, it's hopeless!” George exclaimed. “There's no way we can stop that wall!”

Nancy's eyes moved frantically around the room. “Wait, I have an idea,” she announced.

She grabbed the ruined flashlight, detached the headphones from George's tape player, and tied the thin headphone cord tightly around the flashlight. Thrusting her arm through the bars as far as she could reach, she set the flashlight swinging
like a pendulum. It flew out in wider and wider arcs as Nancy aimed it at the red switch on the opposite wall, some five feet away.

“You almost got it!” George said, encouraging her.

Nancy strained, reaching her arm out as far as she could, but it was useless. At her farthest reach, she was still six inches short of hitting the switch.

“I'm sorry, George,” she said dejectedly, reeling in the cord.

George glanced at the approaching wall, which was now about four feet from them. “How much longer do you think  . . . ?”

“Five minutes, at the most,” Nancy replied, studying the wall's progress. “The one thing I'm glad about is that we got Patrick's confession on tape. The police will find it when they find us. He won't get away with his crimes.”

“I'm glad to hear that,” George said dryly. “But I'd rather be around to see it.”

“Me, too. But—” Nancy tossed the wrecked flashlight up and down in her hand. Suddenly her body stiffened. “Cross your fingers, George!” she exclaimed. “We haven't run out of hope yet!”

Once more she unwound the cord from around the flashlight, thrust it through the bars, and started swinging it. This time, she didn't aim it at the switch on the wall. Instead, she angled it
toward the folding chair that Patrick had knocked over.

“If I can just snare the chair and pull it within reach, I might be able to throw it at the switch to turn it off,” she explained.

George was dubious, but said nothing while Nancy swung the flashlight.

Sweat beaded on Nancy's brow as she swung the flashlight, trying to hook it around the top of the chair. Twice, the flashlight hit the chair and bounced off. The third time, it missed altogether.

“Hurry, Nancy,” George said, clutching the bars next to Nancy. “Hurry!”

Nancy didn't need to be told. The moving wall was already beginning to nudge her shoulder. She reeled in the cord and swung the flashlight again, giving it an extra flick of the wrist. The flashlight soared upward, stopped with a jerk in midair as it reached the end of the cord, and fell straight down on the far side of the chair's back leg. Nancy let out her breath with a loud whoosh.

Slowly and steadily she pulled on the cord, so that the flashlight snagged on the chair leg. Then she pulled it across the floor toward them. Finally it was close enough for her to grab.

“Yes!” Nancy crowed. She grabbed a leg in each hand and stood up, lifting the chair until the back almost touched the ceiling. Then she swung it in a downward arc, aiming at the power switch.

There was a loud crash, and then silence. The scraping noise of the advancing bars had stopped.

“Nancy, you did it!” George shouted. She squeezed around the now narrow cage to give Nancy a big hug.

Nancy's whole body sagged with relief. She opened her clenched fists and let the folding chair crash to the floor.

“That was close,” she said. “Much too close.”

“But you did it!” George repeated. “You were terrific!”

“Thanks,” Nancy said, her mind already racing ahead. “I don't see any obvious way out of this cage, do you?”

“What about picking the lock?”

“I don't think so,” Nancy said. “I didn't bring my lock picking set with me, and we don't have anything else to use,”

“This is ridiculous!” George said, hitting the bars in frustration. “There
must
be a way out of here.”