The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes Read Online Free PDF

the center hall to the rear garden,” Nancy remarked.
    The taxi driver grinned. “Most of my American passengers have never heard of our open closes and closed closes,” he said.
    When Mr. Drew and the girls looked utterly blank, Donald added, “Our tenements—ye call them apartment houses—have a common entrance, called a close. If it has a door, it’s a closed close. If it has no door, it’s an open close.”
    Nancy remarked with a smile, “I see we have a great deal to learn in your country. We shall probably find ourselves making mistakes and people misunderstanding us.”
    “Aye, and that ye will!” Donald assured them.
    He drove his passengers to an attractive hotel next to the railroad station and they alighted. Nancy, Bess, and George waited patiently in the lobby while Mr. Drew went up to the reservations desk to announce their arrival. After nearly ten minutes had gone by, Nancy wondered what was causing the delay. To her surprise, her father seemed to be arguing with the clerk. She overheard the lawyer say, “But you have my cable!”
    Finally the clerk shrugged, produced two keys, and summoned a porter. On the way up in the elevator, Mr. Drew explained to the girls that apparently the hotel had marked his reservation Dewar, pronounced Dew-ar, instead of Drew. The lawyer’s room was some distance up the hall from the one the girls would be occupying.
    “After we unpack, I’ll get in touch with you about my day’s plans,” he said as they stepped from the elevator.
    Nancy, Bess, and George were delighted with their room. It was large and tastefully furnished. There was an adjoining bath, and Bess declared she had never seen such big Turkish towels in her life. “They must be seven feet long!” she exclaimed.
    Nancy, meanwhile, had gone to the bureau and opened the top drawer to put away some clothes. Staring up at her was a very strange note.
    “George! Bess! Come here!” she called. “The mystery has followed us!”
    The cousins dashed to Nancy’s side and stared at the paper. “What kind of message is that?” asked George, and read aloud the strange words:
    “‘RATHAD DIG GLAS SLAT LONG
MALL BEAN BALL GUN AIL.’”
    “And what weird drawings!” Bess remarked.
    In the upper left-hand corner of the paper was a bagpipe. Opposite this was a cradle in the form of a boat. And at the lower left, crowding the margin, was what looked to be a part of a one-story modern building.
    Bess burst into laughter. “Mystery nothing! Some kid who stayed in this room made it.”
    George nodded. “The words sure sound like baby talk.”
    Nancy was inclined to disagree, but before she could comment, the room telephone rang. She answered it, expecting the caller to be her father. To her surprise, the desk clerk was on the wire. His voice sounded excited.
    “Is this Miss Drew?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’m most frightfully sorry,” he said, “but I have given you and your friends the wrong room. I will send up a porter at once for your bags. He will take you to your new room.”
    When Nancy reported this to the others, Bess sighed. “I’m glad I didn’t start unpacking. But I’m surprised that a hotel as fine as this one would make such a mistake.”
    Nancy went back to concentrate on the note. Her photographic mind made a mental picture of it and she memorized the strange words.
    As the young sleuth closed the bureau drawer she said, “This note may have been intended for the person who is coming into this room.”
    “You mean it’s in code?” George asked.
    “It could be,” Nancy answered.
    By this time the porter had arrived with a baggage truck. The girls’ new quarters were still farther down the hall in the opposite direction from Mr. Drew’s room. After the trio was settled, Nancy remarked, “I’ll have to tell my father we’ve moved.” To the porter, she said, “Did Mr. Dewar show up to claim that room we left?”
    “Yes, ma’am, he did, and he was black wi’ rage when he learned