078 The Phantom Of Venice

  Contents

  * * *

  1 Mid-Air Meeting

  2 A Shot in the Dark

  3 The Watcher in the Shadows

  4 Falcon Palace

  5 A Glass Menagerie

  6 Unseen Eyes

  7 Shell Game

  8 A Sinister Sign

  9 Ghost Story

  10 Rendezvous with Danger

  11 Secret Search

  12 Masquerade

  13 Dark Deeds

  14 Game Plan

  15 Stakeout

  16 Night of the Omelet

  1

  Mid-Air Meeting

  The plane lights had been dimmed while the jetliner winged across the Atlantic through the midnight darkness. Nancy Drew had dozed off twice already during the flight from New York, but each time had awakened after only a short nap.

  Why am I so restless tonight? she wondered. It can’t be just the thought of riding in a gondola tomorrow and seeing the sights of Venice!

  The famous young sleuth had been called to Italy to help solve a baffling crime connected with one of her father’s law cases. The prospect was exciting, but Nancy had investigated many other mysteries before, and she was too experienced a traveler not to be able to sleep aboard a plane.

  No, her restlessness tonight, Nancy sensed, had nothing to do with crimes or mysteries, even in glamorous foreign settings. She suspected her unsettled state was an emotional response to a question that had been troubling her ever since her plane took off from Kennedy Airport:

  Am I or am I not in love with Ned Nickerson?

  Recently the two had decided to date other people and cool their own romance, which had been simmering since high school days. Since then, Nancy had had one or two romantic encounters which struck sparks, but Ned remained always in the back of her mind as someone safe and rocklike and comforting—someone she could always count on and turn to, no matter how the shifting winds of fancy might blow.

  Their phone conversation just before she boarded the jetliner seemed to reignite all the feelings they had had for one another when they first met . . . and now, hours later, the warmth of that exchange still glowed in Nancy’s heart.

  Somehow, it seemed, she and Ned would always be on the same wavelength. But was that emotional rapport love?

  She still wasn’t sure . . .

  With a sigh, Nancy flicked on her overhead seat light and glanced at her wristwatch. Almost 12:45. They had been in the air for six hours, with two more to go before landing in Rome.

  Nancy set her watch ahead six hours to Italian time, then picked up the paperback mystery she’d been reading, which had fallen into her lap the last time she dozed off.

  A girl was walking up the aisle. Somewhat taller and slimmer than Nancy, she had straight, pale blond hair and large gray-green eyes, and looked about nineteen or twenty. Seeing a fellow traveler her own age awake, she smiled vaguely in passing.

  Nancy returned the smile and was surprised when the girl stopped. “Mind if I join you?”

  “Not at all. Please do!”

  The other girl dropped into the empty aisle seat beside Nancy. There was something shyly appealing about her manner and appearance, Nancy thought.

  “I expected the plane to be more crowded, didn’t you?” she murmured.

  “Yes, there must have been quite a few cancellations,” said Nancy. “Not that I mind . . . I prefer having a little more elbow room.”

  “Have you done a lot of traveling?”

  “Well, yes . . . a fair amount, I suppose.”

  “I wish I had! This is the first time I’ve ever been so far away from home on my own.”

  Nancy smiled again. “Are you on a vacation tour?” she asked politely.

  “No . . . I wish I were.”

  There was such a sad, pathetic note in the girl’s voice that Nancy immediately regretted having asked. “I—I’m sorry if I reminded you of something unpleasant,” she murmured.

  “You needn’t be. I’d much rather be flying to Italy than staying in New York!”

  Her response sounded defiant. Nancy was intrigued by her sudden change of tone.

  “You live in New York City?” she asked.

  “Yes . . . And you?”

  “In a town you’ve probably never heard of, River Heights.” As she spoke, Nancy found herself wondering about the other girl’s background.

  Her yellow silk shirt and beige designer slacks had obviously come from an expensive boutique, yet the total effect seemed oddly lacking in chic. It was as if the girl hadn’t yet achieved her own distinctive style. The one uniquely personal touch was a flame-colored East Indian kerchief loosely knotted about her throat. It seemed to hint at secret fires within.

  I’ll bet she has plenty of spirit, deep down, Nancy speculated. She just hasn’t learned how to express her real self yet.

  As the thought flickered through her mind, she realized the other girl was studying her closely.

  “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

  Nancy shrugged. “It’s possible.”

  The girl continued observing her for a moment, taking in Nancy’s red-gold hair and vivid sapphire-blue eyes. Then she shifted her glance with a sudden awkward little laugh. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare. It’s just that your face seems awfully familiar. Maybe that’s why I sat down—because I thought we might know each other. My name’s Tara Egan, by the way.”

  The teen from River Heights smiled. “Nice to know you, Tara. I’m Nancy Drew.”

  “Nancy Drew?! . . . Of course! I knew I recognized you. You’re the famous detective who keeps solving all kinds of mysteries!”

  Nancy nodded, slightly embarrassed. “I don’t know about ’famous’. I’ve been lucky enough to unravel a few cases.”

  “I saw you on TV just the other day, in connection with some witchcraft case in England.”

  Nancy nodded again, racking her brain for some polite way to change the subject, as the other girl went on, “And now you’re flying to Italy!”

  “Yes, to meet my father. He’s there on business. Er, whereabouts in Italy are you heading, Tara? Rome?”

  “No, Venice.”

  Nancy smiled. “Well, well—small world! That’s where I’m going, too.”

  “Hey, how about that!” Tara exclaimed. “I wonder if we’ll be traveling together all the way?”

  When they discovered that they were booked on the same connecting flight from Rome to Venice, she was delighted. “Oh, that’s wonderful, Nancy! Suddenly I don’t feel all alone any more.”

  “I’m glad, too, Tara. It’ll be nice having company.”

  The discovery that they would be fellow passengers all the way seemed to inspire Tara Egan to confide in her new friend. She explained that she lived in Manhattan with her mother and her mother’s second husband, in a high-rise condominium overlooking the East River.

  “My stepfather is a real estate broker,” she added. Nancy was surprised at the sudden venom in her voice.

  “You sound as though that’s a crime,” she said gently, smiling to soften her words. “I know several realtors back home who are very nice.”

  “You wouldn’t think my stepfather’s very nice,” Tara retorted. “He’s a slumlord.”

  “You mean he owns rental properties in poor neighborhoods?”

  “Yes—and spends as little as he can to keep the places liveable. But mother thinks he’s wonderful! They were both against my going to Italy. I was shocked, Nancy. I couldn’t believe they’d try to stop me from going over to collect Daddy’s last personal belongings. They said we could simply have them shipped to New York. Isn’t that awful? Imagine not caring enough to go over to find out what happened to him, and how he spent his last da
ys! I told them I was going anyhow—like it or not. I had enough money of my own saved up to pay for the trip, so they finally realized they couldn’t stop me.”

  As Tara paused indignantly for breath, Nancy did her best to sort out what she had been saying. “When did you last see your father?” she asked.

  “About five years ago. He’d just come back to New York from the Far East and he called up—right out of the clear blue sky, you might say. Mom didn’t want to see him, and she wasn’t too crazy about me seeing him, either, but I made such a fuss that she finally had to agree. He took me out to lunch and dinner and a Broadway show, and then the next day we drove down to the Jersey shore and swam and laid around on the sand all afternoon, soaking up sunshine—it was just a terrific day! I loved every minute of it!”

  Tara choked up for a moment, and Nancy saw tears glistening in her eyes. She squeezed the other girl’s hand and said, “Your father spent most of his time out of the country, did he?”

  “Oh, yes! Daddy traveled all over the world. In fact, from what Mom’s told me about him, he always seemed more like an adventurer than an artist, which is what he was supposed to be. He could never bear to be tied down to one spot. That’s what led to their divorce, I guess. He was the art director for an advertising agency when they were first married. But he quit to go paint in Mexico, and after that I guess he never did hold a steady job. He’d sell a few paintings through a gallery and use the money to go off and paint somewhere else. After a while Mom got tired of not having a home of her own.”

  “I can imagine,” Nancy said sympathetically. “Did you hear from him after your parents broke up?”

  “Oh, yes. He’d send me postcards and letters from all over, or copies of travel articles he’d written and illustrated for various magazines. . . . At least he used to. During the last few years, though, I didn’t hear from him very often.”

  Daylight was already visible outside the window, and the plane’s cabin lights had gone on. Nancy opened the curtains to the first rays of morning sunshine. She didn’t mind the fact that she’d probably missed her last chance for a final nap before landing. She wasn’t feeling at all sleepy, and she was too eager for another glimpse of Italy to want to drowse off again. Besides, people and their problems always interested Nancy, and she found Tara Egan’s story genuinely engrossing.

  “Had your father settled in Italy, or was he just visiting there?” she inquired.

  “Oh, he’d been living in Venice for quite a while. He wrote me once that it was the most beautiful city in the world—the perfect place for an artist to live. He wanted me to come and stay with him, but he—well, he never had enough money to send me a plane ticket, I guess, and of course my mother and stepfather would never have dreamed of paying my fare just so I could see him!”

  Again Tara’s voice broke with an edge of bitterness, and again Nancy squeezed her hand.

  “He must have been fairly young,” the titian-haired teen murmured reflectively.

  “Yes, he was in his early forties, just a year older than Mom. He died in an accident. He . . . he drowned in a canal.”

  “Oh, how awful, Tara! I’m so sorry. How on earth did it happen?”

  “We don’t know exactly. In fact we know nothing at all of the circumstances. We were simply notified by a telegram that gave no details—which is another reason why I made up my mind to go over.”

  The stewardesses began to serve breakfast, and the girls’ conversation lagged. When they resumed chatting, Tara deluged the teenage sleuth with questions about her mystery cases.

  Presently the pilot announced over the intercom that they would soon be landing, after which both girls become too excited and absorbed in preparing to disembark to have much time for talking.

  At last the jetliner touched down, and the passengers filed out into a reception lounge at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport. It was jammed with people waiting to greet arriving friends and relatives.

  Lines moved quickly and within minutes after claiming their luggage, the girls cleared Customs. A single skycap in an orange uniform grabbed up both Nancy’s and Tara’s suitcases and led the way past busy airport shops and through a corridor that connected to the domestic flight terminal.

  After less than half an hour’s wait, they were able to board the airliner that would carry them to Venice. As they winged across the Italian boot, Tara fidgeted and chatted in bursts. She seemed to grow more and more ill at ease the closer she came to her destination. Finally she asked, “Will someone be meeting you when we land, Nancy?”

  The strawberry blond shook her head. “No, Dad planned to, but at the last moment a business meeting was scheduled that he can’t avoid.”

  “Then would you come with me?”

  “Of course, if you’d like company.”

  “Oh, I would, Nancy! You see, Daddy wasn’t living by himself in Venice at the time of his accident. He had a—an Italian lady friend.” As she said this, Tara threw a sidelong glance at her companion. When Nancy nodded understandingly, she went on with a forced, nervous laugh. “Now that I’m almost there, I guess I’m a little uptight about meeting people and introducing myself as his daughter!”

  Suddenly Nancy realized that her new friend was on the verge of tears again. She sensed, too, that for Tara, what lay ahead would be almost like attending her father’s funeral.

  “I’ll be glad to come!” she said warmly. “And don’t worry, Tara, you’ll bear up, I’m sure of that. Just think how happy your dad would be to know you’ve come all this way for his sake!”

  This time it was Tara who squeezed Nancy’s hand.

  As their plane circled in for a landing, the scene below was almost like a map. They saw part of the Eastern shore of the Italian boot, bordering the Adriatic Sea. The shoreline was indented by a vast shallow bay, or lagoon. This was protected from the sea by a thin sandy strip of shoal or beachland, called the Lido, which stretched across the mouth of the bay like a chain. Inside this chain, on the blue-green waters of the lagoon, floated the island city of Venice.

  They debarked at Marco Polo Airport just outside the coastal town of Mestre. From here they rode a bus across the double railroad-and-car bridge, which extended out over the lagoon for five miles, to the nearest tip of Venice.

  Thus it was from the bus window that the two girls had their first glimpse of the lovely city rising from the water, the Serenissima, or Most Serene, as Venice was called centuries ago, when she was an independent republic and a great maritime power.

  “Isn’t it beautiful!” said Tara. “Just like all the pictures I’ve ever seen of it. But I still don’t understand why they built Venice on water.”

  “From what I’ve read,” said Nancy, “they hadn’t much choice. Rome was crumbling, and Italy was being invaded by barbarians. The only place people could take refuge was on the marshy little islands out in the lagoon. And their settlement gradually turned into Venice.”

  “When you think of it like that, the result seems almost like magic!”

  The bus left them on the car-landing, called the Piazzale Roma, just across the Grand Canal from the Santa Lucia train station. The place was a beehive of activity. A vaporetto, one of the steam launches that serve as public buses in Venice, was unloading passengers, prior to leaving on a return trip down the canal.

  Tara said that her travel agent, for reasons of economy, had booked her into a pensione, or boarding house, rather than a hotel. “It’s in the San Polo district,” she said, fishing out the address.

  “Oh, good! We’re in San Polo now,” said Nancy. “That’s the first district on the Right Bank of the Grand Canal. We might even be able to walk it from here, if we had no luggage to carry.”

  In the end, the girls hired a gondola, which soon deposited them on the narrow quay in front of a pink-stuccoed house with a sign over the door, Pensione Dandolo.

  The motherly landlady, Signora Dandolo, welcomed her new guest with a warm smile and readily agreed that Nancy could leave her sui
tcases in Tara’s room while the two girls went on to the home of Tara’s late father.

  “Ah, si! That is only a few minutes’ walk from here!” Mrs. Dandolo told them after hearing the address. “My son, Zorzi, will show you the way!”

  The lively ten-year-old proudly escorted the two pretty Americane to their destination, a stately but rather narrow, yellowish-brown building that looked about two centuries old.

  “Grazie tanto, Signorine!” the boy exclaimed when the girls tipped him. “Any time you need a guide, please to call on Zorzi!”

  “We’ll remember!” Nancy promised.

  Inside the vestibule, Tara rang a bell under a small card bearing the name, Sra. Angela Spinelli.

  Moments later, the ring was answered by a Venetian quite different from anyone either girl had expected. Nancy caught her breath and her heart skipped a beat as their eyes met.

  The young man who had just opened the door was, beyond question, the most gorgeous man she had ever seen!

  2

  A Shot in the Dark

  The young man’s hair was dark and curly, his eyes a rich greenish-amber. When he smiled—and he was smiling now as he regarded the two pretty girls standing on the doorstep—he revealed gleaming, even white teeth and a dimple at each corner of his mouth.

  “Si . . . ?”

  His questioning voice as he looked at them sounded, to Nancy’s ears at least, as melodious as Luciano Pavarotti’s. He was not quite as tall as the average movie hero—perhaps five-nine or five-ten, at most—but his slim figure was beautifully proportioned, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, and his chest and bare arms, revealed by his open-necked, short-sleeved knit shirt, were smoothly and gloriously muscled.

  His smile gave way to a throaty chuckle, and Nancy became abruptly and embarrassingly aware that she had been staring at him, and so had her girl friend.

  “Ah, si! Ma certo!” he exclaimed to Tara. “You must be Signorina Egan!”

  “Y-y-yes, I am. And this is my . . . my friend, Nancy Drew.”

  A thrill ran through the teenager from River Heights as his lustrous eyes rested on her—for only a brief moment, but long enough to notice her attractive face and figure.