CHAPTER XII.

Hidden Notes

BURT and Dave bent over the sending set, trying to figure out how the various gadgets worked.

"This is a complicated one," Dave remarked.

George, who had had a little coaching along these lines from her father, an electronic engineer, made several valuable suggestions.

"Where are the call letters?" she asked.

The young people examined every inch of the set but could find none.

"I wonder whom the kidnapper was calling? Some pal? Or a member of a Cyclops gang?" George asked.

The boys said they wished they knew and went on with their examination, hoping desperately to get the set to respond. Finally they hit the right combination and in a moment Burt's signal was answered.

He said, "Calling from station without call letters. Who are you?"

The listener seemed reluctant to reply and asked, "Why don't you have call letters? Everybody does."

"We're in trouble here. Owner is away. No clue to call letters," Burt told him.

The ham radio operator turned out to be answering from a town not far away.

Burt told him he was calling from a swamp and then said, "There are five of us here. It's near Arbutus. Will you phone the police department and ask if they'll come out here? We've made an important discovery about a missing person."

Nancy stood listening. She began to shake her head to indicate that Burt had told enough. He nodded and put a finger over his lips to indicate he understood.

"Will you please do this for us?" Burt asked the ham. "I'm Burt Eddleton. I attend Emerson College. You can check there if you like."

The man said he would be glad to help and asked, "Where are you?"

Burt gave him directions from Arbutus, then said, "Over."

Nancy and her friends hoped fervently that the ham would not think the message was some kind of a joke and pay no attention to it.

"There's nothing we can do but wait," said Bess with a sigh.

"In the meantime," Nancy spoke up, "we can continue searching this place."

All but Nancy went outside to look for clues. She felt that if Ned had been outdoors, he would have tried to escape and not bothered, or had time, to leave a clue.

"More than likely he was kept in one spot, either chained up or threatened with dire punishment if he tried to get away. We know he used this cot," Nancy thought, gazing at it for a full minute.

She decided to pull the cot apart to see if anything was hidden inside. First she took off two blankets, shook them vigorously, and looked over every inch of them.

She found nothing. Next, Nancy picked up the mattress and laid it on the floor. To her amazement, she saw dozens of small note-pad sheets with Ned's writing on them lying on the springs. Eagerly she picked up one and read the message which looked as if it had been hurriedly scrawled.

There was a date on the paper. The day Ned was kidnapped!

The note said, "Cannot understand why I was kidnapped when Cyclops could have stolen what he wants if he had waited a little longer."

There were other notes written the following day. One read: "Am being pretty well fed and comfortable, but this madman threatens me with a gun whenever I move."

There was a daily series of notes telling of Ned's treatment, how one ankle was chained to the bed, and his captor's endeavors to keep him away from the lab even when he let him get a little exercise.

Nancy came across an entry with no date on it, but the contents were very enlightening. It said that his kidnapper had prepared the robot helicopter for a flight to Nancy Drew's home.

Ned had begged to see the copter and the man had finally consented and taken him outside. "When my captor was not looking I slipped a note to Nancy onto the floor."

Nancy was elated. "That's mystery number one cleared up!" she murmured.

At this point Bess and George came into the cabin to see if Nancy had learned anything. They were astounded at her discovery of the notes.

"It puzzles me," Bess said, "why the name Crosson doesn't appear in any of these notes."

George replied that it could mean the kidnapper was not Crosson after all. "And he never told Ned his name."

Nancy decided to copy the notes in case the police should come and want them. She had just finished when the girls became aware of a whirring sound in the air. Quickly Nancy stuffed both sets of notes into her pocket. Then she restored the bed to its normal look and went outside.

A police helicopter was arriving. As soon as it set down, the young people went over to talk to the men. The ham had done what he had promised!

"Tell us everything that has happened," one of the officers said, after three men had alighted.

As quickly as possible, Nancy gave them the highlights of the story and showed them the notes Ned had written, and her copies of them.

"This looks serious," the captain remarked. "I'll take your copies to turn over to the FBI. If we need the originals, I'll let you know. What's the registration number of the copter?"

Nancy replied, "We didn't see it today. But the one we saw the first time turned out to be a fake."

After hearing the story, two of the three officers decided to stay at the cabin in case the suspected kidnapper returned. The pilot told the young people he would take them to their car and to climb aboard.

In a short time Nancy and her friends were delivered to the automobile. They thanked him and he wished them luck. He warned the young people to be careful in their future sleuthing. "The kidnapper sounds like a bad one." The pilot flew off and Burt took the wheel of Nancy's car.

When they reached the fraternity house, Bess could hardly wait to get under the shower. She had said nothing more about her sudden spill in the swamp, but she felt very itchy.

The other girls washed and changed too, then joined the boys for dinner. When they finished eating, Burt and Dave said that they had to attend a night lecture.

"Sorry not to be here to entertain you girls," Dave said. "But we'll make up for it some time. Promise."

Bess laughed. "I've had enough entertainment for one day! See you when you get back from your lecture."

She and George went off to talk to some of the other boys. Nancy was torn between her desire to stay with them and a sudden feeling of curiosity about Ned's notes. There might be some clues in them which she had not noticed!

In the guest room she sat down and reread the notes, then examined each one through her magnifying gla.s.s. But she could detect no hints to Ned's whereabouts, nor to why he had been kidnapped.