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Detectives Unite!Frank and Joe were equally surprised.
"Nancy!" Frank finally exclaimed after a long pause. "What brings you to New York?"
"The investigation, of course!" Nancy answered, a smile coming up on her face. "I didn't know that your friend was Frank and Joe's aunt, Mrs. Higgins!"
Mrs. Higgins laughed. "I forgot to mention that Gertrude Hardy introduced me to these two young sleuths."
After a few minutes at the front porch talking about their past cases, Frank and Joe decided to get back on the present case.
"By the way, what was stolen?" Nancy asked Mrs. Higgins.
Mrs. Higgins sighed. "Well, there is a snobby neighbor Catalina Dilworth. She was gone for a few days with her husband, and when she came back, her cherished treasure, the Vase of Norma was gone!"
"Vase of Norma?" Frank asked.
"I'm not really sure what is going on here, but the moment she found it gone, she noticed that the window was not locked. When she looked out the window, she saw a trail of footprints leading from the window to the window of our house."
Nancy thought for a moment. "Could it be possible for someone to just break into the house and leave footprints and then climb back up the roof?"
Mrs. Higgins shook her head. "No. The police said that there wasn't any footprint on the roof. It's really hard to explain. Please come outside. This happened two days ago, so the footprints are still barely visible."
With those words, Mrs. Higgins led the three detectives to the back of the house. There was a huge mansion right behind Bailey's residence. Nancy figured out that the house must have been Mrs. Dilworth's.
"Well, here are the footprints. The police investigated and said that all the footprints came from one pair of shoes."
Nancy looked at the footprints. They were barely visible.
"That day, it was raining all morning, so the footprints were made very clearly. You might want to ask Catalina about this: she and her husband found the footprints after coming home from Vegas. Oh, before I forget, here are the photos taken by the police when they came here."
Mrs. Higgins handed Nancy a bunch of photographs of the footprints. As Mrs. Higgins said, they were made by one pair of shoes, and they weren't very big. The feet of a girl of eighteen could fit in the shoes easily and quite comfortably.
Joe and Frank also looked at the footprints and the ones in the photographs. Joe said as he handed them to Frank: "I think the best thing to do is as this lady about what she had seen when she came back."
Frank nodded. "Good idea." He then turned to Nancy. "What about you, Nancy? Do you want to come with us to investigate?"
Nancy smiled. "Of course. It's been so long since we last investigated together."
Bess and George, however, refused to go. "Three detectives are enough for one robbery case. I think Bess and I will go around the city for some spots to visit," George said. "And don't hesitate to ask for help, Nancy."
Nodding, Nancy asked. "So will you girls be back by dinner?"
"Sure, Nance," Bess answered. "See you sleuths in dinnertime, okay?"
With a wave of hand, Bess and George went back in the house. Frank, Joe, and Nancy headed for the Dilworths' mansion.
As Frank rang the doorbell, a car entered the garage. A woman who was as tall as Frank got out and walked to the three strangers. "Well, can I help you?" she asked in a gruff voice.
"Yes. We are investigating the robbery that happened here. You are Mrs. Dilworth, I presume?" Joe said.
"If I'm not Catalina Walker Dilworth, then I don't know who I am. Please come in. I'd like to prove that filthy girl next door guilty, after all."
The woman's attitude angered Nancy. She just wanted to walk away but knew she needed to get information that could prove her friend innocent.
The three young detectives were led to a wide living room with a grand piano, a table, and two sofas. The lady, who was about thirty years of age, asked them to sit down, so they did. After ordering the maid to get the guests something to drink, Mrs. Dilworth sat down and asked for what they wanted to know.
"We wanted to know when you came back and how you found the footprints," Frank began.
"Oh, that. John and I came back from Las Vegas, and it was about ten in the morning when we got to the front yard. We took a taxi home, of course. When I opened the door and went inside with the suitcases, I heard something shatter downstairs. John and I ran to the living room and saw the figure in front of the piano over there, shattering the glass to get our precious Vase of Norma! I screamed. He put the vase into a duffel bag he carried and fled. John ran after him.
"The person wore black sweatshirt, black pants, black ski mask, and brown shoes. He ran to the direction of the kitchen and used the staircase to get to the third floor."
As Mrs. Dilworth took a breath, the maid came in with a plate with four cups of hot chocolate. She set the cups down wordlessly and went back into the kitchen. Mrs. Dilworth took a sip out of the cup. She then continued talking.
"John and I ran after him, of course. When he ran into one of the rooms that led to a balcony, he locked the door behind him. Since I carried the master key that would open any door in the house, I opened the door. We then noticed that the thief with the vase was gone!
"Noticing that the window to the balcony was open, we ran to the balcony and looking down onto the ground. There, we saw the footprints leading to and from this house! We figured that the thief must have jumped down onto the ground and went to the direction of the house, so we ran back to the first floor and called the police using the phone in the kitchen. After the longest five minutes of my life, the police finally came and took the place apart looking for the fingerprints and footprints and whatever they thought that could have come from the thief."
"And it was raining the whole time, am I correct?" Frank asked.
The wealthy lady nodded. "It was raining, fortunately, so we could spot the footprints clearly. After we told the police what we saw, they went to that house and found a girl in the residence. I think her name was Reilly or something."
"Bailey," Nancy corrected the woman. "Anyway, thank you for your time. Would you mind if we look around the scene of the crime?"
"Not at all. Please find useful evidences to prove that girl guilty!" Nearly spitting the last word out, Mrs. Dilworth went back into the kitchen and to the second floor.
"That nerve of hers to call my friend a burglar!" Nancy said under her breath. Then, she went out with Frank and Joe to look at the footprints.
"This looks interesting," Frank said. "Don't you see something weird in here, Joe?"
"Yeah," Joe said. "If the criminal wore black from head to toe, then why didn't he wear black shoes instead of brown ones?"
"That's not the case, Joe," Frank said. "It's—"
"—the reason the burglar had to run all the way up to the third floor and then jump down onto the ground." Nancy finished the sentence for Frank. "Right?"
Frank nodded. "There must be a reason to why he had to go to third floor."
"And the second thing," Nancy mentioned. "Why did the burglar rob the house on that day? If the Dilworths were on vacation, the best time would be right after they took off. At least, I would have done so. Seeing that he also knew where the stairs were also confuses me."
Nodding in agreement, Frank continued Nancy's thought. "It's pretty unnatural to have stairs in the dining room. If the thief were rushing to get out, the best way would be through the back door in the kitchen. I went over there once and noticed the door. It didn't need a key to open, and anyone from the inside could have gotten out easily."
"But he had to turn around and go up the stairs and go to the third floor," Joe joined in. "This really is weird. I wonder if the thief planned this out from the beginning."
The girl detective agreed. "This is a planned crime, all right. What I don't get is why the thief got this vase. It seems like the vase couldn't have been seen from anyone passing by." She went inside and found Mrs. Dilworth sitting on the sofa.
"Mrs. Dilworth," she asked, "have you mentioned the vase to anyone in particular?"
"Heavens, no!" Mrs. Dilworth shouted. "I haven't shown it to or told anybody. This was a gift from my husband's cousin in Scotland. It was a family treasure, as John said. I got it just ten days ago. John and I went on vacation for seven days, so we got it three days before we went on vacation. No guest came since the Thanksgiving holiday, so I'm sure nobody knows it's even here!"
Nancy was perplexed. It was not known to public, so how did the thief know that Mrs. Dilworth had the vase? And why did the thief leave the footprints behind, letting her believe that Bailey was the burglar, when she obviously was not?
While Nancy was asking Mrs. Dilworth questions, the Hardys were looking down at the footprints. "Hey, Joe," Frank whispered to his brother. "Look at this."
Frank held out something that was in one of the footprints.
"Splinter?" Joe asked. He looked at the small piece of broken wood and said, "That looks new. I'll bet it broke off something when the robber tried to make his getaway."
"What I'm concerned with more is this thing on the splinter," Frank said, pointing to the tip of the splinter.
Joe took out his magnifying class. "This looks like…white paint."
Nodding, Frank went on, "Exactly. Why is there white paint on this splinter? And where did the splinter come from? Those questions can be answered pretty quickly."
"The balcony!" Joe nearly shouted, since he was excited he had made a discovery. "Let's go and investigate!"
Nancy looked down at her watch. It was nearly three o'clock. She had investigated for nearly an hour. No wonder her eyes were sore. She needed a break.
The girl sleuth sat down for a moment and started thinking about the case. She needed to take a rest if she wanted her mind to solve this mystery.
Deciding that a cup of cold drink would do best, Nancy got up from the sofa and went outside. The pre-Christmas vacation to New York was nice, but she needed to enjoy herself, not just work, work, and work.
"After all, Dad once told me…" Nancy thought, then stopped. There was one question she had not heard answered: where was her father?
"Dad told me he was on a case, but he never mentioned where." Nancy thought about the conversation with her father the previous day:
"Big Apple! Why, that's a strange coincidence! I happen to be going there tomorrow as well. A client of mine says that an accident happened in a theater and the person who avoided the falling sandbag is now suing the owner. I am there to defend the owner of the theater, whose name is Henry Saraland."
The name of the owner was Henry Saraland! And he owned a theater her in New York. But Nancy never asked her father specifically where the theater was.
"Oh, well, Dad can handle the case himself," Nancy told herself.
As Nancy was walking down the sidewalk, she suddenly had a weird sensation, like someone was staring at her.
Nervous, Nancy took out her makeup kit and opened up the mirror. As she looked into her reflection, she saw something else behind her.
Just about five yards behind was a man who wore black mask, black jacket, black pants, and a cold stare, following her.
