Read Online The Scarlet Slipper Mystery by Carolyn Keene - Free Book Online Page B

It was Mr. Drew, calling from his office.
    “I have some interesting news for you,” he said, “but I’d rather not give it to you over the telephone. I suggest you come down here at once.”
    Nancy lost no time in getting to her father’s office. He closed the door as she sat down in his private study.
    “What is it?” Nancy asked eagerly.
    “Tomas Renee has disappeared. And he’s wanted by the French police!”
    Mr. Drew explained that up to six months before, the Renees had lived in a villa outside Paris. Then suddenly they had vanished.
    “But,” said the lawyer, “it seems that Mr. Renee had some strange dealings with various people and is liable to imprisonment.”
    “No wonder he disappeared,” said Nancy. “I wonder if he is still in France.”
    “That’s hard to say,” her father answered. “If he left the country, it must have been under an assumed name.”
    “Then the immigration authorities can’t help us?”
    “I’ve spoken with them,” said Mr. Drew. “If Tomas Renee came to the United States, it was not under the names of Renee, Judson, or Bull. No one from France has arrived under those names during the past year and a half.”
    Nancy sighed. “All our facts are on the negative side, Dad. Let’s try a new angle.”
    “What?”
    “Those pictures that Henri painted may be an important clue,” Nancy pointed out. “If Renee was dishonest, his story about the race among art dealers probably was false. And in the light of what’s been happening to the Fontaines, there’s a chance that some of the pictures may be in this country—possibly even in River Heights!”
    “You think there is some connection between the paintings and the enemies of the Centrovian underground?”
    “Perhaps.”
    Mr. Drew looked thoughtful. “Suppose I call the customs office? And then, how about having lunch with me?”
    “Wonderful, Dad. I’ll call Hannah and tell her I won’t be home.”
    Nancy spoke to the housekeeper on a phone in the outer office, while Mr. Drew used his private line to call customs.
    “Oh, Nancy,” Hannah said, “I’m glad you called. Mrs. Parsons was here. She’s terribly upset because Millie Koff didn’t come back. She says the Koffs haven’t returned to the Claymore Hotel.”
    Nancy hung up and dialed the Cliffwood Hotel at once. “Mr. Koff and his daughter checked out yesterday,” the clerk told her. “They left no forwarding address.”
    Nancy was dumfounded. Had she let Mr. Koff deceive her? Was he in league with the Judsons, and maybe with Raymond Bull, and even Renee?
    When Nancy told her father about the Koffs, the lawyer looked grave. “Let’s eat,” he suggested. “Maybe we’ll be brighter after lunch and can figure this out.”
    At the lawyer’s club, Nancy found herself the center of attention. Her father’s friends enjoyed exchanging sallies with the young detective and trying to stump her on knotty problems. For a time, Nancy nearly forgot her own case.
    Soon after they returned to Mr. Drew’s office, a call came in from the customs office. Mr. Drew told Nancy that all of Henri’s paintings had been shipped to the United States during the past twelve months.
    “The consignor for eleven of them was Tomas Renee. But the twelfth, the one with the scarlet slippers, was sent over by a man signing the name Raoul Amien.”
    “Who received them in the United States?” Nancy asked eagerly.
    “A Pierre Duparc, formerly an art dealer in New York. His whereabouts are unknown.”
    Nancy had a hunch. “Dad, I think this Raoul Amien may be in our vicinity—perhaps using the name Judson. Can we send a cable to Paris to inquire about him?”
    Carson Drew agreed to do so, and Nancy said he would be able to reach her at the dancing school all afternoon.
    When the lawyer returned home that evening, he told his daughter that Raoul Amien had indeed come to the United States. “He married after arriving,” he added.
    “Dad, I think Amien and Renee probably were