Free The Clue of the Whistling Bagpipes by Carolyn Keene Page A

suggestion that the writer was not familiar with the language. He had merely used certain words to convey his message.
    “You mean,” said Bess, “that he could have done this by using a dictionary?”
    “Yes.”
    George grinned broadly. “I was just thinking that the words ‘wife member without stamp’ might mean that some woman is involved in the mystery. She could be a foreigner who isn’t in this country legally.”
    Mr. Drew looked at George admiringly. “You may have interpreted this correctly. If so, you girls had better keep your eyes open for a woman who is trying to hamper you in your endeavors.”
    Nancy remarked with a grin, “I can’t let Bess and George get ahead of me in this guessing game! Perhaps the first two words, ‘highway ditch,’ meant that Mr. Dewar was to force my car into a ditch if possible.”
    “And he did!” Bess told Fiona.
    Soon afterward, the group left the table. Fiona said good night. She would meet the girls in the morning after breakfast. “It is most kind of you to give me a ride,” she said, “and I shall do my best to make the trip interesting.”
    At nine the following day Fiona was waiting in the lobby. Outside stood the girls’ rented car, a small four-seat convertible sports model. After Nancy and her father had signed all the necessary papers, the driver went off. A porter stowed the girls’ baggage in the trunk. Nancy kissed Mr. Drew good-by and took her place behind the wheel.
    “We’re off!” Bess cried enthusiastically. “And what a beautiful day!”
    Fiona directed the way out of town and across the Firth of Forth. Then they headed northwest toward the town of Fort William.
    “Are you happy to be going home to the Isle of Skye?” Bess asked the Scottish girl.
    “Yes, indeed,” Fiona said, smiling. “And I hope that you will be able to come and visit me before your trip is finished. I could tell you much local history and folklore.”
    “Tell us some now,” Nancy urged. “I don’t even know the names of famous spots on Skye.”
    “One is Borreraig, where the most famous college of piping once trained pipers from all over the Highlands!” Fiona declared, her eyes sparkling.
    “A college to teach about the bagpipe?” George asked, intrigued.
    “Yes, several colleges were started many centuries ago,” Fiona said. “The one at Borreraig trained the MacCrimmons, a clan of fine pipers for more than two hundred years!”
    “It’s thrilling to think that the bagpipe we know today has such a long and colorful history,” Nancy remarked as she guided the small convertible along the neat, hedge-bordered roads.
    “Oh, yes, and its history is not Scottish alone,” Fiona declared. “I understand the instrument first was played in Egypt as a simple chanter and drone. Later on, these were attached to a bag made of skin and fitted to a blowpipe.”
    “Egypt!” Bess exclaimed, then giggled. “Can you imagine King Tut playing a bagpipe?”
    Fiona laughed. “Perhaps you ought to imagine that Aristotle and Julius Caesar were pipers, too, for the Greeks and Romans played the bagpipe. Then the custom spread through Europe by the Celtic and Roman invasions.”
    “If that’s true, why do we think of it as a Scottish instrument?” George asked.
    Fiona explained. “The primitive instrument is still played in isolated spots of Europe. But in most places music became an indoor entertainment and people were interested in more subdued melodies and elaborate arrangements.”
    “Dinner music,” George suggested, and Fiona nodded.
    “But its history was different in the Scottish Highlands,” Fiona declared. “Our lusty people loved the martial spirit of the music of the pipes and used it for marching troops. It pepped them up when they were tired. Chiefs of the Highland clans were proud of their pipers.”
    “George, I wish you hadn’t mentioned dinner music,” Bess declared. “I’m getting hungry!”
    The girls laughed, and Fiona said that they were