Foreword: I'm glad to announce that two of my readers have understood and cracked the code! Actually, I must admit, I just copied the method from Dan Brown's Digital Fortress, so it's not actually my original. But the second code which I will introduce in this chapter is my own. The code may seem complex when you look at it, but it actually is not. However, I cannot state the answer to the second code in the next chapter, since I need to continue the story. (And I'm pretty sure you want to read a Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys mystery, not a book filled with codes and meaningless junks.) Making and solving all these codes makes me think of playing the Nancy Drew computer games :-) By the way, if you get the chance, you might want to borrow the CD-ROM from the local libraries (I'm sure they have the Nancy Drew games on their shelves) and spend a few hours divulged in Nancy's mystery! My recommendation is "Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon." It's the newest game and has the Hardy boys in it. But my second favorite is "Treasure in the Royal Tower," which features a creepy (well, not really, but it's really cool) castle in Wisconsin (that was brought from France to US, by the way). It was the first ND game I've ever tried, and I loved it right away! The characters are great, the music is stupendous, and the setting is quite mysterious. So, if you have a few hours to spare, try them!

Oh, I almost forgot...please REVIEW!

Chapter 8

Storm Returns

Nancy tried the clue for about half an hour.

"Could it be like the code that I cracked when Frank, Joe, George, Ned, and I were in Miami?" she murmured. She remembered the second case she worked with the Hardys, titled Ocean of Deceit. In that mystery, she and the other detectives came across a cryptic message that was as baffling as this one. However, when she tried that format, it didn't work. The format which she tried was reading every other letter in the sentence.

"CHT, LIH, UTE, EEE, IPN, SIT… No, that doesn't work. What about the other way? OLR, NLA, TAN, HRC, EAE, WTS… That doesn't work, either. The only words that I can distinguish are Ute, sit, and tan. And they don't seem to mean anything, either."

She scratched her titian-blonde head. "So how should I do it?"

After a while, she thought of something. "Wait a minute… If I take the first letters of each group, I get the letters CLUEIS. That's 'Clue is'! I get it! I'm supposed to write each of the sequence vertically, starting from the left side!"

She got started. First, she wrote down COHLTR vertically on her sheet of paper. Then, right next to it, she wrote down LNILHA. Then, UTTAEN, and so on. When she was done, the paper looked like this:

CLUEIS
ONTHEW
HITEPI
LLARAT
THEENT
RANCES

Then, when she was finished, she grinned.

"That's it," she muttered happily. She read the message from left to right: "'Clue is on the white pillar at the entrances.'"

Ned, Frank, and Callie looked up from their laptop, "Did you crack the code?" asked Frank.

Nancy nodded. "I sure did." She then told them of her accomplishment. Ned nodded as he listened to her explanations.

"Great job, Nance!" he said with a smile. "You're the smartest code cracker I've ever seen!"

Nancy blushed. "Well, I guess we should go see the pillar at the entrance. Maybe the second clue can tell us where the treasure is!"

The detectives then went to the front of the hotel. The detectives went to the pillar. The wind was as terrible as ever, and Callie's hat was almost blown to the ocean waves below the hotel! "There it is," said Frank, feeling the wall. "We should make a rubbing." He then took out a sheet of paper and lightly sketched on the sheet with his paper. Words appeared in less than ten seconds.

Back inside, the detectives looked at the message in awe.

"What do you thing this means?" asked Callie, looking at Frank. "To me, this looks like a bunch of numeric gibberish."

The girl was right. This code was harder to break than the other one, for it was composed of many numbers each followed by a letter:

17e, 8i, 23w, 5i, 25y, 11s, 21h, 9n, 16l, 4a, 12h, 20t, 14l, 18a, 2y, 15l, 22e, 24a, 1m, 6n, 13a, 3p, 10g, 7t, 19d.

Callie groaned. "Ugh. This magician sure likes puzzles, doesn't he?"

Frank stared at the letters. "These numbers must have something to do with decoding this message. But I'm not sure what to do."

"We can think about this code later," said Nancy. "I think we should be more concerned about the murder."

"But we all know that it's impossible!" said Callie. "The killer couldn't have entered the room."

"But I need to check something," said Nancy.

The detectives headed up to Room 13. Nancy checked the doorknob. Then, she checked the wall. "Well, I don't see any trace of special equipment."

"Of course not!" said Callie. "I personally checked the doorknob myself! It was perfectly locked!"

"So the killer could not have entered the room because he didn't have the key. That leaves one explanation; the killer was already in the room when Frank checked it."

Frank interrupted, "But there is no place in here that would let a full-grown adult hide. I even checked the cabinet under the sink in the bathroom. There was nobody there in the room when I went in."

Nancy looked at the bed. "Did you check under the bed?"

"No, but I knew that a person couldn't fit in there. The space under the mattress is only wide enough to let a cat in, not a person."

Nancy checked the bed. Frank was true; the space under the bed was too narrow for even a nine-year-old to crawl in.

The girl detective got up and turned around. The room was bare of any cabinet. There wasn't even a TV in the room. And she looked up. There was nothing on the ceiling, and it was impossible for a person to somehow stick to the ceiling like a ninja in TV shows. She checked the floor. It was finely carpeted, but she could find no trapdoor. Also, there was only one suitcase in the entire room, which was still too small to fit even a toddler. She looked at the detectives.

"I guess it's impossible for a person to hide in here. You did check the spaces behind the doors, didn't you?"

Frank nodded. "Of course. That's the most basic trick, actually, and Joe used to do that a lot when we were playing hide-and-seek when we were kids."

Nancy scratched her head, puzzled, when a voice made her turn around. It was Edna's. She was asking Nancy to come to the front desk.

As the girl detective went to the lobby, Edna told her: "I just received a phone call from your father. It seems that he has news to tell you."

Nancy was excited. What news could her father have for her?"

The girl detective went to the telephone immediately and listened. "Dad?"

"Nancy!" exclaimed Mr. Drew. "Where were you? I called your room but you weren't there!"

"I woke up early, so I went downstairs. Anyway, what were you planning to tell me?"

Mr. Drew paused for a minute, as if he was searching through his files, and continued, "I found the file about Mrs. Milton. It says here in my file that she had two children, a boy and a girl, before her demise."

Nancy asked sarcastically, "And they are dead, too, aren't they?"

Mr. Drew chuckled and said, "No, they aren't. At least I think they aren't. The thing is, the boy, James Milton, was seven and the girl, Diana Milton, was five when their mother was killed. They were actually in the house when Mrs. Milton was killed, but they didn't see the killer's face. And the killer didn't see them, either, but to assure their safety, the police put them under the witness protection program."

"Witness protection program?"

"Yes, Nancy. That's the program where the witness to a crime is protected from the culprits and the people who might seek revenge. Those children changed their names and identity. Right now, I'm sure they're living peacefully in a town or city somewhere, but I don't know where that is."

Nancy sighed. "Isn't there a way to find out their identity?"

Mr. Drew sighed also. "I'm afraid not. The government is very strict when it comes to handing out private information about an individual to a person who is not a family of the individual. It could take me years to get that information."

Frustrated, Nancy said, "What about the other members in Mrs. Milton's side of the family? Didn't she have a sister or brother? Or even a step-brother?"

"No, I'm afraid. As long as I know, these people are the only living relatives. Mr. and Mrs. Milton were the only children of parents who were the only children as well. I don't see any file about remarriage and adoption, so I'm quite sure that the boy and the girl are the only living relatives that they have."

"Okay… Thanks a lot. Call me if you have any more information, okay?"

"Okay, Nancy. Bye!"

As Mr. Drew hung up, Nancy continued to brainstorm. She still had a bad feeling that the murder show wasn't over. But she didn't know who was going to be killed yet. She then looked up.

"I have to talk to the guests," she concluded.

She went back to the dining room and told her friends about her findings. They agreed to talk to the suspects with her right after breakfast.

When the clock showed 8:10 AM, the guests came into the dining room. Silently, they ate their breakfast and left after they finished.

"Okay," said Nancy, right after she made sure that the detectives were the only ones in the dining room, "to speed up the investigation, we should go in two groups. Ned and I will talk with Amy, Derek, Gary, and Xavier. Frank, you and Callie should talk to Edna, Henri, and Norma."

"Got it," Frank replied, jotting down the names. He and Callie left the room and went to talk to the three suspects. Nancy and Ned then went to talk to the four remaining suspects.

The first one whom they talked to was Amy. The Japanese artist answered Nancy and Ned's knocks with a slight grunt. But when she saw the two, she smiled a forced smile. "Hi," she said with a slight Japanese accent. "Come on in."

In the room, the artist gave them each a cup of tea which she was brewing just then. She sat down and took her own cup. "What was it that you wanted to ask me?"

Nancy and Ned looked at each other, and Nancy opened her notebook that contained a list of things to ask. "Um… Did you know June before coming to this hotel?"

Amy seemed quite surprised, but her voice remained calm and steady. "Well, yes. You see, she and I are both artists, and we sometimes see each other at each other's exhibits. The reason I know her is because she and I share the same interest: ghosts and the supernatural."

The painter sipped from her cup. "She was a wonderful photographer, who seemed interested in taking pictures of deserted and yet quite fascinating houses. Some of them, she stated, contained unexplained blotches and lines. Let's see…" She then reached into her bag. The artist then took out a book. Opening it to a certain page, she showed the detectives the picture that was on the page.

Nancy took a look, but the only thing she saw was the picture of an old mansion located next to a waterfall.

"Did you see it?" asked Amy.

Nancy looked at Ned. He shrugged, and she answered no. In an instant, a look of sheer disappointment came across the painter's face. "Well, if you see here," she said, pointing to the blank space between the mansion and the waterfall, "you can see a face looking towards you. See? If you look here, this is the eye and this is the nose and…"

The girl detective squinted as much as she could, but all she saw was a random formation of leaves. "Um… I guess that's all for now, thank you for your time." Then, she and her boyfriend left the room as quickly as they could. Once outside, Nancy sighed. "To me, she sounds like a complete maniac."

Ned grinned. "Got that right."

But as she looked out the window, the girl detective suddenly gasped.

Outside, there was an enormous gray cloud forming just miles from the house. The cloud was so huge and dark, she couldn't help shuddering.

"The storm is coming back," she muttered.

As the girl detective and her companion left, the Japanese artist looked at her laptop. Quickly, she went to it and shut it down. Then, she took out a notebook with black leather cover and opened it. Taking out a pen, she started scribbling. Finished, she looked up at the window.

"All according to the plan," she muttered with a grin.

"I can't wait..."

Postscript: What did Amy mean when she said the last quote in the chapter? Why does everybody seem to have a secret of some sort? Will the detectives be trapped in the storm again? There is only one truth, but can the detectives unveil it before time runs out? Read the next installment to find out!

Don't forget to review, by the way. I really like hearing from my readers.

To those of you who are wondering if I'm a N/F or N/N fan, well, I can't tell just yet. Sure, I had Nancy stay with Ned for the last three novels, but--who knows?--I may change my style of writing. You'll just have to read to the last sentence of this story (yes, I do mean the very last sentence and the last word of the story) to find out if Nancy will stay in the cozy hometown with Ned or go venture the unknowns with Frank. I'm sorry if youare confused about my position, but this is the way I write, and as a mystery writer, I need to conceal the truth till the very last moment :-)

Hope you'll continue enjoying this story! I will guarantee surprises and twists in the second half of the novel.

James Stapleton