Nancy Drew: Mystery of the Six and a Half Keys
Chapter Twelve
Radek handed Nancy a bunch of random scraps of paper, when they reached the marionette cart. "Here," he said. "Sort these into the correct script."
"Why would I know the script?" Nancy asked. "I've never seen the play before."
"You can use my notes to figure out which characters say which lines," Radek said. "Oh, and you have to keep track of the props! Props are, heh, surprisingly difficult to do with marionettes. I have to plan them well in advance."
"Can't you just improv the entire play?" Nancy asked. "How many times have you done it before?"
"Oh. Um. Look, just because I did the play six times a day for the past nine months, that doesn't mean I have it memorized," Radek said.
Nancy groaned, as she realized she didn't have her phone, so she couldn't look up a video of the performance online. "Okay, give me a detailed summary of the plot, and I'll see what I can do."
"No time," Radek said. "I need to undo the knots on the marionette strings. When they get tangled, it's a mess."
Seeing as Radek was going to be no help at all, Nancy decided to solve the puzzle on her own. Scene one had three lines of dialogue, four frames, and five frame notes. "Three and four and five are totally different numbers!" Nancy complained.
"Excuse me?" Radek asked.
"The play starts with the king greeting everyone, but you have four different kings listed on the character list," Nancy said. "Which one is it?"
"Figure it out based on context," Radek advised.
"The context is that I don't care about your stupid puppets," Nancy muttered. She pulled out a pen and started writing new dialogue on Radek's notepaper.
Radek came to check on her progress, a few minutes later. "Hold on," he said. "King Charles doesn't punch anyone in the play! And the other character is King Rudolf the Second, not Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer."
"Close enough," Nancy said. "So the winner of the boxing match gets the crown, while the loser is thrown off the bridge. What do you think the scroll should be used for?"
"If you're not going to do this correctly, we can't put on the play," Radek said.
"I tried, and it was boring," Nancy said. "Maybe next time you should have an actual script, instead of taping pieces of paper together."
"Look, you have to do this," Radek said. "It's—it's very important that you learn the legend of the seven keys."
"Why?" Nancy asked.
"It's an important part of Czech culture," Radek said. "King Leopold really did commission the creation of the seven keys. They unlock the door to the vault that contains the crown jewels."
"What if one of the keys breaks in half or something?" Nancy asked.
"Well, I imagine that someone very smart and clever might be able to find the original blueprints," Radek said. He looked at Nancy very intently. "They're probably somewhere in the alchemist's lab, deep under this castle complex."
"Wrong," Nancy said.
"Wrong?" Radek asked. "No, I'm correct. The blueprints are—"
"—Totally irrelevant to my investigation," Nancy said. "Why would I get a bunch of old blueprints, when I've been hired to find a necklace? No, you'll have to guess again. What would happen if one of the seven keys broke in half or something?"
"I don't know. What?" Radek asked.
"Then there'd be six and a half keys!" Nancy said. "Ha ha, that's a great title! I think that's what I'll call this case: Mystery of the Six and a Half Keys!"
"I thought you just said the keys are irrelevant to your investigation," Radek said.
Nancy patted Radek on the head. "I think you've spent a little too much time playing with puppets," she said. "You're starting to confuse yourself."